When my cousin’s husband of two decades left her for a woman 20 years younger, she was blindsided. He was a salt-of-the-earth family man, but in the months leading up to him suddenly leaving, she said he’d been a ‘bit off’. A redundancy had seemed to ‘send him off the rails’. He became moody, started working out for long hours in the gym, showed a new interest in ‘hip’ nightclubs, and bought a motorbike and, she later found, a stash of Viagra. Then he left.
’Classic midlife crisis,’ I remember saying to her, not really knowing what that meant, but also knowing that he was displaying the sort of ‘stereotypical’ midlife-man behaviour that deserved chastising. That’s just what men of a ‘certain age’ do, isn’t it? Almost as if they…
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Woman & Home (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 2025