My Therapist’s Secret to Midlife

When I was 22, I had a nebula vision of my future, but if it hastened, there were five things that I was sure of: I wanted to be an artist. I eventually married, probably with a fellow artist. I wanted at least two children. I wanted to live in Brooklyn for the rest of my days with my family and friends of the university. I wanted to have a house in the Catskills where my family could meet every summer.

Let me tell you how many of those five things happened: one. One! I am, in fact, an artist.

But the rest?

The actor-boyfriend who spent my veins convinced to get married? We broke when we were both 33 years old. I married my now husband at age 34, but he is definitely not an artist. Marrying him meant leaving Brooklyn and moving to Europe and then to Los Angeles.

Those two children I wanted? I obtained only one, who has been one of the greatest anguish and joys of my life.

The house in the Catskills? I guess I can continue dreaming.

There are many other things that have not resulted in planned: my marriage is, like most, more complicated than “I do.” I am not always satisfied with how advanced I am in my career, in part because I have done most of the care of children in our home. As I live in Los Angeles, I spend much of my life in the car. My older parents and most older friends live to a continent.

Those are the difficult things, but there is much that is unexpectedly wonderful: my daughter and I are as close as a daughter mother couple can be, maybe because She is one. My left brain husband has a stable job that allows me the freedom to be an artist. When I move to Los Angeles, now I live in an hour of my sister for the first time since we were children. My family has found a community of friends on the west coast that has been the basis of our life during the last decade.

It is a great life that I love. And also, sometimes I really hate him.

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The other morning, I was chattering my therapist about this, about what was surprised and sad that I was for what so many parts of my life have resulted, all the time was so grateful for a lot.

She stopped me. “Midlife,” he said, “it is about sustaining the tension of the opposites.”

Wait, that?

It was one of those moments in therapy when you have to stop and simply assume it.

Medium life is about sustaining the tension of opposites.

Unlike our 20 years, when it comes to the future: getting the job, leaving, building a career and/or a family, traveling, doing good in the world, this stage is about sustaining light and dark, good and bad, at the same time. For most of us, that means that there is much that we are happy, and many that surprise or disappoint. Maybe a marriage has ended or we couldn’t have children. Maybe our parents have become ill. Maybe we fell into unexpected races that were to give us enormous satisfaction. Maybe our second marriages are much better than our first!

At this stage of life, he explained, we are reconciling how we think our life would go with how it really goes.

The point of my brilliant therapist: this cannot be avoided. Welcome to the middle age.

Of course, there is something difficult in this realization, but also offers a ray of not so small relief. One of the most refreshing things that my therapist told me when it came to sustaining light and darkness did not have to do it with a great thing but a little girl: my husband’s work will take him from home for long periods this year, and I am already anxious for that.

“You’ll miss him when he’s gone, and you’ll not be surprised when he’s gone,” he said, “and both are fine.”

Both are fine! Well, if that is not a motto to live in the middle age, I don’t know what it is.

Abigail Rasminky is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. Teach creative writing in the Keck School of Medicine of USC and write the weekly newsletter, People + Bodies. He has also written for Jo’s cup on many issues, including marriage, preteens, perimenopause and the only children.

PS that enjoy an empty nest, nine comments from readers about aging, and how would it be described in five words?

(Photos of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler of Amy Good Hang podcast).