London - At first glance, it bears all the hallmarks of a classic male mid-life crisis: there’s the spouse, abandoned for a younger Spanish lover; there’s the high-flying career, ditched for a “journey of discovery” around the world; there’s even the Harley-Davidson, bought to help escape the confines of a marriage that had gone stale.
There’s just one key difference. The person hitting the road on a motorbike in a quest for adventure is not a man, but a woman.
For Lucy Valantine, 45, it was the feeling that there must be more to life that prompted the “male” mid-life crisis, complete with the above symptoms.
“I know it sounds like a cliche, but I was desperate to break out of my marriage and do something exhilarating,” she recalls. “For three years before I left my husband I had growing feelings of doubt which, in the end, I just couldn’t ignore.
“It was a terrifying process to leave behind everything I knew. To give up my marriage, my job and my way of life. But I couldn’t continue as I was. I knew I wanted something different and I had to go out there and find it.”
So Lucy left Mark, her husband of five years, and their picturesque cottage in Hampshire to embark on a year-long adventure that would lead her to a new life, in a new country, with a new, younger lover.
She is not alone in her quest for a new beginning in mid-life. What was once seen as the sole preserve of the middle-aged man is becoming increasingly common among women, who view it as a chance for a new beginning or an opportunity to recapture their youth.
Figures published this week revealed that women tire of their marriages far sooner than men, growing steadily unhappier than their husbands the longer the union continues, with the crunch point often coming in middle age.
The trend has been fuelled by the popularity of Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling book Eat Pray Love. It was turned into a major Hollywood film last year, starring Julia Roberts, and tells how the author left her husband in her mid-30s to find fulfilment on a journey of self-discovery through Italy, India and Indonesia.
Now, inspired by the story, increasing numbers of women are following suit. And whereas once it was wives who were left behind to cope with the practical and emotional fall-out, now often it is husbands who are left struggling to cope as their wives suddenly change their looks, their hobbies or their relationships.
Specialist websites such as midlife club.com, which were set up to offer support and consolation to women struggling to adjust to their husband’s mid-life crisis have now had to broaden their remit to help men cope with a wife’s version.
Among the advice and forum pages, filled with tales of male confusion and turmoil, it offers an explanation for the female mid-life crisis by medical practitioner and author Dr Eva Bell.
“Husbands may also be passing through their own mid-life crises, and are like irritable hedgehogs,” explains Dr Bell. “Or, in a reversal of roles, they become overly dependant on their wives.” Either way, Dr Bell says women begin to feel trapped.
“A woman may feel that life is passing her by. ‘Who am I?’ ‘Does my life count for anything?’ An inexplicable loneliness overcomes her as though she has no real self-identity.
“Conscious of her gradually fading beauty and energy, she sinks into depression. This feeling of worthlessness is compounded if there is marital dissatisfaction.”
It is against this background that many women seek to change their lives, embarking on what Dr Bell describes as a “second emotional adolescence”.
Often that means leaving behind a stale marriage. Women instigate seven out of ten divorces according to statistics, and with an estimated 30 percent of marriages collapsing in mid-life, the female mid-life crisis carries a heavy toll.
The question is: are the women who seek to escape just being supremely selfish, or a little courageous for seeking an alternative to a dull relationship and mundane home life?
For as relationship coach Francine Kaye, author of The Divorce Doctor, points out: “Until relatively recently, most middle-aged women stayed within the mould, even if they were bitterly unhappy - and accepted it as their lot in life.
“Nowadays, a mid-life crisis has become much more commonplace among women. In fact, it’s often not a crisis at all but more an identity issue; a wake-up call when women start to question what they really want from life.”
That was certainly the case for Lucy Valantine. The catalyst for making radical changes to her own life was the news, in 2003, that her mother had terminal ovarian cancer. Lucy was 38.
“We pulled together as a family to care for her and support each other,” says Lucy, who worked as a management development trainer. “But it also had the effect of forcing us to look inwardly at how truthful we were being in our own lives.”
Lucy admits that, on the surface, she and Mark looked like the perfect couple - yet she found herself battling feelings of profound turmoil.
“I remember sitting in my London flat thinking about Mom, thinking about life, thinking I’d soon be turning 40, and what had I achieved?
“I questioned how happy I was in my marriage. Were we man and wife, or more like brother and sister? I had become acutely aware that I had been pushing away doubts about our relationship.
“I started to realise I actually could, and would, do the unthinkable: I would leave my safe existence, my great job, my marriage, family and friends, and take a year out to travel round the world on an adventure.”
The couple didn’t have children - Lucy says she had never felt particularly maternal - and any thoughts of having a family were eclipsed by her burning new desire to break free.
When, a year after her mother’s diagnosis, Lucy broke the news that she was leaving him, Mark was devastated. But as far as Lucy was concerned, there was no going back. She told her mother about her plans before her death in 2005, and was relieved to receive her blessing.
Lucy’s next 12 months were packed with what she calls “life-enriching experiences”. She had a tattoo done on her stomach of shells and seahorses with the words “Live Life”.
Then she bought a Harley-Davidson motorbike and spent five weeks riding through France and Spain. She then returned to the UK before going to Costa Rica to work as an English teacher.
Lucy’s adventure cost several thousand pounds, funded by the sale of the house she and Mark had shared, and the division of their assets.
Next she went to Mexico, then spent five weeks in Zambia helping in an orphanage, did a tour of Australia and New Zealand by motorbike, and spent three months teaching English in China before catching the Trans-Siberian railway across Mongolia and Siberia.
Lucy says hitting the open road was liberating, but did she have any regrets about the husband she left behind?
“Half way through my trip, I was in Africa when my sister sent a message saying my divorce had come through,” she says.
“Until then, with all the excitement of my adventures, I’d not thought much about it. But as I stood on the banks of the Zambezi River, poised to cast my wedding ring into its waters, I felt an overwhelming feeling of sadness and disappointment that things hadn’t worked out. Had we tried hard enough?
“But I’d made my decision. It had been the most awful and difficult decision of my life, but I’d followed it through and now I was moving on.”
Lucy’s journey finally led her to the Spanish city of Granada in 2007, where she met new boyfriend Antonio, a 36-year-old assistant director in a bank. She has since set up and runs a travel business there called Go Granada!, dividing her time between Spain and Hampshire where she lives with her sister.
“It’s been a long and emotional rollercoaster ride,” she explains. “Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if Mark and I were still married. But, no, I have no regrets.
“Mark is with someone else now - they have a baby and I am happy for him. I tried to follow the conventional path, but it is only now that I feel I have discovered who I really am.”
It’s a phrase that Francine Kaye knows only too well. As a relationship coach she works to save marriages, but admits even she wasn’t able to salvage her own when she got her “wake-up call” at the age of 35. “Its like you suddenly realise you’ve been wearing the wrong clothes and they don’t fit any more,” she admits.
“I’d been married since I was 19 and we had two children, aged five and eight. But once I hit my late 30s, I wanted to know what else life held.
“For me, it was about realising my ambitions. So I started a counselling diploma. I think my husband and I both knew our lives were taking different paths, but we didn’t know what to do about it.
“While I was questioning what I wanted to do in my life, my husband was having an affair with another woman, then it was too late.”
Yet despite the temptations and pressures that a mid-life crisis may bring, for some women it doesn’t automatically herald the end of their marriages. There are other things they seek to change about their life.
By her own admission, 47-year-old Rochelle Peachey is in the middle of a typically “male” mid-life crisis. She’s started dressing far too youthfully for her age and has taken to driving a Harley-Davidson.
If some are tempted to judge or react with horror, she just doesn’t care. In fact, it’s part of the appeal.
“The bike cost me £12,500, and I feel like a young girl again when I am riding it,” she says. “I love the shocked reaction from people when I turn up at meetings in my leathers.”
More surprisingly still, her transformation comes with her 48-year-old husband Phil’s blessing. Indeed, the couple, who have two sons aged 25 and 18 and live in Pinner, Middlesex, joke that they’re having a mid-life crisis together.
“Phil and I are determined to grow old disgracefully together, and our relationship has never been stronger,” she says. “He has bought himself a Jaguar sports car and I have my Harley. Buying it just seemed such a wild and fun thing to do, though my sons were horrified.”
For his part, Phil says: “I love the fact that Rochelle is re-inventing herself. We work together at the ‘keeping it fresh’ thing, and I think the mid-life crisis is a blessing to any long-term marriage as long as, like us, you face it together.”
Or, as Dr Bell puts it: “A good husband will not only be emotionally supportive of his wife, but also give her the space she needs to develop her sense of self-worth.”
Yet any man who turned that phrase around to suggest that a “good wife” should allow a husband having a mid-life crisis “to explore his sense of self-worth” would be branded a hateful misogynist.
Yes, more and more women may be having a traditionally “male” mid-life crises. But whether that makes them any less self-indulgent or immature than their male counterparts is another matter altogether. - Daily Mail