Sunday, August 03, 2008
Life, "Ask a Bachelor"

Live your life

Dealing with the end of a friendship and taking care of a midlife crisis

By Blane Bachelor

Q This isn’t so much a question about a romantic relationship, but about a friend who kind of dumped me. I’m still trying to process it, so maybe you can help. So, there’s this gal at work, and we became close friends when we were both going through difficult breakups. I was trying to end a messy long-term thing, and she was going through a divorce. We started spending time together at work--cigarette breaks, coffee, lunch, sometimes happy hour. But it was only platonic. We were a good support system for each other. But, about a year later, our friendship has gone south, and I don’t understand why. When I ask her to grab lunch, she says she’s eating at her desk because she’s too busy with work. She stopped smoking, so smoke breaks are out. She has a new boyfriend, I know that, but I don’t want to date her—I only want my work buddy back! I’ve tried to ask her what’s wrong, and she only blows me off. It’s so strange. Can you help me figure this out? Is there anything I can do to win her friendship back? —Dumped and Stumped

A Doubtful, but you’d do yourself a giant favor by following her lead. Focus more on your career than boring coworkers with your romantic woes, give up the damn cancer sticks already, and learn to take a hint when someone is pulling away from you. Rejection, romantic or otherwise, always sucks, but don’t make it worse for yourself by becoming known as the creepy office stalker.
The only other possibility I can think of for her insta-freeze is that her new dude has put the ixnay on her being buddy-buddy with someone who has a Y chromosome. In that case, she either doesn’t value your friendship enough to stand up to him about it, or she’s a spineless wench.
Either way, she’s sending you a pretty clear message. So let her live her life, try to get one of your own, and every time you see her at the coffee machine, make sure you’re peppier than Richard Simmons on ecstasy—without extending an invitation for anything.  Perhaps over time when she sees that, just like her, you’ve moved past the woe-is-me time in your life and have completely lost interest in reigniting your friendship, she’ll come around. Chicks are nutty like that.

My wife and I met in high school, dated exclusively throughout college and got married soon after that. We have three young sons and an overall happy, satisfying existence together. She stays home to raise the kids, and I have a career I mostly enjoy. But I think I’m hitting that dreaded midlife crisis stage, and I have no idea how to handle it. I love my wife and my kids, but I’m so restless. I look around at younger guys in my office and just envy their youthful energy and lack of responsibility. This is eating at me. I’m also finding myself more attracted to other women. I don’t think I’d ever cheat on my wife, but I’m tempted for some excitement somehow, sexually or otherwise. What should I do? —Going Crazy

Go skydiving. Take a month off work and hike the Appalachian Trail with your family. Learn Arabic. Take up juggling. Volunteer at the hospital holding crack babies. Go get one of those crazy-ass new pedicures where you dip your feet in a tank of water and little fish nibble off the dead skin. Hell, if you’re really desperate, you can go midlife crisis-cliché and buy yourself a kick-ass sports car or get a tattoo. Whatever you do, please figure something out before you go and do something really stupid (and predictable) like cheat on your wife with your busty secretary.

And speaking of your wife, why not try to refocus your roving eye back toward your own marriage? After all, there’s a good chance she’s every bit as bored as you are, but with three younguns to chase around while you’re off at the foundry, she might be too damn tired to even talk about it. So you take charge and do something to spice it up. Sign the two of you up for salsa lessons. Drop the kids off with their grandparents and whisk her away for a fun weekend. Bring home flowers every once in a blue moon. I’ll bet that, combined with whatever you do to scratch your own itch, will help you kick some new vigor into your relationship. (And then you can pat yourself on the back for instigating it.) At the very least, your wife will probably respond in the sack, which is never a bad thing for a wilting middle-aged ego.

And for some tough love here, you could quit complaining and start focusing on what you do have—your health. I just watched the "Dateline" special on that Carnegie Mellon professor, Randy Pausch, who just died from pancreatic cancer, but not before creating a global phenomenon with his “Last Lecture,” which focuses on all those life lessons about how precious our time on this earth is. I haven’t bought Pausch’s book yet, but it might just be the thing to snap you out of your funk. Good luck. SP
Freelance writer and columnist Blane Bachelor doles out dating and relationship advice in this space every week. Submit your questions at www.askabachelor.com.