Welcome to Forty: Men’s Mental Health in Midlife.

Welcome to the club!

It's here, and you didn't expect it. Like a sudden reaction to spicy food, you are trapped in a small row of dimly lit cubicles, next to a guy closing a business deal on his phone. While he sends a voicenote to his boss, you are hovercrafting for your life and hygiene purposes. When the warning hit your brain, it was nearly too late. You almost shat yourself. You survive your stomach's treasonous act, washing your hands in a sink, who, like you, has seen better days. You look up into the scratched mirror; the graffiti is awful with lousy spelling, and for a moment, you touch grass. It hits you in the guts like your father's disappointment: Welcome to forty. In the gloomy restroom, you realise that, like your ever-decreasing morning erections, life is losing much of its oomph.

You've arrived at a place where men don't talk about what's going on for them. Most men aren't too concerned about midlife changes until someone's genitals or sex drive enters the chat.

At midlife, we face not only physical changes but also psychological upheaval. Let's start with the mirror reality. Things start to sag at an increasing pace. From facial features to our bellies to muscle tone and definition, hairlines move further back, and reading small print is an exercise best done at arm's length. Our memory needs a higher refresh rate, and we feel fatigued faster. Even a basic night out seeing a movie might require an afternoon nap in preparation.

Psychologically, we are almost entering a second adolescence. Some of us search for affirmation of our identity in this new life stage. We ask if we still mean something to others.

There is loss, grief, and mourning for our younger selves.

We reflect on our relationships, our social connections and our careers. We also think of our past and wonder if it was okay to be us until now. The wandering dread of our mortality creeps in. We realise we do not have unlimited time. We look at our lives and choices and wonder if we want to keep doing what we do. There is loss, grief, and mourning for our younger selves, for the ideals and dreams that died along the way to the acceptance of ourselves where we are now as we are.

Other men enter a stage of denial and become somewhat self-destructive. I call it the undoing. They refuse to accept their reality and long for younger versions of themselves. The stereotypical midlife crisis comes to mind: blowing everything up to get a hint of the past. Today, that's probably more associated with being an alpha male- whatever they think that might mean.

Even the cat will judge you.

For anything to be hard at forty is tough, but for gay men, forty is somewhat harder. There is considerable pressure to remain youthful and virile. There is a judgemental undercurrent towards men who have reached midlife. The assumption is that we should evaporate into the gay abyss, that we should shut up and sit down. To combat this rhetoric, we've entered an age of freezing everything in time, from our foreheads to our body fat percentage. We should not age; if we do, we need to pretend that we haven't.

As a man of a certain age, I know that psychologically, most gays my age did not have the best start in life. Now we are entering midlife and it's a shitshow for many of us. The world has significantly changed since I secretly watched Will & Grace on an analogue TV. The usual progression of life and associated milestones ended up in the wonkiest of dryers- for gay and straight men alike.

Midlife loading, please stand by for broadcasting.

Midlife can be an undoing, or it can be a celebration of change and embracing life again. It can be a reminder that you are still here and that you can sort out things, even the remnants of your father's disappointment. Start therapy, start something, but do not disappear into the void because you are a middle-aged man.

Know you are not alone.

All my love,

Werner