Are You Meeting The Expectations Of The Perfect Middle-Aged Woman?
At one point, I was going to name my manuscript, Grave Expectations — a wordplay on the title of the Dickens novel that I thought was really clever — initially. You see, one of the main themes of my story is the impossibility of living up to expectation — the expectation on the mother to be the glue of the family, the expectation on the father to be the breadwinner, and the expectation on the children — on the son to toe the line of convention, and on the daughter to compensate for her brother’s challenging behaviour.
The difficulties of trying to live up to expectation feel particularly poignant right now. Middle age has provided me with a clearer insight of the way that society measures “success”, and its distorted values. I can see now why so many of us end up in jobs or relationships that don’t suit us, or in a permanent fug caused by a sense of failure.
Looking back, I feel like I spent my twenties trying to carve out the life my parents wanted me to have, and my thirties and forties trying to be a perfect parent. It’s only since I reached my fifties that I’m actually making decisions for ME, doing what I want to do — and only because I’m privileged enough to have the financial security to change my course.
I find it particularly strange the way we associate men with the midlife crisis — triggered by the realisation that this might be it. In my experience, women experience a similar mental shift, spurred on by the same awareness of time running out.
That’s why divorce is so common in middle age. Women reach a point when they get tired of the pressure to be everything for everyone. Because it’s not only career expectations we have to worry about. We live in a society that expects us to stay young and beautiful, to be perfect mothers, lovers and carers, and somewhere in that mix we are also expected to make a mark in our career.
However, the expectation to remain sex sirens — beyond our reproductive years — is the most ridiculous one. I don’t think I’m imagining the pressure on women to remain available to service their (more highly sexually driven) men at all times. Nor the trope of the stereotypical middle-aged woman as a moody, dried-up shrew, whose decision to batten down the hatches provides men with the perfect excuse to hunt elsewhere.
Conversely, middle-aged men are portrayed as George Clooney types — silver foxes who are still rampantly sexually active and attractive to women half their age, rather than the needy, pot-bellied, miserable gits that most of us know and love.
Very little is said about the men who lose their sex drive in middle age.
Caitlin Moran mentions the reality of middle-aged sex in her latest book “More Than A Woman”, and her dedication to what she calls the “maintenance shag” — the shag many couples (who have been married FOREVER) force themselves to endure to meet society’s expectation of a healthy relationship — is, frankly, hilarious. While her comments about anal sex made me a little uncomfortable, her dissection of the planning involved to get the weekly/monthly/annual/Christmas maintenance shag over and done with in order to prove by some societal measure that we’ve still got it — is something I can definitely identify with.
I feel that pressure to maintain a level of intimacy with my husband, that goes beyond him flashing his penis at me in the kitchen at every opportunity or dry-humping me each time I bend down in front of the dishwasher. But the truth is, after more than thirty years together, I get more turned on by a Marion Grasby cooking video than the sight of my husband’s drooping balls.
And why should we feel bad about not having as much sex as the next couple?
Obviously, social media doesn’t help with the guilt. Images of women in their fifties who continue to look fabulous — and I don’t just mean young — pile on the pressure, as does advertising that blatantly targets our insecurities. Beauty companies are relentless in their quest to make middle-aged women question if they are living up to their responsibilities as perfect older women.
Personally, I refuse to believe that the majority of middle-aged women who have spent more than half their lives with the same partner are really rooting like rabbits.
And in case you need reminding, there is absolutely nothing wrong with contentment. Sometimes, a marathon session of the latest series on Netflix is far more fulfilling than a quick poke and associated muscle strains the following morning. And if the only intimacy you share with your partner is holding hands on the beach, that’s okay too. I suspect it’s way more intimacy than many couples experience.
No one leads a charmed life — you only have to look at what celebrities Chrissie and John Legend have gone through recently to realise that.
And while I’m on the subject of Caitlin’s sage advice, another piece that resonated with me was “don’t marry a cunt”. Suffice it to say, there is no perfect man either — which is, without doubt, the most important nugget of wisdom women should share with each other and their daughters, after the truth about childbirth. Fortunately for me, I had a father who thought with his penis and so I learned early on that serial Romeos are rarely tamed. If I’ve done one thing right in my life, it has been to marry a good man.
Not a perfect man, but a good one.
Life is about making choices. I suppose that if I really wanted to have hot sex every night of the week, I could probably find someone to deliver the goods — although, admittedly, I might have to pay for it. But would my escort have the same professional mansplaining qualifications as my husband, when it comes to pretty much everything I need to know in life?
More importantly, would he be there for me the many times I fall?
Middle age fucks with our bodies and our minds. It throws up all sorts of questions we stuffed away in the too hard box during those crazy years of young adulthood and parenting. And yet, it also opens the door to self-reflection. We can’t change the past, but we can make meaningful choices about our future and self-evaluation is the path to that freedom. More time to think about what I want out of whatever time I have left has given me freedom from toxic relationships, unnecessary anxiety, and the constraints of the ridiculous beauty standards demanded of women — so much so, moving forward, I’m even starting to question if I really need to shower every day.
Slowly, I am silencing the inner judge that used to tell me I wasn’t good enough. At fifty-five, I can choose who I want to be, and I’m enjoying the experiment. I don’t aspire to look forty, but neither am I ready for fluffy slippers and herbal teas. Right now, I want to be different things on different days, so long as I can be me.
Are you meeting society’s expectations of the perfect middle-aged woman?