Is Your Marriage Going Through A Midlife Crisis?

Anna Maxted reveals how her relationship changed in her mid-40s

- Anna Maxted

Midlife can shake your confidence like a dog with a rag doll. Several years ago, when I hit my mid-40s, I realised my vocabulary had apparently halved and my anger levels had doubled.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ my husband would growl, exasperated, as I snapped over tiny misdemeanours – leaving the butter out, playing jazz. I refused his invitations to dinner or to play tennis and, although I’d act interested during our conversations, I was largely in my own world. I spent a sad, irritable few months isolating myself.

Meanwhile, my husband of 20 years lost weight, got fit and was in excellent physical and mental health. He was embracing life, I was hanging back – and pushing him away.

One day, before Christmas, he came home with a beautiful fir tree and a silver star to crown it. However, for the previous 12 years, tree-top position had been held by a toilet-roll snowman, made at nursery by our eldest son, Oscar.

Irrational hurt

I felt the pristine star wasn’t us. ‘But what about Oscar’s snowman?’ I said, pulsing with hurt. Mad as it sounds, in that moment, I felt the star was a rejection of all we stood for.

Though I knew, deep down, that wasn’t how my husband meant it, I felt threatened. I was relieved when that sharp, cold star was too heavy for the tree, and the snowman was reinstated.

I barely felt sane. When I tried to park the car while listening to loud music, I backed into a tree. What with the irritability, irrationality – and becoming a liability – I feared I had dementia.