Around 40 – 45, you might be busy with your career, sorting out your financial goals and planning about retirement solutions. Your growing up teenagers, on one hand, may leave you with a void of having grown-up in a wink’s time and on the other hand, fill you with a budding friendship of an adolescent.
At this stage, what becomes important is how you feel when you look back over the last few decades of your life. How worthy you feel of what you’ve done and how you’ve lived so far, matters the most. All along you felt that there is still much time left to look forward to life. However, now you realize that you are getting old though not too old and the hope you had had towards things getting better isn’t as intense as it used to be. And don’t be surprised if your spouse takes hardly any priority in this phase of your life!
Most women at this point find solace in children’s affairs while most men are behind raising the career bar in a hurry to reach new heights. It doesn’t matter any longer if you two don’t take the same room in the house or if you two don’t get to speak anything at all for a few weeks. Thank the children for they connect you under one roof.
There are yet other elements, however, that soak you emotionally at this stage. Your ageing parents! They mean to you more than they ever meant to you. Death or last days of your parents can be taking your spirits away. It might feel like you are suddenly waking up to what life and living is all about. You wish you had more time at your hand now to live with them the way you did as a child. On the other front, irrespective of how you dealt with your in-laws so long, it is time that you dissolve any conflicts with them to help them sail their last days in peace. Even if not for them, for your spouse! Because, the more you love and respect your in-laws in their old age, the more you shall look beautiful to your spouse’s eyes. And that’s how you two grow together in love, friendship and forgiveness as you slowly sink into the anticipation of your own old age.
With middle age, you also tend to recapture the decisions you made, significant life experiences, mistakes you regret about and the people you’ve crossed paths with. And somewhere through your reflections, you feel you want a companion now – not need but want a companion. If your spouse equates to that role, be glad that you’ve taken a beautiful path with each other all along. How easy is it to open up to your partner about your inner guilt? How comfortable does it feel to have a conversation with him/her about your past, well without any judgement or criticisms being passed? How accommodating are you to reflectively listen to your spouse’s stories? After phases of lust, romance, intimacy, responsibilities and deals, you are now heading to companionship!
Image Credit – Shutterstock
Other posts in the A to Z series:
The Mr. & The Mrs. – The Evolution
A for Attraction – Why we fall in for Who we fall in?
B for Butterflies – The Stage is all Set!
C for Commitment – Stepping Across the First Line of Control
D for Dating – The Fairy Tale Begins…
E for Expose – Here enters the Family
F for Farewell – Goodbye Brahmacharyam!
G for Grihastha – The Mr. & the Mrs.
H for Honeymoon – The Happily Ever After
I for I Openings – Welcome to Reality
K for Kids – No longer the Husband & the Wife
L for Lost – The Lost Art of Making Love
M for Midlife Reflections – Is he/she the right partner for you?
Very nicely covered up the psychological part.
Congrats for PTE.