Midlife crisis: two Hongkongers’ contrasting stories, and how to see turning 50 as an opportunity to enrich yourself

Lydia Fong thought that she would relish getting older, but as she approached her 45th birthday, feelings of dissatisfaction began to set in. “My relationship with my husband had grown distant, my two sons were already grown with lives of their own, and my career was coming to an end,” the accountant says. “My body also started changing in ways I didn’t expect. I found it harder to lose weight, and my skin looked old and tired no matter what I put on it.”

Fong [a pseudonym] felt like she’d “used up” all her “good years” and had nothing left to look forward to in her golden years. “It seemed like things would only go downhill from that point,” she explains. “I’d read about people my age taking time off work to travel or embark on new endeavours, or leaving unhappy relationships to start new ones or just be alone, and I asked myself why I wasn’t doing any of those things, too, even though I wasn’t sure if they’d make me happy. I felt depressed thinking about what the future held for me, and at the same time, regretful about the choices I’d made that had got me to that point.”

Now 50, Fong feels she might be in the throes of a midlife crisis. Although she keeps herself busy with hobbies like cooking and ballroom dancing, she says that she often experiences feelings of emptiness, disappointment and anxiety.

“I feel trapped and just want to run away from everything,” she admits.

Canadian psychoanalyst and organisational psychologist Elliott Jaques’ is credited with identifying the “midlife crisis” in a 1965 paper on creative geniuses’ working patterns. Unlike childhood and old age, it’s hard to define exactly when midlife occurs, but, according to Joyce Chao, a clinical psychologist at Dimensions Centre in Central, it’s that part of adulthood between one’s 40s and 60s.