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Who cares who you sleep with?
Yuck?
You're old?
No one wants to think about you having sex? Gross, Keep it to yourself. Hasn't that part of your life kind of ended? Don't embarrass your children? Do you even want that anymore? Shush, don't make a thing of it, put it away. Who cares who you sleep with? You do and what you care about still matters? Hiding a part of yourself that's essential to who you are. Isn't the freedom you've waited so long for. Sex and sexuality is not only for the young and the lineless. Joy
and pleasure and connection has no time limit. Truth has no deadline. You've had your time. Shush up about desire and love and longing. Now it's not your turn. So selfish. This idea has trapped plenty of women in places they didn't belong, when actually the opposite is true. Now you have a lot more experience and a lot less time, So why would you waste it? Not being who you are, not asking for what you need, not getting the pleasure
until now? Only played out in the privacy of fantasy, not feeling the feelings.
You weren't raised with a name for that.
You were taught to fear and shove aside, push away into a voiceless corner. Who cares who you sleep with now you're mid whether you do or you don't, how much or how little, how often, how rarely, whether you even like it or not?
Who cares?
If you're stuck wondering what else there is, Whether there's a truer expression of you somewhere, whether there's a craving for a deep companionship or a cheap thrill you can no longer ignore, And who cares? What the world knows about who you really are? The answer to all of that.
Is, as you do.
Hello, I am Holly Wainwright, and I am mid midlife, mid family, mid learning, and this is mid your podcast for gen X women who are anything. But what if it took you until mid to say out loud something that you've been trying to find the words for your whole life, Something like, yes, I know I'm a mother married to a man, but I'm also bisexual. That's the story of today's guest, The novelist Julie Cohen. Julie was
in her forties when she came out as bisexual. You can hear some of the reactions to that decision echoed in my intro today. Some people, she says, asked her why she bothered, as if age itself renders your sexuality irrelevant. Some people, she says, suggested that just as an adolescent sexuality can be dismissed as a phase, perhaps hers was simply.
A mid life crisis.
Her husband, Julie says, not surprised they're divorced after a while, although she's very clear that wasn't as a result of her sexuality, and slowly in lockdown, she started to date women dating after divorce, navigating the apps in the first post long term relationship. Sexual encounters are interesting and nerve wracking for anyone, and Julie says it was no different for her. You're going to hear how it all went,
the pleasures of post penis sex, what she found. The differences are between dating men and women and just how it felt to be living the version of herself that Julie says when she was growing up she didn't have a word for. This is the last episode of Mid
for twenty twenty four. My friends, there are plenty of other interesting little morsels of content are going to be popping up in your midfeed over the next six weeks, some expert conversations about Perry and menopause, some gen X storytelling podcasts and interviews that I think you're going to love. But as for Mid, we're going to be back with you in twenty twenty five with all kinds of new things.
We wanted to leave you with a really honest conversation about how it feels to be finally living as you in the mid.
Welcome Julie Cohen.
Julie, I'd love to start by reading out the opening of an essay you wrote for Medium five years ago now, and the title of that was I came out as bisexual in midlife, and you wrote in my forties and having been married to the same man for twenty years, I came out to my family and friends as bisexual. I'd known for a while that I was attracted to more than one gender, but I never felt the need to talk about it publicly or to define my sexuality
for other people. Looking back at my teens and twenties, the time when many people are discovering their sexuality. I really didn't know that bisexuality even existed. I grew up in a small town in Maine in the seventies and eighties. I had gay male friends, but I didn't know any out lesbians. I only ever heard the word bisexual applied to David Bowie, who clearly lived by different rules than ordinary mortals. I knew I liked men, so I figured
I must be straight. When I had intense feelings towards women, including emotional and physical attraction, I defined them as friendship. Gradually I came to realize that it was more than that. But by then I was in a relationship with a man. I was building a career, negotiating a marriage, being a parent. I hardly had time to breathe. Why bother to talk about my sexuality, Julie, Can you tell me how and when it became essential for you to talk about your sexuality.
I think it was a professional decision as well as a personal one. As a novelist, I'm drawn to certain subjects and I can't help but want to write about them.
And you know, when you're writing a novel, you're going to spend a year or so with a certain subject, and I started being more and more attracted to writing seam gender love stories, particularly love stories between women, and I thought, because I was exploring that so much in my fiction, it would be and I have to say this before I say anything, it is really important never to out anybody or for anybody to feel that they
need to out themselves. Your sexuality is your own business, and when you come out of the closet is completely and utterly up to you. But for myself, I felt that it would be more authentic to my own voice and my own stories and my own life if I came out publicly to my readers.
Was it a mystery to you in any way why you were really drawn to writing those relationships at that time when you were married to a man.
No, not really, No, you knew. I knew. I really did know. I was writing a story at one point about this time, I was writing a story about It was called The Two Lives of Louis and Louise, and it was about one person called lou who it's a sliding doors story and in one reality born as a cisgender man, and in the other reality they're born as a cisgender woman. And that's the only difference between them,
and it's the two stories. There are two stories, making one story of one person, and how because of their gender, everything about them changed, everything about the life around them changed the people around them too, because not because of who they were, but because of how they were treated because of their gender. And in order to make that story work and to give it the ending I really wanted, Lou had to be bisexual and be bisexual in both realities.
And that felt like coming home. So much of that writing felt like coming home to me. And I think I was writing that about the same time that I wrote that essay, and I just wanted to be more authentic with my voice and with the people around me and just say, yeah, really, this is a lot of my feelings too.
You talk a little bit about how there was among some people there was a bit of an idea, well, who cares, like you know, who cares who you're attracted to? Who cares who you're sleeping with? Why do you have to tell everybody? There's kind of an undercurrent in your writing, and you write, which I found really really profound.
You wrote, I care.
It isn't irrelevant to me, It's part of my emotions my thoughts, My choice is my work, the things I create. I'm a middle aged woman and I still matter. And I hope that being open about my sexuality might help other people like me who are struggling with being open about this.
Absolutely to a certain extent, saying who cares who you're attracted to is homophobia, as we know, it's also agism, and I think the most insidious homophobia and agism is the internalized variety. So the kind you feel about yourself, tell me about that. It's what I was writing in that essay when I said, who cares what I think? I'm only a middle aged woman. I'm only a mom who cares if I fancy women as well as men. It's irrelevant to everybody around me. But the thing is
that we live in a mostly straight world. We live in a world with compulsive heterosexuality, which is what I was talking about in that essay when I said I was attracted to men, so I must be straight. And unless you say otherwise, people assume that you are straight, and that assumption makes it raises a lot of yourself, and I think we are subject to that assumption because of our age too, and the fact if you're a mother.
There are so many assumptions made about you as a human being that unless you stand up against them and say, yeah, I'm a mom and I love it. But I'm another person too. You know, I'm in my forties, I'm in my fifties, but I still matter. Unless you say those things out loud, you allow other people to write the narrative for you. I think the hardest barrier to overcome was my own feeling of that, you know, I'm not relevant anymore. Who would care what I have to say?
Why am I being selfish by saying something that could upset my family and my friends. It didn't upset my friends, but that could upset my family. Who am I to make that change? And at the same time, you know, I was at the center of my family. I was looking after my kid, I was looking after my then husband. It did actually matter a lot. But as women, I think we're taught to efface ourselves, yes.
And also that our sexuality or our own priorities and needs, like it's frivolous and silly. You know, by now we've got all these serious things to deal with. And that's for young people, you know, like some kind of internalized idea that, as you say, it's selfish and greedy almost to be and now you want that too, you want to live an authentic life as well.
And on top of that, there are stereotypes about bisexuals and bisexuality. That's one of the stereotypes that bisexuals are greedy, they want everything, they want everybody, and that they like to sleep around because you have to switch from one gender to another or whatever, which is not necessarily true. As all stereotypes, it's not true at all. I mean, at the time, I was married to a man and I had no interest in sleeping around or doing anything like that.
You say that it's very important to you that it's clear that it wasn't because of your set. Your divorce was not because of your sexuality. Can you tell me a bit more about that and about the misconceptions that people maybe have around that situation.
A marriage is a very very complicated thing, and a long term marriage is a very complicated thing. There's so many aspects to it. To reduce the breakup of a marriage to one thing is way over simplification. And in my case, I was happily bisexual married to a man. I'd never dated a woman, and so I did think about that, but that wasn't any different than my fancying someone on the street thinking about that. Everybody has fantasies
and wonders and desires. That's part of being human. You don't have to act on them, and that's part of being married. And nothing changed about that at all. When I came out. It was exactly the same. So I don't want to feed into those stereotypes of bisexual people being rapacious or greedy or promiscuous, because that's not what happened. What happened was our marriage came to a natural end, and then I started dating women.
In this essay, you also write about this that young people are often told their sexuality is a phase, and I when told that mine was a midlife crisis. So when because there's a difference between the conversation you're having with your husband and with your very close circle, but then there's a difference of them when you're out literally out in the world as a newly separated or divorced woman. Is that a reaction that people had and why do you think? What do you think that's about?
It was a reaction that some people had, Yes, And I do talk about this a lot, because it was just an enormous eye opener for me. There was a publishing professional who said that I had come out as queer for the career boost.
Oh my god, no, and I so likely to kind of keep yourself relevant or something.
Is that what they were thinking?
Right, all the young people are doing it, that must be why. Oh my gosh, So it's and I celebrate that day every year that person.
What do you mean you celebrated every day?
Celebrate it by posting a picture of myself, you know, snogging the person I happen to be dating at the time or whatever. Because I'm petty like that.
I like that.
You're like, oh god, I mean, obviously we can't expose that person too much. But did you did that person stay in your life professionally?
No? No?
You were like, no, no, no.
I mean. Also, it's so funny because I talk to my queer author friends and I say that, and they're gassed at two things. One is like, hold on that as homophobic as hell and ages as hell. But also, how does someone in the industry not know that being queer is not a career boost? Rely is not.
It's a very ignorant thing. To say on in Many
Day twice. As you've made very clear, the story isn't linear, and that your marriage ended because of your bisexuality, but once your relationship was over, and without wanting to step on any other people's stories here, mothers are always really worried whatever when they go through a relationship breakdown, no matter what, that they're ruining their children's lives, and that's often part of the thing that plays into the sort of shame of you know, we being greedy again, whatever
the circumstances are, to want to be happier, want to be more authentic, want to be freer. Did you do a lot of research and rehearsing and all those things before you told your child about your situation and what was going on.
I came out to my teenager before, well before the marriage broke up. I came out when that I published that essay, in fact, because I know that they have Google, and I know that their friends have Google. So I thought it was best to just talk with them straightforwardly about that. And that was absolutely fine, not a worry at all. My child is very accepting and has lots of queer friends and is in the community themselves, and
it's not a problem. The divorce was something else, because I have a complicated divorce story in that we decided to split up in January twenty twenty, and then we decided to take it very slowly and let our child know when we had all the living arrangements in place. But then lockdown happened and we were ended up in a house together, living together for another year, so divorced
at the time. We actually got divorced in October twenty twenty, but we were still living in the same house at the time because there was the restrictions were such that we had to be and that was a very difficult year in a lot of ways. But I'm also grateful for that year because it meant because we're stuck in the same house together literally not able to leave, at some points, we developed much better communication skills and we
developed a friendship and mutual respectful relationship. That meant that the breakup of our marriage was pretty smooth in a lot of ways. It laid a good foundation for it, and our child knew that we were splitting up after a while. After the lockdown went on for a while, they sort of noticed that I had been sleeping on the sofa for a whole while. I didn't do a lot of research about it. We just did what felt
right at the time. It was a difficult time, so I say it had a silver lining, but it was very hard because I had all these big feelings that I could not let out at all because I was with the person I was divorcing, and I was with my child who I didn't want to see them because they were mine and I didn't want my child to have to carry that. There were foteen at the time fifteen fourteen fifteen, So yeah, it made things intentional. It
made things difficult, but intentional. So I'm grateful for that.
What did you do with your big feelings in lockdown? In that situation?
I wrote a book that was unpublishable, right, and I walked the dog a lot. Yes, and my female friends were there for me one hundred percent. I owe them everything.
Thank God for that.
It's a very difficult circumstance in which to be divorcing though, and maybe sort of trying out your training wheels as a newly single person. Yeah, yes, when, when and how did dating happen in that situation?
I had a couple of dates after we'd split up, but before he had moved out, they obviously had to be out of the house, so dog walks and things like that. And the apps are a wonderful thing because you can test out flirting with people and you know, it's a whole new It was a whole new world for me dating women as well. I mean dating anyway in your fifties is like what, Yeah, after you've been married for so long, it's a complete landmine.
And was it scary or thrilling to learn? I mean, these are two new things you're learning, I guess, but after being married for a really long time flirting again, like and like what was it like?
And then there's the whole thing about when you're flirting with another woman. Because I flirt with my friends constantly. I'm just to flirt, and so then I would I tend to flirt with people when I newly meet them. So then trying to parse that out about how much am I flirting because I'm attracted and how much am I flirting because that's just my normal way of relating to somebody. It's I read something somewhere that is when you come out, you go back to being a teenager.
So you have to relearn the world in a way that you did when you were fifteen sixteen, but in it you know completely differently. So it's weird being, you know, in your fifties and being a teenager at the same.
Salutely, once you knew the marriage was over and you were going to start dating again, you knew that this was you were going to date women. Was it Did it feel like I get to be me now? Was it exciting and thrilling or was it scary?
Both both. I think we have a we have an illusion that people stay the same throughout their life, and I think that in contrary to that, I think that people have many different selves to them depending on the situations that they're in, depending on what they find important at the time. I think you can be slightly different with different people. So trying to work out who you are through dating is not really a good idea because
then the dating affects yourself. I have been trying to be very mindful about being myself and who I am rather than responding to the needs of others in a romantic situation. I feel that I did that for many years in my marriage, and I was trying to work out who I was myself and who I was now, not who I was before I got married or who I was during my marriage, but who I am now.
And so I've dated and then taken time off dating, and then going back to dating, and because I want to always walk into it with a strong sense of self and not feeling that dating women is going to fulfill a wonderful part of me that was never fulfilled before. That's not the way it works, not for me anyway. I need to be comfortable and happy within my own skin, and that is regardless of who I'm dating and what
gender they are. So I did discover a lot about myself through making mistakes and through meeting people that I didn't really deal with. I learned a lot about women dating women and how different that is.
What's what was some of those early lessons. What's what is different?
It's different. The thing that leaps to mind, Holly, is when I had my ad a first uh overnight date with someone who just brought her sex toys. It's like, wow, lesbians, they're so evolved. Yeah, that was great. I enjoyed that.
And that's not to say that has happened every time, but that was a real shock for me, but some of the other lessons I think because I haven't dated men in a very long time, I'm I contrast it with my friends who got divorced about the same time and who were dating men while I was dating women, and that experience seemed to be quite different for us.
There seemed to be fewer women who were on there just to waste your time or just to have a hookup or just to see what was going on, and maybe more women who are that's it's a cliche to say that women want to jump right into a relationship, but I did feel fine that the women who I was dating, and maybe that was because as I was choosing them intentionally, were very clear about what they wanted in their life. Absolutely because which I found very refreshing.
It's a common experience for women who are dating after divorce in the straight world.
I guess to.
Suddenly, and I don't know, maybe this is the same, but there's a world of opportunity suddenly opens up on the apps, and it can be very good for your self esteem in a way, and then it can also be devastating if you're rejected, even by people who you were perfectly prepared to reject yourself.
It feels so raw because you know.
One of the things that's so different about being in a long term relationship, even if it wasn't a very happy one necessarily, not that I'm suggesting yours wasn't, is there was a certainty to it, is.
That a similar experience.
Was it a bit of an emotional roller coaster in terms of am I going to feel desired?
Am I going to fall for everybody? All of those kind of things.
Well, you feel differently about your body in your fifties than you did in your twenties, that's for sure. I am. I love my body, and I'm really happy that it's still healthy and it's still you know, looking pretty good, and that I can still wear what I want to and I can do what I want to do. I'm very grateful for it. But it's really not the body I had in my twenties, you know, it's very different.
Well, it would be strange, if it were to be honest, It would be strange.
You know, I've got the cesarean scar and the stretch marks and the cellulate and all of these things, and I did worry about that. I think another sort of strange bit of internalized misogyny is that we want our bodies to look good for men, but we really want our bodies to look good for other women. I think as women, we are taught to be almost competitive or to outshine, to be you know, perfect in front of
other women. And I really had to let that go, you know, and think these I'm not dating someone to impress them or to have the perfect body, and I'm not. I don't know why I expected that of myself, because I don't expect that of the people I'm dating. I love the signs of age on a woman's body. I think it's wonderful. So I don't know why I would have trouble accepting that about myself. But I it's a journey, Yes it is.
And that's so true.
That is that's absolutely things that you wouldn't even think about on somebody else's body for yourself.
You're like, why am I so this? Why am I so that?
Without wanting to get too personal about this, were those first experiences? Was it how you had imagined? You were saying that, you know, when you grew up in a small town in the seventies and eighties, even though you know that you were an are sexual there wasn't really a framework for that. I imagine you had a lot of years and you're writing and was it how you imagined?
Did it live up to expectations? That's what I'm trying to get at here. I'm so English.
I like, you know, you know what completely exceeded my expectations And I'm going to go there right away is boobs. Oh my god, God, Holly, boobs are great.
Oh tell me, I just suddenly.
Understood why what was going through every man's mind? I mean, boobs are just awesome. They are just the best. So, yes, that the fact that boobs exceeded my expectations.
We'll be back in a moment with more from Julie Cohen, but first a little break. Please tell me if this question is inappropriate. But given that you wrote in the essay about growing up in a time and a place where there wasn't a framework for bisexuality beyond David Bowie, do you think if you were growing up somewhere different and now your life would have been very different? And do you think about that?
Yes, I think if I had grown up in a city it would have been different. But it was the eighties. But yeah, I think it might have been different. I can't. I love my upbringing. I grew up in the most amazing place with the most amazing people, and I love it. I grew up in a small town in Maine. It is fantastic. I wish that I had grown up someplace broader minded, with more diversity and more queer role models. I did not have to suffer what my gay male
friends had to suffer, which was pretty horrendous bullying. That was a privilege of being a straight passing woman. And I am not surprised that I didn't know anybody any lesbians of my own age, because their lives would have been hell. So the homophobic bullying was awful, and I believe it's got better there when I've been there in the past. More people seem to be joyously out. It's really nice to see things have changed. The twenty first century has caught up with Rumford mean.
It's one of the things about being older, I often think, when is that you do literally have this body of hindsight and seeing your and sometimes you do think, I don't know what's trying to get at. When you look back and you think, well, that is what happened, it could have been like that. It could have been like this, and there are things you grieve and things that you're happy you went through.
Do you grieve not.
Having had twenties your twenties or whatever as an out bisexual woman, or do you think that you got the joys you needed.
I think that would have been super fun, really would have been fun. So I don't grieve it, but I would have enjoyed it.
Yeah, I wanted to ask you. So the essay that we started this with, it's five years old. A lot of things have changed in your life since then, I'm sure. Tell me what your life looks like now compared to them.
Well, then I was married to a man.
And you are still living, still living.
In the same house, and now we're divorced. He lives a couple miles from here and we're friends. I've had a relationship with a woman which has now ended, and now I am dating, and that's all in very early stages. But I'm really working on myself and who I am and what I want. Around the time I wrote that essay, I belonged to the Romantic Novelist Association in the UK, which is for people who write relationship fiction, and I started the Rainbow Chapter, which was for queer writers writing
queer love stories. So I started that about that time, and so I got to meet a lot of queer writers, which was fabulous. Through that, for a few years, we marched in Pride in London as a group of romance writers, which was just fantastic. I've met some great people. I've taken part in queer literary festivals, which is always joyous
and relaxing. It's one thing I didn't understand before I came out and before I really was able to join the community, is how wonderful it is to be with a group of people where you don't have to you don't have to explain yourself, and that is just wonderful. And I love the queer community that I have formed for myself and that I've found within writing circles.
So wonderful group of friends. Family.
Yeah. Yeah, writers who understand how difficult it can be as a queer writer in this profession, how much you have to fight sometimes to make your voice heard and to get your books in the hands of the correct people.
So we should let the listeners know, because we talked about this off Mike earlier on is that you are a very professional novelist who writes romance fiction, as you've said, and what you describe as queer feminist thrillers.
But are they queer feminist thrillersts.
They're not queer. The relationships within those books so far, the main relationships have been heterosexual relationships, but they what they are is critiques of heterosexual relationships. Yes, I wouldn't say very.
Much the vibe I get from them. I have not read them yet, but having observed them on your social media and stuff, that's exactly the vibe I get. I guess one of the things I would say is my preconception, and please disavow me of this, is that the Romance Writers Association might be quite a conservative.
Body, am I like? Is that right or not?
Like?
I know, there's quite strict rules about what a romance novel is.
And isn't there used to be, Holly, I don't think that that is so true anymore. There is a growing body of diverse romance.
So and as you said, you started a rainbow chapter within that relations.
Right, And when I started that, that was before the rise of big books like Red White and Raw Blue and Heartstopper and some very popular queer romance that has come out in the last seven or eight years, which has transformed the market, not as much as I would like, but it has opened up the door. So there is a body of diverse romance, you know, romance between trans characters, romance, romance, romance featuring disabled characters and characters of color, and characters
of different religions at neurodiversity. There is a growing body of that, but sometimes you have to look to be able to find it. Some of it is self published, some of it is only published. It's not always the stuff that we see on our bookshelves, and I would very much like that to change. I think that all romance readers are all readers should be able to see the world as it really is in their books, even
in their fantasy books that they read for pleasure. Romance is not just between a white man and a white woman. The tropes and rules of romance and the satisfaction of reading about a couple who get together is the same no matter what.
Absolutely so, with the exception of the person in publishing who thought that maybe your bisexuality was a career was the resistance, Like people, changing is often very confronting for the people around you.
Right, We liked it, you said before.
We like to have people in boxes and think I know who you are, I know what your life is, and sometimes it can be very confronting for the people around you, professionally or otherwise. Has that been the case in these five years or more. Have you sort of shared and realigned people in your life or is that not something that was such an issue for your people?
Fortunately, I think the people in my life love me for myself and are generally very accepting and wonderful human beings. So I think I have added people to my life rather than lost anybody, which is great. It's been a positive experience. And one group of the people who I've added to my life are people who, like me, have been married or in seemingly straight relationships, but we'd like
to come out. And I've talked to quite a few people who this is very rewarding for me because I was so open about coming out in midlife, wanted to talk to me about their situation, saying, you know, I feel the same. I'm in a marriage that is happy or unhappy, but it appears to be straight from the outside, but I am not straight. I really feel that a part of me is being suppressed or not expressed, and you know, can I talk to you about that? And I people who say that they wouldn't have come out
if they didn't see somebody else do it first. And like I said, everybody should come out in their own time and space. It should be your decision and nobody else's. But for me, the timing was really fantastic because it let me connect with these people and give them a voice, and not give them voice, let them find their own voices.
If there are people listening to you talking now who are in that situation, what do you say to them?
Well, I mean, first, be safe. I think you have to do what is safe to do. You have to think of that first. If you're in a situation where it's not safe to come out, then you have to manipulate, you know, find your own way through that. I think coming out in your own time and in your own space and in your own way is the most important thing. And you don't owe it to anybody ever to come out. It is your personal truth that you can tell anybody
you want to or not. And what I didn't know at the time is that you don't just come out once you come out over and over and over again. You know, you come out when you go to the doctor and they say, are you on birth control? And you say, I don't need it because I'm just leaping with women. You know, it's when you know the postman comes to your house and starts talking to you about your husband and you say, I don't have husband, I
have a girlfriend. You know, it's having a poster on your wall that talks about feminism turning women into lesbians. You come out in all times and spaces, and some of that feels safe and good and rewarding, and some of that feels very scary and frightening, and it adds a whole new aspect to your life and your safety that you might have never had to think about before, because straight privilege is a thing. And as a bisexual woman, I'm sort of lucky because I haven't had to deal
with that fear all of my life. I am very lucky that I haven't had to deal with that fear for most of my life. But that comes at the cost of a racing part of who you are. My main message, though, is that you matter. It doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter whether you have kids or who depends on you. Your own thoughts and feelings matter, and they are real, and they might change, they might not. This might be a phase, it might be a mid
life crisis. Maybe it isn't. It doesn't actually matter. Your feelings are real and they are true to you, and you shouldn't feel that you have to push them down to benefit anybody else.
My conversation with Julie Cohen continues after this break, you said about life before coming out, that you may have to erase a part of yourself to be able to live in this box, this busy mom married to a man, doing all the things we're doing. It's kind of trite, But do you feel now out fully colored in Ooh?
Yes? No, Sometimes you have to go back into a box, not intentionally, but just because sometimes it's easier, that's what's expected, or because it's really not about you right now and it has to be about somebody else.
Yeah.
We all have various boxes that we go in and out of. I hope most of my boxes do reflect who I am in some way. But we all know the frustration when someone assumes you're something you're not. I think that's very familiar to all of us as women, and I think that's very familiar to middle aged women, particularly in different ways.
Absolutely, and a lot of marriages and in midlife for all kinds of reasons, in that way where women are suddenly like, I can't anymore stomach not living my life. You know, that's something that I hear all the time from midlife women in all kinds of different ways. And I was thinking, you know, some and also not all marriages do, and some of them just morph when I read which I'm sure you would have read all fours Moranda July's book.
One of the things that.
I can't stop thinking about from that no spoilers towards the end, it's this reimagined marriage as like family, but sex and romantic intimacy is kind of separate, almost, And I find that really interesting that people are beginning to.
I'm sure people always have.
But like people are talking about this idea of picking those parts of ourselves apart sometimes or you know, messing with that idea that it should be everything. Maybe it's a bit of this and a bit of that. And long term relationships, as you said earlier, are very complicated. Maybe they're not romantic relationships anymore. I'm not sure what my question is there, but do well.
First off, you're the second person to recommend that book to me very recently, so I clearly have to read it immediately.
You must rated so wonderful.
And secondly, I think I think our culture idealizes the romantic relationship between two people to be everything, to be your entire life and the be all and end all, and I think that is very self evidently not true. I think that queer people for centuries have found ways around that, and have had to find ways around that.
But that's also part of being queer is finding new relationships, new relationships structures, new relationship expectations, new ways to be coupled or have a partner or have several partners, to be sexually active in the world. And that's one of the wonderful parts of being this community is that the whole one more man, one woman lifetime together by defaults, is not the only option. We have infinite possibilities within ourselves that we can explore if we are allowed to.
I like to ask people how they imagine themselves when they're properly old, like really gloriously old woman, What do you imagine what life are you living with her.
I do this a lot. So my best friend and I have decided that we are going to buy an well, we're going to buy an island. But then we just thought maybe an island is not a good idea because what if there's a storm. So we're gonna we want to buy just this vast tract of land and have two houses on it because she's very messy and I'm
very neat, so we can't live together. And then just get a lot of dogs and just have all dogs running around and they can go wherever, and we just have this communal pack of dogs because we're both crazy about them, and we called it Dog Island. And just when we get upset with life as it is right now, we get frustrated with our kids, with our jobs, with our homes, with our lives, we just turn to each other and we say, isn't it going to be great on Dog Island.
Yes, it's going to be great on Dog Island.
It's going to be so great on Dog Island. And then we'll have, you know, lovers come in as we want. If we have a partner, maybe they can live there with are in our house, or maybe they'll have a separate house because it really depends on whether they make the bet or not. And you know that that's the sort of way of being. I don't necessarily see myself married or or you know, growing old with one person. I see myself growing old with a bunch of dogs.
Love it and the people who I really care about. My My friendships have been the longest running relationships in my life aside from my family, and they are infinitely precious to me. And I can imagine a life without them. And I think a life where I prioritize those friendships sounds wonderful.
It's a very common female fantasy that we finally get time to really honor those relationships when all the other caring responsibilities are done, like that we can go to the commune, go to dog Island, just.
Be with each other, just.
Be just be covens of witches, crazy dog ladies, all of those, all of them. I want to be all of those cliches. I want to have purple hair, I want to you know, have lovers. Yes. One.
I've got one more question, which I should have asked earlier, but actually it was about age and sex because for lots of us, as we go through perimenopause and menopause, a libido takes a beating. I am interested curious to know if you are kind of going through and I'm really sorry for the cliched language, like a sexual realignment or something I don't know, or you're just single again for the first time in that period of life.
How do you juggle that?
And do you think that the desire, like the desire can override that.
Ah, The libido is a real thing. It is a real thing, and it's it's true of so many women that I talk to and women who I date as well. It is. It is a and I love HRT. I really adore it, and it's great about dating menopausal women is like, you know, you have a really good time, you go out, you have really good time, You get into bed, you have a really good time. Then you get up, you put on your estrogen.
And you say, everybody knows what they're doing.
And I'm hoping to maybe explore a testosterone and see how that helps. But it is, it is a thing. Dating does give you a bit of a wush. I think having a new lover for anybody is an exciting thing. Flirting is exciting, Touching is exciting. Snogging is just the best I think real a lot of snogging can get can get you over that lack of libido. It's just brilliant.
And what I love about dating women is that it is not as focused on always one focused on the act involving a penis, and so sex takes in a wider variety of things to do, in ways to touch and ways to feel, in ways to feel good then
traditionally is the case between men and women. So I've found a lot of pleasure in that where libido actually might not even have that much to do with it, because there are so many things you can do to feel good and to give yourself that endorphin hit and to feel close and intimate to another person that's not just the old in out, you know, and making hand gestures. For those of you who are listening.
Yes, the old and out, they know that. Yeah, everybody's nudding.
Thank you so much, Jie, Well, how beautiful was that? I don't think we talked about this on the interview, But when Julie writes in her two different persons, because she writes as Julie May Cohen and she writes as Julie Cohen and we talked about it. She writes these feminist thrillers, and she writes these romance books. She actually sits on different sides of her study and they have different pictures on the walls and.
A different atmosphere.
I've found all that so interesting, you know, just the idea that isn't that shocking, really, But we all contain multitudes, and we're very often being told pick a lane, stay there, and you know, sometimes in Mid that shit just all falls apart. Anyway, there's a link to where you can find out more about Julie and her novels in the show notes to this episode, So go and have a look there and you'll see where you can buy the books.
As I said at the top, this is the last traditional MID episode for twenty twenty four, and I'm going to ask for a Christmas present.
I know that's rude.
I know you're not supposed to do it, but if you like Mid, if you've really enjoyed it this year, and we only launched this year. We launched in May, so we've only had six or seven months of Mid. Like it, Share it, review us, give us five stars, Tell a friend. It really really helps this show become and stay successful, and that means that then brands want to partner with it, and that means we can keep
making it. And that's how it all works. So if you love Mid, please support us with your likes, your five star reviews, your shares, your follows, and I will be eternally grateful because making this show has been the highlight of twenty twenty four for me. And if you want to hear more stories about sex, who doesn't listen to episode one of season two with Leslie Morgan who, after her divorce went on a little bit of a
sexual adventure. It is so good that conversation and all the way back in season one, which is naturally that far back, as discussed Catherine Mahoney about midlife dating is hilarious. Thank you for being with us on this mid journey, and thank you, of course to our amazing team ep Nama Brown, our producer Charlie Blackman, our audio producer Jacob Brown and all the talented people have worked on Mid this year.
It's been a wild ride. Can't wait to show you we've got in store next year. Have a wonderful summer,