As my reading continues: I am a little over halfway thru "Men in Midlife Crisis", by Jim Conway. It was written in 1978. I guess it is the basis for many things that are on this board. I found the part about the 6 stages of MLC, although I must admit that HB's rendition is much better than Conway's.
I just found this part that is interesting to me and maybe other men whose wive's are going thru this. I will quote
"The woman who has been anchored in her relationships with other people - her husband, her children her parents. If she derives a great deal of her self esteem from these three sources, she will experience greater trauma through the two stress periods of her life. Her husband will be going thru his own MLC and will not be the stable person she counted on. Her children will be establishing their own identities and will need to break away from the close mother relationship. Her parents are in need of more care and , in some sense, the woman in mid-life becomes the responsible adult overseeing her parents in their later years."
"So her sense of worth must come from within. She should also see her value as something larger than a manager of the household."
I don't know how Conway managed to see my marriage in his book, but it is all written as if he knew.
