What is it that you want out of life? Like, actually WANT?
Not the thing that’s most responsible or the things that you do to help things go smoothly or to make your wife’s life easier. What is it that you actually genuinely really want for yourself?
Chew on that for a minute.
The reason I ask that is because if you’re like a lot of guys in midlife, you don’t have an answer that comes to your head right away when somebody asks you that question. It usually just produces kind of a blank thought. It’s not uncertainty or “I’m still figuring this out.” It’s literally just quiet. And the thing is if you’re being honest with yourself, that quiet has been sitting in your head for a while.
That’s what I call the Identity Tax and it’s one that you usually don’t see coming.
The Editing Starts Before You Notice It
The other taxes in this series are usually pretty visible if you know where to look. The Career Tax shows up when you see who got the promotion. The Money Tax shows up in your bank account. The Respect Tax shows up in the list of things that people ask you to do (or rather don’t ask you to do).
But the Identity Tax? That one can sneak up on you. At some point, thinking about what you want in life started to feel irrelevant, so you just stopped doing it. Then, one day, someone asked you. And you realized you haven’t had a decent answer for way too long.
Because when you spend decades people pleasing, the identity you end up building is one that’s actually built by what you’ve given up instead of what you’ve added. Any opinions that cause issues? Edited out. Your personal preferences that seem selfish? Edited out. Your instincts? Yup. Edited out.
And if anyone were to ask you, you’d rationalize and justify every single one in the moment. It doesn’t feel like you’re losing anything. It all feels like you’re being smart. Like you’re being a good husband. A team player.
But, do that for twenty or thirty years and the version of you that’s left isn’t really you.
It’s the version your boss or wife could tolerate or that your social circle found acceptable. And at some point, that version is all that’s left.
What the Bill Looks Like
Me personally, I was 42 when I got a nice clear look at what that costs.
I was a live-in CNA at the time, caring for a quadriplegic guy in his home. I’d wake up every morning, hack into the sink for a few minutes, light a cigarette, and start getting him ready for the day. Same routine, same fog every morning. I was smoking butts and weed, eating like shit, staying up until two in the morning watching shitty reality tv shows we saved.
I didn’t wake up hating life every day in fact, I’d say I didn’t wake up feeling much of anything every day. I just moved through the hours like a guy who’d already decided this was it and was waiting for the clock to run down.
I’d made a decision. I just didn’t know I’d made it.
That’s what the Identity Tax looks like at full cost. No breakdown. No big scene. Just a guy who handles his responsibilities, keeps things steady, doesn’t make a fuss. The guy nobody worries about. The guy who, if you sat him down and asked what he actually wanted for himself, would stare at you like you’d asked the question in a foreign language.
I call it my Waking Coma Years.
A Man With No Anchor
Machiavelli wrote about this in The Prince. His argument was that a leader with no real position of his own is completely at the mercy of fortune. Whatever direction pressure comes from, that’s where he goes. No anchor, no ground to hold him or her.
That was me at 42 and it’s what chronic agreeableness sets up over decades. When you build your identity around what other people need from you, there’s nothing underneath when things change. A job disappears, a marriage strains, a role changes, and you don’t have any of your own values and principles to ground yourself to. Because you never took the time to define them and defend them.
That’s why midlife hits Nice Guys so hard. Every action and inaction compounds and by the time a guy hits 40, things get too big to ignore.
I covered the three ways this tends to go in the first pieces in this series – Nice Guy Syndrome in Midlife: The Tax Nobody Warned You About.
Some guys just never really get it. They keep performing until, well, their performance is over. And never really quite know which parts of themselves were real.
Some guys see it and get pissed and become bitter old men. I get it. The anger is justified but it just doesn’t get you anywhere on its own.
And then finally some guys do the uncomfortable work of asking the question again – “What is it that I want out of life?”. And then they sit. And listen long enough to hear the answer.
I didn’t get there with any one single moment or big scene. Just a morning where the question just wouldn’t let me go anymore.
You’re still in there.
If this hit home, hit reply. I read them all.