Life Stages And Transitions
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.
Relationships
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,
Relationships
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.
Body and Mind
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.
Work And Retirement
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.
Relationships
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.
Relationships
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.
Life Stages And Transitions
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.
Body and Mind
There is a word for the experience of having feelings you cannot identify, describe or make sense of. Most men who have it have never heard the word. Many would find it uncomfortably accurate.
Body and Mind
By the age of 50, a significant proportion of men discover that the world has become substantially more annoying than it used to be. This is not imaginary, not inevitable, and considerably more interesting psychologically than it first appears.