Surviving MidLife
Welcome to Surviving MidLife - a blog dedicated to the truths, the untruths, and the unknowns around the male midlife experience. A chance to explore the how’s, the why’s and the what next’s! It will include everything from my own personal experience and that of the many midlife men that I coach, as well as deep dives into key midlife topics such as the midlife crisis, the andropause (or male menopause), male suicide, talk therapy, mentoring vs coaching, generativity (starting with what it means!), the role of fatherhood, ‘toxic masculinity’, work/life balance, sibling or birth order, the education system, the importance of male role models, allyship and much much more.
Before I start here’s a little bit about me:
I’m Andrew and I set up The MidLife Coach in March 2021 after my own mid-life transition from advertising agency COO to life coach. It sounds so simple when I write it like that - “My mid-life transition”! Suffice to say that the journey was far from simple, far from easy, far from having no cost, and is far from being finished. But that’s midlife, right? Nothing is easy and everything is messy. I’m married with two boys who are growing scarily fast. I don’t only mean that in terms of getting older but quite literally taller! I did a deal with my eldest boy that he would wait until at least 15 before topping my decidedly average 5’11” but he’s on track to break that promise far sooner. We live in north London, close enough to Hampstead Heath to spend most mornings there walking our lovely and thoroughly disobedient, cocker spaniel Lottie. Life has changed enormously in the last 10 years and in ways I would never have forecast, not least in becoming aware of my own mental health and now so invested in supporting others with theirs.
When I was ‘niching’ (sorry, one of those awful words that sets David Mitchell off on a rant!) I decided to focus my coaching on midlife men who are struggling to live their full life. Through my own experience of approaching and turning 40, and that of the many men I’ve coached through my programme, it became clear to me that whilst each person is having a unique experience - their experience - they are having it at a time in our evolution has human beings and as men when there is much uncertainty, judgement and conflict. The very nature of masculinity is being redefined in real time, the role of fatherhood has changed beyond recognition in a single generation, and men are killing themselves in ever increasing numbers. Whilst great leaps have been made in understanding and supporting the experience of women in midlife - from the physiological and physical to the societal and psychological - the male midlife experience is still incredibly one dimensional in our understanding, and even interest levels.
On the one hand, our society maintains the view that the ‘midlife crisis’ is something to be ridiculed as weak and pathetic - men’s desperate attempt to hold on to their virility through misplaced decision-making, be that in their choice of relationships, purchases or sporting activities. Whether it’s shagging the intern, buying a motorbike or turning into a MAMIL (the much mocked middle-aged man in lycra), the social construct is to simplify the behaviour down to men being boys. To dismiss the behaviour as primarily one of gender and testosterone.
Yet on the other hand, men in midlife have the highest rate of suicide - of 45-49 year olds, 23.8 per 100,000 kill themselves or more than one a day. Men commit suicide 3 times more than women. And staggeringly, suicide is the leading cause of death for men under the age of 50. Not under-20 or even under-30 but under-50. Let that sink in. In 2020, 1,381 men between 35-49 years committed suicide. In that same year in total there were 1,460 fatalities from road accidents in the UK. So a pretty similar number. Yet the following year the Government announced a £100 million Safer Roads Fund to improve the safety on UK roads. They also announced a £5 million fund to support suicide prevention services. Government responds to pressure from the citizens who elect them - so it’s clear that we as a society have a long way to go in caring about why boys and men are killing themselves in such numbers.
This is just one of the paradoxes that I will be diving into in the coming months - why we, both personally and societally, fail to see the connections between behaviours and actions, and why we, instead, allow ourselves to live in a world of polarities. Where things are split only into two extremes - the black and the white, the weak and the strong, the good and the bad - and are so resistant to exploring the great grey mess in between where we actually spend most of our time.
So welcome to Surviving MidLife - I hope you enjoy the journey!
