Midlife c r isis? It’s a myth Why life gets better after 50Jul 21, 2018  · 3 Midlife unhappiness is for lowachiever s Surely, if we are lucky enough to have put lots of points

Midlife crisis? It’s a myth Why life gets better after 50

Midlife crisis? It s a myth. Why life gets better after 50

Jonathan Rauch

We don’t peak in middle age, say the experts. So forget about the stereotypes and embracechange

Sat 21 Jul 2018 01.00 EDT

B eware midlife! You will be prone to sudden, disruptive upheaval. Around the age of 50your productivity, creativity and adaptability begin their inexorable decline. Withthem, happiness ebbs. Your best years are behind you. Naturally, your job, marriageand shattered aspirations are to blame. If you or someone important in your life showssymptoms of midlife restlessness, be alarmed! The dashboard is flashing red.

Everything in the paragraph you just read is inaccurate. True, midlife is a tricky and vulnerabletime. But most of what people think they know about midlife crisis – beginning with the notionthat it is a crisis – is based on harmful myths and outdated stereotypes. The truth is moreinteresting, and much more encouraging.

1 You’re entering a danger zone Actually, midlife is a time of transition. For most people, this is gradual, natural, manageable andhealthy, albeit unpleasant. It is, in other words, the opposite of a crisis. The idea of the midlifecrisis first appeared in an article by the psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques in 1965 and soon caught onin popular culture. Psychologists found no such phenomenon when they investigated, but theidea of the midlife crisis refused to fade.

Then, about 15 years ago, economists made an unexpected finding: the U-shaped happinesscurve. Other things being equal – that is, once conditions such as income, employment, healthand marriage are factored out of the equation – life satisfaction declines from our early 20s untilwe hit our 50s. Then it turns around and rises, right through late adulthood. This pattern has beenfound in countries and cultures around the world; a version of it has even been detected inchimpanzees and orangutans.

We assume that ageing, in and of itself, has either no effect on happiness, or that it simply makesus miserable. But instead, it fights happiness until midlife, then switches sides. Of course, ageingis never the only thing going on. How satisfied you feel at any given time will depend on manythings; but the independent effect of ageing is more than enough to make a noticeable difference,especially if the rest of your life is stable and smooth.

Importantly, ageing’s effect is not sudden and dramatic. It is slow and cumulative. I was atextbook case. In my late 30s, I noticed restless and dissatisfaction, as if neither my life nor myaccomplishments amounted to anything worthwhile. The malaise grew gradually butpersistently. It was seriously dispiriting by my mid-40s. Then, at around 50, my malaise began tolift, as gradually as it had come. Now, at 58, it is mercifully behind me.

2 I must be unhappy about somethingNot necessarily. Often, midlife malaise can be about nothing. At the age of 45, I won one of thehighest prizes in American magazine journalism, a National Magazine award. That, finally,brought fulfilment – for about 10 days. Then the malaise came back. Flailing for an explanation, Ilit upon my career. Many days, I felt tempted to quit my job, just to get out of my rut.

Humans are quite bad at attributing the causes of our unhappiness, and mine was the result of theageing process. Throwing my career into the wind wouldn’t have helped, and may have madematters worse. Fortunately, I was rational enough to avoid rushing for the exit. So are mostpeople. Contrary to the American Beauty stereotype, most of us slog through a midlife slumpwithout acting out, which is fortunate, because a slump can indeed become a crisis if it leadspeople to make impulsive and costly mistakes.

So what is the slump about? It seems to be the effect partly of natural changes in our values. Webegin adulthood, in our 20s and 30s, ambitious and competitive, eager to put points on thescoreboard and accumulate social capital. In late adulthood, after midlife, we shift our prioritiesaway from ambition and towards deepening our connection with the people and activities thatmatter most to us. In between, we often experience a grinding transition when the old valueshaven’t brought the satisfaction we expected, but the new values haven’t yet establishedthemselves.

3 Midlife unhappiness is for low�achieversSurely, if we are lucky enough to have put lots of points on the board by 40, achieving orsurpassing our goals, malaise won’t strike? Wrong again. The most perverse effect of midlifemalaise is that high-achievers are especially vulnerable. The reason is what researchers call thehedonic treadmill. To motivate us, youthful ambition makes us unrealistically optimistic abouthow much satisfaction success will bring. Later, when we meet a goal, our desire for status andsuccess moves the goalposts. Despite our objective accomplishments, we are not as satisfied aswe expected. We wonder, “How come I’m not happier?” As this cycle of achievement anddisappointment repeats over time, satisfaction comes to seem forever out of reach.

High-achievers are particularly vulnerable precisely because they set so much store byaccomplishment, and because they have so much to be grateful for. They often experience theirdissatisfaction as unjustified and irrational: a moral failing. That makes them still moredissatisfied. Now dissatisfaction is bootstrapping itself, creating a self-propelled spiral.

None of this is to cast aspersions on building a business, earning a doctorate, having a family, orother admirable ambitions. Those things are well worth doing. Just remember that objectivesuccess provides no guarantee against subjective discontent and, indeed, can make it worse –until the aforementioned changes in our values make it easier for us to jump off the ambitiontreadmill.

4 At 50, my best years are behind meThis myth is one of the biggest causes of discontent, because we assume that if we are notfulfilled at 50, we never will be. In fact, the happiness curve shows that, other things being equal,the best in life is yet to come. As we traverse our 50s, 60s and 70s, ageing makes us more positiveand equable, and less stressed and regretful. This so-called positivity effect even seems to providesome emotional armour against the negative effects of physical decline and ill-health. In 2011, astudy led by the Stanford University psychologist Laura Carstensen concluded: “Contrary to thepopular view that youth is the best time in life, the present findings suggest that the peak ofemotional life may not occur until well into the seventh decade.”

The false assumption that we peak in middle age not only makes midlifers unnecessarilypessimistic; it also fuels the stereotype of the burnt-out, bitter elder, which in turns fuels agediscrimination that leaves vast reservoirs of experience and creativity underused. In the US,

studies find that people aged 55-65 are more likely to start companies than those aged 20-34, andthat older workers are just as productive as younger ones (and increase the productivity of thosethey work with). But you would never guess this from the way we think and talk about ageing.

5 Midlife slump is something to be ashamed ofThis is perhaps the most harmful misconception of all. Combine the false assumptions listedabove, and the picture emerges of midlife crisis as an unjustified, self-indulgent form of actingout by fortunate people who should be more grateful. No wonder it has become a widely mockedcliche, something people tut-tut over. But the result is that millions of people who are workingthrough a midlife transition do so in silence and isolation, afraid to talk about it, often even withtheir spouses, for fear of setting off a family panic or being told they need medication.

That needs to change. Isolation and shame compound the likelihood of instability and genuinecrisis. Instead, people need support and connection. They need to know, and to hear, that theyare passing through a perfectly normal and ultimately beneficial human transition.

The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After Midlife by Jonathan Rauch (GreenTree/Bloomsbury, £18.99). Order a copy for £16.14 at guardianbookshop.com

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