How Did We Get Here? When Your Marriage Changes After the Kids Leave

Have you ever looked at your marriage and wondered, "How did we get here?"

Maybe nothing is terribly wrong, but something feels different. The kids have grown up, the house is quieter, and now you have the space to notice changes in your relationship that were easy to overlook during the busy years of raising a family.

In this episode, we're talking about why long marriages often feel different in midlife—and why that doesn't necessarily mean something is broken.

We'll explore:

• Why resentment often builds slowly over years of sacrifice
• How the stories we tell ourselves shape the way we experience our marriages
• The hidden cost of carrying everyone else's emotions while hiding our own
• Why emotional adulthood invites us to move from assumption to curiosity
• How both you and your spouse are changing in midlife—and why that's an opportunity instead of a problem

If you've been feeling disconnected, frustrated, or simply wondering why your marriage feels different than it used to, this episode will encourage you to stop asking, "What's wrong with us?" and start asking a more hopeful question.

Because sometimes the greatest gift you can give your marriage isn't fixing it.

It's allowing yourself to be truly known.

If this episode encouraged you, share it with a friend who might need the reminder that changing doesn't mean failing—it may simply mean you're entering a new season together.

If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend!

And if you loved this episode, please rate the show and leave a review so others can find it, too.  

You can also follow me on my socials:

Instagram: @loribuckcoaching

Facebook: Lori Buck Coaching

Website: www.loribuckcoaching.com 

Email: lori@loribuckcoaching.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello, friend, and welcome back to Loving That Midlife. I'm Lori Buck, Master Certified Christian Life Coach, and I'm so glad you're here. Today, we're talking about something I don't think I've actually ever dedicated an entire episode to before, and that's marriage. Now, before you think, well, my marriage is great, or my marriage is struggling, or maybe you're listening and you're single, widowed, or divorced, stay with me. Because today's conversation isn't about creating the perfect marriage. We couldn't do that even if we tried. But it's about what happens when one of the longest relationships in your life enters a new season. And I think whether you're married or not, we've all experienced relationships changing as we move through midlife. One quick note before we dive in. Today's conversation assumes you're in a safe relationship. If you are experiencing abuse, either physical or emotional, or you're afraid to be honest with your spouse because it wouldn't be emotionally or physically safe for you, this episode is not speaking to your marriage. That is a very different situation. And if that is the case for you, please reach out to someone that you trust for support. Or you could reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline for more help at 1-800-799 SAFE. That's 800-799-7233. Okay, now onto our episode. Have you ever looked at your marriage and wondered, how did we get here? Not necessarily in a bad way. Maybe right now you're happier than you've ever been. Maybe you genuinely enjoy spending time with your spouse. Or maybe you've just noticed something feels different. Maybe the house is quieter now that some or all of the kids are gone. Maybe conversations don't come as naturally as they used to. Maybe you feel like you don't have as much to talk about. Maybe little things suddenly bother you that never seem like a big deal before. I hear so many middle-aged women saying the sound of their husband chewing drives them insane. I think that might be a perimenopause thing. Or maybe you've caught yourself thinking, why am I so irritated with him lately? Or maybe you've realized you're carrying around resentment you never even knew was there. If any of that sounds familiar, I want to offer you some hope right now. What if nothing has gone wrong? What if you're simply entering a season where you're taking time to really notice what's happening in your marriage? Because, friend, if you don't know what is actually happening, you won't know what it needs or how you might want to change it. For so many of us, our marriage spent 20 or 30 years operating in the background. Not because it wasn't important, but because life was loud. There were kids to raise, jobs to work, meals to cook, houses to clean, calendars to coordinate, homework, sports, laundry, college applications, aging parents. Your marriage had a shared mission. Then one day, the mission changes. The house gets quieter, and suddenly you start to notice your relationship again. Not because something suddenly broke, but because you finally have enough quiet to hear it. And I know what that feels like. After homeschooling for 13 years, something unexpected happened right after my youngest graduated. Now, let me be clear, I would not trade those years of homeschooling for anything. I've said it once and I'll say it again. Homeschooling was the hardest yet most fulfilling job I have ever done in my life. And if I had to do it all over again, I absolutely would. But there was a cost. And for a few weeks after I graduated, my youngest, all I could see was what it had cost me. And I started making a mental list. I had given up the opportunity for a career. I had given up free time. I had given up income, professional growth, time to myself. I had sacrificed so much. And those sacrifices were real. I wasn't making them up. But somewhere in those weeks after she graduated, my thoughts slowly turned into resentment. Not towards my children, but towards my husband. I was keeping score, and he was on the wrong side of that equation. Then one morning, when I was thinking those same thoughts again over and over, another thought occurred to me. Yes, I had sacrificed a lot, but that wasn't the whole story. And then I asked the question, what had Jeff sacrificed to be the sole provider for our family for all those years? And that question changed everything. My list didn't disappear. My sacrifices were real, as I mentioned. But suddenly I realized Jeff probably had a list too. He had carried pressures I had never carried. He had sacrificed things I never saw. He had worried about things I didn't have to think about. We weren't opponents keeping score against each other. We were teammates who were trying to build a life together. And that one question completely shifted my perspective. I think sometimes resentment isn't just about what happened. I think sometimes it's about how we tell ourselves the story and whose story we're remembering. And that's one of the reasons I love coaching. Because coaching teaches us to be curious instead of certain instead of asking, what's wrong with my marriage? What if we ask, what story has my brain been telling me? Or what story have I forgotten to consider? That's a much more hopeful place to begin. And today, I'm going to give you three main teachings that I think will be so beneficial to you and your marriage. Teaching one, the stories we tell become the life we experience. So, here on the podcast, if you've listened for any time at all, you've heard me talk about the creation cycle. Our thoughts create our feelings, our feelings drive our actions, and our actions ensure our results. And then our brains use those results as evidence that our original thoughts were true. If my brain keeps telling me, I've sacrificed everything, I'm going to start feeling resentment. And if I feel resentment, I'm probably going to withdraw a little, or become more critical, or keep score, or maybe I'll just assume the worst about my husband instead of the best. And then every interaction becomes more evidence that I'm the one sacrificing. I'm the one carrying everything. Nothing changed in the circumstances surrounding my marriage the day I asked myself a different question. But when I changed my thoughts, everything downstream of that began changing too. Friend, emotional adulthood doesn't ask us to deny our story. It just invites us to become curious about someone else's story too. To maybe look at our story through a different lens and realize more than one story can be true at the same time. Teaching number two, you can't be known if you never let yourself be seen. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you've heard me talk about women being the emotional pack mules of their families. As women, we often think it's our job to carry everyone else's emotions. We try to make sure everyone else is okay. We smooth conflict. We absorb disappointment. We keep the peace. Now, I've already talked before about what that does to our nervous systems. I've also talked about what it teaches our children about relationships and their own emotions. But I don't think I've ever talked about what it costs our marriage. When we spend years managing everyone else's emotions, we tend to stop expressing our own. Just think about that for a minute. We convince ourselves we're being strong, or that we're protecting everyone else, or that we don't want to burden anyone with our emotions. So we swallow disappointment, hide loneliness, push down grief, pretend we're fine, and slowly we become less known to the ones we love most. I heard a woman say the other day that she couldn't imagine telling her husband or children what she was really feeling because it would make them uncomfortable. And honestly, I remember being in that exact position at one point. And it made me wonder how many of us are doing exactly that. We think we're protecting the people we love. But what we're actually doing is hiding who we really are. Many of us have spent years wanting to be understood while never allowing ourselves to be fully known. If your husband doesn't know you're grieving, he can't try to comfort you. If he doesn't know you're scared, he can't pray with you. If he doesn't know you're discouraged, he can't respond to you. Not because he doesn't care, but because you've become so good at carrying everyone's emotions alone and or stuffing down your own emotions that he might not even realize you have them at this point. And teaching number three, you're both becoming new people. I also think we forget something else in midlife. We expect women to change. Menopause literally used to be called the change. And you probably heard your grandmother or your mother whisper something about the change when you were little and you were confused. I know I was. The good news is that we now are talking a lot about women's hormones and how to support them. And perimenopause, sleep, hot flashes, brain fog, all the things. But our husbands, they're going through changes too. And that probably isn't talked about as much. Except for the old joke about men in a midlife crisis, buying a sports car. Anyway, their hormones shift, their bodies change, their energy changes. Maybe the man who always seems steady suddenly becomes a little more emotional or quieter or more reflective. Maybe he's worried about retirement. Or he's also wondering what this next season is going to look like when the kids are gone. While you're looking at him thinking, who are you? He's probably asking himself the exact same question. And he might be talking about himself, or he might be talking about you. Friend, maybe the goal isn't to get your old marriage back. Maybe it's to become curious about the person standing in front of you today and who he is today. And maybe to let him be curious about the woman you've become too. I think that's one of the beautiful invitations of a long marriage. We are not the same people who got married 30 years ago. We've changed in ways we never could have imagined while we were standing up there at that altar. And that's a good thing. I can't imagine living 30 years and not changing. How useless would that be? But anyone who's been part of a long-term marriage knows that if you want to stay married, you have to keep extending grace, keep forgiving, keep being curious about each other, and keep choosing love. Not because we've earned it or because we feel like it all the time, but because we committed to that, and because we've both been loved so generously by Christ that we can pour out love on one another. I love this quote by Tim Keller, and I think it sums up some of what I've been trying to express in this episode. He said, To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us. Friend, as Tim Keller said, to be known and not loved is our greatest fear. So I know that maybe the thought of opening yourself up to be more known by your husband might be a scary thought for some of you. But I want to challenge you this week. I don't want you to try to fix your marriage or make a list of everything that needs to change, or even have one of those big State of the Union conversations with your husband. Instead, I want to challenge you to let one more piece of yourself be known this week. Maybe it's a fear. Maybe it's grief. Maybe it's a dream you've never shared. Maybe it's simply saying, I don't think I've ever told you this, but sometimes connection doesn't begin with finally being understood. Sometimes it begins with finally allowing yourself to be known and becoming more curious about your husband too. So, what's mid about the midlife this week? Well, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, Jeff and I just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. And I've also mentioned we planned this incredible trip to Alaska, and it was wonderful, as I talked about last week. But what I didn't really think about was that our actual anniversary was the day after we got home. And what did we do? We spent most of it recovering from travel. Our flight got in around 1 a.m. on our anniversary after we had spent almost the entire day in the Seattle airport because of a really long layover and then a delayed flight on top of that. I think we finally got into bed around two in the morning. So our big monumental anniversary day was mostly spent being tired, unpacking luggage, and wondering what time zone we were even in. And honestly, I think that's a pretty good picture of what our marriage has been like over the last 30 years. Some big highs, some big lows, and a whole lot of everyday kind of moments in between. Friends, a 30-year marriage isn't built on big anniversary dinners. And that's a good thing because there were years we couldn't get a sitter, or someone got sick at the last minute, or he was out of town working. You know, life was lifing. Instead, a long marriage is built on ordinary Tuesdays, on paying bills, on raising kids, on airport layovers that feel endless, on making sacrifices neither person fully sees in the moment. It's made up of thousands of ordinary days where two imperfect people keep choosing each other over and over and over again. And maybe one of the greatest gifts of a long-term marriage isn't that you stop changing. Maybe it's that you keep getting the chance to know the person standing in front of you and choosing to be with them all over again. Well, friends, that's all I've got for you this week. If this episode encouraged you, I'd love for you to share it with a friend who's navigating this season of midlife too. And if you're finding these conversations helpful, leaving a rating or a review is one of the best ways to help other women find the podcast. If you want to reach me, you can find me on social media at Loribuck Coaching or on my website at Loribuckcoaching.com. That's L-O-R-I B U C K Coaching dot com. I'll see you next week.