Men are lost

[Gob]

I am sitting by the swimming pool at the Canyon Ranch resort in Tucson, Arizona, only it is not really a resort, it is a fitness/wellness/life-enhancing centre where people who are very stressed come to detox and, as I am discovering, “find” themselves.


But this resort is not brimming with stressed-out women, worn thin and ragged by juggling motherhood, wifedom and being the heads of companies. No. The classes here are full of men – men with great big identity issues.


There is 45-year-old Lee, who has just “gotten divorced” and has, in the course of a month, slept with 15 women. “I don’t see myself as that type of man,” he says, “but I feel so lonely and I don’t know what to do with my life.” There is Ryan, aged 53, who has never married and is in crisis about why he hasn’t. Then there is Steve, 49, a travel agent, long-time married, who has hit a midlife crisis. He says he really does want to buy a Harley-Davidson and head off down Route 66. “Is that wrong?” he asks. “I just don’t know what I want in my life anymore.”

They are all part of a “sandwich generation”: they sit between the baby boomers and the digital natives. And they are a group who have, according to recent statistics, lost their way. The Samaritans Suicide Statistics Report for 2014 shows that men aged 40-44 are the demographic group with the highest rate of suicide, nearly four times that of women the same age; for those aged 45-54, the rate is roughly three times higher for men than women. New data from the Office of National Statistics confirm those findings. And although the statistics aren’t always straightforward (there may be under-reporting of female suicides), things aren’t getting better: while the male rate fell for most of the past decade, since 2012 it has been back on the rise.

n the Samaritans report about the data, Professor Rory O’Connor, then the head of the suicidal behaviour research group at Stirling University, said that the focus had shifted over recent decades from younger men being more at risk of suicide to middle-aged men.

“Men currently in their midyears are caught between their traditional silent, strong and austere fathers who went to work and provided for their families, and the more progressive, open and individualistic generation of their sons. They do not know which of these two very different ways of life and masculine culture they should follow.” The pressure to live up to what the report describes as a “masculine ‘gold standard’ which prizes power, control and invincibility” can turn personal troubles such as losing a job into a crisis in a way that it might not for women. The sense of suffering “defeat as a man” can be more acute in middle age, when the responsibilities are greatest.

The result? Men of this generation are in crisis. We often focus on teenage boys and their problems, ranging from depression to delinquency, or on women and their role in society, from young and single to working mother to stay-at-home woman. Yet we rarely look at the role of men, especially middle-aged men – and the problem does not only apply to those who have suffered from the familiar seismic shifts in their lives, such as divorce or the loss of a job.

Continues here...

[MajGenl.Meade]

If only they watched soap operas...

[oldr_n_wsr]

turn personal troubles such as losing a job into a crisis

I can relate. But it is a crisis especially if you have been with the place for 20+ years. Job market for mid+ aged people sucks. And you earnign power takes a big hit.
I think many turn to booze and drugs (as I did).