Many couples emerge from the daily grind of building careers and a family and find that they’re in a union they no longer fully recognise. Illustration / Sara Andreasson, The New York Times
Many couples emerge from the daily grind of building careers and a family and find that they’re in a union they no longer fully recognise. Illustration / Sara Andreasson, The New York Times
Therapists and relationship researchers share six questions that can bring couples closer in middle age.
Midlife can be a weird time. Maybe you’re grappling with new aches and pains or brain fog. Perhaps you’re one of the 2.5 million sandwich generation caregivers simultaneously caring for children and aging parents. Maybeyou’re having an identity crisis, maybe not.
Middle age lands somewhere between 36 and 64, or maybe 40 to 60, depending on whom you ask. It is also an inflection point in relationships, experts say, a time when many couples emerge from the daily grind of building careers and a family, and find that they’re in a union they no longer fully recognise. Rates of “grey divorce” among adults over 50 have doubled in the United States since the 1990s.
“If you have children, your children are typically launching,” said Linda Hershman, the author of Gray Divorce and a licensed marriage and family therapist based in Pennsylvania. “Couples are suddenly turning around and looking at each other and thinking: What is this marriage about, and what is this marriage going to be about?”
We asked Hershman and other relationship experts to offer some big-picture questions that middle-aged couples can discuss — or can ask themselves — to help them better understand their relationships, and what they want.
Orna Guralnik, a Manhattan-based clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who stars in the Showtime documentary series Couples Therapy, encourages her clients to consider their plans for the third chapter of their relationships (when the marriage is neither fresh and new, nor consumed by domestic demands).
It’s a conversation she sees many couples having organically, particularly those in their 50s and 60s whose children have left home. “Where are they going to turn that attention?” she often asks. “And how is that going to inflect the couple?”
Dr Galena Rhoades, a psychologist and research professor at the University of Denver, has advised clients to ask one another: “What are our big hopes and dreams?” Embracing the opportunity to fantasise can help cultivate a shared sense of optimism, she said.
Psychologist Orna Guralnik encourages her clients to consider their plans for the third chapter of their relationships. Photo / 123rf
Does one of you want to move to a new city or to travel more? Throw yourself into a new hobby or skill? Become more civically engaged?
“Not all of those things will be possible to fit into the rest of the structure of your life,” Rhoades said. “But I think there’s a lot of value in having that time together to connect — and in seeing the relationship as a place where you can dream big.”
What are we modelling for our children?
Rhoades, who is an author on a forthcoming edition of Fighting For Your Marriage, said her clients put real thought and care into how they interact around their children when they’re younger.
“Once their kids are adults, it’s like they sort of forget they are still role models,” she added.
She has advised that couples ask: What do we want our children to learn from our relationship? How might that shape their own relationships?
For instance, maybe you want to make it clear that relationships take work, Rhoades said, so you talk to your children about how you handle conflict. Perhaps it’s emphasising the importance of date nights and prioritising coupledom.
How do I contribute to our problems?
This kind of self-reflection is easier said than done, admitted Dr Adam Fisher, a psychologist and sex therapist based in Salt Lake City. But by midlife, most of us have learned something about ourselves and our relationships.
Fisher said that taking time to reflect on the type of partner they want to be — regardless of what their partner does or doesn’t do — ultimately gives his clients a greater sense of agency within their relationships.
You might say to yourself: “Even if I have big complaints about my partner, I know I don’t show up like a perfect angel — and I’m trying to work on those things,” Fisher said.
Thinking about the type of partner you want to be is a way of balancing out the tendency many of us have to blame our partners for our problems. Photo / Andrey Popov
As an alternative, you might ask your partner to share one or two ways in which you are difficult or make their lives harder, he said — though he quickly acknowledged that idea may not work for couples who are struggling to communicate or for whom that question might feel unsafe.
Ultimately, thinking about the type of partner you want to be is a way of balancing out the tendency many of us have to blame our partners for our problems.
What skills have we developed?
By the time couples reach middle age, many have fallen into decades-long communication patterns, some better than others, said Jeffrey Chernin, a marriage and family therapist based in Los Angeles and the author of Achieving Intimacy.
So he often encourages partners to think about the positive communication skills they have developed. “You want to fortify those,” he said.
Maybe you’re both good at listening without interrupting, for example. Maybe you are pros at apologising. Simply acknowledging some of those strengths can be a useful bonding exercise, Chernin said.
“Let’s strengthen what’s going well,” he said, “not just address what needs to be improved.”
Couples who have been together for a while might also forget why they like each other, so they need to take a look back, suggested Dr Harriet Lerner, a psychologist based in Kansas and author of The Dance of Anger.
“When couples revisit the qualities that first drew them together, it shifts the emotional climate of the conversation, enlivens the present moment and serves as a powerful reminder of the foundation on which their relationship was built,” Lerner said.
Is this relationship worth it?
With experience, most people come to understand that no one gets everything they want from one person, said Terrence Real, a family therapist and author of Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship. Which is why middle age can be a good time to have what he calls a “relational reckoning”.
“A relational reckoning is a question,” he explained, “and the question is: Am I getting enough in this relationship to make grieving what I don’t get OK with me?”
For instance, maybe you and your partner don’t have the best sex life, but you have a beautiful emotional connection and you’ve built a happy family, he said. If that trade-off is OK with you, you acknowledge that and grieve the loss of what you don’t have.
“Grieving and digesting the limits of one another’s human imperfections is a central part of long-term intimacy,” Real said.
Should we get outside help?
It is important to approach the questions above with a sense of curiosity and openness, said Tiana Frazier, a licenced marriage and family therapist based in Texas. Try to stay present and avoid becoming defensive, she said, and “if the conversation becomes overwhelming, it’s OK to take a break”.
Couples who are contemplating whether they want to stay together — or perhaps to radically change the structure of their relationship — may want to engage professional help. Discernment counselling is an option for couples who are pondering big changes, Hershman said.
Depending on your circumstances, you might consider a specific form of counselling, like sex therapy, or individual therapy if your partner is reluctant to join you.
Whatever you do, don’t wait until problems explode, Real said. “The things you’re not getting build up resentment”, he added, and by the time many couples find their way to a therapist, “their resentment is leaking out all over the place”.
