#99 - How to Make Room for Connection in Your Relationship in Midlife with Carrie Cohen

In addition to the emotional and physical changes that can come with midlife, have you ever felt discouraged when you realized that your relationship with your spouse or partner was having its own midlife crisis?

If so, you’re not alone, but you don’t have to stay stuck. Since we’re celebrating Valentine’s Day this week, I thought it would be the perfect time to invite relationship expert Carrie Cohen on the show to talk about why feeling disconnected in relationships and marriage in midlife can happen without us even noticing. She will let us in on why midlife is another transition for our relationship that will need plenty of communication and negotiation until both partners land in a sweet spot. 

Best of all, Carrie shares some incredibly practical and powerful tools you can implement in your relationship to get the spark and connection back on the menu again! 

To learn more about Carrie and her work, check out her website at www.carriecohencoaching.com and follow her on IG @CarrieCohenCoaching. 

📚 I wrote a book! Eat To Thrive During Menopause is out now!  Order your copy today and start thriving in midlife.

Transcript

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Jenn Salib Huber 0:00

Hi and welcome to the Midlife Feast , the podcast for women who are hungry for more in this season of life . I'm your host , Dr Jenn Salib-Huber . I'm an intuitive eating dietitian and naturopathic doctor and I help women manage menopause without dieting and food rules . Come to my table , listen and learn from me trusted guest experts in women's health and interviews with women just like you . Each episode brings to the table juicy conversations designed to help you feast on midlife . And if you're looking for more information about menopause , nutrition and intuitive eating , check out the Midlife Feast community , my monthly membership that combines my no-nonsense approach that you all love to nutrition with community , so that you can learn from me and others who can relate to the cheers and challenges of midlife . Hi everyone , welcome to this week's episode of the Midlife Feast .

Jenn Salib Huber 0:53

Have you ever wondered if your relationship is going through perimenopause ? I kind of say this jokingly , but it is something that often comes up that people will say I feel like everything is changing , including my relationship , and whether or not you have kids , whether or not you're married , regardless of what your relationship looks like , this is an age and stage where a lot of things are changing and , as my guest on today's podcast shares with us . There are some things that we can do to help prepare , as well as kind , of course , correct if it feels like midlife has crash landed into your marriage or relationship . Carrie Cohen is a marriage coach and relationship expert and , as you'll hear , she shares some really great examples , but also strategies , of things that you can start doing today that will help your relationship to thrive in midlife and be able to come out through the other side feeling hopefully more confident , especially if it's been a bit of a rocky road . So have a listen and let me know what you think . Hi , carrie , welcome to the Midlife Feast .

Carrie Cohen 2:06

Hello , thanks for having me .

Jenn Salib Huber 2:09

So , as I mentioned in your introduction , you are a therapist and specifically working with couples , and there's a lot that happens in midlife around change and relationships can certainly be one of the things that come under strain with perimenopause . So I'd love to hear a little bit more about kind of how midlife lines up or crash lands into your work . Yeah , tell us a little bit about that .

Carrie Cohen 2:36

Sure . So what I find oftentimes for couples in midlife specifically is that they're coming to see me , typically because it's about the time when their kids are usually in adolescence or older and they're beginning to take a look at their relationship and realizing that they've just spent the last number of years 10 , 15 years focusing on raising their family and now that their kids really just need less of them , they want to refocus some of their energy back onto their relationship , and so that's the I would say that's the most ideal scenario when I see couples , and all the way to the kind of least optimal scenario , which is when couples really find themselves feeling quite estranged from their partner , their relationship , because they've spent so much time raising their kids . So for me , when I see couples in midlife , that is usually why they're coming , yeah .

Jenn Salib Huber 3:42

And so with midlife especially , you know I often talk about when we're talking about the health side of things , that it's easy to not notice the early signs of perimenopause because they overlap with so many other things . You know it's it . You may not notice the changes in your cycle because it's can be normal to sometimes have changes in your cycle . You may not notice that the sleep changes or the mood changes are happening the week before your period because you're not used to looking for that or maybe it's not enough of a problem . Do you sometimes find that , because midlife is a busy time for people , that maybe they're not picking up on these little signs in their relationship that may have been there for many years ? Absolutely .

Carrie Cohen 4:27

And I think that what happens for couples is that one or both will just justify those small things they might see . So , for example , you know , let's say they're they you know they're out of the early weeds of parenting , another into adolescence and they have more than one kid and they're playing sports or doing other activities and one parent is managing taking one kid one place and another parents managing taking another kid another place , rather than being able to take that opportunity to do something as a family . And I think that a lot of those get justified by the couple in terms of schedules are really busy . We're trying to maximize our time , particularly if they both work and then they're managing the household . And they may also really just sort of attribute their own disconnect to a busy time in life . And both say one or both will say you know , as soon as we get through the stage , things will be fine .

Carrie Cohen 5:34

And more commonly it is the woman who is sort of feeling more okay with that , whereas the male is usually feeling a bit more anxious or stressed about the loss of connection , because oftentimes and I would say that that's that's typically the case also when when their children are young . And so what I find is that men might be pushing for more time together , and that puts women in this bind just to sort of put it plainly between attending to their kids and making sure that they're still being a good mom because mom guilt doesn't ever go away and then also wanting to attend to their husband , because they also want to be a good wife . They don't want to lose their marriage . And then , if they have a career , then we throw that into the mix and I think that it creates a unique bind for women that men just experience differently .

Jenn Salib Huber 6:35

Oh , my goodness . I was talking to a friend about a situation that they're in in their marriage and she said something that I think is probably relatable to your clients and to the listeners . But she said I want to spend time with my husband , but whenever he says to me at the end of the day , can we spend some time together ? It feels like he's just adding something to my to-do list . And she said and I don't know how to articulate to him that I'm just done . I'm just done , I don't have anything left to give , and it doesn't feel like she's getting something from that time at the end of the day because she's so done .

Jenn Salib Huber 7:15

How do you find that the roles in a relationship like I'm thinking , like traditional roles and I know that traditional has an evolving meaning , so I'm certainly not trying to imply that there is one traditional role and in traditional roles , where the mother often is often the default parent and is often the one who is kind of the household manager and then goes into perimenopause and has brain fog and isn't sleeping well and is dealing with all of these things on the inside , how does that all play into the relationship ?

Jenn Salib Huber 7:53

Because I'm thinking of my own relationship with my husband , which I think is OK . When we were younger and our kids were younger , it felt like our roles were really clearly defined , in that we would do certain things at certain times . But then as the kids get older and as I was going through perimenopause and my career was changing and his career was changing , there was often it felt like this parallel path that was happening . But because I was also going through perimenopause sometimes that's hard to articulate to someone and it just felt I don't know . I'm not even sure what my question is here . It's a bit of a ramble , but maybe you can pick up on it .

Carrie Cohen 8:31

Yeah , and then I'm going to respond to that first , since it's top of mind , and then I want to go back to the sort of a recommendation for the person in the shoes that your friend is in , because that is a common experience . So there's a lot of layers here that we can peel back . So I think that when you have two parents who work outside of the house versus two who work in the house , that that's different . So my life changed a lot for the better post COVID , because my husband and I both started working from home and so we had our for the last three years . So that's different .

Carrie Cohen 9:16

So let's talk about the where where you have one or both working outside of the house , and you've got midlife and whatever that means for people .

Carrie Cohen 9:27

You've got the dynamic of children . You have the dynamic of women entering perimenopause , and most women , probably like myself , were not really thinking about it or preparing for that and it felt like you were just hit with a ton of bricks and then you didn't really know what it was . And then , once you start talking about it and reading about it , you're really sort of shocked at how I was shocked at how much I didn't know . I felt so grossly underprepared and then really trying to articulate to that to my husband , who's very understanding and also very psychological , but still was initially for the first few months not really taking it as seriously as he was , as I was , and so I think that it is such a mysterious time of life for couples when women start to make that change , because so many things are changing in terms of how we feel about our body which impacts how we feel about intimacy and being in the best and how sexy do we feel with our changing body , and I think that that's a really big thing for women .

Carrie Cohen 10:40

And so I think there's a lot of layers there that can be really difficult to A navigate in general , but B start to pick apart and think about okay , so what are the issues and what are the issues that are causing this experience between us , where our relationship is changing and why is our relationship changing ? And I think that that's very hard for couples to articulate when they're in it .

Jenn Salib Huber 11:14

And so what happens is ?

Carrie Cohen 11:15

they move out of it , either because they're in the next stage and then they're looking back and they're like very , very disconnected .

Carrie Cohen 11:24

Or they move out of it because there's some powerful intervening force that happens during that time and if we think about a midlife crisis , that really is to me there's an outside intervening force that impacts one or both parties in a way that creates this acute kind of crisis feeling and this fear in them that makes them feel like they have to do something .

Carrie Cohen 11:56

And so I'm saying that very broadly , because it can look and feel so differently for couples .

Carrie Cohen 12:05

And so I think that what happens then is that couples then find themselves right smack in the middle of this stage of life and they can't really use their experience when they were just raising their babies as a frame of reference , because it feels different and it looks different and because that time , although stressful , is usually also pretty joyful for couples and it's very acceptable to be , for the couple to go fall down the total and pull , and so midlife you have to actually create the joy it's not really there naturally from the babies and , let's face it , raising teenagers is very stressful in a different kind of way than raising babies .

Carrie Cohen 12:54

There's a lot more things to worry about and in today's time , when we have social media and there's a lot more exposure and kids are just more precocious , there's just a lot more layers . And I guess what I would just sort of say to that is it's really important for couples to find a way to start to keep tabs on their relationship and we could go back to the example with your friend but it's important for couples to have a process to keep , tap to like , check in and keep a pulse on their relationship through as they move through the stages of life together .

Jenn Salib Huber 13:29

Yeah , one of the things that I often hear from people as they're going through a lot of the changes in perimenopause , like you mentioned , the body changes and just I even think that the changes in our identity really is being this you know , person in a reproductive phase , whether or not the person has children or not , but just you know , identifying as that that reproductive age and stage is difficulty and explaining to their partner . This is how I'm feeling and being able to explain it in such a way that improves or , you know , drives connection instead of feeling like an excuse . You know , I often will hear from people my partner , my husband , just doesn't understand that I'm so tired or just doesn't understand that you know I'm having really , really awful pain with sex because of vaginal dryness .

Jenn Salib Huber 14:28

Or my partner doesn't understand that I'm feeling anxious and I think that that is . I mean , it is difficult , I think , to understand something that you will never physiologically go through . So I can have empathy for male partners who will never go through that , but is that one of the things that you see , that that difficulty in connecting over the midlife experience that's typical for women ?

Carrie Cohen 14:54

Yes , I would say yes , and just to give a contrasting example for frame of reference , and then come back to the couple . So if a 25 year old I'm almost 50 , so if I'm having a conversation with a 25 year old and talking to them about my perimenopause symptoms , it's so over their head they're like lady , I have no idea what you're talking about . You know , which is how I would have felt at 25 listening to you know . And again , I've been around with women who are going through perimenopause and it really I had really no frame of reference . And so so that's the males experience , and the males experience is even more disconnected because they didn't go through this . They did go through puberty , like we did , but it's men and women have a different experience with their body and how they perceive their body when they're , when they're having hormonal changes .

Carrie Cohen 15:44

So let's go back to the couple , I would say first off , it's really important that we give our husbands the benefit of the doubt , in that they want to know about what's going on with us and they really want to know and can have even so much more compassion when they know it's not about them and so .

Carrie Cohen 16:03

But they are going to go to that place first and think it's about them . There's something wrong with how they're touching their wife now , like all of a sudden I used to do that and it used to feel good , and now you don't like that , and now all of a sudden you're not interested in having sex or being intimate . And I think that when women can explain to them again and again and again what's going on and reassure them that it's not about them , it's the male . It's about finding a new way to connect and engage and be intimate emotionally and physically , now that we are moving to through a new stage of life , and people in their 70s and 80s have to have this conversation too as well , because their bodies aren't as limber as they used to be , generally speaking . And so I think that , for women , if we can give men the benefit of the doubt , if we could start there , that they really want to understand and many men will make comments about .

Carrie Cohen 17:04

And I will sit with a couple like this and he'll say , oh , it's your hormones . And I've had to really educate men in a couple of sessions and just say , look , that feels to her like you are either A dismissing it , b patronizing her for having it and C just really not understanding . Because the reality is that the hormones do play a role , just like yours do , right .

Carrie Cohen 17:27

So men with low testosterone , they start to get irritated and agitated and moody , and so I think that there's so much opportunity for education for couples around this , and without it they start to feel really isolated and alone . And A is a couple and B is two parts of a couple .

Jenn Salib Huber 17:44

Yeah , oh , my goodness and I definitely hear that a lot from people when they say that their partner will blame their hormones , and it does feel dismissive . But I also think that , trying to give husbands the benefit of the doubt , I don't think that they can again really empathize with what it's like to have this cyclical set of symptoms that come and go every month and change and then really go on a roller coaster ride in midlife Right , because they don't have that . They don't have that cycle built in . But hormones and hormone changes are part of the why . But we also can't control them . So calling them out like that and saying it's your hormones , like it's a choice , feels really not supportive . So for any partner's listening , I think that that's an important kind of take home too .

Carrie Cohen 18:39

Yeah , it definitely feels not supportive and I think that oftentimes husbands can feel very powerless when they are trying to connect to their wife and be physical with their wife .

Carrie Cohen 18:54

They could feel very powerless . And so I think that husbands can do things like Do research on a new lubricants , make you know , like husbands , yeah , they can start to do research . They can start to say , hey , I , I thought you know , there's lubricants that work better than the water base . There's , there's gadgets where you can insert the lubricant all the way in . Like , husbands can really start to feel more in , in , have some control over it , but and feel less powerless by Taking on some of that responsibility and saying like , hey , I did a little bit research and what I read was that , you know , maybe you have vaginal dryness more during this time of the month , so what if we start to think about maybe being intimate in another time of the month ? There , I think that there is an active role that husbands really need to play during this stage of life . That would really go so far in In that connection .

Jenn Salib Huber 19:56

Yes , so let's talk about a scenario that sometimes , well often comes up when I'm talking to people about , like a Tunement disruptors and especially related to to mood and things like that , which is relevant if whether or not people have children .

Jenn Salib Huber 20:14

But you know , often this role of the default parent if you do have children or the household manager is Is is still , you know , going on when all these things are happening .

Jenn Salib Huber 20:23

And I think one of the gifts of midlife is that we Often no longer have the ability to do the things that we don't want to do anymore , that we don't enjoy , and so we're evolving .

Jenn Salib Huber 20:35

You know , our identity and our role and and our ourselves are evolving , and sometimes that means that we're doing less For the people in our family , and it may be that's necessary and needed as part of self-care and taking care of ourselves , but this is often what comes up is that people will say I Want to do all these things to take care of myself , but it feels like I'm letting other people down and sometimes they call me out on that . They'll say , hey , you , you've been doing this thing for so long and yet it was never 50 50 , it was never part of you know what felt like an equal sharing of responsibility . That's kind of what I jokingly call that midlife crisis that you know it , you can't , you no longer are able to do those things without feeling angry and resentful . And when I have noticed you know friends and who are in that situation , that seems to be the hardest part of this midlife Messy middle to navigate is the changing roles around ourselves .

Carrie Cohen 21:39

Yeah , and and it really speaks to the need for the couple to have ongoing conversations about . So let's , let's just think about , let me just backtrack so when a couple goes from Dating to living together , that transition warrants a lot of discussion and negotiation and renegotiation . And when they go from living together to having children , again , lots of ongoing conversation and negotiation . Midlife is no different and so , and the same would go for any other non-built-in transitions . So those are more developmental transitions that happen , the non-built-in transitions , if somebody takes a new job or there's a move , or there's a loss of a parent and somebody's grieving . So what this really speaks to is the need for this couple to be having ongoing conversation about these things , calibrating and recalibrating along the way every time there is a life transition .

Carrie Cohen 22:43

And so for us , for example , my dad passed away . We're coming up on three years and my mom lives , not with us , but she lives local . My brothers live up north and my husband took on my mom's finances . He manages , you know , she takes care of her own stuff , but he sort of he keeps it all , manages her investments and all of that and so , and that was a conversation we had and it was an easy one . I mean , if it was a difficult one , we would have had to continue to have that conversation , but that was a new role for him that he hadn't taken on before .

Carrie Cohen 23:15

And I think where couples really go wrong is by not talking about these things , by not saying look , as I'm entering this stage of life , I'm actually feeling more fatigued , I can't do as much as I used to , and there are a few things that are really important to me , that are non-negotiables , that I need to do for my own physical and mental health , that I'd like to keep up . So how can we start to think about redistributing the other responsibilities of the household so that we can make room for that and also recognize that I just need more sleep or I need more downtime or more space ? And that's really where I see the importance of having this open dialogue between couples , and that's really sort of the crux of this for couples . So the couples who aren't having that conversation , they end up having a lot of turbulence in their marriage and that's when we really start to see an escalation in the arguing and the disconnect . And then I see them in my office .

Jenn Salib Huber 24:11

And what I was going to say , too , is earlier is that , like men-o-rage right , which so many people resonate with and understand , is kind of this . Boiling up this eruption of anger , women will often feel bad because they'll say it's directed towards my partner , it's directed towards my husband , and it often comes down to feeling like we haven't negotiated a package that it's , that I'm happy with .

Jenn Salib Huber 24:40

And I feel like I want to change the terms of our agreement , and sometimes that is the tipping point in that men-o-rage conversation is that your frustrations are really valid and they've always been valid , but now , because of this hormone soup that you're in , it is harder and harder and harder to ignore that and that communication becomes critical to be able to say , hey , we need to talk about this . So if couples are coming into midlife , what are some things that maybe somebody who's in the earlier stages of perimenopause , what would be some advice that you would give to newly midlife couples about how to kind of insulate or insure themselves against some of this turbulence ?

Carrie Cohen 25:33

Yeah . So I would say , let's just pick like an age range . So I would say when you're starting around 40 , if you haven't already , it's a good time to start having a state of the affairs conversation . Sort of begin that state of the union , like OK , where have we been up until now ? We're married next number of years , our kids are this age . We've been doing life this way , Our family's been running this way . Where are we heading ? Our kids are getting older , they're going to be doing this and that . Where are we ? Like ? I would say , if a couple hasn't done that yet , it's really important to at least have that state of the union . That big kind of it's the beginning of that conversation and then to begin to think about how are we feeling about each of our responsibilities to the home , to the kids and to each other . And that becomes sort of a built in opportunity to start that conversation . It is not a one and done , it is ongoing . And so I and I say sort of you know you're getting ready to round 40 , it 40 can kind of sneak up on you .

Carrie Cohen 26:41

I remember when I was turning 40 and I was , I was in some a group program I was part of and and one person said , well , you're midlife , and I was like I midlife . It was sort of like , like my , my , my own kind of defenses didn't really allow me to think about the fact that I was like in midlife , right . And he's like , oh my gosh , I'm in midlife and so , and the point there is that it can really just happen upon us before we even know it , right . So if you're having your kids when you're in your 30s and then all of a sudden , you're like , how did I get to midlife already , you know ? And so I think that really , just agreeing that we're going to start having those conversations , and what I say to couples , going back to your , your example with your friend , is that it's really important that couples build in a structure that works for them , and so the structure I always give is the following it's like start with having daily mindset checks . It's a it's it takes two minutes . It's where's your mind today , where's your head today ? I didn't sleep well last night . I'm a little bit of funk . There's no , there's no need for like to dig deep , it's just a check . We want to we always want to sort of have a pulse on what's going on with our partner , so that we are not blindsided and like we wake up one day and they say to us I'm not happy , I want a divorce . We always want to have a pulse . So I encourage the daily mindset checks .

Carrie Cohen 28:06

I also encourage what I call these stress less convos . When they're needed . At the end of the day , if you're stressed out , you set a timer five to 10 minutes . It's an opportunity to really just decompress . Your partner hold space for you . There's nothing to fix . They don't respond , they're just listening . They're holding space for you . And those are two daily things .

Carrie Cohen 28:26

And then I also encourage couples to do two weekly dates . One is the 30 minute chat about the business of things , the schedules , our kids , what's going on , how are we doing , how am I doing with you , how are you doing with me , what do we need ? Things like that . It's to manage the business side of the relationship . And then a date like a whether you're going out and having a picnic or you're going for a walk together . It doesn't have to be , you know , a night out , always but there's no business talk , there's no kid talk . It's to nourish the personal side of the relationship .

Carrie Cohen 28:57

So when you I just gave you four things and a couple might say , oh , we can't fit all that in right now .

Carrie Cohen 29:02

So you start , you know , you just start slowly and you start building it . But the point of all four of those , ultimately , is to give that couple check points , touch points , so that they are always in touch with what's going on with each other , so that they there are no surprises . And for someone like your friend no , I don't want to sit and connect at 10 PM at night . I go to bed at 10 , right , I don't want to do it at 10 . So for that couple there's a conversation that's let's start to look for some time , when we're both at our best , that we can connect , so we make sure then the other person doesn't start to feel the neglect every time they ask for it and their partner's unavailable , and then they start to feel resentful oh , you have energy all day long for all the things you want to do , but when I need something you don't have energy for me , and so that's really just backtracking and building in a structure so that you do that when it's like the ideal time , the optimal time .

Jenn Salib Huber 30:00

So what you're really saying is that we need attunement .

Carrie Cohen 30:03

Very much and no one gets perfect attunement , but being seen and being heard and being understood . To me the marital dyad is a . It parallels the parent-child dyad . Whether you have kids or not , you were once a kid and you had a parent and that level of attunement it gets replicated in our marital dyad . It serves a similar function and different functions but it's important , yeah , very important , that attunement .

Jenn Salib Huber 30:35

And just like with eating and intuitive eating and we talk about attunement , we also have to talk about attunement disruptors , right , and so sometimes it's not that the messages aren't being sent , it's that your ability to listen and hear them is being obstructed in some way , you know . So I love that you kind of have these really clear ideas of do this , especially that mindset check . I think that that's a really good . I think I heard , I think Brené Brown also talked about how she does that , about you know , it's like what do you need today ? Like where are you at Scale 1 to 10 ?

Jenn Salib Huber 31:11

Just so that you have this kind of like pulse on like okay .

Jenn Salib Huber 31:17

Yeah , it's like oh yeah , okay , if I'm at a 2 . And I joked that for years the first question my husband would ask me , especially when I wasn't sleeping , was how did you sleep ? Because I think he knew that that was really going to set the tone for the day anyway and that was really going to determine like how much support I needed , right , Thank you so so much . I feel like this is going to be a really helpful conversation to kind of supplement all of the food and symptom conversations that happen on this podcast , Because , of course , relationships are a big part of our life , you know , regardless of whether you have kids or not . So if people want to learn more from you , tell us a little bit about how you work with people .

Carrie Cohen 32:00

Yeah , so I work with couples . I work with them privately , one-on-one with a couple . I also work with women individually who want to work on some of these women's dynamics and their partner either is not ready or not available to work on things that the woman is experiencing . So I do work . I mean , I've my career . I've worked with , you know , men and women individually all along . So , and then I also have a group starting .

Carrie Cohen 32:29

I just finished a boot camp and if anyone is interested , I just I just ran through a boot camp . I have the replays and in that boot camp it's really all about having giving couples the foundation . It's like these are all of the basics that you really need to have in place for your marriage in order to create a strong , long lasting love , regardless of the stage of marriage you're at and regardless of the issues you're dealing with . All marital marital diets need some similar ingredients , and so so people can reach out to me for that , and I also have a group . I have my three month signature program starting in a couple weeks . I'm actually starting to promote that . There's lots of ways to work with me and people can find me on Instagram , linkedin , email .

Jenn Salib Huber 33:16

And we'll have all the links in the show notes too . That's amazing . So what do you think is the missing ingredient in midlife ?

Carrie Cohen 33:23

Well , I would say , the missing ingredient , which is something that I am focusing on a lot right now , with and without my husband , is creating more joy through play .

Jenn Salib Huber 33:35

And .

Carrie Cohen 33:36

I think that we have to be very intentional about that . And so because you go from spending all of your time doing everything with your kids my daughter is now 14 and she is very busy with her own thing and my husband and I are like find ourselves every weekend sitting at home and we're like no , no , no , it's our turn again . Now we get to do the things that we used to do before we had her . So now we're out rock climbing , we're playing pickleball , we're like we're doing all these kind of fun things that we used to do before we had her . And so I think that the missing ingredient for couples is being intentional about creating more joy through play .

Jenn Salib Huber 34:14

I love that . What a great one . I think that's the first time that one's been shared so good . Thank you so so much , Carrie , and have a great day .

Carrie Cohen 34:27

Thank you as well . I appreciate it , Jen .