When it comes to driving speed, 40mph is the "irritating mid" speed - it's too fast for "quiet, family-centric communities", but it's too slow for a significant percentage of other drivers; even when the speed limit of the road in question is 40mph. It's definitely too slow on 60mph speed limit roads, because, in the UK, the attitude of drivers is "you should be driving at the speed limit, or ideally 1-2mph above it", rather than "the speed limit is the highest speed you can travel on this road, so, bearing that in mind, you can drive at whatever speed you're comfortable."
40 as an age, especially for men, is the same "simultaneously too slow and too fast" - you haven't built a successful business, created a comfortable passive income stream from property, you're not a CEO with at least two houses? Failure! Too slow! You're never going to catch up! LOSER! Yet if you're on track to FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early), you own a national or international business that's doing well and employing a significant number of people, your property portfolio is international, and it's all Eat the rich! You didn't earn any of that! Oooohh, get youuuu - wow, you achieved everything before you turned 45...enjoy 40yrs of boredom and getting flabby and soft, LOSER!
This is the distinction between men 40+ and women 40+ - women definitely experience the "becoming invisible" syndrome, where the attitude is "Well, you're not at peak fertility anymore, you're probably not going to have any/more kids, you've probably peaked in your career...you can't offer me anything, so you don't really exist", which is cruel, inaccurate, and entirely unnecessary. Men over 40, however, experience "perpetual loser-dom" - we either haven't achieved enough, aren't ripped enough, aren't rich enough, or we're "posturing" by having achieved all of those things.
This is why the "midlife crisis" is a common trope for men, but not so much for women - invisibility makes you angry, rightfully so, because most people recognise immediately that they should not be being treated as if they are irrelevant or invisible. Perpetual loser-dom, however, causes insecurity - because maybe they're right. Maybe you have failed at life. Maybe all your visible achievements are just proof that you've failed to build a rich inner life.
Add to this insecurity the fact that, between 35 and 45, men typically start to spot the patterns women have had to recognise from at least their teenage years, which acts like tectonic slippage, creating a pressure boundary, and shaking the ground of certainty beneath your feet. If, as a man, you make it to 40 without actually experiencing psychosis, you'll genuinely wonder if you're going insane. From someone who both lives with a serious psychotic illness (schizophrenia), and who has been seeing the world's patterns for a few years now, there's a subtle but important difference between psychosis and heightened pattern recognition: psychosis has you feeling completely certain that no one else knows what the world is really like; heightened pattern recognition has you doubting whether you really understand the world. Psychosis brings raging certainty that you're seeing the truth; heightened pattern recognition has you second-guessing whether you're reading too much into things.
When you're treated as invisible, and feel justified anger about that, it is actually very easy to decide your course, and steer it with blithe disregard for the opinions of others.
In contrast, when you're being told you're being paranoid, when you're mocked as "an over-sensitive snowflake", when you aren't certain of what you're seeing, you seek certainty and agreement - depending on your attitudes to people who aren't you, this will either make you hesitant to make any definite decisions, and see you limit your life to what is reliably broadly palatable, or else it will have you taking actions with carelessness and callousness. Both place you securely in the middle of community - the difference is whether that community is interested in emotionally harming you, or physically and financially harming others.
40 as an age, especially for men, is the same "simultaneously too slow and too fast" - you haven't built a successful business, created a comfortable passive income stream from property, you're not a CEO with at least two houses? Failure! Too slow! You're never going to catch up! LOSER! Yet if you're on track to FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early), you own a national or international business that's doing well and employing a significant number of people, your property portfolio is international, and it's all Eat the rich! You didn't earn any of that! Oooohh, get youuuu - wow, you achieved everything before you turned 45...enjoy 40yrs of boredom and getting flabby and soft, LOSER!
This is the distinction between men 40+ and women 40+ - women definitely experience the "becoming invisible" syndrome, where the attitude is "Well, you're not at peak fertility anymore, you're probably not going to have any/more kids, you've probably peaked in your career...you can't offer me anything, so you don't really exist", which is cruel, inaccurate, and entirely unnecessary. Men over 40, however, experience "perpetual loser-dom" - we either haven't achieved enough, aren't ripped enough, aren't rich enough, or we're "posturing" by having achieved all of those things.
This is why the "midlife crisis" is a common trope for men, but not so much for women - invisibility makes you angry, rightfully so, because most people recognise immediately that they should not be being treated as if they are irrelevant or invisible. Perpetual loser-dom, however, causes insecurity - because maybe they're right. Maybe you have failed at life. Maybe all your visible achievements are just proof that you've failed to build a rich inner life.
Add to this insecurity the fact that, between 35 and 45, men typically start to spot the patterns women have had to recognise from at least their teenage years, which acts like tectonic slippage, creating a pressure boundary, and shaking the ground of certainty beneath your feet. If, as a man, you make it to 40 without actually experiencing psychosis, you'll genuinely wonder if you're going insane. From someone who both lives with a serious psychotic illness (schizophrenia), and who has been seeing the world's patterns for a few years now, there's a subtle but important difference between psychosis and heightened pattern recognition: psychosis has you feeling completely certain that no one else knows what the world is really like; heightened pattern recognition has you doubting whether you really understand the world. Psychosis brings raging certainty that you're seeing the truth; heightened pattern recognition has you second-guessing whether you're reading too much into things.
When you're treated as invisible, and feel justified anger about that, it is actually very easy to decide your course, and steer it with blithe disregard for the opinions of others.
In contrast, when you're being told you're being paranoid, when you're mocked as "an over-sensitive snowflake", when you aren't certain of what you're seeing, you seek certainty and agreement - depending on your attitudes to people who aren't you, this will either make you hesitant to make any definite decisions, and see you limit your life to what is reliably broadly palatable, or else it will have you taking actions with carelessness and callousness. Both place you securely in the middle of community - the difference is whether that community is interested in emotionally harming you, or physically and financially harming others.
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