There are 6 female midlife crisis stages women go through once her midlife crisis begins.

For over 36 years, I've worked with men whose wives have suddenly collapsed into a midlife crisis or eventually melted down into a woman these husbands no longer recognized.  

They're completely caught off guard and have no idea how to deal with a wife in midlife crisis. Men want to know when it’s over. 

They want to know that because they can’t stand living with this other woman who resents them or even hates them. 

These husbands want to get back to their normal life with their normal wife. And who could blame them? 

They had no idea this was going to happen but if they knew what I know, they could’ve predicted this long before their wedding. 

Women who melt down into a midlife crisis all have one thing in common: they come from painful childhoods and they are what I call a "Chaos Kid".

A painful childhood is one where the girl endures abuse, neglect or abandonment.

If one, two or even three of these things have happened to her in her first 10 years, she will endure a midlife crisis in her adult intimate relationship and her marriage, sometime between two and 26 years into the marriage.

Typically, a woman’s midlife crisis launches between ages 35 and 45 but in some cases of really severe childhoods, it can even begin in their early 30s. 

Through my own research where I interviewed hundreds of people about their childhoods, this has proven to be true over and over again. 

Girls, who grow up in happy homes where mom and dad enjoy each other and mom and dad make her feel important and valuable, never endure a midlife crisis. The reason your wife is going through a midlife crisis is because her childhood has some combination of abuse, neglect or abandonment. 

If I would’ve warned you about this 60 days before your wedding, you would have thrown me out of your house.

At that time, you were not ready to hear it because you had to fulfill your destiny and this is the girl who could do that. That’s because something in YOUR childhood, attracted you to THIS particular girl because of what happened in hers.

Before I explain the 6 stages of a female midlife crisis, I want you to realize that your wife WILL go through them. If you are not what I call an Environment Changer, you will not be able to shorten this process. 

That means you must get through it and that will take 2 to 5 years. Also remember that these stages are not completely distinct. They can blend together and sometimes completely overlap. You will see stage two happening in one week and stage 3 happening in the next.

Throughout these stages, you might see some of the following symptoms of your wife's midlife crisis.

This is the stage where your wife takes on various vindictive behaviors. Most of these will be to get you to pay financially for the things she believes you owe her. 

Depending on the girl, she could make many financial demands through her attorney such as requiring that you pay both lawyers.

It also could be that you emotionally owe her for past hurts and she wants revenge. That could take many forms depending on how she was raised. No matter what twists this stage takes, watch for a focus on getting back at you financially.

In Stage 5, she will be seeking out ways to let you know that she is much happier now because she has a new boyfriend, a new apartment, a new career, a new engagement, a new something. 

This is the “show off” stage where she finds ways to communicate through friends, through family members or even directly that you suppressed her entire life and now that you are out of it, she is much happier than ever before because you are gone.

Like the song, “Somebody I Used to Know”, she has done what she promised and moved on with her life. 

She has turned you into a distant memory of someone she used to know. She does not bring you up to anyone and if you have children together, she will never admit you meant anything to her.  

I can’t say this next point enough because men don’t hear me very well when I make the point. The point is this: the entity that is driving this supremely self-centered behavior has taken all of her childhood pain and blamed it all on you.

Your wife actually believes it's all your fault because she has no clue what else could have led to her bottomless pit of unhappiness and despair. That’s why a midlife crisis in a woman is completely unfair to her husband (unless he’s abusive, etc. and an extreme chaos kid himself). I’m assuming you are not that man. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.

You are probably a real nice guy who treated her exactly the way your father treated your mother in your first ten years. Your mother could handle it from your dad, but your wife could not accept you being like him.

If you are looking for a way to shorten your wife's midlife crisis, I suggest you watch my on-demand class for men that covers many of the concepts I teach, bringing it all together into a message on why this is happening and what you can do to “save the girl”.

In this hostile environment, you must become you at your best to avoid pushing her further away. Gifts, cards, kind words, notes and affection will only push her  further away from you and add fuel to the fire.

Now that we’ve confirmed your wife is a Chaos Kid, one of the most difficult things you’ll be faced with is understanding the fact that you can’t treat her like a normal woman. You’ll try to rationalize, make sense of the situation, buy cards for birthdays and holidays, apologize often, tell her you love her like you would in a normal marriage.