Are Middle-aged Women Really Done With Men?

When I asked a friend recently how she’s doing, she paused and answered, “I keep wondering if this is all there is.”

She, like me, is 50-something and like many 50-somethings we are empty-nesters or about to be empty-nesters; we’re either 20-something years into a marriage or divorced. We’re in the so-called “midlife crisis” years, a time when we question what we’ve done (and, more likely, haven’t done) and where we want to be.

It was odd timing, coming just days after I read Monique Honaman’s provocative post in the Huffington Post, I Just Wish He Would Have an Affair, in which she details how many wives have confided in her that they just don’t want to be married anymore:

“These women are done. They say they aren’t happy. They say they aren’t in love with their husbands (or any other man — they aren’t having affairs). They say they simply wish they were no longer married to him. They aren’t fulfilled. They wonder if this is how they are doomed to live the rest of their lives (and God-willing, most of them have another 40+ years ahead of them). … The common factor amongst all of these women is that they say that their husbands are really solid, good, nice men. … they just don’t want to be married to them anymore because they have fallen out of love.”

That’s a curious place to be but not unusual. Honaman doesn’t say how old these women are or how long they’ve been married, but since she indicates they have another 40-plus years ahead of them, I don’t think I’m off in guessing they’re in their 40s, 50s and 60s — yep, midlife.

Why is midlife so wrought with angst for women?

Well, beside the study that found that age 48 is the pivotal year for women’s unhappiness, women tend to be more prone to depression anyway. But at midlife we’re dealing with menopause, the loss of our role as nurturer, the loss of our youth and beauty, etc.

And I don’t doubt that some women have been inspired by the Eat, Pray, Love life or, what AskMen calls the Second-Act Syndrome: After raising a family and tending to the home and baking brownies for the Boy Scout fundraiser and volunteering to drive on who-knows-how-many field trips while doing paid or non-paid work (and, yes, being a…