The midlife crisis is a myth. At least, that’s what researchers from the University of Alberta would have you believe. After studying their fellow Canadians over a period of 25 years, they concluded that, rather than dipping in middle age, as has long been believed, happiness climbs steadily from your teens onwards, as if life were one long amble towards the sunlit uplands.

Personally, I’m not convinced. Just a couple of months ago, British and Australian researchers announced that “life satisfaction” falls gradually until the ages of 40 to 42, before rising again until you hit 70. They had studied 50,000 adults in Australia, Britain and Germany.

The lesson I take away from these conflicting reports is that either people in different countries feel differently about their lives (imagine that!) or that some research isn’t worth the peer-reviewed paper it’s printed on. In any case, I don’t want to believe the Canadians.

For a start, your 40s are awful. Not only are you halfway to the grave but it increasingly feels like it. Your knees creak and your back aches. If you have kids, they’re probably no longer at the adorable stage but continue to bleed you dry. If you own your home, you’re still paying for it; if you don’t, you’re still struggling with the realisation that you never will. Your parents are both a source of concern and a glimpse of your future. And everyone tells you life is just beginning…

If only. By this point you’ve been legally adult for more than two decades. You’re living with decisions whose consequences you barely understood when you took them. From career to home to partner to hairstyle, many will have been bad. That’s the law of averages.

Who wouldn’t get a bit wobbly in the circumstances? You have real problems, unlike some whingeing 18-year-old with his whole life in front of him.

More to the point, take away the chance of a midlife crisis and you take away hope. “Crisis” does not mean “disaster”. It comes from the Greek word for “decision” and, as the dictionary reminds us, it is “a crucial stage or turning point… an unstable period… a sudden change, for better or worse”. When life’s looking grim, a turning point is just what you long for.

It was certainly that way for me, although I started a year or two early. In 2002, aged 39, I realised my life had to change. I had a nice home and a good job, on the arts desk of Britain’s leading liberal newspaper. A lot of people would have killed to be in my shoes. But they pinched. I was sick of grey, dirty, overcrowded London.

So I kicked my way out. This wasn’t the stereotypical male crisis — I didn’t splash out on a sports car, or trade in my partner for a younger, flashier model — but I quit my job, sold my flat, moved in with friends and began to look for somewhere else to live. I ended up in an isolated shack on top of a French mountain.

With hindsight, I tried to change too much, too quickly. If I’d had a partner I’d probably have ditched her too. Still, I was soon happier than I had ever been. I had 10 mostly fantastic years in a beautiful part of the world, often worrying about money, but never wishing I could turn the clock back.

I’ve since made plenty of mistakes, started down many dead ends, but always realised in time to reverse out before too much harm was done. That’s the thing about misery: if you handle it properly, you can learn from it. And if you’re a slow learner, well, there’s nothing to stop you having another crisis, and another, until the lessons sink in. Older readers will remember Reggie Perrin, the hero of David Nobbs’s 1970s sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Reggie wasn’t satisfied with one midlife crisis, first faking his death and running away from his wife and boss, then coming back in disguise and getting embroiled with both once more. That’s a hero we old fools can identify with.

So, please, life is already hard enough for the middle-aged. Don’t tell us that our crisis is an illusion. Strip us of our “myth”, and we won’t even have the consolation of knowing that others like us are just as messed up.

We might decide to just suck it all up. And that would make us more miserable than ever.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd