How do you navigate the long term relationship?

How midlife and relationships are hard to navigate (to put it mildly)

It’s interesting because when I talk to friends this doesn’t seem to be unusual. I’ve written before about how many of the women I know are changing. or have changed a lot since they hit their mid forties (or even earlier). However in some cases the men have stayed the same. Skateboarding. Smoking. Emotionally a bit stagnant.

This has meant that these women are spending more time with female friends to get the type of connection they need to thrive. To actually feel alive and not just surviving. This isn’t obviously sexual connection though. I come from a family where my mum was married 3 times. She also (I think) had affairs. She once told me that the average relationship has a life span of about 7 years. I was 27 when I met my partner and was an entirely different person. I was living in a studio flat. Looking back I chased him like mad and he wasn’t interested. He actually called me ‘Barnacle’ because he said he ‘couldn’t shake me off.’ This was my pattern with previous relationships- I wanted a man who didn’t want me. The thrill was in convincing them that I was a good bet.