Are you yearning for midlife love?

(In or after your marriage?)

Jul 17, 2024

Midlife love doesn’t get much a look in, does it? In terms of music, movies and TV it’s all about young love and “The One” when in midlife love is, in fact, the most interesting love of all.

And I don’t just mean midlife dating… which is a hooey all of it’s own. I also mean the midlife love we try to extract from marriages strained with the stress of the expectations and workloads on two people also trying to vie for their own lives, while being supportive partners while also perhaps learning to be parents while also trying to be whatever their careers are shaping them to be. It’s a lot.

Many of the women I encounter through my work as the midlife coach are either figuring out how to extricate themselves from a marriage, pick themselves up off the floor from their marriage ending, figuring out how to start again, or - and this is the midlife love we often bypass - are trying to find the flurries of life and love within a marriage that is drowning in the years and tears of duty and drudgery.

So let’s look at them both: Midlife dating and Midlife marriage resuscitation, and how you can bring some life into love.

Midlife dating

I don’t know which dating disaster story to tell you first. There’s the one where he insisted on telling me why he didn’t see his kids. (Red flag, ladies, red flag.) Even so, I suggested we didn’t do the whole “why I got divorced” conversation on the first date… it’s a bit of a fun-vibe killer and I’ve felt like a therapist on so many dates while the man bitches about his ex that I make it a rule to avoid this conversation until the second meet, if there is one.

But he insisted. So I nodded as he told me the classic cliche.

“I had an affair.”

I was wearing sunglasses so he likely didn’t see my eye roll. But then, in fairness to him, it’s not every first date someone takes my breath away. But his follow up line left me grasping for an oxygen mask.

“With my wife’s mother.”

There was no second meet.

Then there was the guy who passed due process to further dates. We had laughed and connected over books and travel and then, after a couple more fun meets, he was back at mine, we were sloppy dancing and at some point got to some smooching on the sofa. Now, let it be known, we had covered quite a lot of subjects like family, careers, books, music, past loves, and even health and fitness. You’d think it might have occurred to him in all those chats to have mentioned the colostomy bag. Maybe I’m odd, but a bit of fair warning about something like that before you unbutton a man’s shirt would be useful.

And then there was the guy whose first words when I sat down on our first date were “You’re not going to see me again, are you?” Fifteen minutes in, he was crying. It’s the only date I’ve been on where I actually considered climbing out the restaurant bathroom windows.

But some challenging stories aside, (given I’d married a man who turned out to be gay!) actually most of the men I’ve chatted to and met have been perfectly ok. Many have been really good guys and most have been lovely. Often the reason for not seeing them again is a lack of chemistry, bad timing, or a host of things that weren’t awful. Even though my mum is no longer with me, I did decide that shagging your wife’s mother for six months was one where it wouldn’t have mattered if chemistry was off the periodical charts, it was a no. But most have been undramatic and perfectly fine. But hey, I’m in midlife and I’m not looking for perfectly fine. I want more. I want stimulating, sexually and intellectually. I want exploration, of each other, the world, this life. I want fun. Good old fashioned energising fun.

Yet when you get to this stage of life - with excess baggage and a carry on of cynicism - it’s easy to get put off by the effort of “getting out there”. Dating, by which I mean - spending hours trying to decide who to date, then messaging banal banter until one of you drifts off into the ethereal from boredom - can start to feel just like every other chore in your life. Surely it has to feel easier than this?

But it’s also an amazing opportunity to really (and I mean really… with therapy, coaching, meditation, journaling or wherever else you need) reflect on who you are now, and what you need now, and what you want now and to really be intentional about this next relationship (or even if that’s what you want.)

At my recent retreat for women going through separation or divorce, we gave everyone an exercise to write a list of what they wanted from a future partner. One women had 24 items on her list. I doubt any man could fulfil that many, even my lust-longing dream, Keanu Reeves. So we did a little work and asked them again, but this time to list the way they wanted to feel with someone. That makes all the difference. You can focus on height or money or job but really it’s got to be about how they make you feel. I know early on the energy someone brings to the conversation is the surprise. Not how nice his socks are.

What I’ve discovered from my own midlife dating experiences, and coaching women entering the fray - we need to focus less on how much we like them, and focus a lot on how much we like ourselves when we’re with them. I see women try desperately to hang on to a newish (or longish) relationship where they have stopped being the fun and flirty woman with life and love to give, and turned into a nagging bore because he won’t step up. How does he make you feel? If the answer is crap, then no matter how high your hope is, hope is not a strategy for love. Doing the work to figure out what you want and need (and it could be very different to first time round) is really important.

Midlife marriage resuscitation.

I see many women in, not necessarily a loveless marriage / relationship but certainly a lifeless one. Maybe they occasionally do what the shallow social media advise will tell them - go on date nights, spend more time together, spend less time together, buy some new underwear - but that’s like looking at a holiday brochure rather than booking one. There’s nothing like domestic drudgery to deplete desire and connection. Women in particular can lose a real sense of themselves as they become all things to all people. You become the lamp, like part of the furniture, rather than the light.

I certainly was lonelier in my marriage than after it, despite being single - mainly because it was only when I invested time and thought on who I am - separate to my roles as wife, mother, daughter - did I realise that I was always there. I could be alone but not lonely. I’d just stopped seeing myself.

Marriage is a partnership, even in many ways, a business partnership, with the added complications of love and chemistry. And like any business partnership it needs regular reviews to see what’s working, what’s not, what’s changed internally and externally, what supports are needed, where is attention required, what are the latest goals and direction. Yes, that can feel risky, but surely it’s riskier to wake up decades later to find the relationship no longer has a pulse?

Bring life back to you

In both these situations - starting over or refreshing a marriage - bringing life back to a marriage, and to a new romance, starts with bringing life back to yourself

I see it all the time with my clients. As soon as they start investing in themselves, start to be intentional about who they are becoming, emerging from a state of disconnection from themselves to build a strong and vibrant relationship with themselves, often their marriage improves. Or they realise perhaps the marriage is no longer a place where they thrive…. But they have to take the time to understand what it means to thrive again. I told the story recently of a client who inadvertently relit a fire in her marriage, but only by spending the time to work out who and how and where she was now that she’d raised a family and realised, in this extended and unique midlife for women, she wasn’t ready and willing to retreat into the background; she wanted to live life again, for her.

The reason I’m not as lonely now as I was in my marriage is I have developed a stronger relationship with myself. We assume a partner is there to see, hear, and understand us in our entirety but no one person can - or should - be expected to do that. Instead we have to learn to see, hear and understand ourselves. I had to learn to be the hand on my own back,… that doesn’t mean I don’t love another hand on my back, but if mine isn’t there that other hand becomes too powerful. When I feel unseen and unheard (and believe me, when you live alone with three teenagers, that is a common symptom!) I now know that really it means I’m not seeing and hearing myself. In my recent book Midlife, redefined: Better, Bolder, Brighter I have a chapter on how women (and I certainly did this) ghost themselves. They stop answering their own calls. I had to learn how to colour myself in again, and so much of my coaching is helping women do that too.

Whether you’re dating again, or trying to find the pulse in a marriage is starts with finding The One….. and that’s you.

I’d love to know how you feel about midlife love, so please join me in the comments below (if you’re reading this in an email, please click on the link below to go through to the website to join the conversation.)

Are you yearning for midlife love?

(In or after your marriage?)

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