Today I am talking to the fabulous Heidi Trudinger about midlife relationships. Our bodies go through huge changes at midlife and women in particular feel the change more acutely due to the hormonal dropoff of perimenopause. Men go through their own hormonal change with Andropause however the hormonal shifts are small each year and the decline is steadier.
All of this impacts how we feel about our bodies and our imprint on ageing that we learned through both our family system and culturally, has a huge impact on our ability to embrace our changing bodies at midlife. Most of the fear that we experience around ageing is not about getting old it is actually about dying and Heidi and talked quite a bit about this.
How do we sustain sexual intimacy at midlife with all these changes? Well it is not too hard but for most of us it is about learning about what sex actually is; something few of us learned when we were younger. It is about learning what true intimacy is and how to hold space for that with each other.
We also discussed:
Self love as an antidote to ageing and how to find that,
Embracing the Maga (archetype) at midlife really understanding what our individual expression of that that is and how it is different to the Crone,
How we can reconnect with the playful parts of ourselves, parts we have often buried deep in our unconscious, to reinvigorate our relationship,
How our body brings up old trauma for resolution at this transition and what a gift that can be,
How deep rest is incredibly sustaining for our bodies and is part of our erotic practice,
How our midlife transition is a portal for us to claim our authentic sexual selves and how we might start the path to explore this aspect of our selves.
You can find Heidi at heiditrue.com.au. She is also on instagram @true.intimacy and Facebook