Don't Touch Me! 3 Simple Ways to Avoid Meno-Rage Ruining Intimacy in Your Midlife Marriage

Remember when you first started dating? When you'd spend all night on the telephone...talking about everything and nothing at all?

And now that you're in the midlife transition, not only does it feel like you have nothing at all to talk about with your spouse, but it also feels like the intimacy and affection are gone.

In this episode, Laurie shares three simple ways to get the affection and intimacy back...even when you're feeling all cringey and full of meno-rage, when you're screaming on the inside, but smiling on the outside.

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Transcript

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how do you keep affection and connection alive in a marriage when you're feeling all cringy and menopause? Ragey when, when you're screaming on the inside, but feeling like you have to force a smile on the outside. And she wasn't talking about sex, but more like, how do you get the intimacy and the connection and affection back when your going through all of this menopause transition. And you just want to scream at your partner. Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson. This is the podcast for the midlife woman who starting to ask herself big life questions. Like, what do I want? Is it too late for me? And what's my legacy beyond my family and my work. Each week we're answering these questions and more. At the School of Midlife, we're learning all of the life lessons they didn't teach us in school and we're figuring out finally what it is we want to be when we grow up. Let's make midlife your best life Hey friends. Welcome. Back to the School of Midlife podcast in today's episode. I am going to answer a question that was posed over on the, what? The menopause social media page. If you aren't familiar with my friend, Jessica, over at what? The menopause you should be following her. She has all sorts of fantastic tools and information as it relates to the menopausal transition in midlife. You know, a lot of times here at the School of Midlife, we, we don't spend a lot of time talking about. Hot flashes and menopausal change. And am I having a midlife crisis? Because there are so many other people that are doing that better. I like to focus on how you can create mid-life your best life. And leave the fitness and the eating and the hot flashes to, to the experts. Right. Um, At the School of Midlife, we believe that midlife is way more than menopause and midlife crises. So we let the other experts talk about hormonal transitions and hot flashes and things like that. And. Over at whatthemenopause Jessica is doing that beautifully. So I will post a link to her social media there. And if you're not following her, go give her a follow. Um, anyway, one of her followers asked, how do you keep affection and connection alive in a marriage when you're feeling all cringy and menopause? Ragey when, when you're screaming on the inside, but feeling like you have to force a smile on the outside. And she wasn't talking about sex, but more like, how do you get the intimacy and the connection and affection back when like all your going through all of this menopause transition. And you just want to scream at your partner. I thought this question was fantastic. So I thought that I would give a little School of Midlife spin to it. Let's start by saying anyone who tells you that marriage is easy, I think is lying. In my opinion, the easiest thing is getting to the altar. And pretty much everything after that is difficult or it can be difficult. It doesn't have to be, but getting married is the easy part. Um, But Also, can we just offer a quick, thanks that Pinterest, wasn't a thing when most of us got married. I don't know if you've spent any time over there lately, but if you get married now and some of you actually are probably experiencing this because your daughters are getting married, but. According to wedding by Pinterest, you have to have matching outfits for bachelorette parties. And it feels like there's a destination, everything super expensive, gobs and gobs of money being spent on the wedding. And pre-wedding festivities. You have make sure that everything is. Social media ready as far as being able to click photos everywhere, it just. I for 1:00 AM super glad that Pinterest, wasn't a thing in 2003, when Mike and I married. Um, Kind of like, I'm also grateful that social media didn't exist when we were in college, but in any way, Let's just suffice it to say that, getting to the altar: that's the easy part, because you're still, everything is still new about your relationship. You're still in that honeymoon period, and everything is so exciting. And part of that is because you're learning new things about your partner. If you're feeling a little angsty in your marriage or your long-term relationship, It's probably because you've been in that marriage relationship for a while. Because affection is not generally an issue early on in the relationship. Do you know what I mean? I mean, usually there's plenty of physical touch and affection and oftentimes, we might mistake or confuse that physicality. With intimacy. Now I'm not a relationship or sex coach, but, one I'm gonna share with you today. I've learned from coaching, a lot of midlife women. When women think intimacy, they think deep connection. They think conversation, they think feeling seen by their spouse. Men on the other hand, when they think intimacy, they think sex, or at least some sort of physical touch arousal. I mean, it all pretty much comes back to sex, right? So there's a physicality piece to intimacy for men. But for women, it's more of an emotional connection. And for women in particular, they generally need to have that emotional connection before they want the physical act. This. Is especially true after decades of marriage. So circling back to the question at hand is how can you keep the affection alive in your marriage when you're in that menopausal transition. And you're feeling all the meno- rage. And the last thing you want to do is have sex because you don't feel like there's any affection or connection with your partner. I think there are three ways to get back the intimacy and affection. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Okay. Those three are communication, expectations and focus that's in no particular order. Let's just start talking about them. So we'll start with communication. I would ask yourself if you're not feeling that there's much intimacy or affection in your relationship. What are you talking with your partner about now? The longer we're in a relationship with someone, the less, we seem to talk with them. We talk to them a lot, but oftentimes not with them. And there's a difference. Do you remember when you first started dating how those early dates were centered on talking? And there were long telephone call conversations about everything. And nothing, you were just happy to talk to him just for the sake of talking. And there were some coffee dates that turned into lunch dates because you just, you. You kept talking. It was like, you could talk about everything. Or maybe you had a dinner date and finally they came over and they said, you know what, we're closing down the restaurant. You need to move somewhere else. And so that conversation. Maybe you took it to a bar. You just, you, you talked well after midnight and there, there was so much talking. There was so much communication. There was so much curiosity. Like you just couldn't learn enough about one another. But at some point that changed. Didn't it. Like at some point you noticed that you spent less time talking to each other. And that's fun. Curiosity from early on in the relationship. It became a little more. Transactional. Like, instead of talking with your partner, you were talking to your partner because you were so focused on keeping small humans alive and the weekly schedule and who was going to pick up whom from what activity? And what work dinner was happening this week. Instead of the curiosity we moved to the logistical. Right. So instead of talking with our partners, then we just started talking to them about things that had to happen during the day. I don't know if you ever saw that Seinfeld episode where Kramer was talking about marriage and he was telling Jerry not to get married. It's a trap. I think he said something along the lines of it's a prison. And you cannot eat dinner in front of the TV anymore because at dinner that's when you have to talk about your day and you say things like, how was your day? Was it a good day? Was it a bad day? I don't know. How was your day today? And. His bit went on like that. And obviously there's some hyperbole there, but there's also a little truth in there. Isn't that? Right? I mean. We move beyond the curiosity to the familiar. Or to the mundane. And we just get to this point where it's so transactional. And when we lose that curiosity we move to transactional. And when we'd been married a long time. It also seems like we have trouble with deeper more meaningful topics. We typically avoid having tough conversations. Because we don't want to hurt someone's feelings. Maybe we don't want to express our opinions or our preferences, especially if those have changed over time. Um, maybe we're not. Comfortable setting boundaries in the relationships. Especially where there previously haven't been any boundaries. Here's an interesting fact. I've talked to so many women who tell me their spouses think they're having a midlife crisis. Not because they are. And of course, if you're a longtime listener here at the School of Midlife, you know, that I don't believe that there's any such thing as a midlife crisis. But their spouses think they're having a midlife crisis because finally. Maybe for the first time ever in the relationship. She's finally setting and holding boundaries in the relationship. And those are typically hard things to talk about. So instead of talking about them, We just chalk it up to our spouses, not being supportive, which kills trust and intimacy in the relationship. And then you have no affection. So. You can pretty easily see the through line there. That if you want to bring intimacy and affection back into the marriage, you have to start with communication. Let's move on to expectations. You've been together for a long time. And over that amount of time, you've developed certain expectations. Like we don't need to say things out loud anymore. They should just know. Anyone guilty of this. They should just know or. How many times do I have to remind you to do something? Like you can see I'm stressed. You've asked to help out and take some things off my plate. But you're not fucking doing them. And that's making me more stressed out because I feel like I have to keep reminding you to do the damn thing. Why can't you just do it? Or you said you were going to do the thing. You did it. And you did it wrong. Which might be that they did it wrong, but it also could be that they did it differently than how you would have done it. If your expectation is. It needs to be done and they did it then who really cares how they did it. If you start noticing that this is. A habit or a practice where you asked to have something done and it's not done the way that you want. So you get kind of pissed off about it. You might. Notice, uh, you might struggle with this at work too, right? So delegation might not be your thing. Personally for me, I have spent a lot of time trying to get comfortable with delegating. I'm much better than I used to be. But it took me a lot of years. I mean, I was convinced that no one could do anything as well as I could. But here's, what's interesting that I learned that is if you give the people the freedom to come up with a solution. Don't be surprised if it's just as efficient works just as well, solves Exactly the same problem as how you would do it. But they just have done it in a different way, so they can still take some things off your plate and get the thing done. And it will still be fine. Even if it's different than what you would have done. I want to bring this back to expectations. So our spouses are not mind readers, so we have to talk to them. We have to let them know how we're feeling. We have to talk with them about what they said and what we heard, because sometimes those can be two different things. They aren't privy to all of the thoughts that we're thinking. Uh, less, we share them with them. And I have to say, we also need to share them at a time when they're open to receiving them. Like if his favorite team is playing for the national championship, it's probably not a good time to start a conversation about how he let you down last week when you had a fight with your boss at work. And when you came home that night and you were venting to your husband, He asked you a question that made it seem like he was siding with your boss. That that did not make you feel happy. Couple of things here, though. If he's watching the game and his team's playing for the national championship, he's probably not opening to having this conversation. When he's watching the game, right. So don't expect him to stop what he's doing, because you want to have a deep, long conversation. Instead have the conversation when you both have time and when you're both able to focus on the conversation, Sometimes that, that you might have to put it down on your calendar, get it scheduled so that you can have his full attention and you can devote your own full attention. Here's here's another thing. If you want to talk about a question he asked from a week ago. Think about this, that conversations. You've probably been playing that in your head on repeat. You've probably also argued both sides of that conversation for a week now. Right. I mean, maybe you don't do this. So many of us do it. We've replayed this conversation ad nauseum, we're ready to challenge every single response he will give us because we've rehearsed it. And when I say we, I mean, me. But, but I don't think I'm alone here and it's not just because I was an attorney and I'm used to providing backup support for all of my arguments. It's not just me. Right? I mean, women do this. Men do this too, but not to the same extent that women do. Mainly because of our conditioning. We were raised to believe, you know, we're supposed to be the peacekeepers. Let's not rock the boat, couch your opinions in ways that are easy for people to hear. If he can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all. I mean, I've even been part of some organizations that the way you give feedback is say something complimentary first, then you can add up to two negatives, but you have to end on a positive note. So at work that could look like. You really dress the part. You are chronically late. You missed an important pitch deadline and you have a nice smile. That's dumb. Right? I mean, why can't we just say the thing. You're not meeting expectations. You blew that pitch that would cover your salary for the year. You're done. But instead, that message is buried in an almost passive aggressive way. You dress nice. Your work product sucks, but you have a nice smile. We're midlife women. Can we agree that we no longer need to bury the message, to wrap it up with a pretty little bow that we can just say the damn thing? Whether that's at work. Or like we're talking about here at home in the most important relationship in our life because. You know, when things aren't going well at home that spills over into every other part of your life. If you are avoiding conversations at home, You feel it everywhere else and you cannot get it out of your head. It's constantly on repeat So, so back to the conversation that you wanted to have. I'm not saying don't have the conversation, but maybe don't wait a week to have it. If you can hash it out in the moment, but. If, if that, if the moment is too heated, If it's not a good time to talk about it, maybe take a time out. Come back to it in an hour or so when the emotions are less charged. Maybe sleep on it. But rehashing it over and over again. Especially if you were the only one in the conversation and it's happening in your head. It's not doing either of you any good. And here's the thing. He probably doesn't even know that it's an issue. He hasn't paid it any more attention and he has moved on. So hear me when I say this. You have to verbalize your expectations. You have to tell your spouse what you want from them. What you expect from them? How you're feeling. They cannot read your mind, even though you've been married a long time, even though you've been in this long-term relationship. Maybe, especially because you've been in such a long-term relationship. There is a lot that has happened since you first got married. You have personally grown up and changed. He has probably changed also since you first got together. You've likely had different experiences, but also some similar experiences. But you cannot keep expecting your spouse to know what you haven't told them. And telling them once probably won't make it stick. So for the sake of the marriage and your sanity. And to up the level of affection and intimacy, talk about your expectations. Be clear. Be open, be honest. It will help tremendously. Finally, let's talk about focus. We've talked about this before on the podcast that whatever you are looking for, you will find. So, what that means here is if you are looking for ways that your partner is pissing you off or not showing up for you, you will find them. If you are keeping score. And any scorekeepers out there, you know, you are, you're constantly making note of what you've done versus what your spouse has done. And you're tallying it all up at the end of the day or the end of the week. Let's see. I did the grocery shopping. I paid the bills. I made sure that all the travel arrangements were made to take the kids back to college. I ordered flowers for your mother's birthday. Those were all on my list. On your list. Take out the garbage mow, the lawn and order flowers for your mother's birthday. But then you forgot. And I had to do it. But keeping score. That doesn't actually make anyone feel better. It's a zero sum game. There are no winners. They're just a bunch of losers in that game. So we need to change the way that we are focusing on our marriage and our long-term relationship. The whole idea of what we get is what we've been looking for. That's that's confirmation bias. You might've heard of confirmation bias before, but it's this tendency to seek out. Or interpret. Or remember information or events, things that were said that confirm our existing beliefs or expectations. So what we're thinking. And it confirms those things while dismissing or overlooking or sometimes forgetting. Uh, Other contradictory evidence or evidence that doesn't support what we think. So how does this work in our marriage? Well, we selectively notice behaviors that align with our current thinking about our spouse. And those can be positive. Or they can be negative. Interestingly, the longer we're married, the more likely it is that our default filter, the thing that we fall back on most often. As we look for the negative. How are you letting me down? How are you not showing up for me? Here are a couple of examples. Why do you want to go spend time with your buddies at a fantasy football draft instead of going to To dinner with me? And then all the sudden this becomes, you Always choose your friends over me. And if that's the lens we're operating from, then guaranteed, there will be countless bits of other evidence that we can find to support what we're talking about, we can make our case, like. You get a text from a friend, you always respond immediately. I texted you and it takes you hours to respond. If you respond at all. Your bodies want to grab a drink on Friday night after work, and I want to go to dinner on Friday. You tell me you have a meeting, air-quotes meeting. Which is I already know is just beer with your friends. You tell me you're going to do that and meet me after. So if my confirmation biases that you always put me last, then it's going to be super easy for me to find examples of that in our lives. I'm taking the responsibility in this marriage, your having more fun than I am, because I'm the one that has to take all of the responsibility. Here's another thing. When we talk about. What our spouse is doing or not doing. Pay careful attention to the language that you use. If you start using words like always or never, or all the time or all the responsibilities. Whatever I start talking in absolutes, even if I'm not saying it out loud. So I'm thinking this always happens or you never do this. Then that is a trigger for me that I know I'm going to start spiraling. I'm creating a situation where one may or may not exist. Most of the time, it's what I built up in my head. It's a story I'm telling myself about what's really going on. And it might be true. But it also might not be true because how often do things always happen? Or never happen or happen all the time. I'm the one who takes on all the responsibilities. Is that true? Probably not, but because I've spent so much time telling myself that and working myself up in my head about that, then that is what I become to believe. It's this perfect. Example right of the adage. Don't believe everything you think. Because our thoughts are oftentimes the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our own world, the situation around us. We start believing those thoughts. We're just believing the stories that we're telling ourselves. And. They may not be true. I have to do everything around here. Well, that's not true, right? I mean. For most of us, that's not true. Your spouse is doing things around here. You just maybe are choosing not to look at them. While you're in this spun up meno-rage feeling. Here's a real life example. Mike should know by now that I hate babies breath. We've been married 21 years I asked him a couple of weeks ago to pick up some flowers at the grocery store. I always have cut flowers on my kitchen counter. It's this lovely indulgence that makes me happy. I have been doing it since even before we got married. I, I usually buy them. I pick them out. I arrange them. But we were having his parents over for dinner on a Saturday. Totally last minute decision. And garbage day is on Friday and I had thrown away last week's flowers the day. before. his parents were coming over for dinner. And he needed to go to the grocery store and grab a couple of things to finish up what we needed to cook dinner. And I said, Hey, can you, can you pick me up some flowers? And he comes home with fucking baby's breath. what we needed to cook. Daddy And I'm thinking to myself, how is it? We've been married 21 years. We have fresh flowers in the kitchen every week. Not once, has he seen me bring home? Baby's breath. And I started thinking shouldn't he know by now that I don't like baby's breath. And I'm thinking about what is it? But here are my options. flowers in I can thank him for going to the store, an activity that I don't particularly enjoy. He did the shopping, grabbed all of the things we needed for dinner, including the flowers that I asked him to buy. So that's one thing I could have done, been grateful for it. Thanked him for doing it. Or I could dwell on the fact that he bought me baby's breath. Not mentioning it to him. Creating a story in my head about how, if he really loved me. He would have bought me tulips, which are my favorite, the Or white lilies. I love those because they smell lovely and they last at least a week. So a lot of white lilies that are house. But. No baby's breath. I chose to thank him for going to the store. For getting the things that we needed for dinner. Including flowers that I would never buy for myself. We did have a conversation about, Hey, next time, can you not get baby's breath? Not my favorite. Um, kind of messy, just don't really like it. And he said, no problem. It's as simple as that. week. So a I could've built it up into this, you know, created this big story. About him not valuing me or not loving me or, but I didn't. It's so often we can just nip it in the bud. And it's so much easier. Here's Something that you can actually do put into practice that if you're feeling that. meno-rage, that. angsty feeling, you know, like you're not being seen like the affection and intimacy you're gone. Try this. Each day. I want you to write down five things that your spouse is doing right. It could be anything, a big gesture. Like he surprised With an anniversary trip to Europe that he booked himself. W w wait a minute that that's probably two grand of gesture, um, for most of our spouses, because we understand that planning an entire trip without needing our help to navigate flights and hotels and tours. That that doesn't seem reasonable. If you've got a spouse like that then you should be, that should be number one on your list every day, you are grateful for the time and attention that he takes to create something amazing for you. But. Maybe he went ahead and made dinner reservations for your anniversary. The dinner or bought you a new apple watch or that beautiful bracelet that you've been thinking about. So grand gestures put that on the list. But also put the little things on the list. Like maybe he sent you a text, Big presentation at work. he sends you a text, wishing you good luck. Or maybe a text came in. After you landed the big picture work and it just says, I'm proud of you. Or maybe he took out the garbage and the recycling without being asked or reminded. Can you imagine? The list can be big things. The list can be small things, but the goal is really in the small things. But five things that. your spouse is doing right. on your I promise you that will change your focus from how is my spouse letting me down to this is what he's doing, right. And that focus change will remind you why you used to think he was a good person. Why you fell in love with him to begin with. Why it's important to you to rekindle the spark in your marriage? All from a little list of five things every day. But don't tell him you're doing this at least not at first. And I'll get to that in a minute. Just keep track on your own. Five things every day, you'll get to the point where you start noticing them without having to write them down. And you can either keep going at that point, or you can just decide, you know what, I've got this habit. Um, I, I'm looking for the Good things. I'm looking for, the things I'm grateful for. I'm looking for the ways that he's showing up for me. I'll have to do this anymore. So do it for as long as you need to, or want to. And then someday, if you're willing, Share some of the things on the list with him. Tell him how it made you feel. Tell him why you were grateful for it. And here's what sneaky. This is, This is incorporating the things that we're talking about today: Communication expectations focus. So when you're talking to him, all three of those. And the typical outcome here. right. Is, he does something for you. You tell him that you. like it or appreciate it. He does it more because he wants To make you happy. It's like this great little merry-go-round of goodness. And you feel more seen and appreciated, which leads to stronger feelings of intimacy and affection and round and round. It goes. What if it can be that easy? What if all it Takes to. add the affection and the intimacy back in your marriage. What If it's just talking with one another. And keeping your expectations in check. And focusing on the good. All doable. Right. Easy things. Talk with one another. Keep your expectations in check. focus. on the good. I'd love to hear how. Keeping track of five things every day. I'd love to hear how that changes your relationship. Shoot me a text find me on Instagram, DM me there. Let me know. It can be that easy. I promise. Here's to putting the affection and the intimacy back into your marriage. I hope you make it a fantastic week and I will see right back here next week when the School of Midlife is back in session. Until then take good care. I have a question for you. When was the last time you spend a day focused completely on yourself, away from the daily grind, the constant emails and text messages. The never ending question of what's for dinner tonight. Well, if a day sounds good to you. What about an entire weekend away? And before you start thinking that sounds a little too indulgent, let me remind you that you can't take care of everyone else in your life. If you don't take care of yourself first. I'm thrilled to personally invite you to join me at the next best life retreat in world famous sun valley, Idaho, with an entire weekend of group coaching to figure out what you actually want in life. How you define success. And to help you lay the groundwork to create a life that not only makes you happy, but also leaves you personally fulfilled. There'll be incredible group activities like happy hour paint and sips, morning walks, a sunrise hike. Your choice of spa appointments and an award-winning spa. All wrapped up in luxury accommodations, gourmet meals, premium drinks, and the best gift bag you have ever seen. I'm telling you this will be one of the very best weekends of your entire life. To keep the retreat intimate, there are only eight spots available and when they're gone, they're gone. So go right now, click the link in the show notes and grab your space before they're gone. I can't wait to see you in Sun Valley.