Of all the midlife curveballs I expected – chin hairs, night sweats, forgetfulness – developing a crush on my son’s 25-year-old friend was not one of them.
I’m 50. I’ve been married for more than two decades. My husband and I are close, solid, happy. We laugh, we argue, we have a life that works. I’ve never so much as looked sideways at another man.
Then my son brought home a new mate from work, and something in me shifted in a way I can’t explain or control.
The first time he walked through our front door, I felt it. That stupid, stomach-flipping lurch I hadn’t experienced since I was a teenager. My face burned, my pulse raced and for a second I forgot how to breathe. I told myself I was imagining it, a trick of hormones or lighting or madness, but it’s happened every time since.
Let’s call him Ben.
Ben is tall, open, easy to talk to. He’s polite, quick to laugh and completely unaware that every time he’s around, I turn into an awkward, babbling mess. I can’t meet his eyes for too long. My heart hammers in my chest like it’s trying to escape. My cheeks flush and I find myself wiping down already spotless benches just to give my hands something to do.
He’s not flirty, not suggestive, not doing a single thing wrong. The awkwardness is entirely mine, which somehow makes it even worse.
It’s mortifying. I feel ridiculous. I know how it sounds, a middle-aged woman getting giddy over her son’s friend, but I swear this isn’t some midlife fantasy. I don’t want him. I’m not flirting. There’s no part of me that wants to cross a line. This is purely physical, chemical, hormonal chaos that I have absolutely no control over.
‘When I hear his car pull up, my heart starts racing before I’ve even seen him,’ says our anonymous author (stock image posed by models)
If anything, I feel angry about it. I’ve worked hard to build a stable life – to be calm, sensible, grown up. And now my own body is betraying me, turning me into this flushed, fluttery version of myself I barely recognise.
When I hear his car pull up, my heart starts racing before I’ve even seen him. I tell myself to calm down, to act normal. Then he walks into the kitchen, smiles, says ‘Hey Mrs C*,’ and I can feel the blood rush to my face like I’ve been caught doing something wrong.
The physical reaction is so instant it’s frightening. My palms sweat, my stomach twists, my thoughts scatter. I start avoiding his gaze, pretending to be busy, rearranging fruit bowls that don’t need rearranging. I can’t explain it. It’s like my brain and my body belong to two different people – one rational, one completely deranged.
And the jealousy. God, the jealousy is humiliating. When I hear them talk about girls they’ve met on nights out, I get this weird ache in my chest that I hate myself for. I’m not jealous because I want to be with him, it’s more like my body is acting out some primitive, hormonal tantrum that my mind can’t reason with.
It’s exhausting, being at war with yourself.
Sometimes, after they’ve left, I’ll sit at the kitchen table and just shake my head. I feel like I’m losing my grip. I love my husband. We’ve raised a family together. But these strange, unwelcome feelings have cracked open something I thought was long gone.
What’s even more confusing is that it’s made me feel alive again, which makes me feel guilty. There’s an energy humming under my skin that wasn’t there before. A rawness. My husband and I are closer than we’ve been in years, but I know that spark didn’t just appear out of nowhere. It’s like my hormones are having one last wild party before they shut down for good.
No one tells you this part of menopause. They warn you about the hot flushes, the brain fog, the sleepless nights. But not this, not the sudden rushes of lust and longing that come out of nowhere and leave you breathless.
‘Ben is tall, open, easy to talk to. He’s polite, quick to laugh and completely unaware that every time he’s around, I turn into an awkward, babbling mess’ (stock image posed by model)
I thought the intensity of teenage feelings belonged firmly in the past. I thought I’d evolved beyond the giggling, heart-racing phase of life. I thought middle age meant emotional stability. Instead, I’m back in this bizarre hormonal storm that makes me feel 15 again, only now I’m old enough to know how inappropriate it all is.
Sometimes I hide in the laundry when the boys come over, pretending to fold things that have already been folded. My husband thinks I’ve developed a sudden obsession with keeping on top of the washing. He has no idea I’m hiding from my own blushes.
I’ve even found myself searching online late at night: ‘Why do menopausal women get crushes on younger men?’ as if Google can offer absolution. Turns out it’s common. Something about fluctuating oestrogen, dopamine, adrenaline, the body’s last hurrah. It makes me feel slightly better to know I’m not the only one losing my mind, but not much.
A friend of mine admitted she’s going through something similar. She’s 51, happily married, and finds herself flustered every time the young landscaper turns up. A co-worker has a full-blown crush on her daughter’s tennis coach. We laughed about it, but behind the laughter was relief that we’re not completely alone in this hormonal circus.
It’s not funny when you’re in it though. It’s confusing. Embarrassing. A reminder that, for all your life experience, you’re still at the mercy of biology.
I know it will pass. I keep telling myself that. That one day he’ll walk through the door and I’ll just see my son’s friend, nothing more, nothing less. I’m waiting for that day.
In the meantime, I do what I can to manage it. I breathe. I distract myself. Google HRT. I try to be kind to myself, even when I feel like an absolute fool. Because the truth is, I’m not broken or unfaithful or shameful, just human. A hairy-chinned, hormonal human.
So for now, I’ll give myself some space, try to laugh about it when I can, and trust that eventually things will settle.
Until then, I’ll be in the kitchen, keeping busy, hoping for composure, and trying to ignore the fact that my 50-year-old body still hasn’t learned any self-control.
