Sex, Status, and Self-Esteem In Our Forties

Debbie and I watched The Invite this week. Seth Rogan and Olivia Wilde star in the movie as a forty-something couple, miserable with themselves and each other. Penelope Cruz and Ed Norton are their joyful upstairs neighbors who come visiting for cocktails.

On the surface The Invite is about sex. Seth and Olivia’s dead bedroom is contrasted with the very loud sex noises coming each night from the upstairs apartment of their amorous neighbors.

Seth and Olivia lie in bed listening to Penelope’s wild, spectacular orgasms, aspirational to Olivia and un-manning to Seth. They try to figure out which of Penelope or Ed Norton is the “groaner.” The truth about the noises is revealed when the two couples get together.

The sex, however, is downstream from status and self-esteem.

Seth and Olivia live in a very large apartment in San Francisco that belonged to Seth’s parents. Their dead bedroom is where Seth was conceived. It’s an apartment that Seth cannot afford as he’s an associate music professor at a small, non-elite college. Seth likely earns less than $100,000 a year. He’s ashamed for anyone to know he’s living off his parents.

When Olivia and Seth met in their twenties, Seth had a band. His band had one hit, but that was it. Now, Seth won’t play the piano in the apartment because it’s a painful reminder of his descent from promising young rock n’ roller to sad sack music teacher.

Olivia gave up her passion for photography to marry Seth and have a child. Olivia spends her days maniacally shopping for the apartment, which has become the epicenter of her life. She spends the entire movie on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Seth admits to being a failure and just wants to be left alone to be miserable. His misery is perhaps the one thing he’s proud of.

Physically, Seth has become a schlub; he looks like an old man. But Olivia is still lithe and beautiful. Seth is keenly aware that he has married well above his range in looks, and that he’s failed to bring any other appealing aspect to the marriage. Except his parents’ apartment.

In contrast, the upstairs couple Penelope and Ed Norton are filled with confidence. Penelope is a talented therapist and Ed Norton is a retired, heroic Firefighter Captain, which in San Francisco means he has a pension that might be as high as $200,000 a year. Their apartment may be smaller but they are a superior version of Seth and Olivia.

My forties were not my best decade for self-esteem

When I was living my forty-something decade, I don’t recall being introspective or intentional about my life. Life just seemed to happen, and I was carried along by things bigger than myself, whether my children, my career, or my marriage. Those were well-defined roles that kept me occupied.

Unlike Seth in the movie, I was advancing in my career during my forties, meeting or exceeding my earlier expectations. Yet I was often plagued by self-doubts. I paid far too much attention to peers who had achieved greater success.

As well, I “weighted” my success against the advantages I’d inherited. I often told myself that relative to those advantages my career achievements were mediocre and deserved a grade of no better than a “C.” In diving competition terms, my degree of difficulty was low. ¹

However, no matter how irrational and angst-ridden I could get about my career, I had my familial roles to fall back on to bolster my self-esteem. I knew I was a good husband and a good father. I loved my wife and believed I had “married up” compared to any expectations I might have ever had. And my children were an elixir to self-doubt.

A great memory at the end of my forties

At my 50^th birthday celebration in 2012, what I remember best are the toasts given by my three children. My daughter Lauren serenaded me in poetic rhyme, a tradition she inherited from me. My son Michael said that he loved when his friends told him that he and I were similar.

My son Andrew got a round of applause when he said I was home every night for dinner, which was basically true. He also drew a round of laughter when he noted that I attended his middle school basketball games to watch some of the worst basketball ever played on any basketball court anywhere. That also was basically true.

Expectations are the most potent source of status anxiety

Usually, we think of status as a way of assessing how we compare to other people. In The Invite, it’s true that Seth and Olivia feel worse about themselves after spending time with their status-superior neighbors, Penelope and Ed Norton, who have an air of casual elegance, an air of sprezzatura.

But by far the most painful comparison is between what Seth and Olivia expected their lives to be and how their lives have turned out. Comparison with “what I could have been” is the most pernicious form of envy because it is the most readily imagined “miss.” But if we meet or exceed expectations, then we’re happy.

For example, when I consider my tennis game, it would be ridiculous for me to be envious of the pro who gives me lessons. I’d be far more likely to envy the game of a slightly better “B” player. But I was terrible when I was younger and over the last ten years, my tennis game has steadily improved so that despite my many tennis defects, I never expected to play as well as I do now.

Expectation failure in a song

One of my favorite songs is “Taxi” by Harry Chapin. It’s a mournful ballad about the failure of a couple to live up to their expectations. It reminds me of the failure of Seth and Olivia in The Invite. Like the movie, the song is set in “Frisco.” ²

The singer Harry is a taxi driver who picks up a sad woman in a fancy gown. She asks him to take her to a ritzy address. She recognizes Harry from his name and picture on his taxi license. Turns out she is Sue, Harry’s long-lost young love. They catch up.

Toward the end of the song, Harry realizes that they’ve each achieved a twisted version of what they’d hoped to become. Sue had wanted to be an actress and now she’s “acting happy, inside her handsome home,” while Harry had wanted to be a pilot and now he’s “flying in [his] taxi, taking tips and getting stoned.”

Clip of this great song below.

1. I discussed my advantages in this post from January:

2. The song begins “It was raining hard in Frisco…” About ten years ago, my son Andrew informed me that no one calls San Francisco “Frisco” anymore. Except Harry Chapin and me.