Mental Health

On November 21, 1969, I held my newborn son, Jemal, in my arms and I made a vow that I would be a different kind of father than my father was able to be for me. I promised him I would do everything I could to create a world where fathers were fully healthy and involved with their families throughout their lives. Following the birth of our daughter, Angela, three years later, I founded MenAlive to help fathers and families to live fully healthy lives.

            My midlife father had a much more challenging journey. I was only five years old when he left and it wasn’t until much later, when I was a father myself, that I found the journals he had written during the time he was going through his own midlife hell at age of forty-two:

            July 3: “Oh, Christ, if I can only give my son a decent education—a college decree with a love for books, a love for people, good, solid knowledge. No guidance was given to me. I slogged and slobbered and blundered through two-thirds of my life.”

            August 8: “Sunday morning, my humanness has fled, my sense of comedy has gone down the drain. I’m tired, hopelessly tired, surrounded by an immense brick wall, a blood-spattered brick world, splattered with my blood, where I senselessly banged to find an opening. How can I give my wife and son what they need?”

            September 12: “A hundred failures, an endless number of failures, until now, my confidence, my hope, my belief in myself, have run completely out. Middle aged, I stand and gaze ahead, numb, confused, and desperately worried.”

December 4: “All around me I see the young in spirit, the young in heart, with ten times my confidence, twice my youth, ten times my fervor, twice my education. I see them all, a whole army of them, battering at the same doors I’m battering, trying in the same field I’m trying. My hope and my life stream are both running desperately low, so low, so stagnant, that I hold my breath in fear, believing that the dark, blank curtain is about to descend.”

Five days after his last entry, my father took an overdose of sleeping pills. Though he didn’t die our lives were never the same. I grew up wondering what happened to my father, when it would happen to me, and what I could do to keep it from happening to other families. My father was committed to Camarillo State Mental Hospital north of Los Angeles where we lived. He was locked up for years and got worse and worse, until he finally escaped. I described his story and his ultimate healing journey in my book, My Distant Dad: Healing the Family Father Wound.

I was twenty-six when my son was born and was blessed by his birth, but also terrified I would end up like my father. I denied my own father-wound and thought I could outrun the fears that kept me awake at night and plagued my dreams. That changed when I joined a men’s group when I was thirty-six.

Our group has continued to meet regularly now for forty-five years. I believe the group saved my life, literally. There were times that their love and support kept me going when I felt lost in despair. What I learned has enabled me to become a better husband and father. My wife, Carlin, says she believes that the main reason we have had a successful forty-four year marriage is because I’ve been in a men’s group for forty-five years.

Another midlife father, Dan Doty, believes in the healing power of men’s groups. Dan is a global men’s work leader, executive coach, and somatic meditation teacher. As founder of EVRYMAN, Fatherhood Unlocked, and Rite of Passage, he leads the contemporary cultural conversation around masculinity, fatherhood, and spirituality. He is also a long-time friend and colleague. “Fatherhood today asks men to grow and evolve in an unprecedented manner,” says Dan. “Along with the traditional responsibilities of protector and provider, today’s dads need to be connected, present, nurturing, and full partners in life.”

When my children were young I hungered to become a great father, but I lacked the skills. I grew up without a dad and it took me many years before I recognized the hole that was created when he left. Roland Warren, President of the National Fatherhood Initiative, says

“Kids have a hole in their soul in the shape of their dad. And if a father is unwilling or unable to fill that role, it can leave a wound that is not easily healed.”

Dan Doty wants to heal the father wound that is so pervasive in our society.

“Loneliness and isolation is the name of the game for most dads,”

says Dan.

“We may have friends, but not the ones we’d call at midnight when we’re in a panic. We rarely have the type of community and support that truly allows us to perform at high levels.”

And I would add, to become the fathers we all need and want to be.

I’m 100% in agreement with Dan when he says,

“Of all the possible types of support, a regularly occurring men’s group carries the most impact of anything we know of.”

That’s why I was excited to hear about his new program called “Father’s Fire.” Dan says,

“Father’s Fire is a professionally guided weekly men’s group for dads who are willing to step into the fire of life and lead themselves, their families, and their communities into a better future.”

Dan says the program is open to fathers of any age, but most of the dads are in midlife and committed to high level success in all aspects of their lives. You can learn more about the Fathers’s Fire program here.

Dan has another exciting program I wish had been available when I first learned I was going to become a dad. It’s appropriately called Fatherhood Ready. Says Dan,

“We consider fatherhood a sacred responsibility, and the greatest opportunity for growth and maturity in a man’s life. It is an unending gauntlet that asks us to continually step up, sharpen, mature, open, soften, and lead. It brings immense pain and strife, and profound joy and love.”

In describing the program, Dan says,

“This program brings together the power and depth of an expertly guided men’s group and the wisdom of the best birth and parenting education around. This is a rite of passage, plus effective training on the most important topics of the early stage of fatherhood.”

I loved what I was hearing and asked Dan who would most benefit from the program. He told me Fatherhood Ready is for:

• Expecting dads at any point along conception to pregnancy.

• Men trying to conceive.

• Fathers of newborns and babies in the postpartum period.

• Men wrestling with a decision to become a father.

I have known Dan before he became a father and watched him grow stronger and more committed to fatherhood as each of his children, two sons and daughter, have come into the world and been welcomed by Dan and his wife. Dan is forty-two, the same age my father was when my dad was overwhelmed by fear, confusion, and his perceived inadequacy as a father.  

The contrast between Dan and my dad brings tears to my eyes wishing my father had been able to join Fatherhood Ready and Father’s Fire and part of a men’s support group. I know my father, wherever he is in the spirit world, would join me in also shedding tears of joy knowing these programs are available now to men and their families.

You can learn more about Dan and his work at DanDoty.com.

You can get information about Father’s Fire at DanDoty.com/Fathers-Fire.

If you are a father-to-be, a new father, or someone who care about fatherhood, check out Fatherhood Ready at dandoty.com/fatherhood-ready.

As for me, I’m now the father of five grown children, grandfather of seventeen, and a great grandfather of two. I write a regular article about the joys and challenges of being a man at MenAlive.com. I invite you to subscribe to my free weekly newsletter at menalive.com/email-newsletter/

The post Midlife Fatherhood: The Ultimate Rite of Passage for Men appeared first on MenAlive.

My interest in the lives of midlife men began in 1949, the year I was five years old and my 43-year-old father took an overdose of sleeping pills. My dad had become increasingly depressed when he couldn’t support his family doing the work he loved. Though he didn’t die, our lives were never the same. I grew up wondering what happened to my father, when it would happen to me, and what I could do to help other families avoid the suffering my family experienced.

            Two other men have been interested in the lives of men for a long time. Robert Waldinger, MD is professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. Marc Schulz, PhD is the associate director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. They have been friends and colleagues for more than thirty years and have recently written a groundbreaking book on how we can all create a more joyful and meaningful life.

            In The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness, they say,

“The Harvard Study of Adult Development began in 1938, with the intention of ‘investigating not what made people sick but what made them thrive.’ The original 724 subjects were young men and boys from the Boston area chosen from two populations: 268 were Harvard undergraduates and 456 were from Boston’s inner-city and disadvantaged neighborhoods.”

            Subjects agreed to answer a thorough set of survey and interview questions every two years. Collected over hundreds of lifetimes, the biennial check-ins constructed detailed portraits of participants’ health using emotional wellbeing surveys, medical tests, and biographical interviews.

            We all want to be happy and live a great life, but what does that actually mean? Drs. Waldinger and Schultz begin to answer that question by drawing on the wisdom of the past.

“More than two thousand years ago Aristotle used a term that is still in wide use in psychology today eudaimonia. It refers to a stage of deep well-being in which a person feels their life has meaning and purpose.It is often contrasted with hedonia (the origin of the word hedonism), which refers to the fleeting happiness of various pleasures.”

            They go on to say,

“If hedonic happiness is what you mean when you say you’re having a good time, then eudaimonic happiness is what we mean when we say life is good. It is the kind of well-being that can endure through both the ups and the downs.”

            When my father couldn’t find work, he blamed himself, thought he was a failure as a man and that my mother and me would be better off without him. I wrote about his recovery and his journey to find real happiness in my memoir, My Distant Dad: Healing the Family Father Wound, and offer an on-line course on how we can all heal the father wound.

            Waldinger and Schultz begin their book with a simple question:

“If you had to make one life choice, right now, to set yourself on the path to future health and happiness, what would it be?”

Think about that for a moment. If the genie of happiness gave you one wish, what would you choose?

            The authors suggest ones that studies have shown people have chosen.

“Would you choose to put more money into savings each month? To change careers? Would you decide to travel more?”

In a 2007 survey, millennials were asked about their most important goals.

“Seventy-six percent said that becoming rich was their number one goal and fifty percent said a major goal was to become famous.”

            What does the science actually tell us? I encourage you to read the book. It is full of stories and the facts are clear. Here’s the short answer with the three major things learned over that past 86 years of the study:

• First, having social connections is better for our health and wellbeing—and conversely, loneliness kills.

• Second, having higher-quality close connections is more important for our well-being than the number of connections.

• Third, having good relationships is not only good for our bodies but also for our brains.

“Once we had followed the people in the Harvard Study all the way into their 80s,”

say Drs. Waldinger and Schultz,

“we wanted to look back at them at midlife to see if we could predict who was going to grow into a happy, healthy octogenarian and who wasn’t. So we gathered together everything we knew about them at age 50 and found that it wasn’t their middle-aged cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old; it was how satisfied they were in their relationships. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest (mentally and physically) at age 80.”

This is crucially important. Throughout human history most people died by age 50. Now many of us will live a full-second adulthood into our 80s, 90s, and beyond. The decisions we make at midlife will determine whether our future is one of joy and wellbeing or despair and decrepitude. (The dictionary offers this example to describe the word: “He had passed directly from middle age into decrepitude.”) You definitely don’t want this to be you.

            You can hear Dr. Waldinger give the summary of the Harvard Study in a 13-minute TED talk that has amassed twenty-five million views.

Why Joining a Men’s Group is the One Thing Midlife Men Must Do to Have a Great Life

            I turned 80 years old last December and feel very fortunate to have focused on relationships throughout my life. My wife, Carlin, and I have been happily married for 44 years. Carlin will tell you that one of the main reasons she feels we have had a successful 44-year marriage is because I’ve been in a men’s group for 45 years.

            For more than fifty years, I have been a psychotherapist specializing in helping midlife men and their families live fully healthy lives. I have found that midlife is a time when men’s health can improve dramatically or they begin to decline. It can be the most passionate, powerful, productive, and purposeful time of a man’s life. Or it be a time when men begin to go downhill.

            Even when men recognize the critical importance of fostering good relationships with a spouse, family, friends, and acquaintances, most would not think that joining a men’s group was the most important thing a man could do. Yet, I believe it is.

            I was 36 years old when I first joined the men’s group. I believe my group involvement has been the most important thing contributing to my health and happiness. My most recent book, Long Live Men! The Moonshot Mission to Heal Men, Close the Lifespan Gap, and Offer Hope to Humanity detailed I’ve learned about life, love, intimacy, and the importance of men coming together in groups at midlife.  

            My friend and colleague, Chip Conley, is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Modern Elder Academy. In his book, Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age, he says that midlife may last from age 35 to 75 and details three stages:

• 35 to 50. We tend to experience some of the challenging physical and emotional transitions—a bit like an adult puberty.

• 50 to 60 is the core of midlife when we’ve settled into this new era and are seeing some of the upside.

• 60 to 75 is when we’re young enough to still be working and living a very vital life, but old enough to see and plan for what’s next: our senior years.

I was lucky to join the men’s group during this first midlife stage and to still be in the group when I graduated to the stage of Elderhood.

In my book, 12 Rules for Good Men, I say,

“Rule #1 is Join a Men’s Group. Looking back on our heritage as men and our lives as hunter-gatherers over the last two million years, one of the things that stands out to me is that men spend considerable time in small groups with other men. This occurred naturally as men went away from the camp hunting for game to feed their families and tribe.”

            In more recent times, men have experienced this deep connection by going off to war. As Waldinger and Schultz say in their study,

“All of the college men in the Harvard Study had plans as the 1940s began. Then Pearl Harbor happened, and every plan, for every student, went out the window—89 percent of the college men fought in the war, and their lives were deeply affected by it. Yet nearly all of the college men reported feeling proud to have served, and many remember it as one of the best and most meaningful times in their lives despite it challenges.”

            Sebastian Junger is the bestselling author of numerous books including The Perfect Storm, Tribe, and War. He says,

“Americans are enamored with war, even when they say they don’t believe in it. Young men in the west no longer have a sense of what it means to be a man—and some of them go to war to find out. We all want peace, but we’re all fascinated by the drama of war. It transcends our moral beliefs.”

            I believe that to have healthy relationships with spouses, friends, and family, we need to take risks and be tested. We need to find our place in the company of men we can trust with our lives. We need to open ourselves to our deepest fears and know we are fully accepted for who we are. We don’t have to go to war to do that.

            I found what I needed in a men’s group and share my experience in a recent article, “ ‘Til Death Do We Part: The Life and Times of My 45-Year-Old Men’s Group.” I have participated in a number of powerful men’s group experiences over the years. Here are a few resources I recommend:

• The Mankind Project.
• MenLiving.
• Man Therapy.
• The Good Men Project.
• Warrior Films.  
• Shana James Coaching.
• Male Wholeness.

If you’d like to read more articles like these, please visit me at MenAlive.com and subscribe to our free newsletter.

The post The One Thing Midlife Men Must Do to Have a Great Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness appeared first on MenAlive.

Part 2

            In Part 1, I introduced readers to an expanded understanding of midlife and the unique journey that men make as we embark on what for many is a true hero’s journey.  In his pathfinding new book, Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better With Age, Chip Conley offers a unique guide for every man (and woman) who is dealing with the confusing and challenging time known as “midlife.”

            Chip Conley is CEO of the Modern Elder Academy, the first midlife wisdom school, and a New York Times bestselling author. “What’s wrong with me?” Chip asked himself in the Introduction to Learning to Love Midlife.

“That was the question that haunted me in my mid-40s,” says Conley. “I hated my life, partly because every piece of it was falling apart. Yet I clung to those pieces as if they were a tattered life preserver.”

            I first med Chip Conley shortly after he opened the Phoenix Hotel in San Francisco in 1987. I was planning a men’s retreat and his quirky hotel seemed like the perfect place. He went on to create a string of boutique hotels, Joie de Vivre Hospitality, and became the second-largest operator of boutique hotels in the world. He later became a mentor to the young entrepreneurs who started Airbnb and was named the company’s Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy.

            I recently interviewed Chip for a podcast at MenAlive. I asked him about his own challenges in midlife, how he came to write the book, and his belief that midlife extends from age 35 to 75.

            I’ve been writing about midlife since 1997 when my book, Male Menopause, was published and become an international bestseller translated into fourteen foreign languages. I said,

“Male menopause, also called Andropause or Manopause, begins with hormonal, physiological, and chemical changes that occur in men generally between the ages of forty and fifty-five. These changes affect all aspects of a man’s life. Male menopause is thus, a physical condition with psychological, interpersonal, social, and spiritual dimensions.”

            I went on to say,

“My first experience with this change of life occurred the day I was born on December 21, 1943. When my mother announced, “it’s a boy,” and lifted me up for my father to hold, he was thirty-seven years old and in the midst of a major life crisis. Over the next five years, he became increasingly depressed and withdrawn. He had what my mother called ‘a midlife nervous breakdown.’ Just before my sixth birthday, he took an overdose of sleeping pills. Though he didn’t die, our lives were never again the same.”

            He was committed to the state mental hospital in Camarillo, north of our home in Los Angeles. I wrote about his own journey of survival and redemption in my book, My Distant Dad: Healing the Family Father Wound. Too many men hit midlife with little understanding, preparation, or guidance. Chip Conley’s journey was not as rocky as my father’s, but he faced his own difficult challenges. “I felt completely alone,” says Chip of this period in his life, “an idiot without a village.”

            He goes on to say,

“Midlife is when we begin to worry that life isn’t turning out the way we expected. We may feel a sense of lost opportunity and frustrated longings. Or feel that we’ve sold out and are living someone else’s life. It’s when we can look in the mirror and see a stranger.”

Chip talks about The Midlife Unraveling.

“Midlife is the initiation into a time of massive transitions. A drizzle of disappointments. Parents passing away, kids leaving home, financial reckonings, changing jobs, changing spouses, hormonal wackiness, scary health diagnoses, addictive behaviors becoming unwieldly, and the stirrings of a growing curiosity about the meaning of life.” (What’s it all about Alfie?)

Chip offers a wonderful vision of a positive transformation in the midst of the unraveling.

“When a caterpillar is fully grown, it uses a button of silk to fasten its body to a twig and then forms a chrysalis. Within this protective chrysalis, the transformational magic of metamorphosis occurs. While it’s a bit dark, gooey, and solitary, it’s a transition, not a crisis. And of course, on the other side is a beautiful butterfly.”

The 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better With Age

            Chip details five important areas of our lives and within each one he offers a number of positive and transformative things we can address:

The Physical Life

1. “I Have More Life Left Than I Thought.”
2. “I’m Relieved My Body No Longer Defines Me.”

The Emotional Life

• “I’m Making Friends With My Emotions”
• “I Invest in My Social Wellness.”
• “I Have No More ‘Fucks’ Left to Give.”

The Mental Life

• “I’m Mastering My Wisdom.”
• “I Understand How My Story Serves Me.”
• “I’ve Learned How to Edit My Life.”

The Vocational Life

• “I’m Joyfully Stepping Off the Treadmill.”
• “I’m Starting to Experience Time Affluence.”

The Spiritual Life

1. “I’ve Discovered My Soul.”
2. “I Feel As If I’m Growing Whole.”

You can learn more about Chip and his work and order his book by visiting him here. You will learn more about his new book, Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better With Age, his six other books, courses, and classes.

If you’d like to read more articles by me, you can sign up for my free newsletter here.

The post The New Midlife Male: Welcome to the Most Passionate, Powerful, Productive, and Purposeful Time of Your Life appeared first on MenAlive.