Monday Mini: Millennial Midlife Crisis

Whether you call it peak survival or the early halfway, the millennial midlife crisis looks a bit different, if it happens at all. We talk about why that is.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stephan
never told your prediction if iHeart radio and welcome to
another Monday Mini or what I'm gonna call Samantha's crisis
or maybe not. Okay, do you like that? Ah? Yeah, yeah,

(00:29):
I'm not gonna leave you hanging it though so recently, Annie,
you know this because you were around. I just I
need to go get my eyes checked because I need contacts.
And we've had a lot of conversations about the fact
that if the apocalypse happens, I'm screwed because I can't see,
Like I really probably have one of the worst like stigmatisms.

(00:49):
I've been told repeatedly by my eye doctors like yoh yeah, yeah,
oh yeah, it's kind of bad, or you really have it.
I'm like, I don't need faces when you tell me
what's wrong with my eyes, but whatever, Because when I
don't have contacts or glasses on, everything is a bright
blur um. It's petrifying. I can't believe I didn't have
glasses until I was fourteen, Like it was like that

(01:10):
think it took that long for me to get them
orging fifteen because my eyes are atrocious when it comes
to all the things that I need to do to
be able to see, and because of the level of
my stigmatism, my contacts I'll go out of whack, so
it's a whole thing. So it was interesting. So I
went for this eye appointment and it was my first

(01:30):
woman doctor like woman um optometrists, which it is rare
because I think I've had the past ten times it's
all been all been men and usually are typically older man.
I did have one young Asian dude. Well this time
I had one young Asian woman and I was like, oh, hey,
how are you have all these things? So I got
my eyes checked, went for the exam. She stops to

(01:51):
the point she's like, m either there's something wrong with
this test or your eyesight has got so badly. I've
never seen this kind of jump except for only in children.
And she's like and it's as She's like, it's not
you know, I'm not gonna say it never happened, but
this is very rare. We need to do a couple
of things. So my what should have been like forty

(02:13):
five minute tests went into being like two hours long
because I had to get my eyes dilated, which is horrible,
horrible because I was like, I'm blind, I can't see anything,
or I can see too much. I don't know. And
it turned out that it was a thing because she
was saying that I must be watched looking at the
screen so much that it's really affected my eyes to

(02:34):
the point that it was a huge It almost doubled
the prescription of what I had. And when she did
the original test, she was like, actually, your prescription is
lower than what they prescribed you previously, and that might
be part of your strain as well, but your screen
time you need to really monitor that because it really
is affecting your eyesight. Which I was like, oh, and

(02:55):
I asked you what could it be because we were
all working from home. Is it getting worse? She's like no.
I was like, okay, to be at all, it might
be like nope, and then she went on to say,
you know, with your age, it's probably time to talk
about readers, and I'm like, son of so I kind
of sat there, you know, I'm like, you know what,
I accept that I am in my early forties and

(03:20):
that this is a thing that I need. And yes,
I have noticed that when I'm focusing on something like
a book or you know, looking something on my phone.
I am doing what my mother and father do, which
is to like try to focus the phone and then
out to see what I am looking at. So I
had a moment of an existential crisis between the whole

(03:41):
your eyesight is progressing like a child to you need readers.
I just had this moment, was like, oh God, I'm
getting older. My eyes were super puffy. So I feel
like I'm starting to look my age. And even though
I should not feel any way about this, because there's
so many I still don't fill my age. So it's

(04:02):
not necessarily that I'm scared of growing older. It's more
so that I am trying to equate how I feel
to my age. So yeah, so to me, I can't
quite grasp the fact that I am my early forties
because I am nowhere near where my mother was in
her forties, right, And there's so many things that does

(04:25):
not see And we've talked about this. I think we
talked about this in the very first episode. I was
introducing myself and that trying to figure out if I'm
all of these things? Am I an adult? Am I feminist?
With all these things that doesn't seem to hit the
nail on the head for me when it comes to
when I'm thinking and then having moments of like, okay,

(04:46):
so I need to look at what readers look like.
And I was like, can I just buy them at
the drug store because she was gonna write a whole prescription.
She's like, yeah, that's her. Fine, you don't need that
high You're gonna be on the lowest. She's like, eventually
you will have to and so all those eventually, and
I was like, you know what, I don't need these eventulis.
I did ask if I could get correct the surgery.

(05:06):
She was like maybe. So that was That was a
fun conversation, but it did have me thinking, because you know,
you start thinking about where you are in life, what
does this look like? Moving on? And I'm doing so
many new things. I'm really honing into trying to learn
Korean to the point that it starting to sound familiar,

(05:27):
but like trying to learn a language, and again, my
situation is completely different because I'm relearning. I guess you
could say, but it feels odd because I'm like, do
I have the capability to learn as easily as I
did as a kid? You know, all these things because
I learned English within six months, and I learned it
to the point that I could understand and communicate with everyone,

(05:49):
which is also why I lost my knowledge of Korean
because I was so I was submerged into English. So
all of these things, I'm like, oh my god, age,
what has happened? Opening I feel like I am finally
coming to a point that I feel responsible because I
am actually being paid adult living money and I'm doing
adult things like buying a house. But that's the only

(06:14):
adult thing. I mean, when it comes down to it,
is managing my credit, sure, and understanding the importance, trying
to figure out this retirement thing, Sure, trying to figure
out the taxes things. Okay, there's so many things that
I'm like, Okay, these are adult things, but I still
feel like I'm so new at this. And then as
I'm sitting here questioning all of these things, of course,

(06:35):
an article comes out about how millennials in midlife crisis
and middle age has become a completely different thing than
what you once knew. So there was a Times article
that came out titled Millennials are hitting a middle age
and it doesn't look like what we were promised. So
she's talking about a book that was written in two

(06:58):
thousand early two thousands. Who is predicting that by the
time we the millennials came into middle age and there
would be no more like midlife crisis situation because we
would become more rich and more stable, and we would
have growth and all of these things, and that the
economic social status would be closer together, which is not true,
which has been the opposite of all of that. And

(07:22):
there's been so many conversations about what does that look
like for us, and what does that mean for the
late millennials, which I am at So I'm right at
the cusp, so I'm at the edge of woul I
would be a millennial slash a gen xer. So it
kind of it's corner when you would say it. But

(07:42):
I think, you know, I've accepted the fact that I'm like, ah,
technically i think I'm the elder millennial, which I still
hate that terms of thinking late millennial, and we are
coming to that point. And she had a lot of
interesting conversations, including maybe in not calling our sells the
middle age anymore because it just doesn't feel appropriate in

(08:05):
that when my mother was going to quote middle age,
she had four children, one who was already married, if
not two, So like it just fills off, right, They've
had and then my mom and dad had the job,
but my mom actually was a stay at home mom,
or my dad had the job. They had a house,
they owned several properties. All of these things, they were

(08:25):
taking care of their grandparents. In different conversations, and that
is not where I'm at. Unfortunately, none of my grandparents
who are alive today. So it does make me sad,
but that's not a thing that we do. I moved
away from home, which was not what they did typically.
So they are like, okay, let's let's call the middle
age something else. And these were some of the suggestions,

(08:46):
and I really liked them. Peak survival mode. And I
think that's referencing which we will come back to, is
that the millennials have gone through every type of chaos
I think there could have been, starting with like the
two thousand and eight crash, and then September eleventh, the
Iraqi War. Then you're going into all the other things,
the pandemic, all of this. So like we've been through

(09:06):
some things. We have seen some things like the column buying, shooting,
all of these things have really just I don't know
if it's grown or we were just now more aware
of it, but you know, we we we've again been
through some crisis. Then there's a late young adult because
one person who was quoted on here said, physically, yes,

(09:27):
I am middle age, but economically I'm in my twenties.
And I feel like that's a little on point because
we are not hitting the same salary bracket. Until three
years ago, which I would have been in my late thirties,
I was still making less than thirty eight thousand dollars
a year, and that was with a full time job,

(09:47):
and that was with the fact that I still had
a roommate again around at thirty six, so that just
it doesn't it didn't equate to that. And of course
I was also single, so that's a whole different conversation.
And then another another person put the early halfway you
know what, Okay, okay, that's that's good. That's good. But

(10:11):
I think, like I found it interesting because yes, I
do not know can we title these things midlife crisis
technically because we don't have the same like suburban wife
trying to change her life around or middle aged dude
who decides to go with younger people to make himself
feel younger. We feel young. I think that's kind of

(10:31):
the complication here is I feel like I'm still a child,
even though I may not look like it physically and
or I may not actually move like it physically. So
biologically yes, mindset and no, does that make sense? It does.

(11:02):
I've shared the story on here and this is when
I don't know, four or five years ago, our wonderful
coworker Tamika, we were at an office event and she
called me an adult and I burst out laughing, like
on instincts, and yes, I am an adult. But it
just felt strange because I don't feel I don't know,
because I live an apartment by myself, which is great,

(11:23):
like I'm able to afford it, but I have like
a messy cosplay closet, like I just have. And it's
not to say you can't do that as an adult,
but it feels like I haven't entered the stage of yeah,
what my parents had, or like those goalposts that we
were taught you would have, and I'm not even really

(11:43):
close to a lot of them. Like that feels like I,
like I joke about it, but some days and I'd
be in my eighties before I'm even and hopefully I
haven't slipped in the shower that it's a concerned I've
had that concerned. My shower very slippery, and I'm like, oh,

(12:04):
we're all gonna die. But yeah, I agree with you,
Like that's the thing. It's like I've hit one mile
marker buying a home, and I felt like that was
pushed onto me because of the point of rent getting
so high and being unreasonable. But it's not necessarily because
I wanted to or I desire to. Again, I we

(12:25):
don't necessarily want children, so that's not a thing for me.
I don't necessarily want marriage. I love where we're at.
I love my partner very much, and I feel like
we've gotten to a good point in our relationship and
we are really good at well, we've gotten better at communicating,
you know, we've gotten really good at cohabitating. So I
feel like all of that is well. But that does

(12:47):
not mean I want to move in any direction outside
of that. I still don't really necessarily see the point
outside of you know, legal reasons. So suddenly that's not
the point. Then why are we doing this? Maybe it's
because again I'm a little childish and don't think I'm
ready for that either. Again, like that's in the back
of my head. In the article that I was talking

(13:08):
about with The New York Times, it says many people
said they couldn't be having a midlife crisis because there's
no bourgeois numbness to rebelligance. Rather than longing for adventure
and release, they craved a sense of safety and calmness,
which they felt up they had never known. And I
feel like that's true. Like I do want to travel,
but I also don't want to leave my house because

(13:29):
I'm afraid of everything out there. There's this level of
like everything's going wrong in the world, so I just
want to be safe. And I think that's very true
my mom. I don't think my mom and dad never
went to room in crisis. If they did, I don't
think that has a time. So I don't know if
they would tell you that that existed for them either,
because it does feel like that was more of a privileged,

(13:51):
upper middle class way of life, like it wasn't for everyone.
If you live to work, if you live to take
care of your children, that's all you could focus on,
so that was not a thing. So I absolutely feel
like it's not necessarily like a very big wash of
like this it was and it was so stable then
it wasn't. It was not necessarily that. But it does

(14:12):
feel like I'm aging differently. I don't necessarily mean physically,
but mentally. I don't feel like I'm anywhere near what
my parents were obviously, or anywhere near what was the
expectation for me at this age. I don't hate it,
but yeah, it's all about being just stable at this point. Yeah,

(14:35):
I mean, it's a it's a big disconnect, and there's
a lot we could talk about because when nineteen ninety
one is when you know, like cable news launched, and
then we're exposed to like everything around the world, and
then the Internet comes around, and then we're exposed to that,
and you you and I were kind of growing up
with that, and then yes, there's nine eleven and all
like the pandemic and all of these things. But also,

(14:57):
like I was just reading a book the other day
about you know, if you take on like wage sagnation.
We've been working. It's because a lot of times that
we'll read articles like they just don't want to work.
You know, a lot of us are working, but where
there's just been no like wage increase. There there's rise
and student debt, like every like renting is more expensive.

(15:18):
There's been all of these things where we can't find
the stability that we want. And I do think it's
interesting because for me, like I love traveling, I love
doing all these things, and now I'm just like I
just want to feel like I have a place, like
I do want to still do that stuff, whereas like
my mom, I'm watching her who never got to do

(15:39):
that stuff because she had kids and talking about like,
you know, I'd like to go do this. So I
do think there's like a disconnect both in generations but
also in what we were taught and told we should
have done by this middle age point and where we
feel we are mentally because of all of these things
that have happened in our lifetimes, right right, Yeah, I

(16:03):
just which feels so odd. No, it does, it does.
But I think like there is sort of a and
this is me speaking extipporaneously, so I could be wrong,
but I feel like that for me, at least, there
is a I'm exposed to all of this stuff and
I feel like I can't change anything about it, and

(16:24):
I can't change like in my situation, but in the
world as well. I mean, you're talking about things like
climate change. I like, literally the other day I was thinking,
I don't know if I'll be around to see that,
which is terrified, but it's that's like what is in
the back of our heads, and so I think that
there can be this mental retreat of I'm gonna watch

(16:44):
Star Wars again. I've seen it a hundred times, but
that's what I'm going to do. And so it feels
like you're being quote childish or not an adult because
you can't handle these things point in reality, like being
faced with all of that stuff all of the time
and feeling this lack of stability and not feeling like
you have like a great financial situation, and not feeling

(17:05):
like you can feel safe. And yeah, that's not to
say that our parents didn't struggle with those but we've
just been exposed to it forever, and so I get it.
Totally makes sense to me that, you know, we all
have a lot of us have these retreats that do
feel quote childish that we've been told or quote childish,
when in reality, we're just trying to cope. Were just

(17:28):
trying to cope well, you know, and then that's how
an article they say, what used to stand out about
midlife is that people tended to have a sense of
power over their own circumstances in midlife, the sense of
control is an important component of health and well being.
Even when previous generations had many life stressors, that feeling
of control balanced them out. But for millennials, unfortunately, that

(17:50):
is exactly what might be changing. We feel we have
lost any semblance of control. And again it might have
everything to do with the back and forth of generations,
which seems that I know it used to be a thing,
and I've thought it was a joke, but it feels
even heavier now, like whether or not it's gen Z
versus millennials, or millennials versus boomers, or boomers versus gen zers,

(18:13):
with millennials being the hype people behind you know, all
these things, it feels like such a bigger divide in
that in trying to see who can one up on
what is wrong? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I do
think I think that there is this kind of idea
among people, especially boomers who did kind of you know,

(18:36):
went to school, especially like white, pretty privileged boomers who
went to school, got the job, worked hard, we're able
to retire that, Well, why can't you do that? I
did that, right, But things have changed or haven't changed
in terms of like wages, So it's I think there
is kind of that, well I did it. I don't
understand why you're struggling so hard, because I like times

(18:57):
were hard for me, but I made it work. And
I do think that changing with people who you know,
take the time to look into what's going on right now.
But I do think that's a big part of this
conversation of sort of this, well it worked for me,
I don't understand. Yeah, yeah, and it is. That's a
good point in that because we have to talk about

(19:18):
Social Security, that is the prime example on it is
depleted and we know this doesn't exist for us, but
we're still paying out ye knowing it's going to be depleted.
Same thing as the fact that the taxes and then
like the wages have not increased, but we're working so
much more because everything else has increased. The price of

(19:38):
living has increased, the cost of living has increased, the
cost of interest and housing has increased. There's nothing that
exists today that was the same then, except for the
wages part, and that is absurd. Even the quality, even
the qualifications to get these jobs have changed without anyone
helping those people to get that kind of education, right

(20:00):
called different conversations the times are quolle, that's a really
great job, and just making sure that they talk to people.
And this is something that they wrote about it I

(20:22):
thought was really interesting. Is how does life filter you
right now? And I feel like they've said it perfectly.
And this is a forty year old woman saying, I
keep feeling like my life is about to get started,
much like how I felt at twenty. Even though I'm forty,
my life didn't start honestly to this new potential quote unquote,
which I feel like it's going to go away at

(20:43):
any moment. Until I started this job, like being able
to have this freedom to do this job, but then
being paid at least more so on the bracket of yes,
this is what you deserve, because we're still not there,
like the disparity in our pay. Don't get me wrong,
We're not complaining, but there's disparity and pay in this
industry as well. Is it much better than what I

(21:05):
was getting? Yeah, But I feel like I'm coming into
the point that I am actually able to live right
to some of the extent that I had hoped for,
and that's just paying able to pay bills and then
also being able to go out to eat with friends,
which was not a thing. Another quote was this person saying,
I don't feel established in life. What I feel is

(21:28):
a loss of potential. And I don't know if that's
just just millennials. I feel like boomers may say that too,
and gen xers may say that too, because they gen
xers whole different conversation. It felt like they had to
really really submit to the boomer generation of making their
parents proud. Does that make sense? Not that we don't

(21:49):
want to do that as millennials, but there was something too,
like those who like went through their like menial jobs
to put their because to college. That's the beginning of that,
I feel like, and that that I don't know that
would be us, but it does feel like that again,
like I feel like I've lost I loved what I did,
but there's so much more that which I could have done. Yeah, yeah,
I mean honestly, this is like we could have a

(22:12):
huge conversation about it, because we haven't even talked about
you know, there's also been medical advancement, so a lot
of millennials are paying for their parents. You're still alive,
You're still alive, you know. Yeah, it's great, but it's
like again, like things haven't and then that's also a
time suck, Like it's just so much stuff that hasn't

(22:36):
shifted where it needs to. And some of it is
a lot of it is economics and having that ability
to have the midlife crisis, and a lot of it
is also just like technology changes ideology because I know
plenty of people who yet are like, you know, I
don't want the white picket fences and all the things
that my parents did. Point um. So it's a lot

(22:58):
of shifting things Oregon, things that should be shifting in
or not. So it's a big conversation for sure. Yeah,
and then this last quote was a little on the
nose for me. Something happens in your mid thirties to
early forties when you don't have kids. It's sort of
a lift off from the aging timeline. And I think
that's so true. When I see friends with kids, which

(23:22):
I love their kids, they're so cute and all of
those things, I do feel like we're in two different
age brackets. It's true that it does feel that way,
doesn't It so like they had this level of maturity
that I don't understand. And I'm not necessarily envious, right,
but to a sort of extent, I'm like, oh, that
is adorable and I love that. But yeah, it feels
like this is adulthood. Having kids is a true adulthood

(23:45):
that I'm not ready for that, right, And I mean,
I think that's that's something we have been fed for
a long time, is that you gotta have kids, you
gotta provide for somebody. And but you're not helping me
with any programs or anything. So not really nothing, no
thank you. I mean it is it is if you.

(24:08):
One thing I've learned is typically there is a way
to make it work. You may be sacrificing something, but
you can make it work. And it might not be pretty,
whether it's time with your family, whether it's being able
to raise your children yourself, whether it's any of those things,
having to stay in a mayor you don't want to

(24:30):
for those kids. And not that that's always happened, but
you know that people do make it work and they
do survive. My parents did survive having three kids plus
me later on, and having one job and trying to
do all these things. They were able to do it. Again,
circumstances were different from today. I could not imagine what
that would look like, as things have shifted so quickly

(24:52):
in economics and in finances in general. But they didn't
make it. And I think that's the conversation, like, you
can do this. You think you might not be able to.
She shouldn't have to, but you can. And that's a
bigger in it self conversation. But also again, like I
was talking about my parents, they could not afford to

(25:12):
have a midlife crisis. And in the same report they
talk about the fact that, yeah, people wanted to pretend
in report like this was a common thing and when
actually only ten to twenty percent of the people ever
experienced a midlife crisis, even in the heightened time where
it was thought that it was always a thing. And
I find that fascinating. But yeah, so I'm having a

(25:34):
moment of like coming back to like, Okay, I'm getting old,
but I don't feel like I'm getting old. Where is
all the wisdom and all the graciousness of aging gracefully
to add to my aging physically I haven't found it
yet and everything is blurry, so I need to go
find my readers that I'm not I don't have yet.
But I wonder if a lot of that was I

(26:01):
don't know. I wonder if a lot of that was
a myth that we kind of observed as kids, Like
our parents had it together at that age, that's what
I'll be. But really they were like, oh gosh, yeah,
I mean I think my parents, Yeah, our parents would
my parents specifically would be like, we don't know how
we did it, but we did it and we had support.
Of course, they're very religious too, so they put in

(26:21):
faith in there. But like, yeah, it's it's an interesting
conversation your responsibilities, what was appropriate, what isn't your expectations?
And yeah, we've definitely changed those as millennials and hopefully
for the better, and the gen Zers are doing even
more so. So beautiful, you do your thing. But it's
it's it's a moment of like, oh god, yeah, this

(26:44):
is odd we are coming into I feel like we
are a whole separate generation that has really shifted things.
Maybe not because I'm being very one sided in this,
but it does. It feels like this big conversations like
it's not what it used to be and the shift
has really started here, right, Yes, and I do think

(27:05):
there's also the conversation of you know, not wanting it
as much, but also can't afford it anymore. So there's
a lot a lot going on. And I love that
it was all triggered by your eye appointment, Damn doctor
Lee and my leaders. I love inspiration comes from anywhere. Ye. Yes, well,

(27:30):
thank you for sharing, Savantha. We would love to hear
from you listeners about this. I'm sure you have plenty
of thoughts. You can email us at steffieia mom Stuff
at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us on Twitter
at mostuf podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff
I've Never Told You. Oh, also YouTube. Thanks as always too,
our superproducer Christina, our executive producer Maya, and our contributor Joey. Yes,

(27:57):
thank you so very much, thank you, thank you, thank you,
and thanks to you for listening. Steph, I Never Told
You's the protection of My Heart Radio from more podcast
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