A cautionary tale for every middle-aged man: part 1

Back in 2001, I had a great family for the most part; married for 17 years, great job, good home, and a little too much debt like everyone else, but then I threw it all away due to one chance but eye-opening conversation. There have been scores of books and movies written about a man's mid-life crisis, where he looks around at his life and situation, and doesn't see much to love and the routine has grown cold and stale. It's a time when man's focus naturally turns inward, filtering out others. Three come to mind off the top of my head:

American Beauty (1999) - Lester and Carolyn Burnham are on the outside, a perfect husband and wife, in a perfect house, in a perfect neighborhood. But inside, Lester is slipping deeper and deeper into a hopeless depression. He finally awakens when he becomes infatuated with one of his daughter's friends, which inadvertently leads to his ruin.

The Seven Year Itch (1955) - when a man's family goes away for the summer, he's tempted by his beautiful neighbor, who just happens to be Marilyn Monroe!

Lolita (1955) - Nabokov's 1955 novel about Humbert Humbert feasting on Dolores Haze defines the push and pull, attraction and repulsion of middle age.

I think every man eventually has a brief encounter with a woman he wished he could have a romantic fling, which develops into a strong relationship. But that's an idealized version of what really happens. The truth is that both of you know it just won't happen.

However, I did, and it happened with a woman I would see Monday through Friday while delivering packages to her office. I'll call her my "Office friend confidant," or confidant for short.

We were both unhappy in our home situations, correction: I was really unhappy in mine and disconnected from my wife both emotionally and sexually. The common thread between me and my confidant was that our bland marriages allowed us to confide in each other without normal boundaries, since we knew that our "relationship" would only be a conversational one and not a romantic one.

This confidant didn't know my wife and I'd never described her physically to her. One day while my wife and I was shopping, we ran into my office confidant. The meeting was nothing unusual, just mutual pleasantries, and then I winked at the end. That wink was the unspoken signal indicating that "I wish it were you I was with."

The next time I saw my confidant at her office, she said the most revealing, brutally honest, life-changing statement I'd ever heard in my own mind and never thought anyone else would say: "I thought you would have a petite blond trophy wife, not the one I saw you with!"

Subconsciously, that statement had the effect or rewiring my brain, of changing my entire outlook on my current state at age 42, of what I envisioned my daily life should be; that is, to be married to a petite trophy wife, not what I was married to at the time. Her statement — in response to my wink? — made me conclude right then that there's no reason why I shouldn't work toward that goal.

But one moment is all it takes to make a fateful turn in one's life.