Ep #159: Should I Stay or Should I Go? The New 60’s

You are listening to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™ Podcast episode 159.

Welcome to The Midlife Sex Coach for Women™ Podcast, the only show that combines a fun personality, medical knowledge, sexual counseling, and life coaching together. To create unique sex coaching that helps busy women awaken their libidos, address intimacy issues, and learn how to express their sexuality for the rest of their days. Here is your host, certified life coach and sexual counselor, Dr. Sonia Wright.

Hello, hello, hello, Diamonds, it’s so good to see you. Dr. Sonia here and I am so happy to be back. I was on vacation for a little, which was wonderful. I went to Ashland, Oregon for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. If you have not gone, you need to go. That is one of my happy places, my soul place. It’s just a wonderful environment. I enjoy the landscape and being up in Ashland, Oregon and then also the shows, the theaters, just incredible.

So I am back from my vacation and I am here today talking with Dr. Kimmery Newsom. One more thing I wanted to say is that we have Advanced Certification in Women’s Sexual Intimacy, which we call ACWSI, that is open for enrollment at this point in time. We start on September 29^th and you can always go to my website, soniarightmd.com and you can go under Work With Dr. Sonia. Just click on that and you’ll see Advanced Certification in Women’s Sexual Intimacy.

We can’t wait to see you. We start September 29^th, but right now I am talking to Dr. Kimmery Newsom. Dr. Kimmery Newsom, how are you doing today?

Kimmery: I’m doing pretty good. I’m doing pretty good. I’m glad to be here with you.

Sonia: Yeah, I had to ask our relationship expert to come in and talk because I have been getting a lot of questions from women in their 60s. I feel like women in their 60s are now, it’s the time for the new midlife crisis type of thing. I get all sorts of interesting questions about monogamy, polyamory, dating again. Women in their 60s are coming alive and choosing a life that is for them.

I had one woman, this question has come up again and again and again so this is why I wanted to bring it to you. But basically, she was saying that she’s been in a long term relationship. She’s been in this marriage for 20 plus years. And at this point it’s sexless and she doesn’t necessarily want to put the effort in to make it anything other than sexless. They don’t have much in common and it’s mainly about financial security. And she’s at this point where she’s deciding, should I stay or should I go?

And of course this is a decision that she has to make. It’s not a decision that I would make for her or that you would make for her, but I know there’s a number of women that are actually at the same point in their life when they’re thinking, what is it I want in my life? And it used to be at one time, maybe hundreds of years ago, 60 was kind of it, life was just about over. But now life, you still have another third of your life at least ahead of you when you’re in your 60s.

And so it’s a question becomes, is this what you want to do for the next 30 years potentially? So what type of things need to go into this consideration, if you’re making this decision, what are some things that they should be aware of if they’re in that place of should I stay or should I go? And honestly, this pertains to women of all different ages. But specifically I am seeing this question again and again and again in the women in the 60s range.

So I just wanted to bring it to you and to talk to you about what you see since you’ve been doing relationship coaching and marriage therapy counseling for many, many years. So that’s why I’m dropping this nice thing at your feet.

Kimmery: Well, thank you for the gift. I appreciate that.

Sonia: You’re welcome.

Kimmery: There are several things to take into consideration, but it’s very interesting to me that these questions are happening now. What about in your 50s when it first maybe became sexless? Because I would assume that it has been sexless for a while as opposed to a few weeks, because that’s not considered sexless. So we’re talking a number of years. And so it’s kind of what has brought you to this place of asking that question? That would be my first inquiry to try and figure out where they’re headed, where they’re coming from, what would be some good things for them to consider.

But I also want to talk about this idea of being stuck. People feel stuck all the time. They feel like I can’t, there’s nowhere for me to go. I don’t have any resources. I don’t have any people around me. And in some cases that is absolutely the truth. People can be isolated if they’re in relationships where there’s been abuse, they can become very hopeless in a sense. This doesn’t sound like the women that you are referring to are in positions of being hopeless with abuse or anything like that.

Sonia: Right. There might be another type of hopeless specifically about why now as opposed to 10 years earlier or something like that. And maybe there is still hope that they could revive the relationship. And maybe at this point, all that hope has gone and the reality of their life is hitting them and they’re trying to decide. And they’re also wrestling with concepts of self. Am I too old to make a change? That is a lot.

This is a question that I get with a number of people too but their perspective is shifting. Before they might have thought, I’m too old, I just have to live with this. But now they’re seeing that women are choosing at all different ages to choose themselves. And so what previously might have been a foregone conclusion that, I’ll just stay in this relationship till I die. Now they’re like I’m seeing more and more women making a choice for them, that works for them at any age. And so there’s a hopelessness in some ways, and a hopefulness in other ways.

Kimmery: Yes, absolutely. And one thing that as I was listening to you talk, one thing that I think is imperative is helping people understand that it’s okay to be independent. Women who come from a generation of you find your partner, you find your mate and you just deal with whatever comes with that. And now they’re having a realization that they don’t have to put up with things that don’t make them comfortable or they don’t feel like they’re getting their needs met in the relationship.

And so there is no such thing as too old. As long as you have breath in your body, there are things you can do differently. And so being able to help women who are in positions that are saying, as you said, of all ages, but in particular we’re speaking to the women who have reached out to you who are in their 60s and asking these questions is that there’s always something you can do.

And financially, as much as the economy is crazy right now, the hope is that you wouldn’t have to feel tied to someone or stay in a situation that is not beneficial for you for the financial situation that you may find yourself in. And you’ve got to question, are there friends around who could help you? Do you have enough of a credit score to get a loan if you need to, to kind of get you started to get you moving forward?

Do you have children who you’re close to and who may be willing to help you until you’re able to be where you want to be financially? And all these different types of questions, because we have options that we may not have had years ago. And so being willing to explore those options is something that’s really important too.

Sonia: Well, I think while you’re talking, I’m also realizing that women in their 60s are in a generation where they grew up having to work and maybe the generation before did not necessarily. And so maybe financially this looks a little different than it has in the past. The majority of women have been out in the workforce, they do have their own funds. And maybe they’re more comfortable if they stay in the relationship and maybe it’s not a full destitution like it might have been previously.

Or maybe in the area of independence, they’ve been relatively independent and so it’s easier to make that choice to go or to stay based. But not necessarily having to do it because there’s a level of dependence on another person where you don’t even get the opportunity or the option to have a choice, whether you’re going to stay or go. But I also like the fact that you have other people that you can depend on and hopefully you haven’t been isolated in a number of different ways. So I think that that’s also important.

Now, what kind of questions should they be asking themselves overall in terms of their thought work, what their mindset is in terms of doing this? We talked a little bit about, no, you’re not too old. You have the bandwidth, you have the autonomy, you can make the choice for you. It doesn’t really matter about your age. You get to decide that you want this in your life. What other things, if somebody were in a coaching session or therapy session with you, what other things would you be helping them ponder or process or figure out?

Kimmery: Yeah. The first question is, do you ever want to have sex again? Is it something that’s important to you? Because if it’s important to you, then you start to make decisions based on that fact, yes, it’s important to me, I want to have sex again. So number one is and then we go down the list and we talk about what those things are. Because if you’re saying your marriage is sexless or your relationship is sexless and you don’t want that, then okay, what are you willing to do?

Because I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are sometimes when people they don’t want to have sex with the person that they’re with and they’re fine with that. But these are people who are saying they are not fine with that and they want more and so how important is it to you?

Sonia: Yeah. And then different options, before it was stay or go. If you’re in a sexless relationship, you either decide you’re going to stay in that relationship or go. But now there’s consensual non-monogamy. And so people have different ways of looking at it. And probably before there is non-monogamy as well.

Kimmery: Just regular, yeah.

Sonia: That was more open and more discussion. So that becomes a part of it too. And I think that that’s an important point. First of all, they may not want sex and so that is fine. We’re not trying to make a problem where there’s no problem. But then they decide, do they want sexual intimacy? Do they want it with just themselves? Do they want it with another person? Those are the type of questions, the next type of questions.

And then also very often kind of a fallout of a sexless marriage, especially for women, is we spend a number of time and I say we because I was in a sexless relationship for a long time. And we spend a lot of time blaming ourselves, it might not have anything to do with us specifically. Very often we don’t exactly know how the sex left the marriage.

And so we come up with all these thoughts and ideas, and some things might be, I’m not attractive enough, it’s my fault somehow, especially for women, we have a tendency to make things our fault. As opposed to just asking the question and maybe finding out that their libido is low or they have erectile dysfunction problems or whatever it is, but we kind of take it on. And so even if we leave that relationship, we have work to do on ourselves.

It’s almost like spend some time looking at what the fallout or the ramifications are of this sexless relationship on us before we move on or maybe while we’re moving on. When we decide that we’re looking for another relationship or such, because I think that there’s something that we need to see, has this affected us? Has it not affected us? What are our thoughts specifically about us as a sexual being? So I think that that’s something important.

And I’ve been working with a number of clients that, currently I’m working with or in the past that have sexless relationships. And they amaze me, whatever choice that they make. Some people go all in, in the relationship and they work on bringing back the sex. Some people are satisfied without having the sex in the relationship, but they want that connection, that intimate connection. And some people are ready to go and other people are ready to stay and just be more like roommates.

So there’s so many different ways to do all of this. So we want to be clear that there’s not one way and one decision that has to be made in terms of if you’re in a sexless relationship. So it’s not specifically that, but I think that that’s an important aspect as well. What’s the fallout? What effect has this had on the individual?

Kimmery: Yeah, for sure. And in the process of figuring out, what do you want to do? Do you want to stay? Do you want to go? Do you want to maintain? Do you want to ask questions about opening up your relationship and what that would look like as well? You’re right, you have to do that mind work. You have to do that internal work where you make a determination about how you can be moving forward and what’s going to be most healthy for you as you move forward into maybe another relationship?

Or if you’re looking for just having fun with people, what’s going to be most important for you and for your psyche and for your self-concept, the way that you view who you are based on the next steps that you make? Because we have to do that work. And as women we’re conditioned anyway in society to blame ourselves for everything. Everything is everybody’s fault, every woman’s fault, excuse me.

Sonia: I was going to say, well.

Kimmery: Yeah, every woman’s fault, every woman’s fault. And that goes all the way back through, if we’re looking at modern psychology and pre-modern psychology, it’s the mom’s fault. Everything is the mom’s fault, literally and you can read it.

Sonia: [Crosstalk] to just blame people and blame one sex, one gender.

Kimmery: One gender.

Sonia: And then just get to do whatever you want, it’s our fault.

Kimmery: Yeah, it’s mom’s fault, everything. And so being able to come out of that conditioning too, because they are also, if we’re talking about the women in their 60s, they are also still of that generation where everything was the mom’s or the woman’s fault. And so being able to have a mindset and an understanding that it takes two people in a situation and looking at what you would like to do differently if you decide to leave the marriage.

What you would like to do differently if you decide to stay in the relationship, because being able to have an understanding that sometimes things become the way they become because both or one person gives up and they decide to stop trying, your efforts fall on deaf ears. And so it makes it very difficult for you to keep wanting to try. And so what do you want to do differently in the next relationship if you decide to leave?

Maybe you make it clear, this is the desire that I have for intimacy. What are your ideas about what sexual intimacy is supposed to look like or you like to have it in the relationship? Let’s match that up and do whatever it is that we need to do to maintain that.

Sonia: I think that that’s something, if you’re a person that needs touch and sexual intimacy is part of that touch for your love language, then I think that that’s important. If you choose to go into another relationship to make that clear, that this is something that’s very important for you. So from the beginning you’re kind of matched up with the person that you like. Like your question, what would you like to do differently in another relationship?

But just overall in your life, what would you like different about your life? You’re only in your 60s, you probably have 30 more years. What would you like to do different? How would you like your life to be in a different way? And I love this third of the life to be about your legacy. What do you want your legacy to be for you and for other people? So all those kind of questions, I think that that’s what we’re really seeing reflected in our 60s is okay, not that this is the last shot but this is where I’m healthy, I’m active, I’ve got all this going for me.

If I’m going to make a change, this is the best time to make this change, maybe not in the 70s or 80s, but the 60s you’re like, okay, and I can still bounce back from what other financial hit there might be in this regard. So I think that’s why we’re seeing a lot of people looking at their 60s. And it’s the new midlife crisis type of time where we’re like, “Okay, what is it that we want our life to be from this point onward?” But I love how you say, “What would you like to do differently?” I do think we need to be intentional about this and not just kind of float from one situation we don’t want to be in to another situation.

Kimmery: Yeah. And this is the point you were talking about legacy and it brought up some of my things in my training. There are always these theories of development where people who are in their 60s and forward are in a developmental stage, it’s called generativity versus stagnation. And if they have lived the life that they want and they continue to live the life that they want, then they get to a point where as they move into the next 30 years or so, they continue to do those things.

And they can leave this life feeling like they’ve done the things that they need to do in order for them to live the fullest life that they want and for the people around them to see how to live life to the full. Then there’s people who are in situations right now that we’re talking about that are stagnant. Their relationships aren’t moving, they aren’t able to do the things that they want to do and they feel stuck. They feel like they don’t have any real way of getting to a point where they can leave a legacy that they can be proud of.

And so that’s where those questions start to come in. But people can change stagnation to generativity to being able to have a mindset of generosity towards themselves, not just talking about being generous to other people. But a mindset of generosity towards yourself, which includes compassion, which includes care, which includes giving yourself grace, which includes giving yourself space to make decisions that are best for you.

Often at 60, they’ve probably made decisions for, if they had children for their children, made decisions solely based on what their partner wanted. And now it’s time for them to decide what it is that they want for themselves. And they’re looking around and they’re saying, “Nobody has really made decisions based on my needs. So now it’s time for me to make decisions about myself and what my needs are.”

Sonia: So, Diamonds, did you hear that? Generosity to self. You get to, we right here, Dr. Kimmery and Dr. Sonia are giving you permission for this generosity to self where you get to have them self-love, the self-compassion. You get to be kind to yourself. You get to prioritize yourself first. And you get to decide what works best for you without necessarily taking 1,000 people into consideration.

By your 60s, your kids are more or less grown. They should hopefully be out of the house for the second or third time. So it really is a time where you get to make the decision finally for you and it gets to be a wonderful time. So I love that generosity to self. That’s a beautiful thing. Alright, we’re going to wrap this up. So, Dr. Kimmery, any last words that you would like to share?

Kimmery: [Crosstalk], you’ve got to say it like that. But yeah, we’re looking at final thoughts on this. Remember that it’s okay to take an examination of what has happened, take an inventory over time. And look at what it is that you have decided that you want for your life based off of everything that has happened and that has come before. What do you want your next 30 years to look like as Dr. Sonia said? And decide from there what those steps are. And it’s not necessarily always meaning you’re going to leave the relationship.

It could be a conversation about how to open it up so that both of you can have the satisfaction that you need and still have your companionate relationship because the person may have become a companion as opposed to a lover. And so being able to take inventory and make a decision based on that inventory is kind of the best route that I can see forward for you. Don’t beat yourself up, don’t give up and don’t let yourself just sit in a situation that causes you pain and misery.

Sonia: Yeah, I think that we started this conversation from a place of hopelessness and being stuck. Hopefully the Diamonds can see, anybody listening to this call or seeing us on YouTube, that we’re now in this place where there’s endless possibility. And if you just make that shift, your whole entire situation can be exactly the same. But if you open up your mind from a place of stuck and hopelessness to a place of wait, I have as many choices as I can think of. And actually spend the time to look and decide.

And we talked about ask yourself, how important is sex for you? Ask yourself what you want your future to look like. Ask yourself, what would you like to do different and then have the compassion and be kind to yourself. So there’s so many different areas that we touched on today. Dr. Kimmery is a relationship coach within my organization and definitely you can find her in the Lit Clit Club. She does classes either on relationship or trauma, depending on the month.

So come join us in the Lit Clit Club and we also always will include your information because you are your own personal coach as well and therapist. And so we also have your information in the show notes, if people want to click on that and find out more about you. Dr. Kimmery, once again, thank you so much for joining us and I’m trying to think of a really big word. Illuminating, that’s the word that I want, illuminating. It really wasn’t that big but shedding some light on this topic let’s just say. Thank you so much.

Kimmery: You’re so welcome.

Sonia: So good to see you, take care.

Hello, hello, hello, Diamonds, have you heard the amazing news? Dr. Sonia, that would be me and my amazing team has started a sex coaching and life coaching monthly membership program called The Lit Clit Club. The Lit Clit Club was made just for you. It’s a safe place where women can come to create the lives that they want, the lives that you want. It’s a place where you get to talk openly about your sexual concerns and be heard. There’s no judgment, no reprimand, no labels, just acceptance, knowledge and freedom.

It’s a place where you get to ask all the questions that you ever wanted to ask about sex and about life too. You get to dream big and create your life your way inside and outside the bedroom. You know I love the concept of creating the life that you want inside and outside the bedroom, that soul bursting life that you deserve. So come to the club for the sexual intimacy coaching and stay for the empowerment and the freedom.

Do you have questions about libido, menopause? Lord help us, menopause is no joke. Sexual health, relationships, sexual orientation, pleasure equality and orgasms, religion and intimacy? I am not finished with this list yet. Maybe you have questions about toys, maybe about non-monogamy. Perhaps you’re interested in BDSM, maybe self-love, self-pleasure. Maybe you have questions about self-orientation. Maybe you need to work on healing from trauma.

Maybe body image is something that you want to focus more on and definitely embodiment. Perhaps creating the life of your dreams or journeying to your authentic self. Maybe you just want to stop people pleasing. Whatever questions you have and concerns you have, we have the answers and the coaching that you need. In all actuality, you have the answers inside of you. And the coaching will help bring that out. And you know what? You get to choose how you want to be coached.

You can be coached by video, by audio only or you can use the questions and answers session, it’s whatever works for you. You get to sit back and relax and get the help that you need and your cameras are off. And every month we have a new workshop in addition to our regular coaching sessions. So click on the link below in the show notes and find out more about The Lit Clit Club. We can’t wait to see you there in the club, come join us. Things are just starting to heat up. Alright, Dr. Sonia out. Love you all, Diamonds.