Glass half-full men. I’ve had quite a few relationships with them in my – and their – middle age. So it comes as no surprise to me, nor to my friends in a WhatsApp group that pings every day with anecdotes about grumpy husbands, that Miserable Man Syndrome is a recognised psychological state many arrive at in their 40s and 50s.
Not that they start out that way. My most miserable partner, the one who really took it to an art form, was great fun for many months when we first got together. Charming, upbeat, spontaneous – he was everything I was looking for. He was in his mid-40s and I was heading towards mine, and we’d do crazy things together that reminded me, gloriously, of being a teenager again.
We packed picnics at the drop of a hat, full of smoked salmon and wine, and ate them by the side of the rural Thames. We’d skim stones and talk about how happy we were.
I regard myself as a sunny, positive sort of person – like most of my female friends – and he clicked straight into my life. He had energy and ideas.
One day he went out to buy some food and came back with a rented VW camper van and we set off for the coast, later spending a hilarious hour doing the ‘oyster challenge’, as we called it, which in practice simply meant trying to eat as many oysters as possible. The prize was a bottle of Moet, and he beat me by 45 to 30.
After six heavenly months, we moved in together. I was totally in love. All my friends thought he was absolutely wonderful.
And yet, three years later, he had become such a sullen, difficult misery-guts that he’d get furious with the cat for sitting on his favourite cushion. The man who once thought nothing of booking flights for romantic breaks just hours in advance now snapped if I parked my car behind his in the driveway.
Love coach Lucy shares a lot of her friends have grappled with their own miserable men, partners that have become bored of life
His world seemed to shrink. He complained about noise from the neighbours. Didn’t like the new laundry detergent I bought. Huffed if I said I wanted to go out rather than cook.
Attracted, he once told me, by my joie de vivre – as indeed I was to his – he now spent all his time quashing it in both of us.
Another person’s misery can be as infectious as laughter, and I found myself snapping back and finding fault with him too.
When I talked to friends it turned out many of them were grappling with their own Miserable Men. Lots said that, over the years, their partners had become less energetic, more irritable and just, well, bored of life.
My friend Joanna still complains that her once va-va-voom husband now wants to do nothing more than sit in front of the fire and watch sport. ‘He’s let himself go in a way I never would,’ she says. ‘He has hairy, unruly eyebrows and nasal hair. He’s put on weight. He doesn’t wear or even buy aftershave anymore.’
At least two good friends of mine in their late 50s have actually left their marriages because of Miserable Man Syndrome.
‘I haven’t worked this hard, raised my children and put my own needs to one side for this long just to spend the rest of my life living with a man who is essentially on a complete downer all the time,’ says my friend Sarah. She is now travelling solo around Europe having a wonderful time.
Some are more philosophical, putting it down to the ageing process and the aches and pains their husbands have begun (endlessly) complaining of. The menopause is no fun, after all, so perhaps the male version, ‘andropause’, is similarly trying for them, they theorise.
Perhaps these guys have reached a point in their lives where they look back over their achievements and find them lacking or disappointing. Perhaps we should cut them some slack – and they should talk about it more.
Or maybe, say the realists among us, the reckoning is of a different kind. Do men in their 50s finally see that the sexual chase is over, realise they’re ‘stuck’ with what they’ve got and – unlike women – fall into a funk because of it?
The problem with living with a Miserable Man is that, whether you like to admit it or not, there’s an element of denial involved. On some level you are always trying to get back to the good bit, the way it was in the beginning when things were so magical and funny and great.
A significant part of you just cannot believe that the happy person you loved has turned into Mr Misery Guts. And so you plough on, planning interesting city breaks, booking cinema tickets for that art-house movie everyone is talking about or suggesting a summer festival or gym membership. All of these things he’d have jumped at before, but now he finds an excuse to bat them all away. ‘I won’t like it. Too crowded. Not my thing anymore.’
Frustratingly, other people don’t see it. The Miserable Man holds his grumpiness tightly to him and never shows it outside the house, so everyone else thinks he’s still fun and great and wonderful, and it is only you who is subjected to his endless misery.
One night, after a conversation over dinner during which my Miserable Man said not one positive thing about anyone or anything – the trains were late, the cat brought in mud, the potatoes were overcooked, TV was rubbish – he went out into the garden and sat there nursing his almighty grievances against the world alone.
It was then I finally lost my temper and pointed out he was actually living a lovely life. We had a beautiful house. He was living with a warm and loving partner. We were not financially strapped like many other people and everyone we knew and loved was healthy and happy. ‘What on earth is wrong with you?’ I asked plaintively.
He didn’t answer and within two months we had broken up and he had moved out. Thank goodness I came to my senses.
There have been so many studies that show a positive outlook is much better for our health and happiness than if we are constantly moody and miserable and finding fault in everything.
I do think it’s an age thing, however – but there is a very stark difference between the sexes. I have certainly noted that, as men get older, they tend to fold in on themselves and withdraw. Conversely my female friends in their 50s and 60s seem to be finding a brand new energy that sends them off globe-trotting, finding new careers and having new relationships. No wonder 51-year-old Bridget Jones went out with 29-year-old Roxster.
It’s no life to be with a partner who is a moaner about every little thing, who starts the moment he comes through the front door about his boss or the traffic or pot holes.
It is a choice to see the good in things rather than the bad. The truth is, living with or going out with a Miserable Man has a damaging – ageing – effect on you too. It’s very hard to be happy and forward-looking with someone who is perennially morose.
As a therapist, I know that misery can be weaponised. Then it gets altogether darker, involving tactics like the ‘silent treatment’ or an irritability that carries a hint of threat about it. I’ve come across people who think being optimistic is somehow silly or ditzy whereas being miserable and pessimistic is being realistic.
But how wrong they are. So many people in the world have real problems or are clinically depressed. Being miserable because your shirts aren’t clean or your football team has lost just shows a lack of resilience.
Miserable Men need to Man Up – just like their women.
AND A MISERABLE MAN WRITES…
By Roland White
Yes, yes, I admit it. I am a miserable middle-aged man, but my defence is this: you have driven us to it, ladies. Basically, it’s all your fault.
You have taken cheery romantic young men and then ground them down with your high standards and domestic efficiency to create grumpy middle-aged monsters.
Come on, hands up all those women who stand behind their menfolk, waiting to pounce if so much as a teaspoon is out of place in the dishwasher.
I can almost hear men across the land nodding in recognition. You complain when we don’t pull our weight around the house, but if we do pull our weight you complain that we’re pulling it in the wrong direction.
Roland White argues: ‘You have driven us to it, ladies. Basically, it’s all your fault’
Take the problem of tidying the bathroom. Gents, have you ever wondered why discarded boxer shorts and socks are so unseemly to the eye when a pile of bras and knickers on the floor never prompts the same rage?
It would be more than any man’s life is worth to mention what goes on in the bedroom, so I’ll just quote the scene from Annie Hall where Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are asked by separate therapists: ‘Do you have sex often?’
Woody: ‘Hardly ever, three times a week.’
Annie: ‘Constantly, three times a week.’
But do you know the worst thing of all? You can never take no for an answer. Does that dress make your hips look fat? No, of course it doesn’t, but you never believe us, do you?
I should end by mentioning that Mrs White is a barrister who has specialised in libel and slander. So clearly none of my reckless generalisation applies to her.
Except the bit about the dishwasher.
- Some names have been changed
