THE MID-LIFE CRISIS: PAIN OF IMPACTED FEELINGS

March 2009
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As he grows older, the macho male finds himself increasingly isolated—cut off from his inner being, incapable of intimacy, and dangerously ill-equipped to handle the inevitable assaults of aging.

Brooding strong and silent behind his invincible mask, he may try to disguise his pain by appearing perpetually cheerful or by translating psychic suffering into sardonic jest, a time-honored masculine defense. But now the jokes are etched in acid, the laughter laced with bile, and a man discovers that comic detachment and cold-blooded denial are feeble weapons to use at this critical stage of life. After forty impacted feelings take their toll.

During this turbulent period women have an important advantage over men: They are allowed to admit their dissatisfactions without censure and seek comfort when they feel troubled, confused, or ill. Our society not only encourages women to express their feelings openly but also supports them in doing so.

By contrast, since male superiority requires forfeiting the right to be merely human—human enough to admit weakness—men are sternly prohibited from confiding their troubles, confessing fears, or seeking help.2 And that is why, some researchers suggest, women have less difficulty aging than men, less difficulty surmounting major life crises.

The masculine mystique dictates that a “real” man be self-sufficient. A male in our society is therefore trained from childhood to follow the cult of toughness. Little boys don’t cry or complain, he is told. They take it on the chin. Little boys are supposed to be brave and bold, strong and sturdy, fearless at all times. Sentimental outbursts, he soon discovers, are for women only.

Because of this conditioning, a man learns early to suppress or deny these forbidden feelings. He learns to conceal his pain, bury his anger, and clamp the lid on all emotions. In time he gradually becomes dulled to his own inner responses, detached from his feelings, and finally in some cases incapable of feeling.

This schizoid separation occurs because traditional sex roles pit male against female by defining masculinity and femininity as polar oppositcs. Thus, the man who fails to conform to the masculine mystique—who fails to obey the commandment that he be in charge of his emotions—goes so at great peril: He is automatically accused of being like a woman—soft, weak, and foolish.

Feelings are dangerous, according to this polarized logic, because if you rely on feelings rather than facts, you lose control. And if you lose control, people take advantage of you, and then you get screwed. Which means being passive, feminine and manipulated.

But this masculine ideal of keeping cool is based on a monumental fallacy: The assumption that emotions can really be “controlled” by pushing them aside. There is now much medical evidence which suggests that buried emotions backfire, either physically or psychologically. Thus the more a man tries to control his emotions, the more they actually control him.

The reason for this paradox is that suppressed emotions don’t go away. If concealed or denied, they smolder underground until they finally find some devious route for release. Contrary to the masculine ideal, then, repressed emotions are more dangerous than those that are openly expressed.

A good illustration of this is seen in the man who regularly suppresses his anger. His rage builds up gradually until he finally explodes. “I don’t know how to express my feelings aggressively without being violent about it,” confessed one mild-mannered man whose life experiences all seemed strangely muted. “When it comes to dealing with anger I can’t stop the escalation. If I start to scream and yell I’m likely to throw things, bang walls, even smash you in the face. Of course, it takes a lot of provocation to bring this out, so mostly I just clam up.”

His experience is typical. Many men who pride themselves on rarely losing their cool oscillate between these two extremes: Their emotions either remain buried—or else break out and go berserk.

Such violent outbursts are frightening, of course, because the man who blows up after overly long periods of repressing anger is indeed “out of control.” Moreover, such explosions often have devastating consequences: A man gets fired; he loses a good friend; or his wife walks out on him. Surveying the mess he’s made, he resolves to exercise even tighter controls in the future.

The result? The next time he turns his anger against himself, infecting or inflaming the body. He gets sick, stricken by ulcers or colitis or hypertension or migraine headaches, to name but a few among the many diseases that authorities now agree are caused by stifled emotions, anger especially.

It is the body that finally pays, because if emotions are not expressed in words or actions they must find release through physical illness. This is the basic explanation for what are now called psychosomatic diseases. And in our society men who take pride in keeping all their problems to themselves are especially prone to this psychosomatic response.

But at mid-life the stoic injunctions of the masculine mystique cause psychic pain, too. Emotionally armored to do battle against the world, men who have been taught to deny anger and pain have also closed off other, more positive feelings. With age they become increasingly unable to express or respond to affection, tenderness, or warmth. Rigid and out of touch with others, they have learned to substitute guarded, mechanical responses for spontaneous, felt action.

As a result, many men are indescribably lonely as they enter their middle years. They complain that life has lost its meaning. They feel bored and restless. Nothing excites them or gives them joy.

The emotional juices that provide pleasure, that give life meaning, that inspire action, have dried up. Their lifelong habit of discipline and self-control has taken its toll, sapping their energies, muting their emotions, and leaving them cruelly isolated. They have become detached from other people and their authentic self, a self so long concealed behind a cool cover, a false macho mask, that it has been stripped of all passion, stripped bare. A self sacrificed in the name of masculinity: outwardly strong, inwardly sterile.

Such a man feels hollow, empty, dead inside. He laments like the character in That Championship Season:

I’m so bored half the time it’s killing me. Watching the same old faces get old, same bullshit, day in and day out. Bored. Sometimes I get on the turnpike and just drive until I feel like getting off. Alone … What’s left? Hit a few bars, some music, drink, play old basketball games over in my head. Pick up some strange pussy now and then, here and there, you know. Always need something young and juicy sitting beside me. Mostly sit and replay the good games in my head, believe that? . . .

Sometimes I think that’s the only thing I can still feel, you know, still feel in my gut . . . that championship season.5

This lament comes from a man who has made his million but lost the capacity to feel anything except the ancient thrill of a high school basketball game. Like many mid-life men, he complains he is dying of boredom, but he is really suffering from a terminal case of impacted feelings.

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