Inappropriate feelings

[Dako]

As unsettling as it is, there's some real beauty in it.

That feeling of being a teenager again, rediscovering the world and feeling new sensations has a richness from exposure to the details of the world. Learning how the world functions adds to the beauty .

Sitting under a tree near a bird becomes lounging under an engleman oak watching a stellar jay under a mackeral sky. Everything has multiple levels of depth.

 

Sorry, but it's my nature to go all touchyfeely.

 

I kinda like this crisis.

[lostandadrift]

this thread has helped me MUCH more than my dozen or more counseling sessions. I really appreciate everyone's input. A good book about this, kind of more for women than men, is A Year by the Sea by Joan Anderson.

 

I have to say, now that I feel like I'm coming out on the other side of the initial torture of my situation, that it IS enlightening. I feel like quite a different person, and in a good way. I DON'T have all the answers I see, and I'm feeling much more curious and open-minded. I too, in a bizarre way, am kind of enjoying it.

[Dako]

Lost,

You seem pretty together from what I can tell.

I read Gail Sheehy's Passages decades ago, in which she denied there's such a thing as midlife crisis, and put forth the idea there are a series of these passages. Years later I discovered she hadn't actually gone through midlife when she wrote that.

Whatever you call it, it's pretty real to me!

[lostandadrift]

I was the PICTURE of together until this happened! But it will have been good for me in the end. Open up more possibilities for me. I think it was necessary and time for me to have an attitude adjustment.

 

My husband is showing some surprising openess to changing with me. He's been reading some of the books I've been reading on the subject, when before they would have been scorned. I even hesitantly mentioned a 3 day class I wanted to attend this weekend, anticipating he would react negatively and he was instantly and genuinely positive about it.

 

These little steps forward give me so much hope.

[Momene]

It's nice to know I'm not sufferring from my serial mid-life crises alone but, yes, I can say that alone with the pain I've gained a lot of insight and grown up a lot in the last 5 years. I think many (most) of us get so embroiled in our paternal/maternal roles that we forget that there's a person underneath it all who also needs looking after - us!

 

When I turned 50 I reckoned by best guess I had 25 years of active life left, so started to grab a little bit more back for myself. Still having a daughter at school does restrict my options but then as she gets older, she enriches my life more, but I also realise that she'll go her own way and I can't become too dependent on her for company.