When middle aged couples get divorced. Here’s the narrative. Every time.
He’s having his midlife crisis.
He bought the sports car.
He wants a younger woman.
He blew up the family because he couldn’t handle turning 50.
That’s the default story. That’s the assumption. And it’s bullshit.
The celebrity ones make the news. For the rest of us, we just become the latest gossip in town, until the next one, and so on. Most recently; Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman. I’m reading this shit (don’t ask me why…) and here I am thinking: what if Nicole Kidman just kinda sucks? Honestly, I’ve always thought she was kinda weird. What if Keith’s just had enough? Why isn’t that the headline? Why is it always “Nicole’s inner circle thinks Keith’s going through a midlife crisis” instead of “Nicole Kidman’s a high maintenance pain in the ass with too much botox and Keith doesn’t want to spend 52 to 92 with her”? None of us will ever know the real story, but whenever a couple in midlife breaks up, the coverage, whether it’s in your community or the papers, is always one-sided.
It’s always the guy’s fault. The woman is assumed to be the hurt, scorned, cast aside good wife. While the man is assumed to be weak, selfish, thinking with the wrong head and reckless.
But the men I know? The ones I hear from every day? They’re good guys. They’ve been grinding for 20, 30 years. They’ve worked themselves to the bone. They’ve carried the load. They’ve been good dads, good husbands, good providers. And when they finally get to their 50s, they’re tired of being unappreciated. Tired of not feeling desired. Tired of years of feeling like a sperm donor and a bank account.
Even my own couples therapist once said: nine times out of ten, it comes down to sex and money. That’s the truth of it. The guys don’t feel desired, and they don’t feel respected. They don’t feel like partners — they feel like wallets and employees. And meanwhile, their wives are changing, pulling away, and the men feel like they can’t fucking win.
And let’s not ignore the elephant in the room; which is now being talked about everywhere by women, but almost nowhere by men; wives in menopause. At the same time we need our wives the most, they’re going through the toughest period of their lives. They need us, we’re expected to be our most empathetic and yet, we don’t have that much left to give.
New to Midlife Male? Sign Up Now for Free
Yet when the marriage ends, the narrative is always that the man blew it. That he’s the cliché. That he couldn’t handle aging. Nobody ever stops to ask: what if he stayed in it for decades, did everything he could, and finally just had enough?
Why don’t we ever hear:
- He was a great dad, a dedicated husband, took care of himself, and finally realized he didn’t want to spend the next 40 years being resented in his own house.
- He worked his ass off for 30 years, stuck it out for the kids, and when they left for college, he decided he deserved more than being ignored.
But that’s never the story.
I go through this stuff with big time guys; investment bankers, CEOs, entrepreneurs and friends. I’ve had top divorce lawyers tell me flat-out: most of the men they see aren’t assholes. They’re not running around being reckless. They want to be married. They want to be in a real, mutually beneficial and respectful relationship.
They’re men who made a lot of money, sacrificed their own lives, stayed for the kids and their wives, and then looked around and began to feel like they were just funding their wife’s Range Rover, tennis lessons, and lunches while getting nothing in return. They start wanting to do their own thing — a trip, a project, even just some peace of mind — and their wives resent it. And at the same time, the guys start resenting their wives, and it festers, and they see diminishing returns in their relationship and it gets to a point where it’s no longer acceptable.
And it’s not just about divorce. It’s about how so many guys I know have been living their lives asking for forgiveness or permission. Permission to train. Permission to take a weekend trip. Permission to buy something for themselves. Not only do they work for their companies, they feel like they work for their wives.
I hate watching men huddle over, tail between their legs, and ask, “Can I do this?” as if they’re kids. That’s not partnership, that’s servitude.
Here’s the bigger point: if you want to know why so many guys check out in their 50s, it’s because they’ve been living that way for decades. They’ve been carrying the load, doing the work, suppressing their own needs. And then when they finally have had “enough,” society labels it a crisis.
It’s not always a crisis. Sometimes, it’s a correction.
And here’s how you know the coverage is biased: the people writing these celebrity divorce stories are not married or divorced men in their 40s and 50s. They’re women. Female writers. Because if you’ve been a husband, a father, a provider for 20 or 30 years, you know the truth. You know what it feels like to walk through the door at 8 p.m. after carrying the weight of the world only to feel invisible in your own house. You know what it’s like to be constantly told “no,” to be made to feel like you’re not enough, to realize your wife stopped wanting you years ago.
Guys know. Women writing headlines don’t.
Look, I’m not saying men are blameless. Some do blow it. Some do check out. But not every divorce is about some cliché midlife crisis. Sometimes, it’s about finally taking back your life. Sometimes, it’s about making a midlife correction, not a midlife collapse.
So the next time you see a headline about a midlife divorce, ask yourself: what if it wasn’t his crisis? What if she just kinda sucks?
In Health,
midlifemalmidli
femalemidlif
Greg Scheinman
Founder, Midlife Male
52. Husband. Father. Entrepreneur. Coach.
Follow me on LinkedIn, and Instagram
midlifemal
midlifemale
midlifemal
Join 35,000+ driven men over 40 getting free weekly advice on maximizing their health, wealth, and fulfillment in midlife. Subscribe here.
