Middle age is miserable.
At least, that’s the implication of a new survey of 2,000 people from U.K. theater chain Cineworld, which found that life is “least fun” at age 45. Additionally, more than half of people say that finding fun in everyday life gets harder the older you get.
Previous research supports the idea that middle age is rough. Data from the U.K.’s Office of National Statistics (ONS), which looked at the well-being of more than 300,000 adults over three years, found that people ages 40-59 were the least happy and most anxious. And a working paper distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that there is “much evidence” that “humans experience a midlife psychological ‘low’.”
In fact, there is a “happiness curve,” and it bottoms out in midlife, Jonathan Rauch, author of “The Happiness Curve,” explained to MarketWatch’s Alessando Malito. “The happiness curve is how aging, independent of other things, affects your happiness and it is U-shaped,” Rauch said. “It turns out the aging process drags your happiness down through your 40s, bottoms out around 50, and then aging increases your happiness for the rest of your life.”
So what causes this midlife slump? The ONS researchers suggest that the juggling of the multitude of responsibilities in middle age could be to blame, including “the burden caused by having to care for both parents and children at the same time.” Some 23% of American adults balance caring for their kids and their parents, and they often face financial challenges as a result, a 2015 Pew Research Center report found.
Midlife doldrums could also be related to the struggle to balance careers and personal lives, the ONS researchers wrote, explaining that while younger people might still be in school, “those in their middle years may have more demands placed on their time and might struggle to balance work and family commitments.”
What should you do if you’re going through a midlife slump? Try to get back the fun in your life, says psychologist Erika Martinez of Envision Wellness: “By middle age, people can be bogged down with responsibilities — mortgages, children, spouses, etc. Somewhere along the way, they stop doing the things they enjoyed when they were younger. I think the key to enjoying middle age is not to let responsibilities rule you. Keep doing, or re-engage in, the activities that you found fun and exciting before.”
And sometimes it requires you to think even bigger. “If you had big dreams when you were younger, and have not accomplished what you wanted to do, or you are feeling burned out in your career or no longer really needed as a parent because your children are grown, life can feel very empty,” explains Tina B. Tessina, a psychotherapist and author of The Ten Smartest Decisions a Woman Can Make After Forty. “But, actually this is a great time to reinvent yourself on a new basis. Instead of worrying about what you haven’t done, why not figure out what you can still do? It’s never too late to be who you might have been!”
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She looks rode hard and hung out wet.
Well a paper bag and some lube would probably extend her service period.
Damn, no sense of humor. She looks like the fugly wife of the guy on Homelan\d.
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. The things that might’ve seemed interesting once no longer do. Can you imagine being an aging rock star with plastic surgery and hair plugs having to act the fool and play your hit from the 80’s for the 4,000 TH time? Better to have worked for the water department.
I guess you can find something you’ll like doing, though. In retirement (if that’ll ever happen), I’d like to work with kids at a ymca camp or something. Once in a while I give out food to the homeless (all drunks, druggies or crazies). I don’t know whether that helps or just makes it worse. I do it for me, truth be told. If there were some volunteer setting where you’d just carry babies and try to soothe them, I’d do that.
Sounds like you have a good heart.
I loved all of my middle years, even though there was some trying times. Right up until 59 when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Bummer. Some people say that cancer is the best thing that ever happened to them. Those people are certifiably nuts.
I haven’t found middle age to be the least bit joyless, boring or burdensome. Kinda enjoying it. Aches and pains are many, but being a little smarter than I was 30 years ago more than makes up for it. If your middle age sucks, you’re doing it wrong.
Not for me either!
My ex flew off on her broom when I was 44 and the judge mercifully banged the gavel on our divorce when I was 45.
It just doesn’t get any better than that!!!
You could have been a widower.
Good one.
A survey of people in movie theaters. That gives you an indication of the disposition of the respondents. Most likely the same ones blaming their miserable lives and poor choices on someone else.
Thanks much for that one. There’s a reason why Christianity banned usury.
I found this after googling “which religion believe in usury”
“Usury is the act of lending money at an interest rate that is considered unreasonably high or that is higher than the rate permitted by law. It first became common in England under King Henry VIII. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam especially take a very strong stance against usury.”
The trouble being that the usurers own the govt and set the laws in their favor
LOL, is this from Snopes? It is true the Judaism frowns on Jews loaning money to other Jews at interest.
“It’s never too late to be who you might have been!”
It worked for Caitlyn
Grandma Moses, Colonel Sanders, Duncan Hines, Sam Walton, Julia Child, Martha Stewart….and many others who found wealth and a new life in their middle and later years….enjoy what you got while you got it…life is short
I bought a book for my Father when he turned 60 (I was 39) it was a collection of essays various people wrote about starting new lives from 60 on, quite inspiring I thought. He retired at 61 from a factory job he despised. I learned an important lesson watching him all those years, even spent 9 months working at the same factory…find work you love or work will grind you down.
21 years later when I was cleaning out my parents’ home my Mom was selling, as my dad had gone home (too many cigarettes) and she was moving in with my sister, I found the book.
I don’t think my Dad every read it. I devoured it.
I had started a business at 55, was five years into it and it was going gangbusters. After I read all the stories of people who had reinvented themselves I knew what I wanted to do next. Had some long talks with my wife, got her agreement, and two years later I finally found and bought the land for a farm I had been taking about for 30 years.
Next project (on the modest working farm built from scratch) is my wife’s dream house (I get a 1,000 sq. ft. basement, my own mud room, and an outdoor shower so I stop tracking mud in).
I think after the house is built I’m going to get a good dog and a good donkey…then try my hand at making my own beer! By that time surely TSHTF will once again allow me to reinvent myself.
Maybe I’ll become a Minute Man?
If EC can be a two minute man, I’m sure you can be at least a one minute man.
Umm, how do you know about EC’s timing?
Unrealistic expectations and lack of character causes unhappiness.
Hmmmm Sounds like another reason for progressives to take away guns.
Napoleon Hill’s classic “Think and Grow Rich” points out that the vast majority of truly, spectacularly successful people didn’t hit their stride until their 40’s. I suspect this poll in the UK simply shows that 45 is the magic age when most Brits finally figure out that the pro-diversity equality cult they’ve been peddled their whole life is in fact a load of bullshit, and their leaders have sold out their people for a few shekels. They are sad because their society, built over thousands of years is not only dying, it’s being killed. Gotta love the stock photo too- average Londoner circa 2019.
Can I barf now? I maybe read this same friggin article the first time around 1992, maybe earlier and it’s been regurgitated ever since. The generation sandwiched between the younger and the older blah freakin blah.
But Dream Big!
50 is the new 30!
You can be anything you want to be!
and btw, buy this book!
How about this for a Life Curve – You’re consumed with making your way, finding a place, figuring out the real world from the happy horseshit people tell you when growing up, starting a family, keeping the family, a business, a home, car, pets, all of it. Maybe early 40s you sit down and have a minute. Time to think what the actual fuck. You look in the mirror, you look at your spouse. Chances are good you’ll have a period of hating it all, maybe you divorce, maybe you make peace.
Enter Physical Decay, stage left. Maybe in your 50s. Menopause is bullshit. Lumbar pain is bullshit, etc. You learn to cope, not because you are “brave” but because there’s no other options.
By 60 or so you’ve made some progress with looking back, looking all around, and finally being sort of okay with what you actually have and have done. Even if you don’t have much, and haven’t done much like myself. It’s great to not worry about what people think, how you look, what you’re wearing. You’ve learned a bunch of stuff, all the hard way because when you’re young your head is full of delusions and they have to get beaten out of you by Life. Now you see how things are, where they will likely end up. You have what in other times and cultures was called Wisdom. Even if you’re a putz in a lot of ways and aren’t that amazing of a person, you can still tell people things that will make their life easier, you’ve got a bunch of Dad jokes, you can fix the plumbing, make the dinner, pay off that mortgage.
No one wants it. Because you know…Boomer.
In fact, your level of understanding of your culture, times, life experiences and so-called wisdom are in direct proportion to your Assholery, and the most damning evidence of your worthlessness. The past is crap, culture is crap, western patriarchal white-supremacist American life experience is crap, and so my dear aged one – YOU are crap. Also, it’s your fault. You made everything like this and we hate IT and we hate YOU.
So how about this – whatever an American has been through during their first 5 or so decades, this Kulturkampf is going to hit those people really, really hard. Whatever struggles an American has had as an aging individual, they will be made exponentially worse by the deliberate scorching of the earth around them, by their own people.
So you have realized in your later years that you must face your own limitations, and eventually your own death. But the cultural message is that it’s all been garbage, the whole journey has been a joke.
That’s a shitty thing to do to a nation’s Moms, Dads, and Grandparents. Who wants a boot in their ass on their way out the door.
Buy my new book on aging in America,”Thanks For Nothing Boomer: Fuck off and Die”. Free shipping to all contiguous states by Amazon robot and drone.
“Average Londoner” – just another nigger.
Just went empty nesters. It’s fucking awesome!! Wife approached me yesterday morning, hun, I think we need to practice with the AR. Done!!