ittybiz + fluentself did great gender commentaries this week too. All my favorite gals have got me thinking on this! posts are brewing…

I think men usually get to feel “comfortable in their skin” quite a while before this. Probably by the late-20s early-30s stage most of us know who we are and where we’re going. As we approach the mid to late 40s though, there are a number of factors that have a quite dramatic effect on our lives.

This is the time of life when finally, the end of the dreaded mortgage is in sight; after so many years of knowing that we have to get to work and take whatever comes our way or else risk losing the family home, we get to feel liberated. The “I can tell the boss to go stick his job” or “I could give this up and go sail around the world” feelings are great, even if we never choose or need to act upon them.

By now we also get to see our children entering the beginnings of adulthood. We can play sports with our sons and treat them as equals, go out for an adult meal with our daughters. We can see their lives ahead, mapped according to their dreams not ours. They will soon be heading off to university or college and we can really enjoy these years with them before they go.

In our 40s we can still play some sport but there is always a ready excuse: “eyesight’s not what it was”, “the knees are giving way”. So the competitiveness that has dominated sport, and so much else, in our lives since early teens subsides.