Ep #244: Don’t Wait Until Your Relationship Is in the ICU

Dr. Sonia (00:43)
Hello, hello, hello, Diamonds. You are listening to the Midlife Sex Coach for Women podcast, episode two hundred and forty-four. Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. Hey, how’s it going? So good to see you. It’s Dr. Sonia here. Let’s talk. Let’s talk. Let’s talk about relationships today.

Specifically, I want to talk about honeymoons. Many of you know that my partner and I have a commitment to taking several honeymoons in the course of our relationship. And for those of you that may have heard, several means like a hundred, but I am not planning on getting married a hundred times. Can you imagine the dresses, the planning? Like, I am not a person that likes ceremonies, so absolutely not. But I do like to travel and I do love the idea of honeymoons.

But my partner and I have made a commitment to have one hundred honeymoons over the course of our relationship. One hundred. At least one hundred. And right now we are at honeymoon number sixteen.

And then when I say honeymoon, I don’t necessarily mean that we’re flying to Paris or spending two weeks in the Maldives. Sometimes the honeymoons are bigger vacations. We went to Hawaii this year, but sometimes it’s just a day or a couple of days away. And sometimes it’s literally just overnight somewhere. The location isn’t what makes it a honeymoon. What makes it a honeymoon is the focus. So the focus.

When we go on a honeymoon, the focus is on us, it’s on our relationship, it’s on our communication, it’s on our loving connection, it’s on our intimacy. So many of you know that my partner is a marriage and family therapist, and so having a good relationship is something that’s very important to both of us. we want to make sure that our honeymoons is an intentional period of time when we say.

This relationship matters enough to get our undivided attention. And I know most of you know that we are the parents of four kids. So a lot of times there’s not a lot of undivided attention. So we have to be intentional about that, right? So recently my partner had to remind me exactly what that distinction was in terms of what makes a honeymoon. And that is committed, undivided attention, right?

So apparently I tried to sneak a family vacation into the category of honeymoon. We’re talking about our next honeymoon, and I casually said something like, our next honeymoon will be at the end of this year when we all get together with the kids to celebrate my 60th birthday. And my partner looked at me. And you know that kind of look, that look that says, yeah, no, that is not a honeymoon. excuse me, we’re traveling, we’re staying somewhere.

We’re celebrating. We’re celebrating me. So how fabulous could that be? It’s kind of honeymoon-ish. No, nope. Wasn’t getting away with it. No way, no how. My partner was very clear. If all the children are there, this is not a honeymoon. This is a family vacation. And sometimes we go to this location by ourselves. And so my mind said, we’re going there again. That makes it a honeymoon. But no, I was corrected very quickly, right?

Because if kids are there, the focus is gonna be on the family. It’s not specifically going to be on the relationship. I’m gonna be thinking about are the kids having fun? Does everyone have what they need? What are we eating? What are they eating? What’s going on? What can I do to entertain them? What the plan is for tomorrow? Blah blah blah blah blah. somewhere underneath all the logistics and love and family togetherness, there’s us.

But there isn’t us, right? my partner is right when she says this is not a honeymoon. Family vacations can be wonderful and they can create amazing memories and it can strengthen the family, but it’s not necessarily strengthening your relationship as a couple. And be aware of this, right? So this conversation it made me realize something. That’s exactly how intimacy disappears. I coach so many women.

That are in relationships, that are parenting. And it’s around that transition time when we’re focused on so many different things that the intimacy in the relationship goes away. And I don’t just mean the sexual intimacy. I mean the connection, the emotional connection. So sometimes intimacy disappears because everything else becomes more important.

And we need to understand that relationships rarely go from thriving to dead overnight. There’s something that happens in between. We tend to imagine relationship problems as these big dramatic events, an affair, a betrayal, a huge fight, some massive breakdown in communication. And yes, yeah, these things do happen in people’s relationships. But I often think that intimacy dies much more quieter.

than that, it gets what I call deprioritized. It goes further and further down on the list, little by little by little. And especially when you’re raising kids. And at first maybe you’re exhausted because you have a newborn, right? And that makes a lot of sense. And then they’re toddlers. And we kind of think that when we when they get to school it’s gonna get a lot easier. But suddenly we’re starting to drive them all over the place.

There’s a school, there’s activities, somebody needs braces, there’s soccer practice, there’s homework, there’s science projects, and then you’re dealing with teenagers. I’m laughing just because, like, that’s where I am in a lot of ways right now. My kids range in age from 13 to 27, with the younger three being under 20, right? Then there’s college applications. We just went through that process. Then there’s quit.

tuition and figuring out how to pay for that and all these things, you’re working and you get so distracted that you kind of like take what is the word that I want? like you know the relationships there. You know you love this other person. And so we kind of take it a little bit for granted, right? We take it for granted that it’s gonna be there, but we’re not investing the time and energy in the relationship, right? And

There’s a lot going on here. The relationship keeps getting pushed further and further and further down the list. We’ll have a date night next week. We’ll take a trip next year. We’ll reconnect when things calm down. Things have gotta get easier when the kids leave the house. They don’t necessarily. They don’t necessarily because they leave the house but they don’t leave your life, right? Especially if you have tended to be a little bit of a helicopter parent.

Then they call you and they rely on you. So part of this work is putting more and more intention into your relationship and also helping your kids develop the skill set to be able to become more and more independent. So both of those things are happening at the same time, right? And you have to realize there’s always something going on. Life doesn’t send you a calendar invitation.

Saying, congratulations, everything is calm now. You can resume that intimacy. Let me just tell you that that invitation is not coming. Sorry, not coming. And then the kids leave, right? Suddenly, 20, 25 years has passed, the kids are gone, they’re off to college, they’ve moved out if you’re lucky. and you look across the room at that person that you’ve built this amazing family with and realize I don’t really know them anymore.

Wow. You know how they parent. You know how they handle bills. You know whether they’re going to remember to take the garbage out. And you know that they’re what they’re like when the kids are struggling. You know which side of the bed you sleep on. But do you know them? Do you really know them? Do you know what their dreams are about? Do you know what turns them on? Do you know what makes them feel loved and appreciated? Who are they becoming?

And who are you becoming, right? Wow. Neither of you is the same person you were 20 years ago. And now we’re saying, okay, the kids are gone. Let’s get back to that intimacy. Hey, we’re empty nesters. Whoop, whoop, whoop, let’s do this empty nesting thing. And you can’t even find anything to talk about. And you’re just kind of looking at each other. And then you’re like, have you talked to the kids recently, right? Hmm.

That’s a lot of pressure to put on a relationship that has not been nurtured for decades. We’re essentially rolling this relationship into the emergency room saying, Can somebody resuscitate this? Can you help me with this? Maybe they need a little bit of fluids, maybe they need a little D fifty. Like, what exactly does this relationship need it? You this relationship needed a lot of attention over the years.

That’s what this relationship needs. It can’t wait. It can’t wait to the future. I also coach a lot of younger mothers, even though I’m a midlife coach. people are waiting till they’re older to have kids. And this is when I’m seeing a lot of the intimacy disappearing is when the kids are younger. So I do do a lot of coaching of younger women as well, even though I’m labeled the midlife sex coach for women. And I see the same

Trends happening again and again and again. It’s that time where the I’d say the new relationship energy has kind of settled down. You’re in this good place. Maybe you’re married, maybe you’re having some kids, but there’s a shift of the attention away from the relationship and onto taking care of the kids, which makes a lot of sense. But understand that while this is happening and the focus is on the kids.

getting them to bed, doing what you need to do for your career and life and things like that, your relationship may be heading towards the ICU. So let me just say your relationship needs some preventative care. And this is how we are going to approach the health right now. So we don’t say I’m going to completely ignore this situation for 25 years and then when I’m 60, 65, then I’ll start taking care of it. Nope. Nope.

I know that’s how people like to do it with sometimes with their health, but we’re talking about preventative medicine. Preventative medicine for your relationships. So we have preventative medicine for our bodies. We exercise, we go to checkups, we do lab work, we monitor things, we make adjustments, we pay attention to our body. We don’t just wait till we’re sixty five. And you can’t do that with the relationship, right?

We need to have the focus on preventative measures for the relationship. Your relationship needs preventative care. So connection needs maintenance. Maintenance doesn’t mean something has gone wrong. I think that’s really important to understand that maintenance is is maintenance, right? It’s a good thing, but something that we continue to do. So sometimes we have this strange idea that if we have to work on a relationship, that there must be a problem.

I say if you don’t work on the relationship, the odds are there actually is a problem because you’re not putting attention and focus on the relationship. And so I I’m a hundred percent down for you working on your relationship. No matter how good it is, the conversation still needs to continue, right? We maintain things that are invaluable to us. You maintain your home, you maintain your car, you maintain your health.

Hopefully you don’t wait until the engine falls out of the bottom of the car before you have somebody check it out and make sure the maintenance is okay on your car. So why would the relationship that forms the foundation of everything that matters to you, your life, your family, why is that what’s supposed to be on autopilot and we’re not spending any time on it? This becomes really important. Prioritize your relationship.

And prioritizing that relationship does not mean you’re abandoning your children. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. But if your foundation is not good in the relationship, nothing else matters as much to these kids. The security is not there. So it’s I I mean, I grew up in a relationship where my parents that foundation of that relationship was not very good. And when they did get divorced, that caused a lot of problems, right?

But also I I have to say that that was for the best. Because they they were not meant to be living in the same house or anything like that. But my point is we do need to put the focus on the relationship and make sure it maintains and stays healthy, right? so once again, prioritizing your relationship is not abandoning your children, it’s giving them what they need for that security, right?

I want to be very clear. I’m not saying that your children are not important. They are. And that’s why you make sure the foundation of your relationship is solid, right? I’m not saying ignore your kids in order to go on dates. but I am talking about recognizing that loving your children and prioritizing your relationship are not mutually exclusive. In fact, maintaining the health of your relationship can be one of the ways that you care for your family, very much so. So

Your kids are watching. They know what a loving committed relationship looks like. They see the respect. They see how people speak to each other. This is important. If you can’t speak to your partner for some reason and a lot of distance creeps in, the kids don’t know what a healthy relationship looks like. And that’s a huge gift that you could give to

your kids. I grew up, as I said, in a relationship that was not healthy and I actually never did see any really healthy relationships. So I had to spend a lot of time with books and kind of create my own relationships. But if you have a foundation of seeing a good healthy relationship, wow, that makes a huge difference, right? So your kids are watching, you know, they’re learning what long-term relationships look like.

They’re learning whether relationships deserve attention. They’re learning what the foundation for intimacy is and that it matters. They’re learning how they should be treated and how they should treat others in relationships. They’re learning whether adults are allowed to live their lives and identify beyond being a mom and a dad. Or a mom and a mom. Or a non-binary parent and a non-binary parent or whatever the hell you want in your relationships. Make sure there’s respect.

And love and commitment in it. That’s the most important thing, right?

And I think there’s something beautiful about your children understanding. My parents love me tremendously, and the relationship with each other is important. Yeah, both things can be true and both things can be important. So what is your version of a honeymoon? No, I’m not saying everybody else needs to commit to a hundred honeymoons. I’m definitely not saying that. But I am saying everybody needs to commit to the relationship, needs to

Have fun with it, right? And so that might what would that look like? What would your honeymoon look like, right?

And as I said, it doesn’t have to be travel, doesn’t have to be fancy hotels or beaches or fancy dinners, blah, blah, blah. But it does get to be intentionally focused. It could be a cup of tea or coffee at you know, a local cafe. But is there intention, is there focus, is there respect, is there connection, is there love? Like those are the things that make your honeymoon. You can have many, many, many, many honeymoon if you’re going to a cafe. Or you could just have an overnight stay, right?

Or you could have if you have friends that can take the kids over overnight or something like that, whatever it is, so you can get your version. It doesn’t have to be really expensive. It’s just commitment, respect, love and communication, right? And once again, this is why family trips don’t count. Even if I’ll try to sneak one in there, no, it’s not gonna work like that. So

My partner was not rejecting our family. We love our kids very much. But my partner was protecting us, re protecting our relationship. And I have to appreciate that. And that distinction really landed for me because we need time where we’re not focused on being parents or our jobs or whatever, right? We need time when we’re not focused on households and coordinating schedules and not solving everybody else’s problems.

We need time together, right? We need the opportunity to remember that our relationship is important. And that might be just a quick night away, or it might be a whole weekend. It might be standing date night. Like you get to choose how you want to be intentionally focused. It could be breakfast together every Sunday morning. Maybe it’s sitting on the porch without your phones, right?

Maybe it’s a walk together. You get to decide what it is, but understand that the time does belong to you and it is important to be intentional.

And then I have one other thing to say, which is if you have not had much time together and you’re just gonna schedule your little quick honeymoon or whatever, don’t make sexual intimacy carry the entire weight. And what I mean by that is if you haven’t intentionally connected with your partner for the last six months, don’t expect one scheduled night of sexual intimacy to repair everything. If you’re lucky and it does, that talks a lot about your underlying relationship. But

Don’t put all that pressure on one evening. Put the focus on fun, relaxation, talking. Pleasure is always a good thing to have there. But if it’s not perfect and it doesn’t work out as perfect as you’d want to, I’m laughing because our first real honeymoon after we got married, I planned all this elaborate stuff. We went to Las Vegas, we stayed at like all the hotels that I really, really, really wanted to stay at. And we had the biggest fight.

In our lives. It might even to this point, years later, might still be the biggest fight that we ever had. but I laugh about that because like I wanted everything to be perfect. And what was missing was the respect and the communication. And what came out of that was what we realized that we really had to be intentional about discussing things. And it wasn’t all about how everything looked. It was more important about how’s the communication, how’s the love. And from that that experience.

is what grew the hundred honeymoons. So our first honeymoon being a big okay, it wasn’t actually our first honeymoon. Our first honeymoon was just overnight at the Four Seasons in Minnesota. and then after that I think it’s so then we had had a quick I had to speak at an event in Arizona. And so then we kinda had but it was work. So I don’t even know if you count that as a

a full honeymoon, but the third honeymoon was really our big honeymoon for our our wedding and that was kind of a catastrophe and also the best gift that we could ever give to each other and that’s where the concept of a hundred honeymoons came from because you can always have a do-over but what I’m saying is you don’t have to put so much stress and weight on this one perfect thing. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

and so it doesn’t have to be the most spectacular sex you’ve ever had or any of those things. The love, the connection, the fun, that is the most important part of it all.

The important thing to understand through all of this is maintaining intimacy is the most important thing. Having great sex, yeah. I mean, I’m a sex coach, so I’m all for that too. But maintaining the intimacy, maintaining the connection, that is the most important thing. Stay curious about the person that you’re with. Create experiences together. Continue to date the person. You will both hopefully continue to grow and change and you get to know who that person is. Who are they now?

People change. Hopefully they’re changing. If they’re not changing and they’re not growing, hm. But yeah, your partner is gonna change, your relationships are gonna change.

If you’re going to have a hundred honeymoons, then probably you’re going to be very different people from your first honeymoon versus your 47th honeymoon versus your hundredth honeymoon. And that is the great part of this all. This gets to be an adventure. So once again, don’t assume your relation is gonna wait for you. Your relationship is important and it needs to be maintained. We don’t want it suddenly showing up like

being wheeled into the emergency department to go straight into the ICU because it is like it’s on its deathbed because it has not had much attention. It’s been neglected. You get to make this relationship so fabulous. So definitely, definitely focus on your relationship. Give it the love and attention that it needs. Do all the things that you need to do. Your intimacy

deserves your attention, your connection deserves your protection. Don’t wait until your relationship is in the ICU before you decide it is worth saving. Take care of it while it’s living, while it’s growing, while you’re raising any kids, while you’re going through perimenopause and menopause. That can be a very trying time, let me tell you. Be kind to yourself, be kind to your partner, be kind to your relationship during perimenopause and menopause, right?

Take care of it through your career and graduations and aging parents and all of those things. Take another honeymoon if you need to, right? Your relationship matters. And don’t wait until someday to make it a priority. Okay, Diamonds. Dr. Sonia out.