Dear Kirsten, 

I've been married for 17 years and am lucky to say that those years have been pretty happy overall.

We have had our ups and downs but nothing major has come our way.

We went away together over the summer and while we were there we bumped into some of my ex work colleagues and their family.

One of the family members was a daughter in her mid twenties - it's worth pointing out that we are both 50.

We spent quite a bit of the holiday together and they would come through the day and use the pool attached to our hotel.

About half way through the week I clocked that my husband was behaving oddly, he was much more jolly than usual - I can't usually get two words out of him after lunch and there he was in the pool with the daughter having a whale of a time.

I didn't think much of it until he started talking about her and how clever she was while we were having dinner.

I don't think he realised how much he was going on about her. He then started to tell me that she was very attractive. To cut a long story short, she returned some of his affections by flirting and I spent quite a bit of the holiday on my own feeling heartbroken.

I feel embarrassed for him - that a man his age would go after such a younger girl and devastated for me. I feel old, unattractive and like I don't know the person I married. How do you know if it's a midlife crisis or if it's something more serious?

Kirsten replies:

That sounds like a really difficult experience to go through and it sounds like you felt powerless watching it all unfold in front of you.

If this became a repeated pattern I would be attaching more significance to it. He has been insensitive and disloyal, there's no getting away from that. It's the why that interests me.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          I am guessing this is a one off, your idea about a midlife crisis might hold some weight. 

A midlife crisis isn't an official diagnosis, it's a collective of experiences people often go through in midlife (40-65). 

Midlife for some people is a time when they weigh things in the balance and take stock of how far they have come, their successes and failures, their mortality.

This, for some of us can bring up pretty strong reactions. While, on the whole happiness increases (according to research ) after 50, there are still high peaks for depression and anxiety within this age group.

When we think of a typical midlife crisis, the examples we usually come up with are those where the person is trying to recreate their youth. Our identities can be challenged as we get older and we realise we don't have all the time in the world and this can create some behaviours that are out of character.

You might find that underneath his hurtful behaviour is a real issue with getting older and this brings me neatly around to how you are feeling about your ageing process, the changes to your body and how attractive you feel.

On the surface, the issue you are describing could be something that creates friction between a couple - yet really, underneath, it might be that you are both facing the same fears and this could be something that could really connect you both.

You don't mention whether you have spoken with him about his behaviour? The bottom line is that, while the way he treated you on holiday isn't acceptable, an opportunity to talk about what's happening might bring you closer together. After all, you have had 17 years together in a happy stable relationship and this is out of character for him. The person you married is still there and although his behaviour will have damaged your trust in him, such a strong relationship is repairable. 

If you find that he is unable to open up, reflect and take ownership for his actions, then it might be worth seeing a couples counsellor to work things through. Relate offer relationship counselling, you can find them on: www.relate.org.uk 

Finally, spend sometime investigating your own self esteem, has it changed in relation to his behaviour, or has it been declining for a while?

Positive Psychology has some good resources to start to think about ageing positively (https://positivepsychology.com/positive-aging/ ) if it is connected to that.

Good luck with everything, it sounds like you have had a wonderful marriage and with some honest conversations it could get back to a better place.

Kirsten Antoncich FRSA

UKCP Clinical Psychotherapist 

@kirstenantoncich