I'm Dr Orion taban and this is psycha Better Living Through psychology and the topic of today's short talk is why men have midlife crises so a midlife crisis is generally something that occurs in the late 30s to mid-40s the archetypal crisis is a man who suddenly divorces his wife leaves his family buys a sports car dates much younger women and otherwise abandons his responsibilities in favor of an increasingly hedonistic lifestyle well I believe that women can also have midlife crises they tend to look different but they're generally not as common and I think the reason
for that is the factors that tend to produce these crises are as we'll see more prevalent among men than they are among women that said all men obviously do not have midlife crises so what typically causes this phenomenon when it does appear midlife crises occur for two primary reasons first of all they tend to impact men who have been pro-social Duty conscious and responsibility oriented for most if not all of their adult lives potentially ever since they were teenagers these are men who were making their parents happy then they were doing what their teachers wanted
then they were hardworking long-suffering employees and finally they were the often thankless Servants of their wife and children as long as they've been conscious they've been measuring themselves by other people's yard sticks behaving as they should often at Great personal expense to be fair they were often socially rewarded for their sacrifices however what they gained might have actually paled in comparison to what they lost in the bargain now what generally happens around 40 at least in the modern civilized world is that people get their first real taste of mortality everyone knows they're going to die
but most of the time this is more of an impersonal fact than a felt understanding and it's around this time that a parent for the first time Falls seriously ill or passes away or perhaps a person experiences their own first significant Health scare and it can happen that nothing at that point is standing between that person and death like death used to be something very far away parents stood in the way grandparents stood in the way however a person in middle age might find himself next on The Chopping Block as it were for the very
first time in any case death starts to transition from an abstract idea to a concrete reality for a lot of folks at this time there is a growing appreciation of the fact that not only are there a limited number of years left there are an even more limited number of good years left and this is when a person potentially realizes wait a minute I've spent my entire conscious life doing what other people wanted me to do which was frankly my fault and if I don't do anything I'm going to spend the rest of my conscious
life doing the exact same thing I I've just been doing what was expected of me this whole time what about me like my life is also for me I want certain things I want to live the way that I want to live there are experiences that I want to have before I go Etc and this selfishness which has been suppressed for so long just explodes onto the scene and this isn't necessarily a bad thing it is the privilege and responsibility of every human being to live their own lives which if they also want to to
live among other human beings doing the exact same thing requires a kind of creative selfishness like a selfishness that can be creatively adapted to exist among others and without that element of selfishness people don't live life life lives them so we kind of want people to ask what about me that's a fundamentally healthy and rational question but here's the thing if a guy gets to be 45 years old before he is suddenly and urgently concerned about living life on his own terms then he is going to be out of practice being selfish and this is
frankly why I think more men have midlife crises than women do for better for worse women aren't out of practice they ask what about me all the time but for some men the last time they allowed themselves to enact that selfishness was when they were 15 years old and that's why when a 45-year-old man who hasn't asked what about me for 30 years suddenly starts trying to be selfish it's going to look like a 15-year-old version of selfishness that might be as far as he got before he was forced to become responsible and that's why
midlife crises tend to look like Teenage fantasies fast cars and hot women these men stopped cultivating their fantasy 30 years ago it hasn't matured in 30 years so they revert back to that level of functioning now before I go any further if you're liking what you're hearing please consider sending this video to someone who might benefit from its message because it's Word of Mouth referrals like this that really helped to make the channel grow you can also hit the thanks button and tip me in proportion to the value you feel you've received from this message
I don't do corporate sponsorships or product placements so this is how I keep the channel going thank you very much for your support now you might respond but Orion isn't it bad to be selfish no no it's not because selfishness is ultimately connected to the survival and flourishing of the individual organism trying to remove this inborn characteristic of human nature could very well create more problems than it solves can selfishness be taken too far absolutely but when I look around at Humanity I actually don't see that to be the issue if anything I don't think
people are selfish enough about their own happiness and well-being they certainly don't act that way they're not they're not flourishing they're not they're not demanding the best of themselves okay in any case I don't think that selfishness can be completely eradicated and if it's repressed for 30 years then it's going to most likely erupt in forceful ways and at inopportune moments some selfishness along the way probably serves the function of a release valve preventing the buildup of an unsustainable pressure a Man Who develops cultivates his selfishness probably isn't going to explode in an origy of
adolescent selfishness when he is 45 so that's reason number one reason number two is that the guys who have midlife crises are also generally the guys who are very good at delaying gratification most of them have spent the last two decades of their lives grinding away at their careers and a good portion of their success was likely based on their effort and discipline and their ility to foro a present pleasure in favor of a future reward so it's actually a very useful skill to be able to do this men who can't delay gratification generally don't
get very far in life if you want to build anything of value you have to be able to put your present needs aside in the service of some future goal so that's true and it's also true that you can't take it with you my dude so another realization that men have at the crisis of mortality that tends to occur around this age is that all of their wealth all of their prosperity all of the good things they've worked so hard for so long to cultivate other people are enjoying them they think wait a minute if
I delay gratification indefinitely I'm not delaying it I'm forfeiting it uh who knows how much time I have left which is correct no one knows how much time they have left I want a slice of my own pie but here's the thing just as before this man hasn't practiced gratifying himself in a very long time starting to do so at this age is going to be like bringing a starving person to a buffet a starving person does not act like a normal person at a buffet a starving person is likely not going to be able
to control himself and he's going to eat himself sick he's not used to eating food on the other hand a normal person with a normal appetite is much less likely to do something foolish they'll pce themselves properly and stop when they'll they're full and they do this at least in part because they're not worrying whether they're ever going to have the opportunity to eat again just like men have to practice being selfish they need to practice gratifying themselves otherwise they either end up forfeiting gratification entirely and where's the fun in that or they dramatically increase
the chances of one day exploding in some kind of gluttonous orgy now this explosion could be a lesson that can be learned from it could be a step in the direction of responsible self-gratification a phase that most people have to pass through however the sudden forceful nature of many midlife crises is such that they can be very difficult to recover from many women aren't going to like support a man through this process especially if spoiler alert they have been the primary beneficiaries of the man's service and gratification delay over the years in any case I
believe it's important for men to cultivate that creative selfishness throughout their lives if they ask what about me earlier they are significantly less likely to find themselves in a lifestyle that doesn't work for them 30 years down the road and if they practice gratifying themselves along the way they probably won't need to make themselves sick when eventually given the opportunity to eat what do you think does this fit with your own experience let me know in the comments below and if you've gotten this far you might as well like this episode And subscribe to this
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