Without this ability there is little prospect of repair or inner movement. We don't often see men in their fifties speaking publicly of emotion and their private struggles, but when we do it has a particular power. Robert Drewe and Brian Matthews have both published disarmingly reflective memoirs looking back on their younger selves. And here is Peter O'Connor offering a hand to those of us who are stumbling into a period of life that is not easy to negotiate. One of his most interesting arguments is that after 50 there is a tendency towards androgyny.
Women begin to take on their masculine side and men their feminine.
But the movement doesn't happen smoothly or symmetrically. It can cause trouble in marriages that have become set in gendered patterns, especially if one partner begins to move while the other remains stuck. For women there are, perhaps, more obvious advantages and encouragements to break the mould. For men to take up the feminine is a form of surrender that can be very difficult. Not only is it a surrender to ways of living and aspects of themselves that are even less likely to win approval of the workplace, but it is a yielding to the unknown.