There is a particular point in your forties when you look around at your life and think, Hang on. Is this it? Not in a dramatic, I’m going to quit my job, buy a motorbike and run away with a 27-year-old kind of way. More in a why am I still doing this thing I absolutely hate when I am now old enough to know better? kind of way.
And apparently, society has a name for this. A midlife crisis.
I’m not convinced.
Because maybe we’re not having a crisis. Maybe we’re having an audit. And frankly, about bloody time.
The midlife crisis has terrible PR
The traditional midlife crisis is usually portrayed as a woman suddenly losing the plot. She gets divorced, buys a convertible, starts wearing leather trousers and develops an inexplicable interest in tequila. Meanwhile, the man gets a motorbike and everyone says, “He’s just finding himself.”
Women, however, are apparently having a breakdown because we bought a pair of boots that weren’t on sale.
I think we need a new definition. Because what happens in your forties often isn’t that you suddenly become irrational. It’s that you finally become rational enough to stop putting up with things you have been tolerating for years.
You start asking questions you might not have been brave enough to ask before. Do I actually like my job? Do I actually want to spend time with these people? Do I actually enjoy this friendship? Why am I agreeing to things I absolutely do not want to do? Why am I still trying to impress people whose approval I don’t even particularly want?
And perhaps most importantly: If I have another 40 years of life ahead of me, do I want to spend them like this?
That isn’t a crisis. That’s an audit.
The midlife audit is basically a performance review for your life
Except this time, you’re both the employee and the CEO. And unfortunately, there is no HR department to complain to.
You start looking at everything. Your career. Your relationships. Your friendships. Your finances. Your health. Your home. Your appearance. Your habits. Your time. Your energy. And suddenly you realise that some of the things you’ve been doing aren’t actually serving you anymore.
They may have been perfectly appropriate for the woman you were ten, fifteen or twenty years ago. But you aren’t her anymore.
And this is where things get interesting, because we are very comfortable with the idea that people should evolve professionally. We’re encouraged to change careers, learn new skills, start businesses, pursue new interests and reinvent ourselves. But somehow, when a woman starts reconsidering the rest of her life, everyone gets nervous.
“Are you okay?”
Yes. I’m actually paying attention.
Maybe I don’t want to be the woman I was at 30
There is a strange assumption that your younger self is the gold standard. That the goal of ageing is to preserve everything about yourself from the decade before, as though 30-year-old you was the final software update and everything since then has been a bug.
But why would I want to be 30 again?
I quite like knowing what I know now. I like knowing what I like. I like knowing what I don’t like. I like being less interested in whether everyone approves of me. I like being more selective with my time. I like understanding that some things simply aren’t worth the emotional admin.
And I certainly don’t want to spend the next decade trying to convince myself that I’m still the person I was at 30.
Maybe the point isn’t to get back to her. Maybe it’s to become more fully me.
This is also when you start auditing the things you’ve been told you should want
This one can be uncomfortable, because women are handed an enormous list of expectations. You should have a successful career. You should have children. You should be a good mother. You should have a happy marriage. You should have a beautiful home. You should exercise. You should eat well. You should age gracefully, but not too visibly.
You should look natural, but also somehow look fantastic. You should be confident, but not intimidating. You should be ambitious, but not so ambitious that everyone starts asking who is looking after the children. You should care about your appearance, but not too much.
At some point in your forties, you start looking at this enormous list and thinking: Who approved this?
Because I would like to speak to management.
And perhaps that is one of the most useful things about getting older. You start separating what you genuinely want from what you have simply been conditioned to want.
There is a difference between choosing a life and following a template.
And yes, this includes how we look
I think this is an important part of the midlife audit because there is a strange cultural expectation that women should either age naturally and proudly or be vain and terrified of getting older.
I don’t buy it.
I can accept that I’m getting older and enjoy looking after myself. I can appreciate ageing while using good skincare. I can be completely comfortable with my face while also deciding that I’d like to do something about a particular thing that bothers me. I can have Botox. I can have a facial. I can have laser. I can dye my hair. I can decide not to do any of those things.
None of these choices determine how secure I am in myself.
Sometimes you simply look in the mirror and think, That doesn’t quite match how I feel.
And if there are things you can safely do that make the outside feel a little more like the inside, why shouldn’t you?
The goal isn’t necessarily to look younger. Sometimes it’s simply to look more like yourself.
And I think women should be allowed to make that choice without having to attach a disclaimer to it.
No apology. No shame. No pretending you woke up like this.
The same goes for our bodies
Your forties can also be the decade when you stop treating your body like a problem that needs fixing and start treating it like something you actually have to live in.
Which sounds obvious until you realise how much of our lives have been spent trying to become smaller. Smaller waist. Smaller thighs. Smaller appetite. Smaller presence.
And then one day you realise you have spent an extraordinary amount of energy trying to take up less space.
Maybe the audit says: actually, I’d quite like to be strong. I’d like to feel energetic. I’d like to eat food that makes me feel good. I’d like to build muscle. I’d like to sleep properly. I’d like to wear the bloody swimsuit.
And maybe I’d also like to eat the dessert.
The audit is not about becoming perfect. It’s about deciding what actually matters.
Some things get a hard no
This might be my favourite part.
Because the older I get, the more attractive the word no becomes.
No, I don’t want to go. No, I don’t have time. No, that doesn’t work for me. No, I’m not going to explain myself for seventeen minutes so that you feel better about my decision.
No, I don’t want to maintain a friendship purely because we’ve known each other since 2004. No, I don’t want to spend my weekend doing something I hate because someone might think I’m difficult. And no, I am absolutely not interested in pretending I don’t care about something just because caring about it makes me look shallow.
There is something incredibly liberating about realising that you don’t have to audition for your own life anymore.
And some things get a very enthusiastic yes
Because an audit isn’t just about cutting things out. It’s also about identifying what deserves more.
More travel. More laughing. More sleep. More adventures. More dinners with people who make you forget to check your phone. More hobbies that you’re spectacularly mediocre at. More saying yes to things simply because they sound fun. More doing things badly without needing to turn them into a side hustle.
More taking photographs. More wearing the dress. More buying the lipstick. More calling your friend. More booking the trip.
More living.
Because sometimes the problem isn’t that your life is completely wrong. It’s that the things that make it feel good have gradually been squeezed into whatever tiny corner is left after everyone else’s needs have been met.
The audit gives them some space again.
The uncomfortable bit: time suddenly feels real
Perhaps the biggest difference between your thirties and your forties is that time stops feeling theoretical.
You suddenly understand that life isn’t an endless runway. You can still have another forty years, but you also know what forty years feels like.
It went quite quickly.
Which makes wasting another decade on things you don’t want feel considerably less appealing.
This isn’t morbid. If anything, it’s motivating. Because once you understand that your time is finite, you become much more protective of it.
You stop asking, “What will everyone think?” and start asking, “Is this how I want to spend my time?”
That is a very different question.
So perhaps we’re not falling apart
Perhaps we’re editing.
We’re keeping what works and getting rid of what doesn’t. We’re questioning the assumptions, updating the terms and conditions, deleting a few outdated beliefs and adding some new priorities.
And occasionally we’re looking at something we’ve tolerated for fifteen years and thinking, Absolutely not.
That isn’t a midlife crisis.
That’s quality control.
And honestly, if this is what getting older looks like, I’m rather into it.
Because I don’t want to spend the second half of my life desperately trying to prove that I am still the woman I was in the first half. I want to know who I am now. What I want now. What makes me happy now. What I no longer have the patience for. What I want more of. What I want less of. And what I want to change simply because I can.
Maybe that’s what the forties are really for.
Not falling apart. Not desperately holding on to youth. Not becoming invisible.
But finally sitting down with your own life and saying: Right. Let’s see what we’re working with.