The problem isn't the mid-life crisis -- a time when we become aware that youth has gone and we become far more deeply aware of our mortality and the fact that our horizons are no longer limitless. The problem is that too many people act out the crisis rather than reflecting on what it means to have reached mid-life. Acting out almost always creates problems and thus can become a distraction from the actual issues of aging and loss of youth and that, of course, is the whole purpose of acting out in the first place.

As a woman, I feel free to admit that we can be as awful and narcissitic and (if you don't mind the use of the word) as bitchy as men when it comes to dating and relationships. It is certainly a two way street. Sometimes the semantics used are different, but sadly the acts are the same on both sides.

Philip:

I applaud you for your honesty, charges of sexism be damned. (I'm just about to turn 39 -- almost if not quite the same age range.)

But you see, when I have these awkward ends to my own relationships, and I could blame the woman (and women, like men, still have to take responsibility for their behavior), I have to look at other things:

Maybe we just had profoundly different values.

Maybe she (like your would-be hook-up "friend") had substance abuse issues. (Covering up depression?) Or was an adult child of an alcoholic/drug addict.

Or maybe she suffered horrendous abuse as a child -- including, yes, that kind boys sometimes suffer but girls too often suffer.

Not excuses, just explanations.

To me, it's simple - you have to give to get. What I've experienced in most of my adult relationships (i.e. those relationships that weren't awkward fumbling about with bra straps and dicey college makeout sessions) is managing to find people who want everything but aren't willing to sacrifice anything, yet expect their partner to provide and sacrifice all. I've seen examples of terrible decision-making in which people choose momentary happiness of whatever fleeting sort appeals to them at the moment and risk what they have built to that point, but this isn't just in relationships - this is endemic in all behavior. I think in some respects, the wealth and prosperity enjoyed by the Baby Boomers which seemed to cascade down to Gen X until we had to get jobs and now seems to be cascading to Gen Y / Tweeners created a sense of privilege / entitlement, that we can all get exactly what we want whenever we want. Yes, some people have suffered abuse. Some people have substance abuse issues. Those aren't explanations because at some point, people have to decide not to get help or to continue using or to continue doing whatever they have or have not been doing that brought them to that point. Once again, we're back to poor decisions which, honestly, seems to be the core issue. Somehow, an entire generation has been raised which seems incapable of making a good decision which accounts for life goals and their personal values and instead accounts only for instant gratification with no sense of consequence. Frankly, everything sounds like an excuse these days, because very few people have the guts to say they screwed up and accept responsibility for what they have done. Instead, there is always some terribly compelling reason for their behavior which justifies their actions - except they still made the decision to rig up, screw around or engage in some other risky behavior. There is ALWAYS a decision involved and usually, it's a shitty one. Whatever else has happened in our lives, we always have the ability and capacity to make a choice, even if it's making a poor decision. And unfortunately, all of the personal trauma in the world doesn't justify damaging other people's lives.

not much too comment, but i'm doing it to let you know nothing you wrote is so out of whack that omg you're alienating me (can't speak for all your other readers, of course).

in other news, i've been dumped by my doctor wife as soon as she was close to finishing her residency and actually generating an income versus sucking everything into her education.

in the end, i'm glad to have helped her along and getting through the lengthy recovery period made me infinitely stronger than before. so strong that i kicked off all my meds in the process and remarried 3 years later to someone who finally makes me laugh from the belly. with the xwife, i had to be funny for both of us, so when i got midlife crisis depressed (and labeled on top of it), i became strictly a liability.

anyway, i don't want to say more, i'd be just another narcissistic prick crying look-at-me blah, blah, blah.

Friedman is a psychiatrist and psychiatrists have traditionally labeled men as "narcissistic" and woman as "histrionic". Shrinks like to do this - make fun of people, that is.

Now the DSM IV says "histrionics" are shallow - that is one of the criteria, among many other insulting criteria. Frankly, even though I am a woman, I would rather be labeled "narcissistic", meaning I love myself, then be labeled as shallow.

Of course, there is always the old fall back label of Borderline Personality Disorder. This means, "Bitch/Bastard Peeved Doctor" - excuse the language but, basically, this is what that diagnosis means. Shrinks love to throw out this label because then they can show their superiority over the patient. BTW, most BPD's a person meets, though, will be psychiatrists.

Well, I will sum it up and say that women can be just as narcissistic as men -- and men can be just as shallow as woman. Still, this does not mean that a shrink has the right to throw that label into anyone's face. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Very interesting post, Philip. Thanks for sharing this with us. Good luck and God Bless.

Yes women can be as bad as men are... but the was about men...

Sometimes you talk about Effexor and other times Seoquel

LOL. I've come to the conclusion that, aside from some minor physiological differences, men and women are essentially identical (I'm talking behaviourally, here).

Erm, I don't think I've got anything to add to that!

Matt

Zing Philip all you want, Rosie (I think he expected it ...) -- but BPD is real.

In my support groups, I've met too many people who represent their diagnosis as BPD whose symptoms -- and frankly, behavior -- are way off the charts vs. just about any other mood disorder out there.

(And I'm not stigmatizing them, BTW. They'd be the first to admit the term "issues" doesn't even begin to describe their problems.)

Yep, I see what Matt sees out there, in general, though maddening behaviors by both partners aligned with sex-role conditioning appear under stress. In a fallback desperation style.

Speaking for myself (as a woman) I have done some damn stupid things in relationships--I mean, I have messed up a good thing more than once. I can't even say why.
But I don't label myself as narcissistic.
I suffered over all of it.
I think it is human nature to blame the other person even when you know it isn't their fault because it's so hard to feel the pain of knowing it's your own stupid fault.

As the earlier commenter pointed out, there is a traditional bias towards diagnosing men as narcissists and women as borderlines or histronics, but if you pull up a bit to see more of the forest all of these diagnoses are of the DSM Cluster B "dramatic" variety. The criteria are what they are and it is hard to separate out what is an underlying disorder reality and what is a sex difference. Nevertheless, these diagnoses share a fair amount of overlap and that is recognized by the "cluster" idea.

BTW, I don't see anything particularly narcissistic in your action to reject the advances of this woman. Knowing your limits and boundaries and being able to differentiate on the fly between what you admire and what you dislike is called maturity; not narcissism.

I'm new to your site and like it very much. Better late then never, as they say.

Wow, welcome Mark Dombeck, you've got some great work up there at MHNet.

As the 50 some year old mother of a late 20s son, I can testify to how often I've told him that the rude manipulative behavior of some young women he encounters is not his fault, not the larger fault of all men, not the fault of her childhood or whatever...it is because she is being cruel. Cruel, selfish, bitchy - you name it, women can be it.

my take on this is that both men and women are narcissistic to some degree. the difference lies in women often feeling badly about hurting someone's feelings, hence the mixed signals, the "let's be friends", your friend trying to "force out" her man instead of just leaving, etc.

LOL (well, maybe not)... I'm inclined to comment, though an infrequent reader here, merely because I've had similar experiences (I'm 36, by the way) with more than one man of my acqaintance. We get along fairly well, but either there's no 'spark' or else there was one, but no longer. If he's flirty, or out-and-out interested in 'dating', I'll be honest and say (nicely) that I don't think we have romance potential, or some handy euphemism. (And as it happens, I don't have any single female friends I could hook them up with. All my local female friends happen to be married.)

So here's the deal: when I say I want to be friends with somebody, it's a compliment! It means we get each other's jokes, we enjoy at least one activity or interest in common, and I'm happy to run into them, or hear from them, even if they need a hand with something or a shoulder to cry on now and then. When did friendship become just a means to obtain sexual favours or couple status? Sometimes I just want to go on outings with someone for the sake of sharing the activity, you know?

I have a lot of old friends, but some are far away now, and I value opportunities to add fun new people to my social circle without needing to get into all their pants. Is that so odd?

(PS: No, I don't get pissy with these guys for refusing my friendship, but I do regard it as their loss. While they may feel differently, I think I have a lot to offer as a friend, and that a friend is more valuable than a mere warm body. One possible explanation I've thought of is that maybe these guys are becoming bitter due to a lack of, er, pants-getting-into chances that I've never really had to deal with. My experience leads me to believe that even a passably attractive woman usually hears enough come-ons to be able to pick and choose, regardless of how demented her selection criteria may be!)

Just one woman's two cents! :)

I have been slowly boiling over the past yer as I have watched my older sister screw around with someone else, divorce her husband, and then go crawling back to him only after the other man turned abusive..."midlife crises" (though I still tend to think of that as a lame excuse) exist for women, too!

Great post, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

I suspect it isn't that Friedman doesn't think women can be narcissistic pinheads, too. He doesn't seem like the sort to put the fair sex up on a pedestal. More likely Friedman doesn't think about women AT ALL. That is, he's talking about something important here, he's speaking as a doctor, so he's talking about the people who are interesting and whose behavior matters: men.

It's weird, but it's as if women get a pass simply because who gives a damn if women are narcissistic? That's my take on this particular doc, anyway.

Ariadnek, wait until you are your sister's age before judging her. One of the problems with psychiatry and psychology is that it labels people based on a standard of how humans should act rather than how humans do act, thus we get the psychiatrist or psychologist who diagnoses a woman as histrionic or borderline for cheating on her husband and then has sex with her. This psychiatrist or psychologist really won't think he has a psychiatric disorder.

Rosemarie, you are correct about Friedman though I bet in his mind he goes a little further with the narcissism label and thinks that "it's only narcissism if you get caught." It's appalling that anyone gives credence to these labels.

Assholian behavior is not exclusive to either sex, and so-called "mid-life crises" are bogus excuses deigned to disguise plain old bad behavior. Protecting yourself from potential emotional harm is not narcissistic at all.

Sorry, Sally dear, she's only 4 years older than me, so the "wait until I'm her age" thing is bullshit. Try hanging out in my situation before you try to simplify it so much, m'kay?

The article I'm linking too has some cool stuff about narcissism and her views can be applied to the psych labeling industry in general. Here it is:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/fashion/17narcissism.html?ref=health

And a little excerpt:

" Some scholars point out that bemoaning the self-involvement of young people is a perennial adult activity. (“The children now love luxury,” Plato wrote 2,400 years ago. “They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”) Others warn that if young people continue to be labeled selfish and narcissistic, they just might live up to that reputation.

“There’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Kali H. Trzesniewski, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario. Ms. Trzesniewski, along with colleagues at the University of California, Davis, and Michigan State University, will publish research in the journal Psychological Science next month showing there have been very few changes in the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of youth over the last 30 years. In other words, the minute-by-minute Twitter broadcasts of today are the navel-gazing est seminars of 1978."