Midlife crisis symptoms and childhood pain go hand in hand. Most people don’t realize the direct connection between a troubled childhood home and a man or woman in a midlife crisis. When a man or woman suddenly “snaps” and seemingly becomes a different person overnight, their spouse is shocked and in great disbelief.

They try rationalizing, pleading or ‘guilting’ their spouse into staying and working on the marriage. Much to their dismay, this does nothing more than put pressure on the spouse and pushes them further away.

Over the years, I’ve gained a great deal of insight into how childhood pain impacts marriage by conducting hundreds of interviews with adults about their childhoods and the childhoods of the people they marry. Each of the “laws”, below are undeniable truths about what happens to adults who come from childhood homes and enter into marriage as an adult. These very dependable patterns emerged from hundreds of interviews over and over again.

Law 1: The greater the pain you experienced in your first 10 years with your mother and father, the shorter your marriage will last.

Law 2: A man will treat his wife the way his father treated his mother in his first 10 years – and it will happen when he is in a tired or weakened condition.

Law 3: A woman will treat her husband the way her mother treated her father in her first 10 years –and it will happen when she is tired or in a weakened condition.

Law 4: The more you cannot remember your childhood, the more pain is contained in those 10 years.

Law 5: If your parents stayed together but were miserable, you have a program in your brain that forces you to stay in an unhappy married condition. The program is called “Stay married, stay miserable.”

Law 6: The more pain you have in your first 10 years of childhood, the more likely you will face a complete Midlife Crisis somewhere between 35 and 45 years old…on the condition that you are married at the time.

To recap these basics, if your father got instantly angry at small things, so do you, if your mother nagged her husband, so do you, if your father was highly organized, so are you, if your mother was picky and critical of virtually everyone in the house, so are you…

EXCEPTION: if you are a person who hated the way your mother or father was on a certain issue, you will “buck” that the rest of your life and actively and consciously go against the way they were. To be a “bucker” of your parents programming takes a great deal of willpower. In my interviews I discovered that buckers are exhausted by the work they have to do in resisting the programming of their first 10 years.

I conducted an interview through my radio show, Relationship Revelation Radio, with an author by the name of Chris Elliot who wrote a book called “Thought Shredder, bringing out the bucker in you”. Chris Elliott is one of the greatest buckers I know who was physically abused as a child and today teaches a technique for removing that childhood pain from your life. It is possible to overcome a troubled childhood and become a successful adult, but it takes strength and great determination.

Midlife Crisis Symptoms – Why It Happens

Midlife crisis symptoms can be summed up in a simple word, “selfishness”. The more mom and dad focused on their own needs and showed no sensitivity to the needs and feelings of others, the more you will be the same in your own intimate relationship. If you (or your spouse) were programmed to be self-centered, you will have to work very hard to not be taken down by it because after all, who wants to be close to a person who cannot feel what they feel and enjoy meeting their needs? A self-centered person does not have the “software” to give us what we want in an intimate relationship.

People in the midst of a midlife crisis might say things like “As a child, I didn’t get to be a kid and do fun things because I had to take care of my siblings. Now I’m an adult and I’m going to do and take what I want NOW!” or “I’ve been a mother, a wife, a sister, a friend and I’ve lost sight of myself. I need to find myself again. I want to feel happy again.”

The bottom line is this…when a man or a woman is going through a midlife crisis, they are trying to make up for what they didn’t have and many will sacrifice anything and anyone to get it.

It Happens Overnight – and You Never Saw it Coming

You can marry a person who has a chaos filled childhood yet you won’t immediately see many signs that it’s there until the day it explodes into their life. That’s when you suddenly catch all the emotional flak and collateral damage as this person becomes exactly as caustic and self-centered as the people who programmed him or her. This is called the Midlife Crisis. I have discovered that people who experience the ultra-selfish meltdown of the Midlife Crisis all had very painful childhoods in their first 10 years.

You can’t see a Midlife Crisis coming because there are a series of clear signs that must take place to turn it on. For example, just today I interviewed a woman who said that she had married her “soul-mate” until the day he his Midlife Crisis arrived. It totally shocked her.

Here are the eight signs that all turned on within six short months after her husband resisted it over 20 years:

Their oldest daughter left for college. His sister brought her teenage son to live with them. She became depressed after the daughter left. He started traveling a lot for work and being away. His stress was extremely high because of his very cruel boss. She had health issues and couldn’t have sex anymore. His mother that gave him up as a child called and left a message that she wanted him back in her life. His chaotic childhood launched him into his surprise Midlife Crisis.

But be sure to remember this…The Chaos Kid, as I call them, does not decide this, their childhood decides it for them. Don’t try rationalizing with your spouse. This is not a logic decision, it is purely emotional. If you’re new to the idea of a midlife crisis, I encourage you to listen to the free teleclass I held with more details on what a midlife crisis is all about and what you can do about it or learn more about a man in midlife crisis here or a woman in midlife crisis here.

Just watch for multiple signs taking place at the same time. These are required to launch the Midlife Crisis.