How to date joyfully in midlife
Your 3 key ingredients for successful dating
Hey, I’m Katherine and I write about love and life and you can choose what to read. If you’d like to receive my general ‘From Midlife with Love’ posts but would prefer not to receive posts on dating and finding healthy love, you can toggle off the ‘Find Love in Midlife’ section in your settings here: your.substack.com/account. Thank you for being here! 🩷
Dating can be joyful.
I believe that at my core.
Despite the stories I hear from my clients and friends about the trials and tribulations of looking for love - the ghosting, the bathroom selfies, the stilted conversation, the apparent scarcity of decent, intelligent, available people to meet - I believe that you can have a positive experience of dating in midlife.
Provided, that is, you mix in these three key ingredients:
Courage.
Clarity.
Confidence.
Before I go any further, it’s important to say that this post is based on the truth that we can only change what we can.
We can’t rearrange the online dating landscape.
We can’t trigger a tsunami of new fish to enter the dating pool.
And we can’t change how other people show up, how they communicate or don’t.
But we can show up differently ourselves.
With greater courage, more clarity and increased confidence.
These are simple terms but they have a profound significance in my book.
So, let me walk you through them, in reverse order, starting with confidence.
Delve deeper into this topic on my live/recorded Date with Courage, Clarity & Confidence workshop on Tues Aug 12. Click below and use the code Substack10 for 10 percent off. 🩷
Confident Dating
Confidence comes in different shapes and sizes.
It can be surface level or it can run deep.
I displayed outward confidence when I worked as a journalist in parliament, flying around the world with VIPs and asking questions of prime ministers.
Yet, beneath my confident façade, I lacked true self-worth.
I didn’t feel good enough, I had chronic imposter syndrome and I was binge eating and binge drinking to shore up my low self-esteem and numb my fear of being found out.
The same happened when I went dating.
I may have looked good on the surface - hair done, lipstick in place - but underneath, I carried deep self-worth wounds and I didn’t feel acceptable or lovable.
These wounds dated back to my childhood, to the moment my dad sat me on his knee and told me he was moving out. As my young heart broke, I told myself that it was my fault, that I’d done something wrong or that there was something wrong with me.
In fact, the wounds date back even earlier, to the time I instinctively sought out an emotional connection with my caregivers, hoping to be seen and to be soothed because I needed this to feel safe, and that connection, that attachment, wasn’t forthcoming.
Therefore, my subconscious concluded, there must be something wrong with me and I must adapt and please the other, in order to stay safe and survive.
You may relate to these experiences or you may have your own wounds - maybe that time when your big brother or sister or schoolmate or teacher called you fat or ugly or stupid or annoying and you took this to heart because you didn’t have strong enough foundations of self-esteem to laugh it off.
And because of these wounds, you show up on dating websites or on a date feeling not quite good enough, feeling a little bit faulty or wrong and feeling that you need to over-compensate by hiding your true self or censoring your truth or explaining away their unkind comments or accepting poor treatment or saying ‘Yes’ to someone who doesn’t value you or ‘No’ to the person who does because you struggle to value yourself, and it spirals downwards from there.
True confidence comes from accepting and healing these self-worth wounds so that you can show up as someone who knows their value, who can set boundaries and who can walk away at the sight of red flags and stay when they spot green ones.
This healing doesn’t happen overnight, of course, but it does happen and it starts with being honest with ourselves about how worthy and lovable we feel and about how we might be selling ourselves short online and on dates.
Join my Date with Courage, Clarity & Confidence workshop on Tuesday, April 12 at 5 pm UK time, or sign up for the replay. Use the code Substack10 for 10 percent off. 🩷
Dating with Clarity
Like confidence, clarity is multi-faceted too.
You need a clear idea of your values, your likes and dislikes, what you’re looking for in a relationship and what you deserve.
And, on a deeper level, you need awareness of the following:
The wounds you acquired in your early life relationships and how they impacted your dating and relating today (as outlined above)
Your fears about intimate relationships, which are connected to your wounds and may include a fear of abandonment or rejection, of being seen, of not being enough, of being trapped, of making the wrong choice, and so forth
How these wounds and fears drive unhealthy dating and relationship patterns, for example, an attraction to unavailable partners and commitment-phobes or the rejection of emotionally available ones (this is my specialist subject so please get in touch if you need help with this, or dating in general)
In summary, dating with clarity is akin to dating consciously rather than unconsciously, mindfully rather than mindlessly, with self-awareness rather than blindness, with our eyes fully open rather than blinkered, so that we can understand what’s going on in our relationships rather than concluding that ‘I just haven’t met you yet’ or ‘there are no decent people to date’ or ‘all the good ones are taken’ or ‘it must be fate’.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate” - Carl Jung
Courageous Dating
As I write these words, I am struck by how much courage it takes to address the first two points above - to understand and heal our self-worth wounds and to get clear on how those wounds and our deep-seated fears sabotage our love lives.
And I’m astounded that I had the courage to go on this journey myself, to unearth my childhood wounds, to grieve my early life losses, to face my myriad of fears and to transform my dating and relationship patterns, as a single woman in my early forties. My wedding day (I was 48) still feels like a dream.
I’m also blown away by the courage my coaching clients have shown and continue to show as they heal their wounds, face their fears and transform their relationships, at any age, but especially in midlife, with its associated challenges and hormone imbalances.
Courage, then, is the most vital ingredient.
We need the courage to do the deep inner work that will give us the bravery to:
Show up authentically and speak our truth, even if we’re scared
Express our wants and needs, even if we fear rocking the boat
Set and hold our boundaries, even if we fear displeasing the other
Call out poor treatment, even if we’re scared the relationship will end
Negotiate difference, even if we want to run at the first sign of conflict
Walk away when we see red flags, even if we so want it to work out
Move forwards when we see green ones, even if we’re afraid of commitment
Let go of the fantasy of perfect care and embrace an adult relationship, even if the wounded child inside us desperately wants a knight (or a person) in shining armour to sweep her off her feet
Wow.
So much courage is required, but I know you have it in you and you know this too.
You have come this far.
You have endured so much, learned so much, grown so much.
And you’re ready to take your life to the next level.
I wrote at the start of this post that dating can be joyful but after reading the above, you might be thinking that unearthing and healing your wounds, facing your deepest fears and changing ingrained patterns doesn’t sound much fun.
But believe me, it’s the greatest adventure (I write this with a smile on my face).
It’s an incredible opportunity to heal and grow.
Because our hurt happens in relationship, and our healing happens in relationship too.
And on the other side of this healing lies so much joy and so much fun.
It’s a journey you’ll be delighted that you embarked upon.
From midlife with love,
Katherine 🩷
Please leave a 🩷 or a comment if you appreciated my writing or you can buy me a coffee here) and do let me know how you get on with your romantic adventure or if you have any questions. It would be wonderful to hear from you and support you.
Heartfelt Offerings 🩷
I invite you to join my Date with Courage, Clarity & Confidence workshop live or watch the replay. We meet on Zoom on Tuesday Aug 12 at 5 pm BST (that’s today 😊). Sign up below using the code Substack10 for 10 percent off.
Alternatively, sign up for all 3 workshops in the Finding Love in Midlife series and I’ll send you the replays. Use the code Substack10 for 10 percent off the bundle.