Everyone goes through transitions from one life stage to another. Around late twenties, early thirties, one shifts/settles into a “long haul” mindset of family and career. That realization, accepting, and embracing of such responsibility is significantly different from the young adult stage and the newly found freedoms and experiences of exited adolescence.
All life transitions are significant. And for some folks those shifts are more troubling and harder to accept. A crisis is when a transition goes awry.
A midlife crisis happens at midlife, when the pressures of mortality and empty nest press. When life’s accolades and regrets stand starkly against the inescapable fact that there is less time to do what one has put off for another day. That particular time - midlife - has the singular power to break someone.
The seeds for such a midlife crisis would have been planted long ago, during one’s formative years. Abuses, torments, etc. from someone in a position of authority. There those seeds lay dormant, unrealized, unrecognized, and buried, until midlife. Such torment and pain buried from so long ago. And things buried alive will haunt later.
Is your W having a crisis or more a difficult transition. Both have emotional turmoil. Yet a crisis is much worse. There is a consuming, a confusion, an utter need and being driven to some very extreme behaviours as they attempt to run from their freshly uncovered and unknown feelings. It’s a fate I’d not wish upon anyone. MLC is absolutely horrible!
Your W is in her thirties. There may be a crisis element to her transition, for a quarter life crisis is also a thing. However, for most, QLC is not as consuming as MLC. For unlike midlife, at quarter life, one can indeed re-bury those haunts. Of course, that is not healthy nor wanted. And some do indeed face their pains and work through them.
Be W’s journey a crisis or emotional turmoil or difficult transition, or WAS, or WW, your path is the same. Time and space. She is on her path, and you thankfully were not invited.
You are correct, you do not, and cannot, control this. You can only control you. Your thoughts, actions, and reactions.
You can, through that which you do control, exert influence upon W and the situation. Letting your actions speak. Allowing W to see and choose to alter her path. Interestingly, that is best accomplished when you don’t try to display the new and improved you. You just live it and become it.
D
Feelings are fleeting. Be better, not bitter. Love the person, forgive the sin.
