44: Midlife Crisis

Actually, it’s a midlife awakening.

There's something about entering your 40s that makes you look at life a little differently. Maybe you're questioning your career, reevaluating relationships, thinking about getting a tattoo, or suddenly feeling the urge to completely reinvent yourself. Or maybe you're simply realizing that you no longer have the energy to care about things that used to consume you. Whatever it looks like, welcome to midlife. But what if this phase of life isn't actually a crisis? What if it's an awakening?

On this episode of You Handled That Perfectly™, we're talking about the midlife crisis, how it can look different for men and women, and why this stage of life might actually be one of the most empowering seasons yet. As lifelong best friends, entrepreneurs, and moms navigating our 40s, we're realizing that getting older isn't necessarily about losing who we used to be. Sometimes, it's about finally becoming comfortable with who we are.

When we think about a traditional midlife crisis, we tend to picture men buying sports cars, picking up expensive hobbies, or trying to recapture their younger years. And sometimes, that stereotype isn't too far off. Carly shares how her brother jokingly decided he was going to have an annual midlife crisis, complete with a flashy car, a boat, and eventually a sailboat. Honestly, if your midlife crisis involves taking your family sailing, there are probably worse ways to go about it! But beyond the funny stereotypes, there can be something much deeper happening during this stage of life.

For men, a midlife crisis can involve questioning career choices, relationships, purpose, and personal identity. It might show up as restlessness, irritability, emotional distance, nostalgia, or a sudden desire to make big changes. But sometimes, what looks like a midlife crisis might actually be burnout, unresolved emotional struggles, or the realization that you've spent decades simply surviving instead of enjoying your life. And if you've listened to our conversations about survival mode, you know how important it can be to recognize when something needs to change.

For women, though, we think the experience can feel a little different. Rather than trying to reclaim our youth, we're often trying to reclaim ourselves. Motherhood changes you in ways that are difficult to explain until you've experienced them. We spend years caring for our children, managing schedules, supporting our families, maintaining relationships, and keeping everything moving. Somewhere along the way, it's easy to lose touch with the parts of ourselves that existed before we became everyone's everything. Then, as our kids get older and become more independent, we finally have a little room to ask ourselves a question we may not have considered in years: Who am I now?

And the answer doesn't necessarily have to be the person we were before having kids. In fact, it probably won't be. We've grown, changed, learned, and experienced so much since then. Maybe the goal isn't to get back to our old selves at all. Maybe it's to embrace the people we're becoming and figure out what we want the next chapter to look like.

Of course, there's also the reality that midlife for women can come with a whole collection of overlapping changes. Between perimenopause, hormonal shifts, caregiving responsibilities, career pressures, the mental load of motherhood, and the emotional demands of maintaining relationships, there's a lot happening at once. Feelings of restlessness, resentment, emotional exhaustion, or a desire for more independence can be difficult to untangle. Is it a midlife crisis? Is it perimenopause? Is it burnout? Is it simply the result of spending years putting everyone else's needs ahead of our own? Sometimes, it's hard to know where one ends and another begins.

Then there's the pressure of aging itself. Women are constantly receiving conflicting messages about what aging is supposed to look like. We're expected to age gracefully, but somehow without actually looking older. If we embrace our wrinkles, we're judged for letting ourselves go. If we choose Botox or cosmetic procedures, we're judged for trying too hard. It can feel like there's no winning. And even when those conversations are happening around celebrities or on social media, they're still influencing how we think about ourselves. But what if we started looking at aging differently? What if, instead of focusing on everything that's changing, we recognized how lucky we are to have the opportunity to grow older?

One of the things we've both noticed is that every decade seems to bring something better. Our 20s were fun, our 30s brought marriage, motherhood, and new experiences, and now our 40s are bringing a completely different kind of confidence. There's a sense of knowing yourself that you just don't have when you're younger. We're becoming more comfortable with our opinions, more confident in our decisions, and a lot less concerned about what everyone else thinks. Things that once felt incredibly important start to feel like noise, and it becomes easier to recognize what actually deserves our energy.

That shift can also change the way we look at our relationships. When you're raising young children, it's easy for your marriage to become centered around parenting logistics. You're coordinating bedtime routines, dividing responsibilities, managing schedules, and operating as a team to get through the day. We know this all too well! But eventually, our kids will become more independent, and we're already starting to think about what our relationships will look like when parenting isn't taking up quite so much space. Are we still connecting as couples? Are we making time for each other? Are we growing together, or have we been so busy taking care of everyone else that we've forgotten to nurture our relationships?

Those questions aren't necessarily signs that something is wrong. They can simply be reminders that relationships, like people, need room to grow and evolve. The same is true of friendships, careers, and personal goals. Sometimes midlife brings the realization that certain patterns or situations are no longer serving us. Maybe we're ready to set better boundaries, change careers, go back to school, prioritize our health, or finally pursue something we've always wanted to do. And sometimes that change is as simple as deciding we want a new hairstyle or a tattoo. Carly can definitely relate to that one!

But here's the thing: It's okay to change. It's okay to want something different at 40 than you wanted at 25. It's okay to become more ambitious, more independent, more outspoken, or more intentional about how you spend your time. And it's okay to recognize that some of the things we've accepted for years aren't things we're willing to accept anymore.

One of the biggest takeaways from our conversation is that women in midlife aren't necessarily having a crisis. We're waking up and settling into ourselves at the same time. We're realizing that we don't have to stay in jobs that belittle us, maintain relationships that make us feel unwanted, or remain in situations that aren't healthy for us. We're recognizing that it's okay to prioritize ourselves, pursue success, want financial independence, have a family, and expect a genuinely shared mental load.

We're not asking for too much. We're realizing that we deserved these things all along.

And maybe that's the biggest difference between how we viewed life in our younger years and how we're beginning to view it now. We're moving beyond the people-pleasing phase and recognizing that our needs, goals, and happiness matter too. We're learning that prioritizing ourselves doesn't mean we love our families any less. It means we're finally giving ourselves the same consideration we've spent years giving everyone else.

There's also something really meaningful about what this shift can teach our daughters. If we can learn to advocate for ourselves, set boundaries, embrace change, and expect equal partnerships, maybe the next generation won't have to wait until midlife to realize those things are important. Maybe our daughters will grow up knowing that their ambitions matter, their voices deserve to be heard, and they don't need permission to create lives that feel fulfilling to them.

And while the word crisis tends to make this entire experience sound negative, we're choosing to look at it a little differently. Yes, midlife can bring uncertainty, emotional changes, and some uncomfortable questions. But it can also bring clarity, confidence, freedom, and excitement about what's still ahead. We have decades of life experience behind us, and hopefully decades of new experiences still to come. How incredible is it that we get to take everything we've learned and use it to make the next chapter even better?

So whether you're in your late 30s, navigating your 40s, embracing your 50s, or somewhere beyond, we hope this conversation reminds you that you're allowed to evolve. You're allowed to question things. You're allowed to want more. And you're allowed to love the person you're becoming without feeling guilty about the person you're leaving behind.

Maybe we're not having a midlife crisis after all. Maybe we're having a midlife awakening.

And if that's the case, we're here for it.

Remember: handling it perfectly isn't about being perfect. It's about embracing the messy, beautiful, sometimes chaotic journey of becoming who we're meant to be.

And in case no one told you today, you handled that perfectly.And in case no one told you today: you handled that perfectly.