🚨 Welcome to this week’s issue of Generation Xcellent. I’m Stephen Perrine, New York Times bestselling author and former top editor at Men’s Health and Maxim. And like you, I’m doing all I can to survive the moshpit of midlife. Thanks for joining me on the journey! If you like what you see, send me an email—and share this newsletter with another guy who could use our help. 

📩 Thanks for joining the conversation!

- HEALTH -

A Gen X Dad’s Guide to Not Dying

A recent study found that men with children are more likely to develop heart disease later in life. Here’s how to foil your offspring’s evil plot—and live.

By Stephen Perrine

They’re making you eat shit.

When the voices in the backseat say “I’m hungry,” and you’ve still got an hour before you’re home, you know you’re going to hit a drive-thru. But while that’s okay for their resilient little bodies, it’s rough on yours. Men need at least 30 grams of protein at every meal, and plenty of produce, to prevent midlife muscle loss. Muscle-friendly food is so important to us that even the Journal of Cardiology is urging heart doctors to provide patients with advice on eating to build muscle at midlife.

They’re turning you into Willy Wonka.

Chances are, you don’t buy a lot of candy for yourself. But between hiding Easter baskets, stuffing stockings, celebrating birthdays and handing out treats while dressed as a Mario Brother, you’re practically a one-man chocolate factory all year round.

And that means a lot of extra sugar in your house, and in your belly. One study followed 2,735 men and women starting at age forty-nine. Over the ensuing thirteen years, those who ate the most sugary foods were 2.9 times more likely to die from inflammation-based diseases such as heart disease. If you can’t control the candy jar, do this one thing: Stop drinking sugary drinks. One study found just one sugary soft drink per day raises your risk of metabolic syndrome (a combination of obesity, high cholesterol, and high blood sugar) by 44 percent.

They won’t let you party in Vagus.

Not the city, the nerve. The vagus nerve is the largest in the body, and it acts like a brake on our overall nervous system; the more activated it is, the calmer and more controlled we are. When the vagus nerve senses stress, however, heart and breathing rates increase, and digestive activity slows—a part of the “fight or flight” response. And all of that ups your risk for heart disease. The play: Eat more fiber. As the microbes in our guts munch on plant fibers, they produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), compounds that activate certain receptors on the vagus nerve, putting the brakes on stress.

—Adapted from The Full-Body Fat Fix, by Stephen Perrine (St. Martin’s Press).

- GEN-X CULTURE -

Classic Gen X Movie Homes You Can Sleep in Tonight

From Purple Rain to Field of Dreams, you can turn a classic movie home into your next vacation rental

By Jeff Stevenson

>If you’ve always dreamed of running wild through a 5-bedroom mansion after your parents accidentally left you home on Christmas vacation, well… you’re out of luck. 

The house from Home Alone, the 1990 film starring Macaulay Culkin as the quintessential Gen X kid—ignored and abandoned—went up for sale last year, at a relatively cheap $5.5 million. It found a buyer just a few months ago, for $250,000 over its asking price.

You can still go see the house, at least from the street. The iconic red-brick mansion is in Winnetka, Illinois, at 671 Lincoln Avenue. But the only way you’re getting inside is by pulling a Joe Pesci. And even then, you just know the new owners are already expecting that, and have covered the floors with Micro Machines. 

But you can still spend a night or two ensconced in Gen X movie history. Here are three homes featured in the beloved films of our collective youth, available to rent now! 

The Prince Purple Rain house

This modest two-bedroom house in Minneapolis doesn’t look like much from the outside, but once you get past the front door, things get a bit… trippier. Purple velvet wallpaper, 80s vintage stereo, a clawfoot tub where you can sit and think about crying doves, and a bedroom with a mural of freaking eyes peering over the bed. The house that Prince never lived in but pretended to in the 1984 movie Purple Rain was quietly bought by the Kid himself in 2015 for $117,000. After his death, his former bandmates Wendy & Lisa took it over, filled it with Prince memorabilia (including a secret door leading to a room “filled with treasures”), and started renting it out to (presumably) aging Gen Xers and their unimpressed children. The rental has to be “requested,” so it’s unclear what an overnight stay costs. But we’re guessing it’s $1999.

The Reality Bites house

Ah, to be young, poor, and pining for the girl with dad’s gas card. Despite coming dangerously close to being demolished last year, the apartment once rented by Troy, Lelaina, and their downwardly-mobile buds—at 409 W. Clay Street, in the Montrose area of Houston, Texas—is available for rent for a mere $850 a month, or exactly what a philosophy major with no future but lots of snarky comments can afford. Although before signing a lease, you might want to check out this YouTube walkthrough of the property. It looks like Winona and Ethan’s old pad has seen better days.

The Field of Dreams house

Why stay at home to watch Field of Dreams and cry about your dad when you could drop $700 (or $600 on the weeknights) for the chance to sleep in Ray Kinsella’s house, watch Field of Dreams near the field where Kevin Costner hung out with a bunch of dead baseball legends, and cry about your dad? The three bedroom house sleeps seven, so you can invite all your guy friends who love baseball and/or have complicated feelings about their dads for the world’s weirdest sleepover. If you rent it, they will come.

—Jeff Stevenson has written for Men’s Health, Maxim, Best Life, and several other classic men’s magazines.

Battle of the ‘90s Crushes: Week #2
Jennifer Aniston vs. Winona Ryder

Welcome to week 2 of our epic March Madness–style tournament. Last week, Vanessa Williams and Phoebe Cates faced off, with Cates scraping out a victory by a single vote! 

This week, two power players take center stage in a battle of beauty and haircuts. Will it be The Rachel, as worn by the effervescent Jennifer Aniston, or The Pixie, as preferred by the winsome Winona Ryder? Which of these crushes will move on to the quarter finals? Only YOU will decide! 

We’ll have a new showdown every week, with more Gen X goddesses competing for your vote. And check out our social pages (we’re on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads) for updates and a full rundown of the winners.

- SEX -

Is a Sexless Marriage Good Enough?

Two Gen X men offer contrasting opinions of their celibate unions.

By Bob Larkin

>Guys, it’s true: We’re just not getting laid like our dads did.

In a 2021 survey, 26% of married couples under 60 said they had sex once a month or less; in 1989, that number was 12%. And while the New York Times assured us earlier this year that “Gen X Women Are Having the Best Sex,” it turns out most of the women in the story were divorced.

We asked two 50-something guys who experienced celibate cohabitation to share their perspectives: Is a sexless marriage good enough? 

Adam: “Your happiness shouldn’t be defined by other people’s expectations.”

My wife and I didn’t just wake up one day and decide, “That’s it, no more boning.” It happened gradually, over many years. It wasn’t like we stopped being attracted to each other, or fell out of love. We just weren’t as interested in sex as we were in our 20s and 30s.

Our cultural narrative is that everyone should be engaging in nonstop carnal hydraulics. We have couple friends who’d rather admit to being raging alcoholics who beat their kids than to not having regular sex.

But it’s a lie: There was a Archives of Sexual Behavior study a few years ago which found that 44% of men and 74% of women hadn’t had sex in the past month. Being in a sexless relationship doesn’t make you a leper. It just means you’re pretty typical.

My wife is my best friend, my biggest supporter, the only person I want to fall asleep next to and wake up next to. Our libidos have diminished, but not our sense of intimacy. We still spoon in bed. We still kiss for no reason, and even make out like teenagers when the mood hits us, and it never feels forced or obligatory. 

That’s how an evolved relationship works—you no longer feel the pressure to be something or someone you’re not. That’s what real love looks like.

Frank: “A sexless marriage is fine. Until it isn’t.”

My wife and I started dating in our late 20s, got married a few years later, had two kids, bought a house and a big SUV. When the sex stopped, it didn’t feel like a big deal. One dry weekend turned into a dry month, and then a dry year. Two decades later, I found myself in a sexless marriage with a person I loved and respected but didn’t touch.

We tried scheduling a monthly date, but we always treated each other like best friends rather than lovers. We tried making time to watch movies together, or put down our phones when we went to bed. But nothing changed.

I remember the moment I realized all marriages aren’t sexless. I was carpooling to work with my friend Will, and the phone rang through the center dash. He clicked accept and his wife’s voice instantly materialized: “Hi. When are you gonna bang me again?”

I was horrified. Not because she didn’t know somebody else was in the car, but because it meant my friends, two people just as old and over-scheduled as me and my wife, were having sex. Filthy sex. How could this be?

Will quickly muted her and glanced at me. “Well,” he said, “it has been almost a week.” It was then I knew that something had to change.

Today, I’m newly divorced, and dating a woman with boundless sexual enthusiasm. I can’t get enough of her — her smile, her scent, her energy. This was what was missing from my first marriage. Not the sex, the connection.

I’m 57, and I’m having the best sex of my life. If you’re not having the best sex of your life, maybe it’s time to ask why.

—Bob Larkin has written for Men’s Health and numerous other publications.