One of my favourite questions to ask my fellow fortysomethings is ‘What do you predict your midlife metamorphosis will be?’ What was once known as a ‘midlife crisis’ is now, for many of us, a radical reimagining of our lives. Having an emotional affair, buying a food truck, learning to DJ, taking ayahuasca or signing up for a desert-island survival experience – these are just a few of the radical, whimsical ideas my circle of fortysomethings are entertaining as they step into this transformative phase of life.
But what is it about our fourth decade that makes it feel ripe for a reckoning? Is it simply that we’ve lived long enough to be restless, tired of the way things have always been, but are not quite old enough to settle into conventional ‘wisdom’? Or are we at the mercy of our biology, nudged by shifting hormones and some kind of internal magic that pushes us to evolve?
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I remember my parents talking about people going through ‘a midlife crisis’ in the 1990s, and it usually involved someone called Colin being spotted wearing a leather jacket in Waitrose. It was always men who were allowed a ‘crisis’, while women were expected to stay steady, as though midlife change wasn’t for them.
Traditionally, the world has expected us to be ‘done’ by 40, as if identity should be settled and secure by then. Any later-life reinvention or dramatic shift has often been seen as a breakdown or unravelling, rather than a natural evolution. Change, particularly in your forties, unsettles society by challenging the norms that keep us contained and predictable.
This is why certain people – those who have never felt the need to question the boundaries of identity – feel threatened by concepts such as gender fluidity. If someone can change something as foundational as their gender, what other supposed certainties might be challenged? It’s as though any disruption to the traditional trajectory of life could bring chaos: fraying the institution of marriage as people choose different paths for family life and reshape society with self-determined choices. I say bring it on!
Again and again, our trans friends show us what it is to have agency and choose change, listening to their inner truth and acting on it despite the many hurdles in their way and against a backdrop of prejudice. There is so much more at stake for a 20-year-old coming out as trans than there is for a fortysomething cis woman contemplating two weeks of eating grubs on a survival retreat to escape her husband and children, of course, but I make the comparison because I think turning 40 is a transition, and there is something inherently queer about anything that makes you think differently about your body, yourself and your place in the world.
I recently read All Fours by Miranda July, a book celebrated as the first great perimenopause novel. The story has sparked something in me – a restlessness, a kind of itch. In the book, the protagonist takes drastic steps: leaving her family, renovating a motel room in secret and wooing a young dancer. While the choices are extreme and their consequences profound, they also open a portal to an alternative way of living. The narrator’s messy, impulsive actions resonated with so many readers because they capture that simmering desire to shake things up in midlife, to turn the ordinary upside down and see what new perspectives might be found.
I turned 40 two years ago, and while my own shift has been less dramatic, I do feel I’m meeting myself in a new way. My metamorphosis has been gradual – a gentle opening up to the idea that it’s not too late to change. One of the first transformations has been in my relationship with my body. After rounds of failed IVF and now moving through perimenopause, my body has changed from the skinny, androgynous form I was used to. I’ve had to rethink my wardrobe and redefine how I present myself. Life now includes school drop-offs and working out (to look strong instead of thin) before settling into a day of writing at home.
The clothes that suited my former life don’t fit this new rhythm. Where I might have panicked about this loss of fashion identity in my thirties, fortysomething me is leaning into the unknown. My style, like so much else in my life, is in flux.
Alongside this shift, I’ve started to reconsider my own gender and sexuality. I came out as a lesbian at 16 but, back then, terms like non-binary didn’t exist, and sexuality felt much more black and white. Recently, I’ve begun to understand that I’ve always felt non-binary; I just didn’t have the language to express it. I’ve not needed to make any official pronouncement – I’m a busy parent, after all, and the thought of ‘coming out’ again feels exhausting. But acknowledging this within myself has been liberating, and I’m speaking about it more openly with friends. At first, I worried it might look as if I was trying to ‘stay relevant’, but now I think, why not embrace what feels true?
And then there’s my career. I’ve always been a writer, but now, in my boldest forties move yet, I’ve decided to go back to university to study psychotherapy. In the new year, I’ll begin a course that could lead me in a completely new direction. Will I finish? Who knows? But this decade has brought a new acceptance of uncertainty: a willingness to explore, without the need for the rigid plans and labels of my earlier years.
‘This Love’ by Lotte Jeffs is out now.
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