It's Not A Midlife Crisis, It's An Opportunity

G Marshall Andrew

Description

If you're fed up with life, questioning whether you should stay married or thinking you might be better of with someone else, marital therapist Andrew G. Marshall has a radical idea to help you move from the first half to the second of your life without messing everything up. In part one of this essential new book he explains: The three central questions you need to answer (and why everybody else is distracting themselves and avoiding facing them). How to put what's happening now into the context of your whole life journey. How to avoid the tempting short-cuts that cause more heartache in the long term. Why if you pass this mid-life test everything is up from here.If it's your partner who has turned grumpy, critical and blames you for everything, you will be feeling alone and full of despair. Don't worry, in part two of this compassionate book, he explains: A whole new vocabulary for discussing the mid-life crisis without putting your partner's back up. What's really going on in your partner's head. What causes depression and how to help. Five killer replies to the blocks that stops you talking properly about your marriage.Together you will learn three new skills that will either change your marriage into the connected, fulfilling and loving relationship of which you've always dreamed or help you separate amicably and be great co-parents together.

Informations

• Publié par: Marshall Method Publishing
• Date de parution: 08 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780995540309
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Acclaim for
Andrew G. Marshall
‘What he has told me has made me reassess my relationship behaviour entirely.’ —K ATY R EGAN , Daily Mail
‘As if someone has just thrown a warm blanket around my shoulders...it all makes sense.’ —H ANNAH B OOTH , Guardian
‘Marshall exudes calm; his voice is gentle and measured’ —T IM D OWLING , Guardian
‘Andrew G. Marshall offers deeply insightful, helpful, and practical tools for dealing with most of the challenges we face.’ —J ED D IAMOND , P H .D., author of The Irritable Male Syndrome
‘With advice on how to recreate intimacy while retaining a sense of self...His insightful advice makes it hard to disagree.’ — Psychologies Magazine (on I Love You But I’m Not In Love With You )
‘An insightful and gracious walk through creating positive change in your life.’ —R OBERT J. A CKERMAN , P H .D., Editor, Counselor Magazine (on Wake Up and Change Your Life )
PREVIOUS TITLES BY ANDREW G. MARSHALL
I love you but I’m not in love with you: seven steps to saving your relationship
The single trap: the two-step guide to escaping it and finding lasting love
How can I ever trust you again? Infidelity: from discovery to recovery in seven steps
Are you right for me? Seven steps to getting clarity and commitment in your relationship
Build a life-long love affair: seven steps to revitalising your relationship
Heal and move on: seven steps to recovering from a break-up
Help your partner say yes: seven steps to achieving better cooperation and communication
Learn to love yourself enough: seven steps to improving your self-esteem and your relationships
Resolve your differences: seven steps to dealing with conflict in your relationship
Make love like a prairie vole: six steps to passionate, plentiful and monogamous sex
My wife doesn’t love me any more: the love coach guide to winning her back
I love you but you always put me last: how to childproof your marriage
My husband doesn’t love me and he’s texting someone else: the love coach guide to winning him back
Have the sex you want: a couple’s guide to getting back the spark
What is love? 50 questions about how to find, keep, and rediscover it
Wake up and change your life: how to survive a crisis and be stronger, wiser and happier
I can’t get over my partner’s affair: 50 questions about recovering from extreme betrayal and the long-term impact of infidelity
How to be forty-or-fifty-something without going off the rails
ANDREW G. MARSHALL
Every reasonable effort has been made to contact copyright holders. If any have been overlooked, the publishers would be glad to hear from them and make good in future editions any errors or omissions brought to their attention.
The case histories in this book are based on couples with whom I have worked in my marital therapy practice (their identities have been changed to protect confidentiality and sometimes two or three cases have been merged together) and individuals who wrote to my website.
If readers have a medical complaint, it is important that they consult their doctor.
Marshall Method Publishing London • Florida www.marshallmethodpublishing.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Date is available through the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-0-9955403-0-9
Copyright © 2016 by Andrew G. Marshall
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo copying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.
Cover and interior design: Gary A. Rosenberg • www.thebookcouple.com
To Ignacio
Contents
Introduction
PART ONE
How to flourish at forty- or fifty-something and beyond
Chapter One: The big choice
Chapter Two: How did I get here?
Chapter Three: Dealing with depression
Chapter Four: Affairs, the great other and the danger of shortcuts
Chapter Five: Turning your life round
PART TWO
My partner is having a midlife crisis
Chapter Six: How to stay sane in an insane situation
Chapter Seven: Dealing with depression and affairs
Chapter Eight: A new approach
PART THREE
Breaking the deadlock
Chapter Nine: Coming together
Further reading
About the author
Introduction
Is your relationship in crisis or rapidly heading that way? Does it feel like you and your partner have stopped listening to each other and you’re either walking on eggshells or exploding with anger? Have you reached the point that you see things so differently you wonder whether it’s even worth trying to explain your feelings?
If that doesn’t sound bad enough, there’s something about being forty- or fifty-something that makes the situation even worse. First of all, the stakes are higher at this stage in your life than at any other. You may have young or adolescent children and you don’t want them caught in the crossfire – so you bite your lip and soldier on. Second, your parents are getting old and statistically either you or your partner is likely to have lost one of them. You might even be actively caring for a parent. This is a stark reminder that you are not immortal and, therefore, time is running out. Third, our society is terrified of ageing and goes to great lengths to deny it’s happening. For example, I appeared on a radio phone-in recently where the host proclaimed that fifty was the new thirty.
So not only is there no roadmap ahead for the forty- or fifty-somethings among us, but the few signposts that exist are controversial and likely to get you and your partner at each other’s throats. I am talking, of course, about the so-called midlife crisis – the logical explanation if your partner has turned into a stranger (and a highly critical one at that), but if you’re the one who is questioning your life (and feeling dissatisfied) the term midlife crisis will probably put your back up or make you feel blamed. Whichever side of the debate you stand, I have a radical idea: it’s not a midlife crisis, it’s an opportunity (by which I mean a chance to learn, grow and transform your life for the better).
I am writing this book from personal and professional experience. I’m fifty-seven and the past twenty years have been, by a long distance, the toughest. However, despite coping with my mother’s dementia, my father’s frailty and yesterday catching sight of what at first appeared to be an old man’s body in the changing-room mirror of a clothes store, I can honestly say that I have never felt more content, fulfilled or excited about the future.
Over the course of this book, I will be drawing on my mistakes – embarrassingly many – my setbacks and my heartaches, because I think it is important that you know I’ve trodden the same path as you rather than having magically arrived at a good place. I will also be drawing on thirty years of experience as a marital therapist helping couples where one partner (and sometimes both) have gone off the rails in their forties or fifties – and done immense damage to themselves and their partner (and often their children too). Fortunately, I have accumulated countless success stories from people who started off in the abyss but returned with a more connected, more satisfying and more loving relationship. (I have changed names, some of the details and occasionally merged couples to protect identities.)
In each chapter, I will cover a different aspect of being middle-aged – like career issues, depression, affairs and ageing – to explain what is really going on; share relevant scientific research and current psychological and philosophical ideas on the topic; introduce exercises to help you cope better; and teach you new skills to move forward.
The book is divided into three sections. The first is written for people questioning their life, their relationship and everything. The second is for their partners who are coping with the fallout. Whichever side you’re on, please read both parts as this will help you understand your partner better and that’s an important ingredient for breaking the deadlock. In part three , there is advice about negotiating a way through any differences between you and your partner. I will also introduce three key concepts which will either change your marriage into the connected, fulfilling and loving relationship of which you’ve always dreamed or allow you to separate amicably and be great co-parents together.
If you have read my other books the first two concepts will be familiar, but the third I can only teach at this point in your life. Without the necessary life experience, the concept simply goes over people’s heads or they go ‘Yes, but…’ Fortunately, if you have reached forty- or fifty-something, you’re ready to be initiated. So please read on…
Andrew G. Marshall www.andrewgmarshall.com
CHAPTER ONE
The big choice
If the approach of another landmark birthday is sending you into a spiral of depression, you’re not alone. I believe it is natural to take stock at the midpoint of your life, but the process can be dispiriting and the view unappetising. Your career can either feel like you are marking time or that you’ve reached the promised land – the corner office with people reporting to you, but it’s not what you expected. Meanwhile your friends and contemporaries seem to have levels of success, wealth and self-confidence that are beyond your reach. You can also feel fed up with your family – taken for granted by your children (or even secretly disappointed by them) – and your relationship, instead of being passionate and connected, is rather stale. Perhaps you’ve shrugged your shoulders and got on with something more pressing, like your tax return or collecting your daughter from her ballet class.
Except by telling yourself that life begins at forty (or fifty) and ignoring the problems doesn’t make them go away. It only takes a crisis – like a restructure at work, redundancy or the death of a parent – to bring everything back with vengeance. You end up with mood-swings, crippling in