"I can't be happy on my own," and other single in midlife myths

Calling all the single ladies!
If you’re one of the 29% of women who are aged between 50 and 64, or the 49% aged 65 plus who are single, then this one's for you!
In this episode, we explore the journey of being single in midlife, discussing the challenges, growth, and empowerment that can emerge from unexpected transitions.
Sara shares her personal experience of divorce in her early 50s, and opens up about her initial beliefs about what it meant to be single in midlife and how these beliefs held her back. Over time, she shifted her focus towards self-growth and embraced the mantra "everything is figure-outable.”
This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking to thrive in midlife transitions and rewrite their own narrative.

Midlife single stats: 29% of women aged 50 to 64 are single, and 49% of women age 65 plus are single. Single is defined as not married, living together or in a committed relationship (source). 

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Disclaimer: This podcast, along with associated websites and social media materials, are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The views expressed are that of Sara Garska and Kate Campion, and that of our guests, respectively. It is for informational purposes only. Please consult your healthcare professional for medical questions.

Transcript

Kate: Welcome to the Midlife Spotlight podcast. I’m Kate Campion -

Sara: and I’m Sara Garska -

Kate: and we’re certified life coaches obsessed with helping you find joy in this next act of your life. Whether it’s reviving your midlife marriage, losing weight, or scratching that “what next” itch, we’re here to share our experience and expertise with you.

This podcast is a weekly dose of YOU time, where you get the tools and tricks to improve your health and happiness. Talking to you is so much fun, so thanks for tuning in. Let’s get started.

Kate: Hi there, and welcome to Midlife Spotlight, the show that helps you enjoy your next act. I'm Kate Campion. 

Sara: And I'm Sara Garska.

Kate: And in today's episode, we'll be talking about limiting beliefs about being single in midlife and how you can move past them.

Now, Sara, this is going to be such a good topic for the two of us to discuss together because I was working with this coaching client last year and she's in her early 60s.

And one of the things that she said to me that she really struggled with was an absence of sort of single woman role models at this stage in her life.

When she was thinking about, you know, how she wanted to live and the things that were important to her.

And even though we hadn't even started on this podcast yet, having known you for a number of years. I instantly thought, well, you're a woman I know that is crushing it at this stage in your life, and you are single.

But you're super relatable. You're very inspirational. So right from the beginning when we thought about this, well, when I thought about this podcast and approached you, I thought at some stage I'd love to talk to you about how you find navigating this space.

And in particular for today, what were the limiting beliefs that kind of came up in those early stages of you being single that kind of got in the way of your happiness.

Though I do know from some of the things that you've mentioned, you might have the odd awful dating story to share with us at some later point.

Sara: Much later. My kids, I told them about it, that we were doing this, and they're like, oh, we won't listen to this one. And I was like, no this one's fine. Kate's running it. It will be fine. No weird stories. 

Kate: Yeah, yeah, excellent. So I like to do research, as you know, look to the… the stats to see what are we actually looking at when it comes to being single at the stage of our life?

And I was actually really surprised to see that there are 29% of women aged 50 to 64 who are single.

And that definition of single isn't just people that aren't living with somebody or married, it's actually not in a committed relationship as well.

So one in three women are not with a partner in any way, sort of form or shape. And then once we get to 65+, that rises to an absolute massive 49% - almost half.

So I think having positive role models and positive ways of approaching being single in midlife and beyond is just such an important thing to do if we want to maximize the happiness with our life.

So, Sara, you got divorced in your early 50s. 

Sara: I did. Yeah, we were talking about that. And I have a hard time remembering my age.

And for some reason, I did not even do the math before this podcast, but I believe I was 52. So close enough.

Kate: So 52, and you’d been married about 30 years, is that right?

Sara: Yeah a full 30 years, and I’m not going to go into details about the divorce but it was ami… amicable, yeah, and we still get along and we do things as a family together, with all the extras, and my ex husband has remarried and so yeah we’re normal, we have our things, but in general, that part’s pretty good.

Kate: Yeah, so thinking about that time of your life when you were sort of freshly divorced, we’re going to be talking about those, like I said, those limiting beliefs and just to reiterate, limiting beliefs are very much coach speak.

So apologies for people that aren't familiar with the term, but it's really a way of thinking about yourself, thinking about how the world works and your place in it that isn't really helpful to you because it stops you getting what you want or it stops you being as happy as you could be.

And we did talk about limiting beliefs in particular around the idea of being selfish in Episode 1 and the idea of like, I'm too old to do certain things which was Episode 2.

So working with limiting beliefs is super important because like I said, it can get in the way of what you want.

When you first became single, what limiting beliefs kind of first came up for you?

Sara: Well, when I look back on it and... I would say the number one is that I needed to get into another relationship, that I needed to. I just, and I know like in our notes I put that second, but as I've thought about it, that is really the first, that was the biggest one.

I just assumed, because I wasn't anti being married anti being, I just assumed that within a couple years I would meet someone new and fall in love and we'd get married.

That it would all just go like that. It's nine years later, that is not the way it has played out.

But it took me a long time to release that limiting belief. And I do, as I've kind of pondered this, getting ready for this, I think that really in a way held me back from doing the things that I've done in the last few years, because my main mission was I must find a guy.

I need to find a guy. And that limiting belief that I needed to be in a relationship to be happy really slowed down my progress.

It just kept me focused on the wrong thing. And then behind that, I would say, was just that limiting belief that I couldn't do it on my own.

You know, they're kind of related, but they're a little bit different. Just, because I had gotten married so young, I had never lived on my own, and so that other limiting belief was, I don't know how to do this.

And so I had to, you know, move beyond that at some point. So I would say those are the two big ones.

Then just another one, and just the best way I can articulate that is to say, I just didn't feel like I was good enough.

Like, going through the divorce, I felt sort of defective. Like there was something wrong with me and that limiting belief again,  kind of slowed me down, held me back.

Kate, I know like you had a period where you were single too.

I wonder if like you had similar situation. I mean, you eventually did remarry, but did you have that period of time where you had to grapple with your own limiting beliefs?

Kate: Yeah, definitely. I was just thinking, I certainly... So to go back to the one that you said about never having lived on your own.

That was not a problem for me. I don't know if I've shared, but actually I left home, kicked out of home depending on which version of… who's telling the story.

But when I was only 16 years old, I still had two years of high school to go. I ended up actually living in what we call a flat.

I guess it's like a house, but a house that you're renting from somebody else. And I actually lived on my own, off and on. From the time I was 16 years old, like no other person in the house until my first marriage, well until I met the person who became my first husband.

And when I was 19, so you know, the idea of living on my own wasn't a problem to me.

And in fact, you know, I've been divorced twice. So, you know, there was both divorces. Like that feeling of being on my own was okay.

But it was more like you said that thought that it was a temporary thing, you know. And I think, and that idea that, yeah, being single is temporary.

And therefore that means that I can't really be happy until I find a partner. And the interesting thing, you know, now that you say that, you know, I don't know that I actually ever got past that because after my first marriage was all good.

He was a nice person. My second marriage, it was a long time after we broke up that I could even bear to look at anybody. You know, like it was just, it had been quite a traumatic experience for me and it messed with my head a lot about again, that you said about feelings of self worth, but this time it was the self worth within a relationship.

And it actually took me a year of being single to even feel like I wanted to be with anyone.

So, yeah, that was a different experience. And then I had, you know, a couple of shorter relationships before I met Ben.

And so, yeah, the idea that I needed to be in relationship to be happy was actually pretty constant for me.

And you know, but now, particularly when I think back to that statistic that we shared at the beginning about the 49% of people, 65 plus women who were on their own, you know, it does really make you think about how actually while a relationship is a great, great spot.

I get so much of my happiness from my relationship. It is really important to do the things that you kind of want to do for yourself.

Yeah, so interesting again, we come at this from different perspectives.

Sara: We do.

And I'm not anti-relationship at all. I've had some good ones. I've fallen in love a few times over the nine years.

And so I don't look at this failure because they all brought something to my life. And it's really just been in, I haven't been in a relationship for over two years now.

And as you know, this two years has been phenomenal. And we'll get to that as we start talking about the strategies.

But what changed was I just accepted like, this might be the rest of my life. I might be one of those people that doesn't find a forever person or that.And it really was when I accepted it, that I started living the life I wanted to life.

Kate: And now that you say that actually, I think probably my limiting belief that was more about being single was I'll never be happy in a relationship was probably my one.

Like, I didn't think that I would actually be lucky enough to end up as happy as I am now with, you know, with a good partner.

Like, you know, by the time you've had a couple of divorces, you're like, this is actually ever going to work for me.

Of course, the irony is now, we've talked about the fact we both have websites and my website is about relationships and happy marriages so I’ve gone all in on it. Okay. So, those three limiting beliefs that you talked about, how did you actually move past them?

Sara: Yeah. it did not happen quickly, obviously. I remember those first couple of years after, I didn't date for a few months until after the divorce and I got out of the house.

But once I started, it became my mission. I approached it like a job search, which I was also doing. I mean, I took it seriously.

And I always had plenty of dates. I used to keep, not quite a spreadsheet because I still don't know how to do spreadsheets, right?

I would list out the people. I still have my list of every one I've went out with. Everywhere we had our date, a little bit about them, what their profession was.

So let's say I'm going to say I went out with maybe 50 different people.

Kate: Whoa.

Sara: I know. And some of them would be longer, you know. But some of them were just meet once, and that was it.

So the limiting belief that I had to be with somebody really took a long time to kind of, but it was as I approached being 60.

So I'm 61 now. And it just dawned on me like, oh yeah, you might not find that person. And it was okay.

Because by then I started getting a little traction with my coaching. My coaching business. I had the blogs, so I had enough things going on that I finally decided that that wasn't going to limit me anymore.

I was going to live the life I wanted to live no matter what. And so that's, I think that limiting belief just kind of got worn down.

Kate: Like the spreadsheet,

Sara: I did, was like, okay. And I also realized, you know, that as we talked about, you know, that I, that belief that you might need to be, be in a relationship to be happy, I had enough evidence of this like, no, like, yeah, there's happy moments in a relationship and there are happy moments, not being in relationship.

And it just finally started dawning on me that I could be happy either way. I didn't have to be in a relationship to be happy and I don't have to be single to be happy, but I can just, you know, do the things that make me happy and that changed that limiting belief.

And the other. 

Kate: Can we just pause on that a bit though? I really like what you're saying. So what I'm hearing is that you had thought that it was actually your relationship status was the thing that was the happiness, but actually you discovered that it was the achievement of some personal goals, the gaining of traction and the things that you know you're enjoying and getting a sense of sort of meaning and purpose from those other activities that actually weren't contingent on being with another person.

Sara: Oh good catch on that. I love it when I say things and then somebody says it back and yeah like wow yeah that's what I meant. It's so true. Yes part of it was those things were bringing such satisfaction and then the other piece I think that kind of pulled it all together was I had rented for you know eight years because I just was afraid that I would not be able to take care of a home on my own like a home I owned that I had responsibility for, and finally, my family's big. I have kids. I have grandkids. My kids have partners. And a one-bedroom apartment was just not allowing me to have my family over.

So I finally did it, bought a house, and when I got into this house, yeah, it was the... I felt so peaceful. And so I just... I think I'd put off getting a house because I was... didn't want to have a house. And -

Kate: I know what you're going to say. 

Sara: It’s almost embarrassing.

Kate: But if you're going to say you didn't want to buy a house because if you met someone then you were going to have to sell the house. Because you'd move in together.

Sara: Yes. Because if I was renting, it would be so easy to resolve the living relationship. Then when I realized like, no, just get your house. I can tell you the best decision ever. I mean, that was that final puzzle piece to help me just enjoy my life. Honestly, I wake up every single morning happy, at least the waking up part, know, life happens. When I wake up, I am happy. And lot of times I'm happy, I am there by myself.

I'm like,you know, I just get to get up, have the whole bed, have coffee in the bed. So it's all good.

Kate: But that is such common belief. we did not rehearse that beforehand, that fact.

Sara: Yeah, we did not. 

Kate: Because even my son has just bought a house and he's single and I almost felt myself wanting to give him the same advice.

And it's actually, it's ridiculous advice. Because like you said, the home can provide you with a sense of stability. It can provide you with a sense of belonging. You can surround yourself with the things that give you joy. You know, it just gives you so much. 

And actually, when you were talking on that, was reflecting on when I did leave my second marriage I had two dogs, not the same two dogs I have now unfortunately, they’ve both passed away.It was really important for me to be able to keep my dogs. I wasn’t  able to rent a house, I don't know what it's like in the States, but trying to get a rental when you've got pets is just such a mission. Yeah, so I was like, okay, I've got to buy a house. So I bought a house in six weeks.

Like I said, I'm leaving and then boom, six weeks later, was moving into this place. I don't know how I pulled it off. But that house was a healing place for me. I still look it back in all the places I've lived in, and it was just a special place because I went in there, I healed. I have a couple of so in New Zealand, indigenous culture is, Māori culture. And when I moved into my house, I had two of my Māori friends and they came and they made my bed up and they did like a little blessing over it.

And it was just like, it just always had such a good feeling to it. Of course, I met Ben there as well and we lived in there together for a time.

And then when we left it, I just still remember walking around the house and thanking all the rooms for what it had done for me.

Just that whole thing of like, yeah, don't put off some of these big decisions about how you want to live or where you want to live or what you want to do, because they might be the very things that give you what you need.

Sara: Absolutely This house and being able to be able to gather my family here has been amazing because my family is such a joy to me.

And when I didn't have space to entertain them, the kids were doing some of it. But we got to a point because of different, their different living relationships, their different living situations that not everyone had room for everybody.

And it was all falling all onto one of my children. And so, so it was nice for me to be able to pick up and do some of the holidays at my house, have some of the parties, have the grandchildren spend the night.

Just, you know, so it's happy for me when I'm here by myself, but I also love having a place where everybody can come over.

And recently, I've been here a year and I still have not found a dining room table. So I have set up, I cover the floor with a tarp and I have tables set up with paints and canvases so that I can paint and the kids can come over to paint. So that's super fun. There's nobody to say, are you ever going to clean that up? It's like maybe, maybe not. I don't know.

Kate: Love it. Okay, so you got worn down with the relationships and focused on purpose and meaning from other things. You went ahead, you got the house when you felt ready.

What about the idea that you weren't good enough?

Sara: Yeah, so part of that was, you know, as I look back, when you become a single woman, like you said at the beginning, and this surprised me that to me, to me it was like only 29% of us are single. No wonder I felt like I was alone, or your client felt like she was alone. Because I didn't have any single friends.

And everybody I knew was married. And what happened was, and I don't even think it was intentional, but to this day, I don't think I've received a dinner invitation, party invitation, or any kind of invitation like that from anybody I used to socialize with. It kind of just like the hammer came... I mean, I would still see my friends, maybe for coffee or lunch or, you know, those kind of things.But it was like, I was out of that tribe. 

And so it, I don't know if, well, divorce itself, I think I felt like a failure. I was a failure as a mom. I mean, really, I felt horrible.I  felt like I was horrible wife. I felt like I'd let everyone down, so there's that not feeling enough. But then when your social life evaporates and people are still doing stuff together, but because you're just on your own. And so I don't know. It was really, really hard. And, you know, I had to just do the work.

Part of it was doing, you know, the blogs, my first blog, My Think Big Life was a huge part of just writing out my life.

And I never even really talked about these things, but it did give me a place to write. And then, you know, getting my own professional help to help me process everything, which I still do to this day.

And then starting the coaching business. And so I had to almost, I had to recreate a life where I was enough.

And I had to start teaching myself that I was enough, just as I am. Not because of who I hang out with. Or who I'm dating. And, or even like who I'm the parent of or the, I really, like I would say this year I’ve really focused on instead of my enoughness being in relation to other people, it being about me and my own contribution, if that makes sense.

Kate: Yeah, it does my perfect sense actually and it's a very common midlife transition as well. but what I'm hearing from that that's quite interesting is that idea that we have that things will always be the same, you know, and, and so we think like we'll get married to this person and this marriage will last forever, we'll be friends with these people and this friendship will last forever, we'll have these children in our life will be so focused on our family forever.

I think that as I've gotten older, one of the things I've come to realize is there is no forever, you know, life is made up of these different seasons.

And, and I think when you and I've talked about that, you've talked about the idea of seasons as well.

But, you know, we do go through these different stages where it's all about the mothering or it's all about the being the wife or it's all about these people and rather than perceive the shift as a failure, it's just simply a shift in the season, the same way that spring shifts to summer and summer shifts to autumn and so on.

Sara: It's so true and you know, my mother is still alive and she's 91 and I know I've seen first hand all the loss that she's gone through in… She's exactly 30 years older than me, so I'm 61, she's 91. And so over the last 30 years I've seen her lose siblings, her friends, all my dad's friends, my dad.

And it's now … her last home. I mean she has, she lives somewhere, she is at home but living in a house house.

And she showed me how to accept these losses with grace and she's never quit living her life, but it's still scary to contemplate that these losses are going to continue, like getting divorced and having to move out of my home. That was a loss, but it's going to be the first of many, I'm assuming. 

So, trying to think of the word the better that we learn to deal with it.I mean, it's never going to feel good. You know, it's not like you're going to look at it be like, Ooh, this is so much fun. Like you said, it really is a part of life.

So when you say that, I look at, oh, yeah, you know, this part of my life, this single part of my life, I guarantee I will get to a point in my life and I look back on it and I'll be like, that was really, really a good time. That was a good part of your life, Sara. So I'm trying to embrace that more.

Yeah, maybe it's not always, it didn't always feel good, but there's going to be aspects that I'll look back on and just treasure.

Kate: Mm hmm. Yeah, and that kind of leads nicely into how, you know, what were the beliefs that you went from having about, you know, not being enough and you need a relationship to be happy and so on.What did you replace those beliefs with?

Sara: One of the biggest ones, I would say going to be able to figure anything out. I didn't read the book, but there was a book by Marie Forleo. I think that's her last name. Anyway, it was called Everything is Figure-outable. I didn't read the book, but I love that phrase.

And It just taught me that I can figure things out because that fear that I wasn't going to be able to take care of the house. I wasn't going to be to live on my own. I had fears about taking care of my money. I just told myself, you can figure this out, Sara, and you can do it. So a lot of it was just sort of, even though I didn't know that was what it was, I was already self-coaching.

The other big belief change was, I can be happy on my own. And kind of with that is I'm not really alone. Telling myself I was alone was not helpful. I was like, I'm not alone. Well, I have friends, I have family, I have children, I have grandchildren, I have a son-in-law, daughter-in-law, I have, you know, my mom's still alive.

And so when I really started thinking about it differently, it's like, no, I'm not alone. But when I tell myself alone, I'm alone, that holds me back.It's very limiting.

And then finally, you know, just that I am enough, I am enough. And one of the things that helped me on that was, because we had talked about EFT in a previous episode, which is tapping, but there's one tapping with the tapping solution called I am enough.

It's 18 minutes. But they recommend you do it like, I think about eight days and so I did that. We just do it, do it, do it, and just reinforce that idea. I'm enough. I'm enough. And that really helped, you know, we have to change our thoughts somehow and sometimes it feels fake when we start.

But as we remind ourselves, that we are enough and we just start noting, noticing our accomplishments, we start believing we’re enough.

Kate: So, that's actually a key thing as well because changing those beliefs can be work. It doesn't just like…”II feel okay now,” doesn't generally happen. It does actually take some form of concentrated control. I'm actually thinking back to the time, Like I said when I left my second husband, I remember keeping a gratitude journal for example, and just like every day writing down the three good things that had happened so that I could just try and keep focused on what it was that was positive in my life.

I had to retrain myself away from thinking everything was over. And then, I mean obviously I've only even known you post divorce.I don't really know what Sara married Sara was like.

Sara: I actually like post-divorce Sara better.

Kate: Interesting. So what is it,your vision of yourself, how has that changed since you got divorced?

Sara: Ooh, that's such a good question. And I think why it's a good question and why it's a little more difficult to answer is I really feel like I'm moving into a new phase.

So after my divorce, not right away, but eventually living on my own, I lost weight. And so for the first time in my life, I got what I call a cute body.

I was like, whoa. And so I feel like I went through my hoochie mama phase. I mean, so I had never worn shorts, dresses or bathing suits since I was in my 30s.

Like I was just never comfortable in my body. And so in my 50s, I lived in like little shorts, mini skirts, short dresses.

And so I colored my hair or I did. And, you know, so that was very important. The looks part through my 50s because, as we mentioned earlier, my job was finding a man. And in my mind, finding a man meant, you know, always looking right and everything.

And in this final part of this accepting myself, I've started letting my hair grow out and which is surprising me. Like, oh, okay, I like it. And I'm just embracing this, not, like I'm changing my identity from single to I'm an entrepreneur, I have a business, I have a voice in the world.

I have I would say millions of people have read my words over the last few years. And this new identity is coming out and I'm not quite what she is. I'm not quite sure what she's going to be like, but I do feel like she's the most authentic version of myself so far.

Like she's the one, the me I am now is the he…. I feel like I don't It's hard to describe in non-coachee words, I don't know. I just feel good about myself. Not because I've suddenly become perfect or anything, but because there's just a new level of acceptance.

And I'm going to add here, because this just occurred to me. Living alone with myself was a gift, because it was the first - these last two years have been the first time I've really just gotten to have my own space with only my stuff in it, take care of it the way I want, run my own schedule.

And so I've really gotten to know myself well. And it's been now that I think about it, really amazing, a really amazing experience that I'm grateful for.

Yeah.  I'm glad you brought this topic up. It's really, I feel like I've gone down memory lane and processing and I've got talk about my life.

Kate: So from you sharing your story, you know, what I've heard is that in the last 10 years you've really gone through an incredible transformation.

And even though you thought kind of that your life was over as well, your life was over as you knew it, you know, that one life was over.

But the kind of rebirth and the experience that you've had since then has actually been really incredible for you.

And you feel like you're actually the most you you've ever been. 

So for our listeners, what advice would you give to them if they've suddenly found themselves single and mid-life? 

Sara: Okay. Number one, don't panic because you are going to be able to figure it out. 

The other thing is give yourself plenty of time. I don't care if you're the person that asked for the divorce or the person that got asked for a divorce, it's difficult. It is a big transition and it's likely to feel very unsettling and not fun at all. And to just give yourself plenty of time.

I really didn't expect it to take so long to feel better. My older sister who had gone through a divorce had told me it will take a good five years. And I was like, oh, that's you. I'll be on the fast track.And here I am. It took me eight years to feel like kind of normal. And so give yourself plenty of time.

 And the other is to not compare yourself to anyone. I mean, it would be so easy for me to sit here and compare myself to you like, oh, Kate found, Kate found somebody.I know other people that have, my sister was one, both my sister's. I see a lot of people find a second marriage or even a third, but you can't compare yourself to everyone.Everyone's experience is different.

My final piece of advice is always be kind to yourself.It's so easy to beat up on yourself when you're in a different phase of life or one that you didn't really want to be in, but there you are.

You need that extra kindness and it needs to start with you giving it to yourself.

Kate: I love that. Being a single with midlife is challenging, but the stories we tell us about what this means for a happy life are definitely more fiction than fact.

So thank you so much for sharing your experience with us today. 

Sara: You're welcome and thank you for asking.

Kate: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you loved what you heard, you can leave a review so we know to keep more of it coming. You can also visit our website at midlifespotlight.com and learn a little bit more about us. We love connecting with you and can't wait to see you next week.