What If You Met Each Other Again in Every Phase of Your Relationship?
Written by Lidija Poth, Transformational Coach
Lidija Poth is an AC-accredited transformational coach and founder of MyLifeCoachingHub, guiding women and leaders toward authentic living and relationship healing. With expertise in architecture, city planning, and teaching at TU Delft, she facilitates transformative retreats and coaching for lasting freedom and joy.
We grow older. We live through different seasons, together and apart. First dates. Falling in love. Moving in. Marriage. Buying a house. Children arriving, becoming rebellious and leaving. Then, sometimes, a quiet estrangement. A midlife transition. A sense that the person across the table is no longer the one you once chose.
Is this simply “what happens” in relationships? Or does it happen when we stop meeting each other as we actually are now?
This summer, I spent a month on the Croatian coast. I listened. I observed. I sat in silence. Around me were beautiful houses, cars, dinners, clothes and holidays, and unhappy people waiting for the other person to change, avoiding the conversation and not moving toward each other. It became clear quite quickly: you cannot buy happiness, and you cannot outsource the work of a relationship to lifestyle.
Occasionally, someone asked how I live, who is in my life and whether I am happy. I could answer with a smile. I make my choices from myself. No concessions that cost my inner alignment. Simply being.
That experience left me with one question I keep returning to in coaching and in life: “What if, in every phase of a relationship, you made contact again as if you were meeting for the first time?”
Relationships are not one story, they are a sequence of transitions
Family life cycle research has long shown that couples move through predictable stages. In "Family Development," Evelyn Duvall described how families shift from forming a pair to building a household, raising children, launching them and then standing face to face again without the daily structure of parenting.[1] Marital satisfaction often peaks before the first child, dips during intensive parenting years and can rise again if the couple renegotiates who they are to each other.
Parenthood itself already changes the bond. On Brainz, How to Maintain Connection in a Relationship When Parenthood Shifts Priorities describes how new identities, not only new logistics, can make partners feel they are losing themselves and each other. The Gottman Institute has reported that a large share of couples experience a drop in relationship satisfaction after the birth of a first child.[8] That dip is not proof that love has failed. It is proof that the relationship has entered a new phase and needs a new conversation.
The years after children leave home are another sensitive turning point. Pew Research Center has shown that so-called gray divorce, divorce after age 50, has risen sharply since the 1990s.[6] Susan Brown and I Fen Lin named this pattern in their 2012 study, and later work in the "Journal of Marriage and Family" found that a substantial share of divorcing couples are now 50 or older, around the age when children often leave home.[4]
That does not mean midlife is automatically a crisis. Many couples use this phase to deepen closeness. The difference is rarely luck. It is whether the couple treats the new phase as a new relationship or keeps living inside an old script.
Why we drift: Assumptions replace curiosity
What I saw that summer was not a lack of resources. It was a lack of approach. People expected the other person to change. They avoided difficult conversations. They stayed busy with houses, dinners and travel. The relationship became a shared logistics system instead of a living encounter.
John Gottman and Nan Silver help explain why this is so costly. In "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work," they show that lasting connection depends on turning toward each other and updating “love maps,” our understanding of a partner’s hopes, fears and daily reality.[2] A love map is not a list of facts from the beginning of the relationship. It is a living picture of who the other person is now.
That picture expires quietly. After a child is born, after a career shift or after children leave home, the old map no longer matches the land. You still recognise the face across the table, but you may no longer recognise the inner life behind it. You think you know the other person. In fact, you know a version from five or ten years ago.
Updating a love map does not require a dramatic talk. It requires curiosity without assumptions. Questions can be as simple as: What is taking up space in you this season? What do you dream of now that you did not dream of before? How do you want to be met, not in general, but in this phase of your life? What would make you feel happy, respected and alive in this relationship today?
Gottman connects this to a small daily move: turning toward. When someone says, “I had a strange day,” that is a bid for contact. A living love map hears the invitation. An outdated one hears only noise.
Sue Johnson, in "Hold Me Tight," adds an attachment layer.[3] In midlife, old defences often thin. The roles that once organised the bond – parent, provider, organiser, peacemaker – loosen. What remains is the question many couples postpone for years: “Do we still choose each other as we are now?”
Growing apart is not always a failure of love. It is often a failure of updating. Two people keep changing. The relationship stays frozen. On Brainz, How Hard Times Turn Long-Term Partners into Roommates and How to Find Your Way Back describes the same quiet shift: two people still sharing a life, but no longer meeting as partners.
Happiness cannot be purchased, and neither can connection
Material comfort can create ease, but it cannot create presence. When conversations are avoided, distance grows quietly. When one person waits for the other to become different, both stay stuck. When we treat a relationship as a finished product instead of a living process, we stop being curious.
In "Gray Divorce: What We Lose and Gain From Midlife Splits," Jocelyn Elise Crowley found that many later-life separations were not driven by a sudden hunger for a new lifestyle.[5] Couples were often asking a simpler, harder question: “What is the value of this marriage now?” That question becomes louder when children no longer organise the days.
My own stance is simple, and it is the same stance I bring into coaching: I choose from myself. I do not abandon my inner alignment to keep a form intact. That is not hardness. It is clarity. A relationship can only stay alive if both people are allowed to remain real and if both are willing to meet the real person in front of them.
Shifting interests in midlife can widen the gap or open a new chapter. See also: Midlife Crisis: How Changing Interests Impact Relationships and Ways to Resolve Conflicts.
The invitation: Meet again, without assumptions
Imagine this as a practice, not a fantasy. In every phase, after the wedding, after the first child, after the teenager’s rebellion, after the house grows quiet, you sit down as if you have just been introduced.
No assumptions. No “I already know how you are.” No demand that the other person stay who they were at twenty-eight.
You ask: Who are you now? What do you dream of in this phase of life? How do you want to be met? What would make you feel happy, respected and alive in this relationship today?
This is not naïve romance. It is relational hygiene. Couples who move through transitions well do not stay the same. They renegotiate identity, intimacy, time and meaning. They allow two new adults to appear inside an old bond.
A life change becomes livable when people can name what is ending, what is beginning and what still supports them. Nancy Schlossberg’s transition theory describes this simply: a transition is not only an event but a shift in roles, routines and identity.[7] A relationship is no different. If the phase of life changes and the conversation does not, distance is almost inevitable.
Would you be happier? Would you still choose each other? Or would honesty reveal that the partnership has already ended and only the habit remains?
Those are not cynical questions. They are respectful ones. A relationship deserves truth more than it deserves performance.
What about you?
Where in your relationship have you stopped being curious? Which phase are you in, and which version of your partner have you stopped updating?
Ask yourself, quietly and honestly: What do I dream of now? How do I want to be treated in this phase of my life and this relationship? What would actually make me happy, not five years ago, but today?
If you are willing to ask those questions of yourself, you can also ask them of the person beside you. That is where a relationship either renews or tells the truth.
In my work, including Sparks in Relationships, this is the heart of the conversation: growth, changing expectations and the mindset shifts needed so a relationship can keep working as life keeps changing.
You do not have to stay frozen in an old chapter. You can meet each other again.
Footage by Michelle Muus Fotografie at Suitehotel Pincoffs, made possible by the PUT-IT-ON platform.
Read more from Lidija Poth
Lidija Poth, Transformational Coach
Lidija Poth is a transformational coach with an OTHM Level 7 qualification and accreditation from the Association for Coaching (AC) United Kingdom. She is the founder of MyLifeCoachingHub. With two decades shaping urban environments as an architect, city planner, and educator/mentor at TU Delft, she now channels that strategic insight into empowering individuals, executives, high-intelligence professionals, and those recovering from toxic dynamics. Her co-creative approach builds deep trust to unlock personal freedom, authentic leadership, and joy. Through 1:1 coaching, programs, and immersive retreats in Bali and Croatia, she guides clients to reconnect with their true selves and thrive sustainably. Her mission is to ensure no one is left behind in their journey to becoming their best, most aligned version.
References:
[1] Duvall, E. M. (1957). Family Development. J. B. Lippincott.
[2] Gottman, J. M., & Silver, N. (2015). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Harmony Books.
[3] Johnson, S. M. (2008). Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Little, Brown Spark.
[4] Brown, S. L., & Lin, I. F. (2012). The gray divorce revolution: Rising divorce among middle-aged and older adults, 1990 to 2010. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B.
[5] Crowley, J. E. (2018). Gray Divorce: What We Lose and Gain From Midlife Splits. University of California Press.
[6] Pew Research Center. (2017). Led by Baby Boomers, Divorce Rates Climb for America’s 50+ Population.
[7] Schlossberg, N. K. (1981). A model for analyzing human adaptation to transition. The Counseling Psychologist, 9(2), 2-18.
[8] The Gottman Institute. Research summaries on relationship satisfaction after the birth of a first child.
