Real Talk About Midlife Relationships | Midlife with Courage™ Unfiltered

In this subscriber-only episode, Kim shares a sneak peek into her most important relationship—her marriage—and reflects on what decades together can teach you about love, change, and staying solid through life’s transitions. 

Inspired by a past conversation about dating after 40 and holding boundaries, she talks candidly about how relationships evolve, how communication matters, and how small shifts can make a big difference. 

Kim also invites listeners to share their own experiences, questions, and challenges via text, email, or social media.

If you'd like to go back and listen to the episode with Merideth, you can click HERE.

Kim Benoy is a retired RN, Certified Aromatherapist, wife and mom who is passionate about inspiring and encouraging women over 40. She wants you to see your own beauty, value and worth through sharing stories of other women just like you.

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If you are looking for deeper connection, encouragement, and support, you should join my free online community. It’s a safe, uplifting space to be inspired, share honestly, and grow alongside women who truly get this season of life.

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Want to be a guest on Midlife with Courage™-Flourishing After Forty with Kim Benoy? Send Kim Benoy a message on PodMatch, here: 

Podmatch Link


NEWSLETTER

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Transcript

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Welcome to Midlife with Courage Unfiltered. This is where I share my thoughts about previous episodes, midlife experience in general, and all the things. If you have topics you want me to talk about, go to the send a text in the show notes and let me know. You can be anonymous or you can let me know who you are. You might even be able to suggest future topic episodes. Now, let's get started. Hello, and Welcome to the second Unfiltered episode. I hope you liked the last episode. Let me know what you think about that. Thank you to those of you who did reach out and, let me know that you enjoyed that. And remember that you can always. Reach out by clicking on the, send a text and you can give me your feedback. You can suggest other topics. Just let me know that you're out there and you're listening. And I wanna again say too that I so appreciate all of you who are joining me in this unfiltered journey. And yes. So last time we talked about, um, messages, we would tell our younger selves. This time I'm gonna talk about something a little totally well, kind of different. It's not about a message we give ourselves this time. In this episode, I wanna talk about relationships and. What got me started thinking about this was my conversation with Merideth Thompson. She was the one, if you remember, she had a long marriage, 20 plus year marriage, which she ended and which was a good thing, and she's dating now. And so we talked about entering the dating world and. What that was like and how she used, basically she used science to help her find a partner. And she has a program that you can use yourself. You can either help yourself find what you're looking for, maybe you're not quite sure. You can also evaluate your current relationships and find out if it's. Based on this research that if it's a good idea to continue it or not it's kind of an interesting, interesting theory, interesting, um, concept in my mind. But what it got me thinking about was as we get to this age, our midlife, our wonderful midlife, our relationships. Tend to change a little bit, at least mine have. And I'm talking about your marriage relationships with partners. Maybe you're not married, maybe you have a partner, maybe you don't have a partner. But if you don't, I guess this, maybe this episode isn't quite for you, but you never know. You know, I've been married a long time. I've been married, we're coming up on 38 years and we were married very young. I feel like we grew up together and,'cause we were both, I was. 20 when we got married and he was 21. I turned 21 like a month later. But anyhow, and then we had kids right away. I was pregnant on our first anniversary. Yeah, so we started pretty young and not a lot of people can say that, they've been together for this long. It's been a journey and I'm proud of that. I am super thankful. You know, it hasn't always been, we used to say sunshine and roses. I, I think people say that now. Or what did we say? We had this saying. I'll have to remember it. I probably, I don't know if I'll remember it. We've been married for 38 years, remember? So, but no, we just, we just it works for us. However, I don't like saying however. And as you, as we go through different changes in our in our lives, in our marriage, I mean, we've had things we, as I said, we have, we had twins, two babies at once, and we didn't have anymore after that. For various reasons, not by my choice at first, but no, I'm glad it worked out that way. But you know, there's navigating. First of all, parenthood in general, and parenthood with twins is always fun. And so there's things that came up with that. Navigating family stuff. Uh. He worked for 37 years at a job that it, it got pretty stressful there towards the end. And he, he did retire early and I mean, it was early. It wasn't too early, but it was, when they say early, it's before age 59 and a half, which is coming up. But, there's money issues that come up and I feel like we really handled, so far, we've handled things really well and. When I was talking to Merideth about how dating, how entering the dating field, again, I kind of started thinking about that. What if, God forbid, please don't let this ever happen that, you know, something happened where I had to be single again and had to go out into the dating field, and I don't know that I would, I don't, I think. Okay, maybe this is just because I'm in this space right now with, he retired a few years ago, and to go from him working a full-time, 10 hour days, four days a week, and then a lot of weekends he would go hunting or fishing. And sometimes I go to, but mostly, you know, he wasn't here as much as he is now, and that has been. It's been a little bit of a strain. I'm not gonna lie, and he knows it. This isn't anything he doesn't know about because we, we talk about it and we joke about it sometimes, and we've had to, to navigate, how we. How we deal with each other on a day-to-day basis now, because now that I'm working, you know, I work from home with, with what I'm doing with the podcast and everything. So, so we're just, we're together so much. And I'm trying to figure out where I was going with this, because we were talking about dating. But oh, this is, this is where I was going with this. See, this is the unfiltered part of it, ladies. To me dating again would be starting over with somebody new. But you're coming from the perspective of I know what I want. I'm not gonna settle for anything. I have my boundaries. And you know, if someone would want to be with me, that would be. They'd have to deal with me. It would be by my rules. It's just so I feel icky talking about it because I really, really don't want that to happen. But, um, it also makes me think about, you know, when we were young and how things have changed as far as we romance and, um. In the first episode, one of the things, one of the message messages I told my younger self would be to have more sex. And it's not like, okay, here is really unfiltered. I guess this is kind of weird to talk about, I feel like I don't feel like we, I feel like that area was good. And I'm thinking now from the perspective of. Not having those as many romantic moments that I wish I would've said it, I wish I would've said yes more often as a younger married woman. How's that there there's a truth out there for you. As you get older, I mean, obviously I'm still attracted to him and I know he's attracted to me'cause I've asked him because I'm making sure. So that's a whole other topic, it's not just, I guess sex isn't such a big focus as it used to be, but it still was something important. And it still is. I'm not saying like that isn't out there. That's not my option anymore. It is. But sometimes there's things you have to do to make it a little bit more, you have to make more of an effort, I guess that's what it is. You have to make more of an effort to. To make the time, at end of the day you've been doing busy stuff, you're older, maybe you don't feel like hitting the sheets or whatever they say. But I think it's really important to make the time to do that. And so that's why as a younger person, I wish I would've done it more often. Maybe that would've created more. Habit, I don't know if habit's the right word, but more of a routine in a good way. I guess that's, maybe that's what I'm thinking. I don't know. What do you, I would love to hear your thoughts on this. And I'm trying to talk about this without, like, giving anything away that, my husband wouldn't want me talking about. But but just in general, we, uh, is it three years ago now? His dad and, they each have a snowmobile and they're, they keep him at his dad's house. And so three winters ago we went snowmobiling and I got to ride on the back of his, and I don't know what it was about it but him. Being in his snow suit and being in charge of this machine. And, and I got to hold him like around his waist. And it was just kind of a cool thing. It's like we got to be physically together without anything else. You know what I mean? It's just, I don't know, it was just like so attractive to him. I was so attracted to him that day for some reason. And so that's why I've been trying to, we wanna go snowmobiling more. It's kind of fun. Um. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe that's something that, that you, you tell me what you guys think. Tell me about that. Tell me, and this can be an ongoing kind of subject for us in this, uh, in this unfiltered space. Tell me about it. I just feel like. Some days I wish I could go back to those early days when we were like all over each other and, you know, we didn't have to worry about kids opening a door or making noise, that kind of thing. Um, and now we don't again. But yet it's different. It's, there's a freedom in that again. But there's also, physically it's like I'm not quite sure what's going on, so I would love to know, please share with me. Please don't let me be the only one sharing these, these experiences. And let me know what you think and send me a text. Send me an email if you wanna be anonymous, just do send a text and I won't even know who sent it, um, unless you tell me. Yeah, so please let me know what you think. I would love to know. Until the next time you join me again, I appreciate your support for this. I hope you are enjoying it as much as I am enjoying making it the midlife with courage, unfiltered. Um, until next time, take care of your beautiful selves. Bye-bye.