Midlife Crisis: Do Women Experience Them?

Midlife crises have long been considered a purely male experience, up there with forgetting to put the toilet seat down or having a hard time talking about their feelings.

But if men can go through menopause, isn't it possible for women to have a midlife crisis of their own? That was the question in a recent HuffPost Live segment, with host Janet Varney wondering if women go through a traditional midlife crisis.

Varney spoke with actress, comedienne and author Annabelle Gurwitch in the studio, while Sherri Ziff; Lisa Haubert, founder of Once and Forever Wellness; and Dr. Elizabeth R. Lombardo joined the conversation via Google Hangout.

"When my mother was 50, she was a grandmother!" Gurwitch said. "People were one foot in the grave at 50! It's only in the last 100 years that we're living so long. I think we're at this point where we don't know what 50 looks like, what it's supposed feels like, we don't know what we're supposed to be doing in our lives... This generation now is making up the rules, ladies!"

But Google Hangout participant Sherri Ziff said she didn't have the typical confusion associated with a midlife crisis. In fact, "it wasn't crisis, it was clarity... Once I really owned that, I could not have been happier," she said.

So if host Varney is correct when she says men "suddenly comes to a screeching halt in their life...[and they] can't decide if they want to move forward or go backward," what happens to women when they reach 50? Watch the video to hear the discussion.