The Intentional Midlife Mom Podcast | Simple, Practical Life, Home & Mindset Solutions for Moms Over 40

Ep. 182: I Don't Know If Anyone Actually Sees Me Anymore

• Season 2 • Episode 182

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Let's talk about the loneliest feeling in the world.

It's not being alone.

It's being surrounded by people who love you—and still feeling completely invisible.

You don't feel like yourself anymore.

And you definitely don't feel like anyone else sees you either.

Not your husband.
 Not your kids.
 Maybe not even your friends.

You've been shape-shifting for years to hold it all together.

Adapting. Adjusting. Accommodating.

Being whatever everyone needed you to be.

And now you're standing in the middle of your life, wondering:

"Who sees me now? Do I even want to see me now? And do I even like her?"

Maybe the scariest part isn't that you've changed.

It's that no one seems to have noticed.

They're still treating you like the version of you from five years ago.

The agreeable one. The accommodating one. The always-available one.

But that woman? She doesn't exist anymore.

And this new version—the one with opinions, boundaries, and a shorter fuse?

She feels invisible. Unwanted. Emotionally homeless in her own life.

This is Episode 3 of the series:
 "Marriage Conversations Midlife Besties Are Having (But Afraid to Say Out Loud)."

I'm Jennifer Roskamp, and this is The Intentional Midlife Mom podcast.

Let's dive in.

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Well, today we're having another deep conversation. And we're talking about being surrounded by people who love you, but still feeling completely invisible. And honestly, you're not even sure if you see who you are anymore either. And you're not sure if you even like her. And maybe the scariest part isn't that you've changed. It's that no one seems to have noticed. They're still treating you like the version of you from five years ago. The agreeable one, the accommodating one, the always available one.

But that woman, she just doesn't exist anymore. And the new version, the one with opinions and boundaries and a shorter fuse, well, she feels invisible, maybe even unwanted, emotionally homeless in her own life. So welcome back, friend. Over the last two episodes, we've been unpacking some hard truths about midlife marriage. In episode one, we talked about that terrifying question, what if I don't even love him anymore?

And we discovered that you didn't fall out of love. You fell under the weight of everything you're carrying. And in the second episode in this series, we talked about why everything feels so wrong, even though he's still doing what he's always done, because the load evolved and the partnership didn't. And so this week, we're going even deeper, because here's what I keep hearing from women. And I'm having the same conversations with my friends and myself, too.

We're saying things like, I don't think he sees me anymore, not the real me. And honestly, I'm not even sure I see myself. And so today we're going to unpack why midlife women feel emotionally invisible, even in longstanding marriages. We're going to talk about how the roles you mastered became the identity that you couldn't escape. And we're going to talk about why emotional homelessness is the real crisis and what to do about it. And so by the end of this episode, you're going to understand why you feel so lost.

why that feeling is actually the beginning of finding yourself again. Let's get started. So here's what happened in your marriage. You changed. Everything around you changed. And you adapted. You adapted to the financial stretch of older kids, things like college tuition that costs more than your first house, car insurance that you can't even believe is real, adult children who needed help getting started in a world that's harsher than the one you entered.

Then there's the emotional weight of teenagers and young adults, their anxiety that keeps you up at night, their heartbreak that you can't protect them from, their struggles with mental health and relationships, and finding their place in the world, things you can't fix with a band-aid or a snack anymore. Then there's your changing body, the hormones that turned your internal thermostat into a broken furnace, weight that won't budge no matter what you try, an energy that evaporates by noon.

And then there's sleep patterns that leave you wired at 2 a.m. and exhausted at 2 p.m. There's your shifting mind, the brain fog that has you forgetting words mid-sentence, shorter patience for things that used to roll off your back, a growing inability to tolerate chaos, noise, and constant demands. Your depleted bandwidth, less capacity for drama, less tolerance for surface level conversations, less energy for managing everyone else's emotions while yours get ignored.

And you grew, you stretched, you evolved, not because you wanted to, but because you had to. Life demanded it, your body forced it, your kids, they required it. The world shifted beneath your feet and you had to learn to walk differently or you would fall and so you changed. You became more protective of your energy, more selective about where you invest your time, more aware of your limits and more willing to enforce them. More vocal about what's not working, more honest about what you need.

You're not the agreeable go with the flow woman that you used to be. Again, not because you choose to be difficult, but because you can't afford not to be intentional anymore. Your capacity won't let you. And your husband? Meanwhile, he kept showing up the same way he always has. Same routines, same contributions, same emotional availability or lack thereof, same jokes, same assumptions, same blind spots. Not because he's cruel, but because he didn't have to change.

You absorbed the changes for him. You compensated. You adjusted. You made it all work. You managed the emotions. You planned the finances. You carried the worry. You made sure that his life could stay the same while yours was completely upended. And because you did, he never felt the weight of what was shifting. So from his perspective, nothing changed. Life looks the same. The marriage looks the same. You look the same from the outside. He still sees the woman that he married, but you, you feel completely different.

You feel like a stranger in your own skin sometimes. And this creates this painful, invisible gap, a gap that widens every time he treats you like the old version of you, every time he expects you to accommodate when you have no capacity left, every time he's surprised that you're upset about something that never used to bother you. Your marriage is still calibrated for a version of you that no longer exists, a version of you who had more bandwidth to absorb everyone else's chaos.

You said yes more easily because you had margin. You let things slide without resentment building. You could absorb noise and mess and constant demands without snapping. You could prioritize everyone else without losing yourself in the process. And you made peace with being invisible as long as everyone else was happy. But that woman, she's gone. And this new version, the one that's standing here now, she has needs and boundaries and limits. And she has a voice that she's finally learning to use.

She can't absorb everything anymore. Her nervous system simply won't let her. She won't stay quiet to keep the peace because the cost is just too high. She doesn't have the capacity to pretend everything's fine when it's screaming on the inside. But here's the problem. No one updated the operating system. Your husband is still interacting with version 1.0 of you. And you, you're running version 2.0, maybe even 3.0 at this point.

And the mismatch is making you feel crazy because he thinks he's doing everything right. And he's being consistent, reliable, the same man he's always been. And you're wondering why it doesn't feel like love anymore. It's not that the love is gone. It's that the love isn't landing because he's directing it at someone who doesn't exist anymore. He's still treating you like the woman who could handle everything without breaking, like the woman who never said no, like the woman who didn't need much because she never asked for anything.

But that's not who you are now. And the painful truth is he hasn't noticed. Or if he has, he doesn't understand what it means. He just knows you're different, harder to please, more sensitive, angry all the time. And from his perspective, that's the problem. But from your perspective, the problem is that he's still in love with a ghost of you. So let me ask you something. When was the last time you truly felt seen by your husband? Not just noticed, not just acknowledged, but seen?

Seen for who you are now, not who you used to be. Most women I coach, they can't remember. Because here's the painful reality. He may say that he loves you, but you don't feel seen by him. And there's a reason for that. He fell in love with and married an earlier version of you. The version of you who was agreeable and easygoing, who accommodated everyone's needs without complaint, who was always available emotionally, physically, mentally, didn't push back or make waves.

and a version of you who made his life easier, not harder. And that version of you, she was real. She wasn't fake or performing. That was you back then. But you're not her anymore. This version of you, she has opinions, sometimes strong ones. She has boundaries, and she's learning to enforce them. She has a shorter fuse because her capacity is maxed. She has a bigger voice because she's tired of being quiet.

She says no, she pushes back, she names what's not working, and here's the heartbreaking truth. This version of you was never chosen. He didn't get to meet her, date her, decide if he wanted to spend his life with her. She just showed up one day. And from his perspective, you changed the deal. You're not the woman he married, you're harder to live with, more demanding, less flexible, and he doesn't understand why. And so when he says you've changed, it's not affection, it's...

confusion. Sometimes it's even accusation, like you broke the contract, like you pulled a bait and switch. And you, you're left standing here thinking, of course I changed. How could I not? Life changed. My body changed. Everything changed. And you're mad at me for not staying exactly who I was at 30. But here's what's underneath all of that. You're not just mourning the disconnect. You're mourning the loss of being known. Because love

without being known isn't really love. It's more like nostalgia. It's attachment. It's comfort. But it's not connection. And that's what you are aching for. You don't just want him to love you. You want him to see you, this version of you, right now. Not the memory of who you used to be. Not the woman he wishes you still were today. But the woman who is actually standing in front of him in real time with her sharp edges and with her boundaries.

With her exhaustion and her truth, you want him to look at you and say, I see you. I see how hard this has been. I see how much you've changed. And I want to know this version of you too. But instead, he's still trying to relate to someone who doesn't exist anymore. And that leaves you feeling invisible, misunderstood, emotionally homeless in your own marriage. Here's what probably happened. The changes, they didn't happen overnight. They happened slowly, quietly, one small shift at a time.

But you kept adjusting, you kept carrying, you kept absorbing the weight. A little more stress, a little less patience, a little less capacity. But you managed, you always managed. You told yourself, this is just a hard season. Things will calm down soon. I just need to get through this week. And you did, you got through it. And then another hard week came and another. And somewhere along the way, the temporary became permanent. The weight you were carrying for now,

became the weight you carry every day and the version of yourself who could handle it all, well, she slowly disappeared, but you didn't notice right away because you were too busy surviving to stop and look in the mirror until suddenly you couldn't anymore. Maybe it was a Tuesday afternoon. Maybe it was in the middle of an argument about nothing. Maybe it was lying in bed at 2 a.m. staring at the ceiling, feeling completely unknown and something inside you, it broke open. Not broke down, broke open.

like a dam that's been holding back too much for too long, and everything came flooding out. The resentment, the exhaustion, the loneliness, the anger, the grief, all of it at once. And you thought, I can't keep doing this. That moment, that's not a breakdown. That's a threshold moment. It's the moment when your body, your mind, and your heart finally all agree. This isn't sustainable. Something has to change. And here's what I need you to hear. It's not weakness.

And your life, it isn't hopeless either. That moment, the one where you discovered that you can't hold it together anymore, that's the truth finally breaking through. All the years of pretending, of accommodating, of pushing down your needs, all of it comes up at once. And it feels like falling apart, but really it's waking up. It's your system saying, we can't do this anymore. We need help, we need change. We need to be seen. And as terrifying as that moment is, it's also the beginning.

because you can't change what you won't acknowledge. And up until now, you've been too busy managing to acknowledge how unsustainable this has been. But now, now you know, and knowledge is the first step. So let's talk about this concept of emotional homelessness. And this really is the real crisis. What's really happening here is this. You're not ungrateful. You're not overreacting. You're not confused. Essentially, you're untethered.

And that feeling, that sense of being lost in your own life, that's what I call emotional homelessness. It's the feeling of standing in the middle of your marriage, your home, your family, and feeling like you don't belong there. Like no one sees you, like no one knows you, like no one even wants to. And that, my friend, is the loneliest feeling in the world because you're not alone. You're actually surrounded by people. But none of them seem to reflect back to you who you actually are. Your husband?

He sees that version of you from 10 years ago, the easier version, the less complicated one. Your kids see mom, the role, not the person, the one who manages, who provides, and who fixes, but doesn't have her own needs, struggles, or identity. Your friends, they see the surface, the version of you who has it all together because that's what you let them see. Because admitting you're falling apart, it feels like failing. But the real you, the one who's struggling, the one who's changed, the one who doesn't fit into any of those boxes anymore,

No one mirrors her back to you. And so when your reflection disappears in your own life, everything starts to ache. You start to question yourself, am I crazy? Am I too much? Am I broken? Why can't I just be happy with what I have? Why does everything feel so hard when it used to feel manageable? What's wrong with me? And the answers you come up with are usually some version of, there must be something wrong with me. But here's the truth. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. You're not too much. You're not crazy.

You're just unseen. And being unseen, especially by the people who are supposed to love you most, is one of the most painful experiences that a human can have. Because we're not just wired for survival, we're wired for connection, for belonging, and for being known. From the time we're born, our deepest need is to be seen, understood, and valued for who we are. That doesn't mean you're vain. And it's not being too needy. That's actually part of being a human.

And when that disappears, when the people closest to us stop seeing us or never saw this version of us to begin with, we start to disappear too. Not physically, but emotionally. We go quiet. We go numb. We go through the motions and we show up for everyone else, but we're not really there. We smile, we function, we keep the house running and the kids fed and the calendar managed, but inside, inside we're fading. We stop expecting to be seen because it hurts too much to keep hoping and being disappointed.

We stop sharing what we're really feeling because no one seems to care or understand anyway. And so we stop asking for what we need because we're tired of being told we're too sensitive, too demanding, too much. And so we shrink. We silence ourselves. We disappear into the roles. And that's when the real crisis happens. It's not when you're angry. It's not when you're sad. It's not when you're fighting for connection. But it's when you stop caring, when you stop trying to be seen, when you stop hoping things will change.

When you resign yourself to, this is just how it is, and I guess I'm just going to have to accept that, that's when marriages die. It's not in a fight. It's not in a dramatic blow up. It's not even in a breakdown moment. But it's in this quiet resignation of emotional disconnection, in the slow fade of two people living parallel lives under the same roof, in the ache of being married and still feeling completely alone. And here's what so many women don't realize. The ache, isn't just about the marriage. It's about losing yourself.

When no one sees you, you start to forget who you are. You start to doubt your own perceptions, your own needs, your own worth. You start to wonder if maybe you really are too much, too sensitive, too hard to love. And that doubt, that's the most dangerous part because when you stop trusting yourself, when you stop believing you deserve to be seen, you stop fighting for it. And that's when emotional homelessness becomes your permanent address. But here's what I need you to hear. You don't have to accept that.

Being unseen is not a life sentence. It's a signal, a signal that something has to change. And that change, it starts with you finally seeing yourself. So where do we go from here? If you're feeling emotionally homeless in your own marriage, what do you do? First, you stop waiting for him to see you. I know that's hard to hear. But waiting for him to notice, to get curious, to finally see you while you disappear more and more, that's not a strategy. Honestly, that's

suffering. So you start by seeing yourself. You name what's changed. You acknowledge the weight you're carrying. You give yourself permission to be different, different than you used to be. You stop apologizing for having needs and boundaries and limits. You stop shrinking to fit into the old version of yourself. You stop shape shifting to make everyone else comfortable. And you start living as the woman you actually are right now. And if you don't know who that is, you need to start figuring that out.

And you don't have to do any of this perfectly. You don't have to have all the answers. But honestly, authentically, and unapologetically, you need to figure out who you are. And then once you've started seeing yourself, then you invite him to see you too. Not by waiting, not by hinting, but by naming it directly. You say something like, I need you to know I've changed. And I need you to get to know this version of me. You could also say,

I'm not who I was five years ago or 10 years ago, and I need you to stop treating me like I am. Or maybe you would say, I need you to see me, the real me, and not the memory of who I used to be. Now, I get it. That's vulnerable, and it's scary, and it might not be received the way that you would hope. But it's the truth. And the truth is always the starting point for real change, because here's what I've seen over and over again. When she.

when a woman just like you finally finds the courage to be seen and he finally has the awareness to see her things start to shift, not overnight, not magically, but slowly and steadily. And that feeling of emotional homelessness, it starts to ease because connection requires two things, being yourself and being seen. And right now, you're neither of those things, but that can change. Here's what I know for sure.

You're not too much. You're not crazy. You're not broken. You're just unseen. And being unseen, especially by the person you thought loved you most, is one of the most painful experiences in the world. But it doesn't have to stay that way. You can start by seeing yourself. And then you can stop apologizing for who you've become. And you can invite him to finally meet the real you. That starts with language.

with being able to say, is who I am, this is what I need, this is what needs to change. And that's exactly what the free guide, he doesn't get it yet, is designed to help you do. It's going to help you name what's changed in you and in your life. It's gonna help you understand why he hasn't noticed. It's going to help you find language that helps him see you, the real you. And it's gonna help you start a conversation that might actually lead to reconnection. You can grab it down in the show notes. And if this,

episode resonated, know that it's just the third part in a 10 series list where we're going to be talking about midlife marriages. If you felt that ache of recognition and the feeling of being unseen in your own life, this would also be an episode that you should send to your midlife bestie, the one who's been quieter lately, the one who's pulled back, the one who seems fine but you know isn't. She's feeling this too. She's not just, she's just not saying it out loud yet.

In the next episode, we're going to be diving into, I'm tired of being the one who holds it all together, and he doesn't even know I do. We're going to unpack the invisible load and why his help often makes you feel more alone. Until then, friend, give yourself permission to be seen, not as who you used to be, but as you truly are, because that woman, she deserves to be known.