Resilience is one of the most overused words in the self-improvement industry. It appears on posters, in corporate training programmes, and in the titles of books written by people who have confused having a difficult morning with surviving genuine adversity.
Becoming a grandfather is one of the more significant events in a man's later life. It is also, it must be said, one of the more bewildering — arriving with a set of emotional responses that nobody quite prepared you for and a title that makes you sound considerably older than you feel.
Divorce after 40 is, for most of the men who go through it, one of the most significant psychological events of their adult lives. It produces loss, grief, disruption to identity and risk to physical and mental health. It is also survivable and manageable.
The male withdrawal is one of the most reliable and least understood phenomena in relationship psychology. The man disappears into himself, or the garage, or he has a sustained interest in the middle distance.
Let's begin with a distinction that matters more than it might appear. Guilt says: I did something bad. Shame says: I am something bad. The difference is between an action and an identity. Guilt is about behaviour. Shame is about self — total, corrosive, and considerably harder to shift
Picture the scene. You're in a modest little restaurant that used to serve things properly. Enormous pies. Chips with everything. Puddings dense enough to alter the Earth's rotation. The kind of place where the menu was laminated, the waiter and the cooks were all called Dave,
Most men would rather dismantle an engine, file a tax return, or watch a documentary about the migratory patterns of Arctic terns than initiate a difficult conversation. This is understandable. It is also considerably more expensive over time than the conversation would have been.
At some point in the middle years, most British men acquire a paunch. This is not news. What is news — or at least, what most men have been successfully avoiding knowing — is what it really is, where it really comes from, and what, if anything, can realistically be done about it.
Changing career after 40 is either the most sensible thing a man can do with the second half of his working life, or a moderately terrifying leap into the unknown dressed up as liberation. In most cases, it is both of these things simultaneously.
The relationship between men and dogs is one of the oldest in human history. It is also, it turns out, one of the most psychologically significant — and one of the least likely to be recognised as such by the men most benefiting from it.
Are you the cool dad? The one who's more mate than parent, who insists on being down with whatever the current generation is down with? This version is more common than it used to be, considerably less useful than it appears, and occasionally mortifying for everyone involved.
The empty nest is one of the most significant transitions in family life and one of the least prepared for. Most parents spend eighteen years getting their children ready to leave. Almost none of them spend equivalent time getting themselves ready for what happens when they do.