Some active, responsible and optimistic women believe that «bad families are only for bad wives», and believe that if she is always an impeccably good wife, unexpected troubles will not await her. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Her family (more precisely, her husband) can be hit by completely incomprehensible “storms” that come from nowhere, if personality crises are not taken into account.
It has long been known that crises and turning points occur in a person’s life, when it is necessary to rethink everything lived and make new decisions. But the American psychologist Gail Sheehy argues that these crises have a certain theme, sequence and follow each other every seven years, starting at the age of sixteen.
These positions are quite controversial, but, in my opinion, very useful. Even if the crisis did not come after seven, but after five or ten years, and even if its subject matter and the nature of the experiences are slightly different, a person who is familiar with the general concept will be able to understand everything faster and make the right decisions.
Crises in men are more pronounced and more severe, so they are described.
16
So, somewhere around the age of sixteen, a teenager faces a problem when he needs to prove (first of all to himself and only then to others): “I am no longer small! I can do everything myself, no worse than any adult!”
He is trying to break away from parental care, looking for independent ways into adulthood. Searching… Wandering… Trying to make love contacts with girls…
And what adults evaluate as ordinary promiscuity and teenage hooliganism has other reasons in the soul of a teenager: the search for oneself and self-affirmation.
23
The next date is twenty-three years. The guy no longer feels small, but now he needs to prove: “I am already a full-fledged adult, an adult in every way.” How to prove?
Several «moves» are traditional. The first is that the young man draws a Plan for his whole life.
He will become a famous scientist, poet, champion, he will have a lot of money, a car, a summer house, a beautiful wife, many children, a luxurious apartment. “I will always love my wife and children, they love me!” … All this is beautiful, grandiose and that is why it is completely unrealistic.
Or, to feel like an adult, the guy gets married.
I remember very well: when I got married somewhere at that age, the ring was a subject of special pride. I go to the subway, I watch: does everyone see that I have a ring? I’m married too!
30
Seven years have passed, he is thirty. Here it becomes obvious that his dreams are unattainable, and then the heavy, despairing word rises to its full height: «Never.» He will never be… He will never have… It is terrible to admit that life did not work out, and the flight from the opened “Never” begins.
He understands that his job is like everyone else’s, ordinary, poorly paid and unsatisfying … — and tries to change jobs (sometimes, along with this, the profession, and the apartment, and the city).
He sees that his family is not a happy family, everything is like the others, ordinary and difficult. Attempts to improve something, showdowns lead to nothing, they are tired. You can’t live like that, he is looking for love on the side, trying to replace his family; hence the wave of betrayals and divorces.
Seeing how everything around is collapsing, he runs away from himself, including into drunkenness …
The crisis ends when a man accepts life in a more realistic way. “Having been ill”, he sets achievable goals at work, family relations move to stable, well-knurled rails, in the spirit of “cooperation-cohabitation”, when everyone does their own thing. Spouses find the optimal distance between themselves when they each live their own lives and do not climb into the life of another; live, «like everyone else», already perceiving it as «normal».
37
Everything is fine, the wife sighed (“has gone mad”), but here comes the most difficult test: thirty-seven is a mid-life crisis. Death appears on the horizon.
He knew before that he would die, but he understood only with his head, abstractly, and didn’t take it close to his heart, but then he felt on himself: the first Marks appeared, the first Bells rang … Health began to give the first serious failures: heart, liver, blood vessels … He felt aging and the approach of death with his skin: “Is it really all? Is it really only withering and a Black Hole ahead, where everything you do will fail?
The man starts to «twitch».
Trying to restore health, he rushes into sports, and with desperation, immoderately, to heart attacks.
Money and a career in his mind are seriously depreciated: “Why? You can’t take it with you to the grave!” Now he is drawn to work not prestigious or monetary, but human and meaningful.
In everyday life, this is the loss of money and some benefits for the family. Put yourself in the place of your wife: she is worried!
The man again ceases to be satisfied with his family — a calm, routine course of family life. I want to leave behind a good mark, to pass on my knowledge and experience.
Many fathers begin (“finally!”) to reach out to children, but the son is just turning sixteen (count!), his task now is to “tear the roots”, and the father stumbles upon repulsion. With mental turmoil, he can reach out to his wife, but both of them are now beginning to age-related hormonal changes. In men, male sex hormones are «washed out», in women — female ones. This means that he becomes more sentimental, while she becomes more masculine. He hasn’t cried for thirty years, and now there are tears in his eyes, he wants to snuggle up to his wife, and his wife cheers, and he himself weaned her from tenderness and frankness. He runs into: “Did you bring potatoes?” and understands: “The family is a routine, the wife is a beast…”
They do not understand him, he is lonely, life is empty and meaningless, so again he goes into drunkenness and betrayal.
The peculiarity of these betrayals is that they are almost always “with young people”: he needs proof that he is still good for something, that it is too early to write him off.
Poor wife! She does not understand him, but she sees that the man «just went crazy!» The reality is that her husband is in dire need of help, he is seriously ill, and his wife, the person closest to him, is against him, she turns out to be his first persecutor and enemy!
Hence — a new, strong, dramatic peak for both divorces. And you need, in essence, a little — to understand each other …