As a miserable, disaffected, self-loathing teenager in the 1990s, my celebrity alter ego was Winona Ryder, who made adolescent misery, disaffection and self-loathing look incredibly chic, as opposed to the unwashed and self-destructive mess that it was and is. A celebrity alter ego is a famous person who has a hint of qualities you recognise in yourself, but carries them off perhaps a bit more photogenically, and, as adulthood beckoned, I looked around for role models to show me how to do the grownup years well. I gravitated towards cool, older women who looked like they could happily spend a weekend on their own and also like they would be the greatest lunch dates ever. There was Nora Ephron, obviously, and Gloria Steinem, still killing it after all these years. There was also a carefully curated selection of actors: Holly Hunter, Allison Janney, Laurie Metcalf, Sally Field. Yes, I’d think, watching them become even more talented, self-confident and beautiful as the years went by. Those are lives I want. This is the path I am on.

And then, one day, I opened a magazine, saw a photograph and realised I had not grown up to be Nora Ephron or Holly Hunter or even modern-day Winona. I had grown up to be Ben Affleck.

To describe this as problematic would be like describing a nuclear holocaust as bad weather. I don’t like Ben Affleck. You don’t like Ben Affleck. Just try saying the words, “I’m a huge Ben Affleck fan”: you physically can’t. But, despite not especially liking Ben Affleck, I have somehow seen most of his movies, including Jersey Girl and Gigli, the latter of which was so bad it lasted only a week in UK cinemas.

So I have witnessed the many phases of Affleck: the Harvey Weinstein years when he churned out three-star movies that his buddy Weinstein bulldozed through the Oscars (Good Will Hunting, Argo); the bewildering Jennifer Lopez years when Affleck gave hope to every random schlub that they, too, might one day date a goddess; the marital stability years with Jennifer Garner; the marital instability years when Affleck may or may not have shagged the nanny; the cash-in superhero years. And I never related to any of those phases, although, if I find myself dating J-Lo in a few years’ time, I’ll happily revise that statement. But then I saw a photo of Ben Affleck at the beach, enormous tattoo of a phoenix on his back, towel carefully positioned to hide his belly in front, and I thought, oh Ben. I feel you, man.

I, too, am falling apart. I have a tweaked nerve in my neck – almost certainly from picking up my twins, who apparently felt they hadn’t destroyed my body enough already – which means I am in pretty much constant pain. I’m a little younger than Affleck, but I am old enough that when I go to parties and hear someone quietly mutter, “So I have this great guy…”, this no longer means that they are about to recommend a drug dealer. It means they are going to tell you about their amazing osteopath, their incredible acupuncturist, their fantastic therapist. Like Affleck, I no longer walk around in a swimsuit without sporting a towel and, also like Affleck, I have quietly considered getting a tattoo, my way of raging against the dying light of approaching midlife.

A midlife crisis, contrary to popular perception, is not the affair, or the newly buff body, although that is a symptom. It’s the visible difficulty with which someone accepts their age, and Affleck’s ongoing midlife crisis is now my number one obsession. The New Yorker ran an only semi-satirical article about the larger social meaning of Affleck’s “sadness”, prompting Affleck to tweet in response that he’s “doing fine”, and then somewhat undermined that claim by retweeting strangers who expressed their love for him. One magazine recently ran a photo story showing how Affleck always wears stained T-shirts, and another ran a story about his bad taste in T-shirts, both signs of a man who is struggling to dress like the 45‑year‑old he is, and, oh boy, do I feel that. What to wear when caught between Topshop and Country Casuals? And at what age does looking a bit of a mess stop being charming and just make you look gross? (Answer: younger than I am now.) Then there was the tattoo, which he insisted was for a movie, until it was obvious that it wasn’t. When asked about the tattoo, his ex-wife, Jennifer Garner, clucked condescendingly, “Bless his heart”, while his ex-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, described it more directly as “Awful. His tattoos always have too many colours, they shouldn’t be so colourful. They should be, like, cooler.” The midlife pain, it never ends.

Thank you, Ben Affleck. Thank you for being my celebrity alter ego, because you have shown me not how I want to be, but how I don’t. You are the canary in the mine for all of us who were born in the 1970s, and you have shown that the way does not lie in dressing how your dad did in the 1980s, nor in dressing how you did in your 20s. Most of all, it does not lie in tattoos. To be honest, I’m not sure what it lies in, but we’ll find it together, Ben, you and me, one towel-clad step at a time.