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Whether it's a coworker, a friend, or (hopefully not) a parent, I'm willing to bet that plenty of us have witnessed a midlife crisis or two in our times. So, when a now-deleted Reddit user took to the popular Ask Reddit forum to ask, "What was the most intense midlife crisis you've witnessed?" I thought the stories people told would be supremely entertaining. From annoyances to scandals, here are some of the best:
1. "A former friend decided to tell his wife he wanted to move other women (who he would impregnate) onto their property, and be the only male with all these other women, and father of all these children. His wife left with the kids, and so far, no other women are willing to sit in tents and wait to be impregnated by his lordship. What an idiot."
2. "My dad cheated on my mom with a coworker who was 15 years younger than him. He bought another house, took another job across the country, and spent YEARS living with her while still married to my mom, saying he 'wasn't sure' if he wanted to be married anymore. Divorce papers drawn up twice but never signed. Eventually, he left the other woman, and he and my mom have been back together for a decade. I have no idea why my mom stayed with him, and I'll never understand it, but I've pretty much told them that I'm not interested in discussing it with them any further to keep the peace."
3. "My dad lost a legal battle with his work occupation, and so lost his license for his work. He proceeded to strip naked and burn all his old work documents in my back garden in one of those big iron bins while dancing around. I had friends around that day, and was not expecting that when we opened the curtains to my back garden for them all to see my dad prancing around with his cock out around a fire. Good times"
4. "My Dad, at 57, separated from my mother due to an uncontrollable gambling addiction and then married a younger woman in her 20s two years ago, had a kid with her, and then died from a heart attack 6 months ago. We get nothing from the inheritance, either. Devastating not being able to visit the house I grew up in."
5. "Dad quit his job to buy a farm with his pension fund, couldn't afford it, and now lives in a caravan."
6. "Decided at 45 that meth had been such a positive influence on everyone else who had tried it, he'd give it a go. Was dead by 47."
7. "My male BFF getting a full facelift just because his daughter's friend said he looked old at 52. Now he looks different and in a Mickey Rourke way."
8. "A surgeon where I work threw his marriage, family, and career away to bang an underage volunteer."
9. "A friend’s father was the embodiment of the perfect family man throughout my childhood. They were all tennis players. My friend became a doctor, his sister a judge, and his younger brother an engineer. They were perfect at everything (and they were all blonde with blue eyes too, I’m not even kidding). Then, when he hit his 50s, this family man I knew quite well, since I’d spent half my childhood at their house, completely lost it. He left everything behind. My friend would occasionally see him around town, completely wasted, and I’m talking hard drugs, not alcohol. He hung out with sailors who were in port and would get absolutely hammered with them."
"My friend later found out that he had started a relationship with a man. He eventually moved to another city, and a few years later, we heard that he had died at a relatively young age. My friend never wanted to tell us how he died. Obviously, we didn’t push him on it. For this guy, the midlife crisis was just too much. Or maybe he had kept all of that bottled up for decades while playing the role of the perfect dad in the perfect family. Either way, the explosion was brutal."
10. "My middle-class, suburban dad had his midlife crisis while Sons of Anarchy was on TV. He bought a Harley, and 10 years later, he was patched into the Hells Angels. I wish I was joking."
11. "My dad left my mom for his childhood neighbor, quit his high-power tech job, and built a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness. I'm not mad, I just wish he would call occasionally. Hopefully, he found happiness."
12. "My mom turned 50, started menopause, and said 'fuck it.' Started dating a woman and moved her into our house, left real estate and bought a restaurant with her partner, left my sisters and me on our own for at least a week every month to go on extravagant cruises and trips with her partner, and basically threw all caution to the wind. It was actually really difficult and kind of fucked me up throughout my high school years. That being said, she got leukemia at around the age of 60 and died within two years, so I'm glad that she had a chance to see the world and take big risks."
13. "My neighbor's wife left him and took the kids with her, too. The guy lost like a 100 pounds, replaced a VW minivan with a sporty BMW, got a pinball machine, and a cat that he now casually walks on a leash outside. He forgot to get a hot blonde with double Ds, or at least I haven’t seen one."
14. "My mom got depressed about all her kids starting to grow up and leave the nest. So first, she started trying to mother our friends, then one day, she spontaneously moved out of the house. A little under a year later, the grapevine informs us that she's visibly pregnant. My dad is doing well now, but that was a really rough year for him. On Dad's insistence, we didn't cut her out; it's been a couple of decades, and we've mostly moved past it, but her relationship with all of us will never be the same, and she knows it."
15. "My uncle. He was orphaned as a child alongside his four siblings. He migrated to the US, achieved the 'American Dream' by owning a successful business, bought a home for his wife and five children, and even became a small-town radio personality. In his 50s, he got into drugs, his wife and kids inevitably left him, he got arrested on a DUI, lost all his businesses, his home, and experienced homelessness. We buried him last month, as he died on the street of unknown causes. RIP uncle Beto. I hope you are at peace now."
16. "A classic, but done very intelligently: A friend of mine reached the stage where he really wanted a sports car — but he had enough self-awareness to lease it instead of buying it. He's the only man I've ever heard about who leased his midlife crisis."
17. "I bought a nice espresso machine. Well, sort of nice. Nice for me."
18. "I knew a woman who got divorced at 38, lost 50 pounds, won a fellowship to start a PhD, bought a motorcycle, and got all the tattoos she ever wanted. Still a great mom to her kiddo, just happy and thriving. Total legend."
19. And lastly, "My husband and I were friends with a couple since our teen years. They had okay jobs and a pretty nice house; things seemed good. But when we were all in our late 30s, the wife found a sex worker living in their backyard storage shed. For MONTHS, she had noticed stuff moved around in her house; turns out every time they left for work, the lady was coming into their house to shower, prepare food, and just hang out..."
"The wife kicked them both out, of course. Husband immediately got the other lady pregnant. They have had four children together in seven years...a grandma has custody of them all, and his older children won't talk to him. Of course, he has never paid a cent of child support. He was in/out of jail dozens of times for theft, then a short stint in actual prison. He now lives in a broken-down car in his momma's front yard and blames it all on his (ex) wife for being a 'bitch' and not letting him stay in the backyard shed. (I've been in it, it's not a nice shed. LOL.)"
Have you ever witnessed a midlife crisis? Tell me about it in the comments — or, if you prefer to stay anonymous, feel free to use the anonymous form below!
Note: some comments have been edited for length and/or clarity.
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