161. Stop Keeping Score: A Midlife Reset for Your Relationship

What if the problem in your marriage… isn’t your marriage? What if it’s what you’re choosing to notice?

In this Valentine’s-season episode, Laurie shares a simple but powerful mindset shift that can transform your relationships — without therapy, ultimatums, or blowing up your life.

Midlife has a way of making everything feel louder. The identity shifts. The resentment you didn’t realize was building. The small irritations that start to feel bigger. The question of “Is this it?”

But before you make any dramatic moves, Laurie invites you to try something deceptively simple:

Change your focus.

Because what you focus on grows.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why midlife can intensify dissatisfaction in long-term relationships
• How your brain is wired to look for evidence that confirms your story
• The subtle difference between healthy awareness and chronic scorekeeping
• A 7-day experiment that can shift the emotional tone of your relationship
• Why this practice isn’t about settling — it’s about strengthening your mindset

This conversation isn’t about ignoring real problems. It’s about reclaiming your power in the dynamic. Because midlife isn’t just about redefining success.

It’s about redefining what you pay attention to. And that choice changes everything.

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Transcript

What if the fastest way to change your marriage and maybe your midlife experience isn't therapy or a dramatic conversation, or even a bold reinvention, but a simple shift in what you choose to notice.

This week I'm sharing a deceptively small practice that can transform how you see your partner. And yourself and, and really your whole life. Because midlife isn't just about redefining success. It's about redefining what you focus on. Let's get into it.

Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson.

This is the podcast for the midlife woman who starting to ask herself big life questions. Like, what do I want? Is it too late for me? And what's my legacy beyond my family and my work. Each week we're answering these questions and more. At the School of Midlife, we're learning all of the life lessons they didn't teach us in school and we're figuring out finally what it is [00:01:00] we want to be when we grow up. Let's make midlife your best life. 

Hey friends. Welcome back to another episode of The School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson. It is the Month of love. Over the weekend, We celebrated Valentine's Day. That's kind of what I wanna talk about today. I am just gonna say it, I'm not a huge fan of Valentine's Day.

To me, it feels very Hallmark-y and I, I just think that if you have a great relationship, you should be celebrating it all the time. And if you have a complete crap shit relationship, some overpriced chocolates and overpriced flowers, and a pre-printed card on one day of the year isn't gonna change that.

But it's not that I don't love, love, I absolutely do. I am a [00:02:00] sucker for a rom-com. I love dark chocolate. I love a bouquet of flowers. I always have fresh flowers in my house that I buy for myself 'cause I don't need somebody else to buy me flowers. Sounds like a Miley Cyrus song, doesn't it?

I 100% believe in soulmates. I believe in happily ever afters. I believe in love at first sight.

I also believe that relationships can run their course. That just because you were the perfect soulmate or you had this wonderful relationship at one point, doesn't mean that you have to be married, literally or figuratively to that person for the rest of your life. Because we all change. And people come and go.

In our relationships, people come and go in our lives. Relationships should do the same. I think that if you are growing in different directions, then [00:03:00] you should be able to like bless and release and go your separate ways and each find your happy.

That's not what I, that's not quite what this episode is about, but that gives you some context on where I am coming from. In fact, I, I believe that marriages should be a little like driver's licenses. What I mean by that is every so often you have to pay a fee and actually decide that you're going to re-up it.

It's not just something that you do once and for the rest of your life, you are married. That once you marry, that's it, mate, for life. Till death do us part. If you get lucky. Because there's so much luck that goes into it, you might end up with a partner for the rest of your life. But for many people, that's just not the case.

A lot of women got married very early on before they even know who [00:04:00] they were themselves, and so trying to pick a partner to see them through every stage of their life when they weren't even sure who they were or what their voice sounded like, it's, it's a pretty tall order.

And we are in a society that seems to value married couples. They seem to want you to be married forever. Let's not get into the politics on that. Let's not get into the marriage. It, there are things though, I, I don't even wanna go there. Suffice it to say that February 14th, this magical day when everybody's supposed to be in love and you're, you know, have your Valentine and everything is great, yes. And if you are not treating your relationship that way every day of the year, or at least more days than you're [00:05:00] taking the relationship for granted, then you might actually find yourself at some point without a Valentine. That's what I wanna talk about today.

I will preface this by saying I am not a marriage expert. You know that. I'm not a counselor. I don't talk about marriages.

All I can do is speak from experience and the women that I coach. And they, there have been a lot of coaching that has gone on when we get to midlife and we realize that the roles that once served us in our twenties and thirties when we were trying to start families and raise them up once those kids.

Are grown and flown, or at least to the point where they can kind of take care of themselves. They can make themselves a snack, they can do their laundry. Sure, maybe you have to drive them to drop off or pick up at school. But they're, they're, they're pretty self-sufficient at this point.

Then you have to start asking yourself, [00:06:00] this partner that I picked, is this a good partner for going forward? And sometimes that answer is no. That is totally fine. I want to take away the stigma of divorce.

I think it's interesting. I've been having, I've, I've actually had two conversations lately with different women who have chosen to leave their marriages for one reason or another, and both of them said they feel guilty for doing it.

They feel guilty for blowing up a life that was fine. Like if you looked at it, everything seemed fine. Also a good reminder that you can never judge what's going on inside someone's home or inside their head or inside their heart just because of how it looks from the outside.

But these women have said that they've lost friendships because of it. They have family members who are not happy with them. They obviously have [00:07:00] spouses who desperately wanted to make this work. But might not have been contributing in the way that they should to actually make it work. Does that make sense? Like it's one thing to want the relationship to work, it's another thing to put the reps in to make sure that it's going to work.

And even then, when both people are committed to making it work, Sometimes it doesn't, and there should be no shame involved in that. It's just sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, like I was talking about earlier, sometimes you're a great match from the jump. And then you just grow in different directions.

Or as a woman, you start maturing. You find your voice, you, you really know what it is that you want in this season and going forward, and it looks different than it did in your twenties and thirties. This is all okay. This is all just fine. This isn't something that anybody should be [00:08:00] judging you. No one should be looking at your relationship or your situation and saying, you really, you, you should not have done that.

We shouldn't be doing that because we don't know what actually is going on with that person in that relationship.

Over the weekend, I shared in my weekly newsletter if you. Don't get my weekly newsletter. You know, I send out a, a newsletter every Sunday and um, a lot of times what that lead in feature or the article that I write for that either ends up on LinkedIn or Substack or sometimes I talk about it on the podcast, but it's really easy.

Get yourself signed up every Sunday, You'll get a weekly dose of what's going on at the school of midlife. And, uh, a little opinion piece for me.

And this week's. A lead in article was all about Valentine's Day, and one thing that has helped Mike and me over the almost 23 years that we've been married, [00:09:00] and that is this whole idea of seeing what your partner is doing, right?

Keeping track of what your partner is doing, right.

So often it's really easy for us to keep track of what they're doing wrong, right? We start taking, uh, mental notes on how they're pissing us off, how they're making us angry, how they're not showing up for us how they forgot to do the thing... the one thing that we asked them to do that they said they would take care of, and then they didn't do it, and then we had to keep following up and asking questions, and then we just had to do the damn thing.

Like, if you're gonna say you're gonna do it, then just do it. And don't make me have to keep coming after you to remind you to do it. Just. Take care of it.

When we focus on the ways that they are pissing us off, or not showing up for us or making us angry, [00:10:00] we will find infinite ways to make that so. And that's because our brain tries to give us proof for our thoughts.

That's that whole idea of don't believe everything that you think. Because when we state something either to ourselves or we say it out loud, like my spouse is really pissing me off, then our subconscious goes, oh, well here, let me give you a million reasons why you are justified in thinking that way.

If you flip the script, and you start actually paying attention to what your spouse is doing, right? It is amazing how how you see your spouse will change. This is not going to solve every issue in your relationship. I don't want you to think that that's what I'm saying. But it certainly helps. Because just [00:11:00] like if I'm telling my brain that he's pissing me off, if I flip that and say he is a great guy, then my brain is gonna go to work trying to find ways to back that up. To give me evidence that that is in indeed the case, that what I think about my husband is actually the truth and it's warranted. Right? He's a great guy.

What are five things that I could write down today to make my case? To, to present evidence that that is indeed what's going on .With a lot of my coaching clients, this is actually an exercise that we do, which is if one of the pieces of your midlife transition, the midlife changes that you wanna make in your life, if one of those relates to your relationship, I will always say, for a week, I want you to write down five things every day [00:12:00] that your spouse is doing right. And they're like, five, are you kidding? How can I do that? No, no, no. They don't have to be big things.

If I was thinking about it, number one, Mike got up and took the dog for a walk while I was still in bed. Number two, he did not make a mess. He put his coffee cup in the dishwasher when he was done with it this morning. Number three, he put the cap back on the toothpaste. You see how these don't have to be big earth shattering things.

But when the kitchen is totally clean when we go to bed, and I wake up in the morning, he's the first one in the kitchen. He is the only one that drinks coffee. And when I come downstairs and there is proof that he has made coffee, it drives me crazy.

Like put the cup, don't put it in the sink, put it in the dishwasher. I we know that you don't just put dishes [00:13:00] in the sink and then they automatically are clean. No, no, no. There's a whole nother step there. You put the dish in the dishwasher, the dishwasher cleans it, and then it ends up back in the cabinet.

So it helps me out if you actually help with the steps to get it from that clean mug that you took out of the the cabinet, to actually getting it back clean again, back in the cabinet. It doesn't mean leaving it on the counter, it doesn't mean leaving it in the sink. He actually took care of it.

I know that this sounds like a ridiculously small thing, but it could be he put the toilet seat down after he went to the bathroom in the middle of the night. So that when I get up in the morning and it's still dark and I just go to the bathroom without checking, I don't actually fall into the toilet bowl; right.

Now, if I was doing it [00:14:00] the other way, like he's completely pissing me off, then I could be like, he didn't put the cup in the dishwasher. He left the toilet seat up. He didn't take the dog out for a walk, he waited for me to do it. I mean, it's pretty obvious that any different situation could be interpreted differently, right?

Five things your spouse is doing right? Do it for a week. Don't tell them that you're doing it. Just keep track of it. Actually write it down. Write it down for seven days. If you wanna take it to the next level, then after that first week, share it with your spouse. Why do you do that? You're not doing it because you know you're keeping notes on them or you're keeping track of what they're doing or anything.

But when you tell them that what they're doing is making you happy, two things happen there. Number [00:15:00] one, you're opening up lines of communication. You are moving beyond the, we've been together for 23, 3 years now. He should know exactly what I'm thinking. He should know exactly how I feel. He should know exactly how pissed off I get about him leaving dishes in the sink or on the counter.

I think that happens more often than we think that the longer we are in a relationship, the less we actually communicate with our spouses about the things that matter. We talk a lot about how was your day? And did you get the mail? And have you paid this bill? Things that keep the household going. We don't spend a lot of time talking about our hopes and our dreams like we used to think about when you first started dating and you'd had those terribly long phone calls where you would just both be on the phone.

I mean, that was way before email, way before text. But think about it. How long would you spend on the [00:16:00] phone just talking about everything and nothing at all. But everything felt like it was, you were discovering something about that person and it was magical.

I mean, it, you, it was, you kind of got excited about it, right?

We don't do that anymore. We just get so involved in the day to day, That our conversations become very logistical. And I absolutely, they have to be. We have to keep the household running. But also if we only limit our conversation and our communication to, do you have this handled? Can you take that? I need your help here.

We increase the opportunity for us to move in different directions because we're not actually on the same page with life. Sure, we are on the same page with how are we going to logistically move through [00:17:00] life every day. But when we talk big picture life and what it is, how we wanna live and, and how we want to be in life together, we stop doing that with this expectation that we've been together long enough, he should just know. Guaranteed he won't.

So if you share it, number one, you are reopening the lines of communication. And number two, and this is the great part, you tell him what you like, you tell him what he's done right? Right. In air quotes there for the last week. You let him know that you appreciate when he does these things.

And that's gonna incentivize him to do it more because he wants to make you happy. It sometimes I know it, it, it feels exactly the opposite. But he wants to do things that [00:18:00] make you happy. So if you tell him, if you give him 35 things that he has done in a week that make you happy, you communicate that to him, guaranteed he's going to take the baton, he's gonna keep running from there.

He's gonna keep doing the things that you told him that you like him to do. Ooh. It's like this magical merry-go-round of happiness. He does the thing. You notice it, you tell him. He does it more because he wants to keep you happy. It's this wonderful shift that really doesn't take any extra time. It doesn't take any extra money. It just takes changing your focus to where it has been, to where it could be.

Because we all know whatever it is you are looking for, whatever you're focusing on, you will find. So if we want to find the things that are good in our life, we should start looking for them.[00:19:00] 

I have talked about that before when it comes to. How we show up in relationships. I actually took it a, a step further this week in a way that I never have before, and I, I almost believe that this is more important than how you're showing up in your relationship.

Relationship. Very important. They've, they've proven that your relationships, whether that is romantic or friendship platonic, your relationships are as important as, as anything else in the hierarchy of needs.

Without connection, without relationships, your health suffers like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Think about that. If you don't have connection, that you need the community around you, whether that is your spouse, whether that's your friends, whether it's a combination of the two. If [00:20:00] you don't have that connection in your life, the effects of that on your health are like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, so not good.

Wouldn't it be great if we created the community and the support system that we need around us to help us live our best lives? Absolutely. That would be helpful.

So the thing that I talked to the newsletter readers about was, what if you did this for yourself?

What if every day for a week, let's just start with seven days. Every day for a week, you write down five things about yourself that you are doing right, that you like about yourself, that you love about yourself, that you notice about yourself.

Five things you're proud of. Five things you handled well, five ways you showed up with integrity, [00:21:00] any sort of mixture among all of them. How would the way you think and feel about your life, about yourself, how would that change in just a week?

I can tell you you would have your back a lot more than you probably do now.

You would like yourself more than you like yourself now. You hear all about self love you. You hear about how you have to love yourself before you can give that love away to other people. Absolutely. And you need to like yourself as well.

When we talk about relationships ending, when we talk about ways that we don't feel like we're showing up correctly or in the right way at work, uh, ways that we are skipping the healthy habits that we so desperately want to include in our life so that we can have, we can be healthier.

There are so many [00:22:00] things that at the end of every day we're like, I could have handled that differently. I wish I would've said this. I wish I wouldn't have slept in. I wish I would've gone to the gym. Our heads are almost this never ending loop of things that we could have done differently. We should have said that and said. We could have handled that better.

So what happens when we interrupt the pattern? And instead of, you really could have done that differently. Instead of doing that, say, I'm proud of how you handled that situation. I am so pleased that you got out of bed and went for the walk even when you wanted to stay in bed. I loved how you styled your hair today.

They don't have to be big things, but when we can bring that idea back to whatever it is that we're focusing on, we will [00:23:00] find. Whatever we tell our brain, it's going to search for evidence to find. If we start telling ourselves that we're a good person. We are a phenomenal woman,

that I am a phenomenal woman. That sounds better. When we give our brain evidence of that, then we show up differently in our lives. It's like when we actually believe that we are pretty fucking amazing, Every day when we get up and we walk into the office or we walk downstairs, it's almost like we are putting on that power suit or that great outfit.

And we are walking into that networking event, or we are walking into that speaking gig or we are walking into that important meeting. You know exactly what I'm talking about. When you are dressed in that [00:24:00] outfit that just, you feel magnanimous in, you feel incredible in like, world cannot touch me. I am on fire.

When you think that about yourself and you've got all of this evidence to back it up, You are gonna walk in every day with that kind of energy. Think about how that changes your life. Think about how that changes how you show up in your relationships. Think about how that changes how you show up for your job. Think about how that changes how you show up for yourself. In your life. Amazing.

That's just after a week. What will be really interesting is if you accept this challenge and you do it for a week, just five things, small things. They don't have to be big things. They can be big things. They don't have to be. It will be interesting to see if you decide to keep going [00:25:00] with it.

Mindset, wellness. They are like muscles. The more we practice, the bigger those muscles will get, the stronger they will get. Which means when we face a particularly tough day, or particularly tough season, we will be able to rely on that mindset, that wellness muscle that we have been working on. When we are quick to criticize ourself, our subconscious is gonna be like, oh no, you don't. Listen to why I think this woman is incredible.

And that subconscious is just gonna keep throwing you evidence that you've already fed it. Which means moving forward, you're gonna have this whole like army of incredibleness [00:26:00] behind you. These thoughts, because our actions start with our thoughts, our beliefs start with our thoughts. If we believe that we are incredible, we are phenomenal, we are bulletproof.

You better believe we're gonna show up differently in our own lives. We're gonna believe that we are someone whose back we should have. We're going to stop talking badly about ourselves because. There's no evidence. Like what do you mean you never finish anything? Oh, to the contrary, my friend. Look at all these things, amazing things that you've done.

What do you mean? You are fat and lazy? Oh, no, no, no. Let me, let me give you the evidence that disproves that negative thought that you've got. You don't think that you are a good friend? Well, let me prove you wrong.

Any of those ideas that we have that, that kind of [00:27:00] bubble up along the way of where we are now and where we wanna go, and God damnit if, if it's not just taking longer than we thought it would to get from where we are now to where we wanna go. And we start beating ourselves up for that, Our subconscious is gonna be like, mm-hmm. Stop that no more, because let me tell you about all of the lessons that you have learned.

Let me tell you about all of the incredible ways that you have shown up for yourself in your life. Let me tell you about the amazing woman who is moving from where she is now, to where she wants to go. She's not late, she's just taking her time. She's doing amazing things along the way. She is an incredible person.

When you believe that about yourself, then when we talk about making midlife and beyond your best life, of course that that is a no brainer. Of course, you're gonna be a woman who shows up [00:28:00] and does. She knows exactly what she wants in this season of life. She knows exactly what success means to her in her life. She knows exactly what the best life that she's living, what she is building towards. And she knows that it is just a matter of time before she is living that reality.

'cause she is a woman who gets shit done. She is a woman who has an idea and she executes on it. She's a woman who has a dream and makes that dream come true. And it doesn't matter if it takes four months and it doesn't matter if it takes four years because that dream, that want, that desire, that is more important to her than anything else.

And she has proven time and time again that what she wants-- not what she's been told to want, not what she's been conditioned to want, not what somebody else tells her to want, but what she actually wants-- When she knows what she wants, she's a woman who [00:29:00] goes and gets it. That's what I want for you.

So for the next week: two pieces of homework for you. Number one, find five things that your spouse or your long-term partner is doing in a relationship, five things that they are doing right. Do it for a week. And five things that you are doing right: how you're showing up, how you're living your life, five things you love about yourself, five things you like about yourself.

It's just five things. That's 10 things total. Do it for a week and see how you feel about your life.

And if you think about it, will you tell me what the result is? I know this works, but hearing from you how it changed what's going on in your life would mean so much to me. I've talked about this before, how it gets very lonely to speaking into a microphone week after week and not hearing [00:30:00] from you. I know you love this stuff because I.

You send me dms of, I sent this to my friend and this is what she said, or I listened to this in OMG. It changed my complete perspective about this. I love hearing that what you are getting here at the school of midlife each week is actually making a difference in your life. Because if it's not, then I wanna change what, what?

I'm speaking into the microphone each week. I want this to be good for you. I want this to be valuable for you. So if it is, let me know.

Thank you so much for being here today. I will see you right back here next week when the School of Midlife is back in session. Until then, take good care.

 Thank you so much for listening to the School of Midlife podcast. It means so much to have you here each week. If you enjoyed this episode, could you do me the biggest favor and help us spread the word to other midlife women? There are a couple of easy ways for you to do that first. And most importantly, if you're not already [00:31:00] following the show, would you please subscribe? That helps you because you'll never miss an episode. And it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. Second, if you'd be so kind to leave us a five-star rating, that would be absolutely incredible. And finally, I personally read each and every one of your reviews. 

So if you take a minute and say some nice things about the podcast, well, that's just good karma. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you right back here. Next week when the School of Midlife is back in session until then take good care.