The 5 Things Your Wife Quietly Wishes For Most In Midlife, According To A Clinical Psychologist
These midlife desires are more common than most people realize.
dimaberlinphotos | Canva I work with lots of clients at midlife, as this is the age for a deeper examination of your past, present, and future. When you deeply recognize that your life is finite, it leads to introspection about what you really want out of your remaining decades.
Women at this stage tend to want very different things out of their lives than their husbands do. In this case, couples therapy can be hugely illuminating for the husband, who had no idea how his wife felt about this stage of life. For those who aren’t in couples therapy, this post can help start conversations about what women want at midlife, and help husbands understand why their wives may present as so wistful, regretful, and dissatisfied.
The five things your wife quietly wishes for most in midlife:
1. More time
At midlife, women tend to feel crushed by competing demands: work, home, parenting, marriage, mental/physical health issues, and more. They wish they had more time in the day to focus on everything fully.
The kids are older, and time with them is more precious, as you’re aware that they are only home for a short time in their lives. The fact is that many women become happier as empty nesters, because they can process their children moving out and move forward, but the teenage years feel like anticipatory grief combined with the daily stress of managing a teenager.
2. A deeper purpose
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At midlife, people move from focusing on their relationships to focusing on their impact in the larger world. This means that your wife is likely thinking deeply about her career, or, if she’s been a stay-at-home mom, her purpose in the world now that the children are older.
If your wife is a deep thinker and/or a Highly Sensitive Person, it is likely that she is struggling with a lack of meaning in whatever she does day to day, and is trying to brainstorm options for what sort of shift could make her life feel more meaningful. There is a reason that many older women volunteer; this gives them a purpose as well as a sense of community.
3. More excitement
Just like men at midlife, women understand that the clock is ticking and they only have a finite amount of time to do everything they want to do. Further, this is unlikely to happen as a very old person, so it feels urgent to do more things now.
Often, this means that your wife yearns to experience new cultures via travel (especially with the kids, who she wants to introduce to new places), experience new activities as hobbies (enter pottery, book club, different types of exercise, meditation), and understand herself on a deeper level, which can also feel new and exciting.
This last idea often leads to starting therapy, which can lead to new behavior and insights. If your wife perceives you as close-minded or resistant to her increased engagement with life, this can lead to frustration, resentment, and conflict.
4. More honesty
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Women at this stage discuss “caring less” about what others think, because they feel less anxious about others’ judgment, the older they get. Often, friendships and family relationships that feel surface-level, fake, and based on image management fall by the wayside at this stage.
If your wife perceives that you are not fully honest with her, yourself, or others, this may feel increasingly intolerable. Many women at this stage suffered from anxiety about being perceived as “less than” throughout their lives, which manifested as people-pleasing and focusing on looking and acting “right.” At midlife, they want to slough off this image-focused outer self and engage with the world more authentically.
5. A deeper romantic connection with you
If your wife has always been the pursuer when you were younger, you likely have noticed a shift and a retreat. If your wife feels your connection is shallow and that you are like ships in the night despite her efforts for years to connect on a deeper level, she is likely to start considering what her life would look like without you.
This is an ideal time for you to bring up couples therapy, which will likely be a surprise to your wife if she’s always been the one to initiate any efforts in the relationship domain. You can relearn what makes each other tick, and communicate in a more meaningful way than purely logistics.
Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten, aka Dr. Psych Mom, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the founder of DrPsychMom. She works with adults and couples in her group practice, Best Life Behavioral Health.
