Like most people, I had never taken the notion of midlife crisis seriously. I thought of it as a fleeting, laughable period of adolescent regression that induces middle-aged men to buy red sports cars and take trophy wives. Typing with my arm in a sling after my ATV accident, I decided to make fun of myself in one of my regular Work & Family columns in The Wall Street Journal. Ridiculing one of the stupidest accidents of my life, I wrote, "The midlife crisis is a cliché -- until you have one."

I quickly learned I was not alone. The column drew one of the biggest reader responses I had received in its twelve-year history. While some readers of both sexes were startled by the notion that a female could even have a midlife crisis, a far larger number of women readers experienced a shock of self-recognition. I did a little research and the statistics floored me: More than fifteen million women have had or will have a midlife crisis, as opposed to less than fourteen million men. 

Seventy-three percent of women in the midlife years claim that "life is too complicated", up from 55 percent fifteen years ago. Extramarital affairs among women have increased to a level nearly equal to men's, peaking among women in their forties. The divorce rate among women in their forties increased during the 1990s, rocking a decades-old pattern of declining divorce rates at midlife. And contrary to expert conjecture, less than 1 percent of women attributed midlife crisis to menopause.

Clearly, I was on to something. Something big.

Excerpted from The Breaking Point © Copyright 2012 by Sue Shellenbarger. Reprinted with permission by Henry Holt and Co.. All rights reserved.