Husband in Crazy Brain Midlife Crisis Shares Story

Shared with me from one of the wives I coach.

I love, love, love, love when one of the wives I coach shares something with me so I can share with you!

I love to be help for you to gain perspective and understanding on what is happening in your world. As you know this happened to me too and while I have done YEARS of research and continue to do so, even with my podcast, my goal is the same: To give you tools to help you get your husband home. PERIOD.  From morning till night, I help people get what they want: love and connection.

It’s not hard, but it is challenging and a husband or wife in midlife crisis is the worst thing that can happen to you next to a child dying. PAIN. Pure horrific mental pain. Surviving the mess is where I help so many.

Here’s the story I want to share below.  May I warn you that the person that sent it to me got it from another source who said she pieced the many posts that “Brian” wrote.

God Bless you all. Keep your husband on your mind and save space for him.  You are an angel and doing the work that will create the best YOU!  A Beautiful, Empathic, Accepting, Strong, Thankful YOU!  A BEAST of Love!

I’m headed to a retreat of wives next weekend and I’m thrilled to bring them a gift that has this on it!  Still a secret!

Sorry it has some weird spaces in it…I don’t have time to “edit” and I wanted you guys to see it right away cause it’s great. Weird, just like a midlife crisis husband!

Also, if anyone can get ahold of “Brian c. Newman” can you please ask him to reach out to me or give me his contact info so I can invite him on my podcast!? ❤️❤️

My Own Midlife Crisis

Brian.C (newman)

Upbringing

My father turned 48 the year I was born
I was born the fifth of six children that survived. I was born poor and I didn’t know it but for the first 10 years of my life
I did know to stay the hell out of my fathers way and far enough out of his reach or there would be no little Newman
around the house.
I couldn’t understand my lot in life. He never seemed angry ay my older sisters and my younger brother born four
years after my arrival was the apple of his eye. Although my bro could do no wrong, even if he did, it was taken out
on me. I seemed the object of his pain and the source of his constant frustration with a life that had gone completely
sour from what he first envisioned.
The year before I was born my father suffered an industrial accident that completely evaporated his youth. On a grain
elevator construction project he lost footing on the roof and landed squarely on the railroad tracks beneath. Although
everyone thought he was dead, he was discovered to be still breathing when the rescuers arrived, his skull had
cracked open and he had lost much blood. This was in the days when surgery was equally as hit and miss; but they
put him together before sending him back to work.
The corrupt workers compensation board at the time refused him leave of absence and the doctors signed off on a
“clear bill of health” within days of his injury. This launched an 15 year struggle with the WCB to gain compensation
for his fall. Forced to return to work without compensation benefits, he was immediately laid off as he could not
remain standing through his often dizzy spells that would again fall him to the ground. He found other work in
agriculture and the oil-patch but would often be sent home to my mother because of nose-bleeds and falling over on
the job. His headaches were not to be believed.

I discovered many years later that the reason I became the object of his midlife anger and frustration had less to do
with his fall and more to do with a large gap in his memory. Apparently during this time of struggle he never recalled
his coming home from the out-of-town project and the weekend of romance he had with my mother. He only recalled
the gentleman pastor that succored my mother’s pain in this struggle. Although my mother was faithful, my father had
serious doubts. All of my brothers and sisters were born rugged and brunette; I was a handsome young blonde. In my
father’s mind I was not to be here and I became a constant reminder of his life’s pain, a reminder of his failure, a reminder of all that was wrong with life – and he let me know in many ways.

I had arrived squarely in the middle of his midlife crisis and the launching of his Irritable Male Syndrome that would carry on the duration of my childhood.
I left home the day I turned sixteen – the legal age that a man could work in our country.
I watched my father withdraw from family and isolate himself and although his tragedy didn’t allow him to be elsewhere he would disappear in his own mind consumed with anger and frustration at his lot in life. His only release
was his lashing out at me and the often “after-hours” debates with my mother that I would overhear. It took 15 years and ombudsman intervention to finally gain compensation for his fall. The WCB settled the suit with a lump-sum that
was far from just recompense but it gave him a feeling of justification and restored an element of his pride. He was only able to work “full time” for the final two years before retirement. He had become an empty shell of a man that life
had beaten. His strength of youth consumed in tragedy he became timid and detached from family and friends. His indecisiveness loomed and he was often led and covered of his weaknesses by my mother. When he finally died
some 20 years later I sat at his hospital bedside and said “life is a b!tc# and then you die” and promptly went out to begin my own midlife crisis.

This crisis of my own was short-lived and although I reassessed some things it never went full blown. It launched periodic periods of reassessment of my life that I lived at full-speed convinced that I would never be like my father.
This was my aspiration from the onset of early adulthood but following my father’s death it became a conviction.

Wife: Transition

Whatever mini-crisis was launched at my father’s death was quickly delayed upon meeting the love of my life some
two years later. Phoenix came in to rock my world. It was the single most positive event in my life to finally find her.
There was an instant recognition on both of our parts. I had heard about her before but when fate led me to her office
I walked straight past secretaries and office people directly to her and extended my hand saying “you must be my
star”. I had never met her, seen her, or had anyone describe her before but the burning sensation in my heart of a 5
hour drive at lightning speed to meet her for the first time only saw one person in that office that day and nobody else
in my way counted. The room and office staff disappeared into mere shadows as I looked in her eyes for the first time
and the force of recognition was so powerful that I think all she said was “oh-ohh, here he is; I’m a dead man”. She
too had that recognition that was to never go away. Her name has been on my lips every day since.
A midlife crisis may be delayed, cut short, prolonged, or even disappear entirely. My ‘midlife transition’ was
postponed for seven years but the inevitable was to come regardless of how happy life had become. The
reassessment of midlife is a normal passage for men and often never really becomes a crisis of any significant
proportion. Mine became triggered by a foreign virus that hospitalized me and stole my physical strength for a two
year recovery period. During this time my mother passed away and triggered the depth of reassessment while
reminding me of the overwhelming thoughts I had at my father’s death bed that “life is a b!tc# and then you die”.

Midlife Transition is first identified by a period of sadness that may even cause a man to become overtly depressed.
Although I had periodic “warm-up sessions” of sadness and depression in the seven years following my father’s
death; I had never really known depression in my life until midlife. When it first appeared I wondered what they put in
the water! My personality was type AB positive and depression really had no place in my fast paced life.

When a man becomes saddened or depressed in a midlife reassessment he reviews all of the aspects of life that
brought him this far. Although women tend to hold their depression inward; men tend to work their depression
outward. A woman may take on blame during her depression; a man looks outward at others to blame. When he
looks for a ‘reason’ for these feelings he assesses all that he is. Our first identity as males is in our career and work;
we identify ourselves by what we do. If a man’s work is not to blame he then looks to his second primary identity – his
home and marriage. Since his sadness is often felt in those quiet moments at home he identifies his sadness with
‘location’ and the result is that ‘home is to blame’. The first place to affix blame is on his wife and then his children.
His desire is to withdraw. He needs to isolate himself in order to progress through his midlife passage but this time
becomes often confusing with very few markers to show him the way. Socially, depression is deemed a sign of
weakness that he feels he cannot show. He can only endure so much of this before he feels the urgency to pull up his
socks and ‘get over it’ and ‘on with it’. If a man seeks professional help at this time from medical doctor’s or therapists
his midlife transition might be brief. If instead he determines to tough it through on his own his transition will reach
crisis proportions before it is over.

A man that determines to ‘do it on his own’ is dragging his feet through midlife transition. In earlier cultures an elder of
the community might step in to coach him through; today a man in western civilization no longer has that social structure to depend on. Instead if he suffers through this alone he will tend to force his feelings of sadness under and
put on a socially acceptable mask of strength. When depression is forced under in this way it does not simply disappear. Instead it is forced to ‘not appear’. It becomes what Terrence Real identified as “covert depression”. It can
no longer be seen by the typical signs of depression but rather may only be seen by the defenses a man uses to run from it.

Real says that ‘Covert Depression’ has three major symptoms. First, men attempt to escape pain by overusing alcohol or drugs, working excessively or seeking extramarital affairs. They go into isolation, withdrawing from loved
ones. And they may lash out, becoming irritable or violent. "Covert Depression," is a psychic band around the heart
that sufferers respond to by engaging in destructive addictive behaviors – from classic alcohol and drug dependence to affairs outside the marriage to workaholism to neglecting or abusing their own children. Typically, they are incapable of making the emotional investment necessary to sustain a lasting loving relationship with their wife,
children, or another.

In my own story I became one who assuaged my sadness on my own accord being unwilling to seek professional help. I forced my feelings under in order to get by in my world. I had an overwhelming weariness of running, running,
and running for the sake of everyone else’s comfort around me. I felt that ‘my time’ was not my own. I was like a gerbil on his wheel unable to step off or the entire structure would tumble down. I became weary of my
responsibilities to hold everything together and not able to find rest. My energy was waning and I no longer had the strength or ambition to stay ahead of the younger men rising in the corporation. I had burned the candle from both
ends for too long and now I was tired. I asked myself “when will it be time for ME?”
In my situation it was my work that was at issue and I stopped my reassessment there before proceeding to assess my home-life as being the reason for my feeling of sadness. Other men that are content in their career would proceed
to “identity number two”. But I had lost my identity at my work-place and my career. I had structured it in such a way that I could not take credit for my personal achievements. It tore away at the very fiber of my manhood – the three
primary needs men require from their work – pride, position, and prestige. This overlapped greatly into my home-life
and marriage, but was not the place that I personally affixed the blame for my sadness and depression. When I withdrew it was first from my work and then much later from my wife and children. Some 4 years later when I took the
‘midlife crisis test’, I scored on every count except the area of “blaming of one’s spouse”.

Although I resent being the classic cliché of “a man in midlife crisis”, I became the stereotype. Until the later half of my forties I was a conqueror in constant pursuit of challenge and competition. I was feverish with goals and meeting them with achievement. Events like downsizing and cutbacks weren’t in my vocabulary. When
corporations were cutting back I seized their misfortune as my opportunity for expansion. I considered downturns in the economy as merely opportunities to solidify growth.

My life was surrounded with a constant buzz of activity. Whether I entered the boardroom or the parts room things
happened and things moved. Action was generated around me. Everyone knew when I was at my desk because the
level of intensity and energy resounded throughout the building. Telephones rang constantly when I was in;
movement occurred, change happened in all departments.
I learned to count on the adrenalin rush brought on by stress. It gave me that cutting edge in decision making and
development of projects. The closer I walked to the edge the better I liked it. Things get done under pressure and if I
worked less than 14 hours it was a slow day.
Turning forty didn’t affect me any as I never slowed down to consider the age change at all. In fact I celebrated my 42nd birthday two years running thinking I was 42 at age 41; it became a source of humor for all involved. I didn’t
have time for birthdays or for aging.

Then 45 came on me like an imploding tower. The passing of my second parent led me to reflect on life but only enough to slow my pace. Then even more suddenly after a return flight from out of the country I was hit with a
“foreign” virus. It drained me of all of my strength and put me into the hospital. The doctor that treated me and eradicated the virus informed me that it would take 2 years to fully regain my strength if I fully regained it at all – a set
back that I couldn’t afford. I regained more than half of my strength in six months through “teethe gritting determinations” but all that I had initially has never returned. I learned to hate the loss of strength and ability to
perform the tasks I could do easily not two years before. I found this depressing to the point of reevaluating my entire life.

I resumed a thought that I had taken on some ten years earlier at the death of my father saying, “life is a b!tch and
then you die”; only this time I applied that thought to me. I was tired, weary of life and burning the stick at both ends. I
felt burned out and cut short of obtaining all of my life goals. I looked ahead to my remaining years of life and
determined that I was now too tired and too old to start again or contend on the competitive edge. My failed
achievements mounted up in my mind until they blanked out any of the real achievements that I had made. All I could
see was my failures.

I couldn’t live with these depressed feelings and sure as hell couldn’t let them show; but they wouldn’t go away. My
wife pressured me to fill her in on what was going on in my head; but I didn’t want to talk about it. Finally yielding to
the pressure I discussed my feelings. She countered my sense of failure by recounting my successes. This may have
worked before but not this time; the feelings didn’t go away so I determined to “fix it” myself.

The Crisis

I considered that since everything that I had ever thought, done, or believed in life had only brought me to this place
of failure – I needed to make some changes. I set aside my “belief structure” because it was obvious to me that it
failed me. I set aside my work and engagement in life at home. I determined that my life was going to be about “me”
now. I needed to “be me” for once instead of working so hard for everyone else’s comfort. I craved after anything that
would make me forget that life was a b!tch.
I began to compensate for the things I was feeling about life by becoming more extroverted and outgoing. I took on a
persona that would outwardly express a contradiction to what was “real” on the inside of me. I got a sports car
because while I was in it I could feel like I was a free spirit. I loved speed and this car put out! Feeling like a free spirit
though didn’t feel quite right when my wife was beside me so I started taking trips and time alone. I began to meet
people that also seemed to be free spirited and began to develop new friendships. I started organizing events to bring
these friends together. One on one with them I was always clear that I really loved my wife and they were never vocal
about their question of where she was. Jokes about “Colombo’s wife” flew right past me. Besides which, all of the
other men in my age group were also there alone. These parties began to grow in excitement and numbers. Soon we
had people flying in just to attend a party that I would throw. Often the men would leave the parties with new partners
but I always slept alone after an event. Organizing these events made me feel good and I kept all of them secret from
my wife.

The females at the events were also free spirited and although I never paid them much attention outside of friendship
they too began to question the whereabouts of my wife. Although it was obvious to them, I was oblivious to the fact
that my “single” attendance was sending out messages. I began to receive correspondence from several women
offering to attend events with me and even to share my time and hotel rooms. I laughed them off thinking “everyone
knows that I love my wife”. I continued unaware that my lifestyle was presenting a contradiction to what I was thinking
and saying.

While these events continued and I was becoming more involved it became increasingly more embarrassing for me
to reveal what was happening to my wife. I didn’t feel I could explain my reasoning, my whereabouts, or even the new
friends in my life. It became a “double life” for me that although didn’t include an affair did make me feel good and
cover my past feelings of failure and depression. Now immersed in a secret life I felt strongly that I needed to stop
because the pressure of this façade was too great for me to keep at home. Between these party events though when
things were too quiet I would feel like sh!t again; this always happened when I was at home. The organizing of events
and the events themselves were giving me the good feelings and adrenalin rush that countered my feelings of failure
and depression. So I increased the time away from home and increased the number of party events.

I formed a committee to manage what was growing into very large events with both men and women on the team to
coordinate activities. One of the women on the team added me to her instant messenger online. First we
communicated party plans only in between organizational meetings. Over time she communicated more of the
matters of her life until the personal conversations began to override the organizational conversations. I met on
occasion with other members involved on the team and again I would take a hotel room. One time the meeting held
at her place included too much alcohol consumption. I stayed too long and eventually fell asleep from the alcohol. I
woke in her bed and not alone! Frantic for an explanation of events from the night before I was assured that
everything including my fidelity was intact. Feeling safe in the friendship now there didn’t appear to be a need to take
a hotel following future meetings if I had been drinking over the legal limit. I crossed the line into serious compromise
– a secret life that included an affair.
Innocence lost is never regained. I was involved outside of my marriage. As the frequency of contact, drinking, and
party life emerged, the line between alternate realities of the double life obscured the reality of life in my marriage. As the one increased the other diminished. Future plans excluded my wife and began to include my affair partner
instead. It was blurring the line of demarcation between who I knew that I was and who I had become.
I was cycling between periods of feeling depressed and feeling good. The lifestyle I had created was a self
medicating antidote to the depressed feelings that I had inside. These periods of cycling that were periodic at first
then became more intense with my affair. As long as I continued “self medicating” myself I seemed to feel okay until I
got alone. The answer seemed in keeping active enough to avoid thinking too deeply about life or what I was doing. I
intensified my drinking and party life to include very few sober hours often kicking back a stiff drink very first thing in
the morning. The intensity of this time was such that very little of it remains in my memory today and what does
remain seems scattered like a fragmented hard drive. No defragmenter here though!
Odd as it may sound to anyone reading this I never did stop loving my wife. I had displaced her.
Including an affair as part of self medicating midlife depression complicates matters entirely. I was already
accustomed to covering up a secret life that excluded my wife. Lying about being involved with another woman was
not too far of a stretch. Yet I was beginning to see past the puppy love of the affair already and I was considering
what life would be like with the other woman. I wanted out and was already feeling trapped. When my wife confronted
me I disclosed my affair; I wanted it to end.
Disclosure ends nothing for a man in midlife crisis. More often than not it only makes matters worse. Externally it may
seem that it brings freedom to the secret life by bringing it into the light of day. Internally the same problems exist but
are now magnified. It’s like pumping up the oven temperature from 450 to broil. It doubles internal pressures. To the
depression it now adds feelings of guilt, moral failure, integrity failure, remorse, regret, and a host other complex
failures. If depression was initiated from feelings of failure this disclosure of the affair magnifies it and elevates it way
beyond. If you are a well seasoned man in midlife crisis you know what to do next – increase the self medication. You
counter your emotions with outbursts of anger because you cannot show your own hurt. You lie and create even
more excuses for your behaviors that are now exposed.
The disclosure of my affair that I intended to end it nearly drove me to the other woman. To somehow justify my
actions I lied and said that I loved her to ease my guilty conscience and moralize my infidelity, I said that I was “in
love”.

Somehow in a childish mind “love” is supposed to excuse such behaviors. I was like a child exposed and caught in a wrong.
The other woman became eager to succor my problem situation that she assumed to be caused because of my
sincere love for her drew nearer. We now have a common enemy – the wife; right? Typically, yes; for me, no,
because I had never stopped loving my wife and untypical of midlife crisis I had never spoken against her either. My
other woman found this to be threatening to her position. She immediately became insecure about our relationship
and she was right to be. My wife never reacted to my disclosure she responded. She said in very simple terms “if you
love her you better go to her; which furniture do you want?” In midlife stupor I replied that I didn’t want furniture but
that I wanted to keep both women! Neither one of these women could see my way of thinking though in as much
clarity as I had in that moment of revelation. Odd that isn’t it!

The Affair

I began immediately to move from covert (hidden) depression to overt and open depression compounded by guilt and
much remorse. This would cycle to the feelings of abundant joy only to find their way back again. An MLC man knows
what to do when depression hits – up the self-medication! But I didn’t have that option any longer at my disposal.
When I was severely depressed, all I could think of was MJ and how I missed her. When I was overjoyed all I saw
was Phoenix and how I loved her. I placed dozens of phone calls through to MJ while feeling depressed (none of
which I remember to this day).
In my constant cycling I came up with what I considered the optimum solution to my dilemma – “why shouldn’t I be
able to have both of these women?!!!”. Feeling the importance of this Light Bulb Moment I brought my solution to
Phoenix with most earnest sincerity. I told her that I was “in love with MJ” and “why shouldn’t I have both of you…”

Knowing both my sincerity and earnest Phoenix knew that she needed to detach. Her only response was “which
furniture are you going to want?” and announced that she was leaving Monday for California and was not sure she
would ever return. Knowing that I had really messed up with this demand I was much more quick to realize that not
only was my suggestion sincerely earnest but was also completely off the wall. I realized that I did NOT have my sh!t
together and if I did not hurry up and “get it together” I was going to lose her and everything worth living for. I replied
“give me two weeks” .
What I meant was “give me two weeks to get my life sorted out (believing in a small miracle happening here…). What
she heard was “give me two weeks to pick between the two of you” . This misunderstanding was to cause us the
most severe hurt, pain, and confusion of our lives that would span many months of personal turmoil.

She detached and she left that Monday for California. She didn’t want me to drive her to the airport but had her friend
drive her instead. The Two Weeks past rather quickly as I immediately cycled back to depression. We men can only
put up with about 3 days of depression before we take action. I forced that ‘sucker’ down and began self-medicating
big time! I hit up all the old friends I had hung with in MLC and planned a big get-together about 600 miles away. I
started consuming great amounts of Bacardi creating a fourteen-day liquor bill that is not to be believed! Unless I
drank myself to sleep I just could not sleep – Bacardi became my sleeping pill. My mix was ‘grapefruit juice’ – the
worst thing for a midlife man. For over a year-and-a-half straight I had only slept roughly 2 ½ hours per night and
NOW was no exception! Sleep deprived and drunken sleep took its toll in many telephone calls to my affair partner
during these two weeks – all of these just prior to passing out from too much Bacardi. I do not recall any of these calls.
In the back of my mind though was the fact that Phoenix was in California and I seemed to be out-of-sight; out-of-
mind as far as she was concerned – she had detached big time! I wasn’t even too sure that I was occupying much of
her head-space at all anymore. This bothered me in sober moments to the extreme! Not only had she detached but
she had seemed to have ‘gone dark’, so much so that other men were beginning to show interest in her for them
selves (I coulda killed them!) I KNEW that if I didn’t ACT and do it NOW then I was about to not only be left behind but
I would lose her too. But then – those were the sober moments; the solution – up the antidotes to this depression with
more self-medication. By this time I was consuming ¾ of a 42 ounce bottle of Bacardi every day plus several
Breezers. I kicked off my day by downing the left-over’s in the glass from the night before in order to delay any
hangovers.

Somehow in this cloudy darkness I found the need to go to California to get my wife. En-route though I intended to
stop for a couple of days at the party event. I rang Phoenix and told her I was coming but that I would be stopping in
Vancouver, BC, on the way to get together with my buds and party-it-up. I think I told her that MJ was on the party list
of attendees too. Phoenix seemed surprised but welcoming of the idea so –this became my plan.
As the time neared though that I should depart my sober moments also increased and along with these the midlife
depression. But these times were good because along with them was time to think. To think about the matters I now
realize are part of midlife transition, I evaluated my past choices and compared them with the present. I projected
current choices upon my future. The one thing that was continually present was that I could not imagine my life
without Phoenix in it even though my actions and words were depicting completely the opposite. I knew it would take
a Quality Decision to completely cut all contact with MJ and to give the remainder of my life exclusively to my wife.
But I missed MJ and it was driving me crazy mad.
This period of time between your wife and your affair partner is what we men in the Men’s Forum call “Stuck in the
middle”. It is a time of extreme feelings of withdrawal. (Heroin withdrawal would be easier than this.) We fluctuate
between being committed to our wives and marriage (our true character speaking) and feeling the endorphins of new-
found love. We know that we compromise our selves in this ongoing relationship but somehow the feelings out-weigh
the alternatives. ‘Feelings” suppressed for years, now refuse to be silenced and dictate our logic – the caboose is
pulling our train. I feel dearly for any man ‘stuck in the middle’. What I was to learn much later on was that what I/we
was missing was not the OW in our lives at all – it was the feel-good feelings that she provided as an antidote to our
depression – woe to the man who wakes to this after divorce and the time is too late! There are many and I could
post their private stories if they gave me permission.

But I was ‘one bright boy’! Not only did I miss my affair partner I also filled Phoenix in on these feelings – whoa!
Thank God she realized who was really me and differentiated between my words and the one who cycled into the Alien.

Men, sometimes you feel trapped by these words that you speak – your profession of ‘commitment’ to your new
relationship and your words to your wife. But really Bro’ – don’t be. If you realize at any time during this transition that
you have just messed up or are about to mess up by holding to your word then back up for a minute. Don’t get stuck
holding to words said right now; matters are confusing and these are NOT times to make LIFE decisions. This is a
time to appraise former decisions. New decisions can wait. The fact is – you have already decided years ago, now go
with that! The piper-to-pay is too huge if you decide otherwise. But DO correct the problem issues in your current
marriage through counseling and other resources.
While picking up my wife in California she began her series of what was to be many, many questions. A lot of which I
had no answers to. I became weary of these and wanted to just say “get over it”; I resisted this temptation but not
very well. Being ‘who’ she is, my Phoenix never has asked what my affair partner looked like, the size of her breasts,
her hair color, or any of the like. Instead she asked me ONE QUESTION to which the answer was required in order to
save our marriage. She asked: ”how is it that you could compromise your character in order to be with MJ?”

Although she expected this answer immediately I am still seeking answers for it today. I’ve written hundreds of
postings on forums in reply. I still seek the truth to that question today. So I ask you – what is it that compromises
your character today that enables you to be with or flirt with being with another woman? The answer to THIS question
will pull you through.
But this question was just the beginning of the end for me. I was cycling through MLC like the Madman of Gadara
being torn by a legion of demons. Her detachment during my cycling drove me mad but she held firm. I did NOT want
to talk about things – I wanted the entire issue over with and behind us. She, on the other hand, needed to
understand. I was fighting against her need to understand with my need to get over it and get on with it. Then one day
it occurred to me – if I answer her questions by talking truthfully and freely then she will get her need to understand
met and I would get my need to have it over with met! Big Light-bulb moment yet again! Sheeeeeeesh!

We started committing MANY hours every day to this process of asking/answering questions, talking freely, and
communicating our feelings. But often in my cycling these conversations went awry. I seemed to be cycling between
two characters – one that loved my wife and wanted her above all else and the other that just wanted to be rid of her
constant questioning. Between being happy with her and extremely irritated with her. Between being content with her
and being sad with her. Between being understanding with her and being extremely angry with her. It began to seem
hopeless to us both and our marriage was ending.
There was nothing remaining in me that I could do. I had simply become this ‘person’ that was out of control, irritated,
angry, loving, caring, and merely a caricature of the person I once knew that I was. Trying with all my might to save
our marriage; I was tearing it down with my own hands. I had no ambition to even live. My cycling increased from
‘daily’ to hourly to every 20 minutes, In the end I would leave the room angry, irritated, stubborn and destructive; then
turn around to enter the room in regret, remorse, and loving and caring. On October 12th I hit Rock Bottom. I could do
no more. I gave up.

Rock Bottom

I went into my private den and shut my door. I was empty, destitute, and without feeling. The Beatles sang it well –
He’s a real nowhere man
Sitting in his nowhere land
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody
Doesn’t have a point of view
Knows not where he’s going to Isn’t he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man please listen
You don’t know what you’re missing
Nowhere man, the world is at your command
He’s as blind as he can be
Just sees what he wants to see
Nowhere man, can you see me at all?
I had set this guy aside nearly two years prior. I wanted nothing to do with Him and I did NOT want him controlling MY
life.This day though I was angry and empty. If I could hate anyone for my Nowhere life it would be the Nowhere man!
I cussed at Him and swore at Him for his fault in my life. I was angry and bitter that He directed me here. And in my
rage I fell face-long on the floor before him. {And this morning with tears filling my eye sockets I can say He didn’t
forget me} As I spilled my bitter angry rage before the one I thought was not listening. My tears soaked the carpet as
my rage emptied out on the floor and like Jacob; I wrestled with God intent on bringing Him down. This wasn’t about
infidelity, betrayal, or about my wife – it was about Him and me. At first I might have faulted my wife for making me
feel this way but not anymore – I went straight to the source. It was YOU god that made me this goddamned way and
it is YOU that is at fault here!!@#$$##@! And as my rage filled the carpet with tears I poured out every hurt and deed
I had done in my midlife foray until I could say no more. And like Jacob he dislocated my hip in order to say to me
‘now you win’ (a battle obviously lost by me). Then…

Silence
Earth Shattering Silence
Then reaching for the bible and journal I had set aside two years prior. I dusted the cover
There was nothing left of me

The last words I wrote to Him in my journal were – “what about ME? When is it MY turn? From now on it was going 'to
be me' – All about me.
Bible and Journal in hand I saw the ripped pages of my first infidelity.
I saw where I went wrong
My face again fell to the floor without compulsion, without rage, but empty, lost, alone… and to the One that made
Himself Nowhere for two years my soul and heart was bared.
I felt washed, clean, empty, restored.
I sat back in my chair and in a moment of time I saw where He once gave me my wife as a gift. I said aloud, I don’t
feel like I’ve been treating her as much of a gift right now. Then out of – not nowhere – but, someone, I heard these
words in my heart and mind – “I’ve given you to her as a gift too”. ………………………I broke.
Perhaps you’ve never been broken; perhaps you have. And perhaps your ‘religion’ doesn’t help you believe in a God
that is real in the here and now. But I do. I didn’t for a while or – well, I really didn’t care. But that aside, midlife is too
important to NOT have what is real – I do. And it sure aint from anything I’ve done but here it is. This is what October
12th means to me

Coming out of the fog

I left and came back many times feeling completely unsure of my life. Driving away from my wife’s place to my dingy
motel room after discussing our property division that I woke-up from the cloud of MLC. I had only driven 10 miles
down the road when it hit me completely unexpected. Perhaps it was the radio playing that forgotten song –
Everything I Own by Bread: I don’t really know. I wailed out loud with a loud groan that seemed to come from my
stomach. Followed by questioning: What am I doing here? WTF have I done?, how could I have done this to the most
important person in my life? How could I have hurt her like this? And who is this woman that’s been in my bed? Tears
filled my eye sockets and I really didn’t know what they were because I hadn’t cried in 40 years. It was hard to see
the road from the sports car. I drove 15 more miles in tears to a dive of a motel and took a room where I could be
alone and cry the rest of the night and regain composure knowing that my stop there was to be brief as I was to
return to my girlfriend’s place. My heart was hanging near my belt. I called her saying that I would not be coming
home to her. I thought the conversation was only a few minutes but I understand now that it was 22. I don’t know
what I said; I don’t really care. But that night I stayed awake all night and all of the next day thinking about what I had
done and writing a Dear Jane letter to my girlfriend. I was ending it right then and there.
A new man.. I thought about Phoenix and our life…
Is there someone you know
You’re loving them so
But taking them all for granted?
You may lose them one day
Someone takes them away
And they don't hear
The words you long to say…

I thought about Phoenix and our life…
You taught me how to love
What it's of, what it's of
You never said too much
But still you showed the way
And I knew from watching you
Nobody else could ever know
The part of me that can't let go
And… (Bread)

By nine the next night a thought occurred to me that I was hungry. That perhaps I could get pizza and go out to my W
place with it and a bottle of wine. I found the pizza and wine and drove 25 miles out to my Wife’s place. I started to
feel “chicken” as I neared the home fear settled in on me. I began to question ”what if she doesn’t want to see me?
What if she is not even there? What if she rejects me now? What if it’s too late for me in her life now?”
I would give anything I own
Give up my life, my heart, my home
I would give everything I own
Just to have you back again (Bread)

Then I remembered that my wife used to put a lamp in the window whenever I traveled and only turn it off when I got
home. So I decided to go around the long way to see if I could see a lamp burning. If there was a lamp, I would drop
in; if not, I would keep on driving. When I crested the hill all I could see was a single light. It was from the window. I stopped sharply in the middle of the road with my chest pounding with fear and excitement. It had been a year since I
last looked for the lamp in the window. The lamp was burning bright.
You sheltered me from harm
Kept me warm, kept me warm
You gave my life to me
Set me free, set me free
The finest years I ever knew
Were all the years I had with you
And… (Lyrics by Bread)

My heart racing with stress nerves flushing my face with intense heat I parked there just looking. I couldn’t turn back
now! Shaking, I reached my cell phone and dialed her number and she answered…….. I hadn’t prepared for this… I
didn’t know what to say. Fumbling for first words I said “ I have Pizza; I have Wine” then silence. After an eternity she
replied “where are you?” I said “up the hill; look out your window” The light dimmed and the curtain rose… she said
“well, come in.” I did!
We spent the remainder of the night with pizza and wine and talk from our heart. I slept in her bed my heart full, at
home, finally at rest. I never saw the OW again from that night on.
Reconnection
Beginning marriage recovery ends nothing for a man in midlife crisis.

I wake up gradually in the mornings and my waking from MLC was that way too – gradually. I awoke in an instant but
it took several months to actually become alert.
During this time my cycling became seriously intense but it was different, it had changed. I was no longer cycling
between feeling good and depression; now I was cycling between depression and sheer panic. When I wasn’t feeling
consumed by guilt and regret and remorse I was consumed by panic in fear of saying or doing something that would
cause me to lose my wife and our marriage. By being in such a state of fear I kept stumbling over my own intentions.
Wanting desperately to save my marriage I was doing everything to nearly destroy it. I would lash out in utter anger
and the next day be crying at her feet for forgiveness. As we continued to talk and try to work things out the
guilt/panic cycle increased to almost hourly. In the end my wife tells me that I would leave the room angry and enter it
again in remorse. She never knew from moment to moment weather she would be dealing with Dr Jekyll or Mr. Hyde.

Our marriage restoration was often confused by periods of ambivalence. Both of us wanting to stay committed would
waiver on the side of ambivalence questioning “should I stay or should I go?” It’s easy when things are going good:
not so easy when they are not. I wanted the whole thing to just be over! She needed to understand.
Men, you will not only know this you will understand this – you said things and did things that you have no recollection
of. You would swear on a shoulder height stack of bibles that you didn’t say or didn’t do certain things during your
midlife crisis. These things are literally not in your memory; they are gone. The best thing for you to do is to stop
denying it. You did it and she has razor sharp memory of it. She was there; you weren’t. If there is a time to get over
your need to always be “right”; this is it. You may have said things yesterday that you will swear today that you didn’t
say. This doesn’t mean that you have lost your mind it means that you are normal in the process of recovery. Accept
it and move on. A year from now you can laugh about it.

My wife had many questions about my time away. She needed to understand in order to fill up the missing pieces of her life. Regretfully I was the only one with her answers but I did not remember. I was desperate to give her what she
needed but I was desolate of the resources.