There are no rites of passage to guide the American male across the rocky threshold of middle age. Our culture provides a man with motives for climbing and clawing toward success, but once the scorecard of his wins and losses has been issued, then all social prescriptions stop.
With no established norms to follow and no sanctioned sources of support available, a man is suddenly all alone.
Now the realization that things which were “supposed” to make him happy are not doing so in fact triggers off a great many questions: Were the beliefs he based his life on really his own? he wonders. What do the myths he’s lived by really mean? And what good are the rules he’s always obeyed? Why has there been so much discipline in his life—but so little enjoyment?
In asking these questions about his relation to the external world, a man transforms the nature of the battle: At mid-life the combat zone becomes internal and the focus turns toward the self.
This is a generation of men who grew up strongly influenced by the Horatio Alger myth and the masculine mystique. But at mid-life they are severely handicapped by both.
Taught to worship money and success, to be good providers and responsible husbands, they had great ambitions for the future, and even greater expectations: Self-sacrifice would be rewarded, they were sure.
Poured into a rigid male mold, they learned to keep a stiff upper lip and maintain a stoic mask. There was no permission, once programmed on this path of duty and achievement, for a man to play freely or cry freely or complain freely. No permission to be gentle and loving, or show weakness, or ask for help.
American men now in their middle years are a transition generation: Much of what they have been taught about striving and success and masculinity no longer works at mid-life. And when they discover, in the prime of life, that the promises and prohibitions from their past suddenly backfire, they have good reason to feel angry. Nobody warned them:
•That after doing everything they were supposed to they would feel cheated and disillusioned.
•That working hard wouldn’t nourish their egos forever. •That adults as well as adolescents go through periods
when they are plagued by profound self-doubts, burning
dissatisfactions, and a violent need to question everything. •That they would still be growing up at forty, and that this coming of age would force them to face their feelings and explore their inner self.
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