Not So Ordinary Midlife Marriage Advice: Fun Midlife Sh*t Quickie Minisode

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Hey peeps, welcome to the flexible neurotic podcast. I'm your host Dr. Sarah Milken. Yeah, you heard that right. I'm a real PhD doctor. Long, long ago like last fucking year. I was sitting in the midlife pump wondering, was this it for me? That day I realized I needed to get off my ass and start my midlife remix. I dusted off my PhD wipe the menopause, sweat off my forehead, grabbed my golden shit shovel and started digging deep to all my midlife bitches. It's not just love coffee and hormones that get you through your midlife remix. It's action steps. Let's do this. Hi, peeps. This is Dr. Sarah Milken, the flexible neurotic and this is the flexible neurotic podcast. I have two types of podcast episodes, the longer more in depth ones with deep dives with expert guests and then another version that's just basically called Fun midlife shit quickie minisode series. This episode format a shorter, more stream of consciousness. And I don't know just fucking crazy. In this minisode series I highlight resonating an edgy midlife shit from my Instagram grid, solo cash, short pop ups with gas and stuff we're all thinking about but maybe too embarrassed to ask. And of course, I will ask for you all ask anything at this point. As my teenagers say I'm the queen of TMI. This week's minisode is called not so ordinary midlife marriage advice. Midlife marriage is not easy. It's a fucking project. I posted a photo of my husband and me on Instagram. And I called it not so ordinary marriage advice. Let's just say that we've been together for 27 years and married for 18 years. Today. This is our happy anniversary. minisode. I'm sure he's gonna fucking love it. Happy anniversary to the guy who I could not imagine doing life without. You truly are my soulmate. I know. It's kind of cheesy, but it's so true. I mean, honestly, in the 27 years we've been together we've never broken up. This doesn't mean that he doesn't annoy the fuck out of me. Or I almost killed him all of last year while we were finishing up the pandemic and moving houses and selling houses. And I bled for a month with a surprise period. I mean, there's so many things. But guess what, at the end of the day, there is no one on earth who I'd rather live parenting Groundhog Day with. We'll explain more about that later. Okay, back to the Instagram posts on the not so ordinary marriage advice. I think this post hit home because it wasn't the usual marriage advice. It was the everyday life shit marriage advice that is more relatable and easy to connect with. As many of you know, I met my husband in ninth grade, we met in the school photo taking line, and I was new to the school. F was for Firestone we were in alphabetical order, and it was not near M for milk in his last name. But somehow he made his way closer to me. If you ask he will immediately deny any of this. Just know that of course my side of the story is the true story. For those of you who've been around my podcast or Instagram, or know me personally, you know that I'm sarcastic as fuck. But guess what? My husband makes me seem like a lightweight. I know it's not possible. But it really is. I mean, you see him acting like a fucking pantomime on my Instagram. Like won't even give me the time of day. When we were getting married. People said to him, she's awesome. And just know that she's a big personality. Like as if he didn't know that after dating me for seven years. And it's not going to be life as you see it just you all the time. He appreciated the feedback and continued on with marrying me. He's a pretty chill person most of the time, although he's very rigid and structured. Yet he says that he married me because I was the only person who could really piss him off. I'm trying to take that as a compliment. I'm processing that. I've been processing that for 27 years, so I'm just gonna leave it as a compliment. Let's just say that we've been together for 27 years and married for 18 Today is my midlife brain. I have said that twice now maybe three times. So I think you got that point. This is our Happy Anniversary minisode. I call Jeremy Instagram has been on my Instagram feed because he hates social media. And he got an account just to follow me and be supportive as husband should be and somehow became one of the star features and characters of my Instagram. He's a pantomime barely speaking on Instagram. He wears a weighted vest. He does some like interesting things with like, leash that he wraps around his waist so that he doesn't have to hold the leash while he walks

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was the dog I mean, all sorts of dumb shit. But I think people seem to really enjoy the realness of that, as I typed out some of the bullet points for this minisode. In fact, his flip flops were squeaking against the hardwood floors and every word he said was a mumble under his breath. He thinks everyone can hear him. And most of the time he's voice texting to his phone. It makes us all fucking crazy. Let's be honest, he's been on my shitless this entire week. He's had a bad cold for a week. No, he doesn't have COVID. He's been tested 700 times. And he has no other symptoms other than a stuffy nose at night. He's still working out, he's still going to work, but he became the fucking snore this week. Okay, I've never had to deal with a snoring husband. That's not part of my fucking agenda. That's never happening. Like he'll have to wear like I have a friend whose husband wears this like air tank mask. Like he'll be doing that before I'm listening to a snore. So after three nights of snoring every 10 minutes, for the first time in the history of our marriage. Other than one argument when I made him sleep downstairs on the mini sofa in his office because we didn't have a guest room. We have slept together in the same room. But in this new house, there's a guest bedroom by by Jeremy. So then after three nights, I'd let him back in the room last night and at 3am. I woke them up. And I was like, Dude, I've awakened you five times I can't sleep. So I actually made him get up and go to the guest room. I felt really guilty. But I feel like I have a newborn baby because I have a snore and he's not even like a snore yet and we cannot make this like a ritual or I'm absolutely gonna die. And then he really enjoy that. I made him get an IV drip with all this like immunities zinc, like vitamin C shit this morning, so that he could finally kick this cold. I'm making him sleep outside of the bedroom like in another room again tonight because I just can't deal because if you know my husband, like from other episodes or me trash talking on Instagram, he lives in like the 1800s with medicine, like he doesn't think medicine is relevant. He hates it. It's annoying when he has to go to a doctor's appointment. He thinks you should just like stay in your bed sleep and like watch TV. And he acts like when he has a cold. It's like some horrible sickness. Meanwhile, like my kids have had the flu, tonsillitis and they've been like really sick. And this is like a runny nose. It's turned him into a snore. Okay, I'm not gonna lie, my marriage is pretty smooth. We have a very solid like working romantic. Well, most of the time romantic relationship. And we both have big personalities in different ways. He's organized and structured and kind of rigid and very sarcastic. I'm more flexible, yes, flexible. My kids would even agree with that. But he's also the person who brings so much to the relationship in terms of like, finance, like paying bills, like all of that, like insurance, like all that shit that like I just hate. And like he plans trips with whole itineraries and plane tickets, like down to the minute it's actually insane. But then if you ask him to find Advil in like a foreign city, he couldn't find the Advil to save this life. So anyway, we have basically figured out how to ignore most of the annoying things about each other. I mean, sometimes I hate his tone of voice. It's sort of like I work for him. And I'm like, Dude, I do not work for you. Let's try that again. And he hates being micromanage. So sometimes that gets tricky, because micromanagement is apparently my specialty. My husband started telling me to supervise myself, I told my friend Heather and her husband, that Oh, I think he just came home with my daughter. He just picked her up from a friend's house, thank God, then the door just slammed. So I'm sure my daughter's gonna walk here in one second, or just ignore me, even though she hasn't seen me all day. Anyway. So back to my friend Heather. So I told her that my husband keeps saying just supervise yourself. And then she told her husband, so then her husband had T shirts made that said, supervise yourself. And he's been wearing them around the house. And then he sent us our own versions of them. It was actually really fucking funny. The problem is that if I don't supervise and like I said, the kids don't get a flu test. And then they sit at home with the flu when they could be taking Tamiflu. And then when I get involved, they get a flu test and they have the flu and then they get Tamiflu. It's like a running joke in my house. And as you already all know, I had my colonoscopy, and he's up next so we'll see how that goes. I'm gonna see if he can supervise himself through making the appointment for the colonoscopy and the 75 Fucking

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steps to a successful colonoscopy that should be fun. Okay, so before I get to my not so ordinary random marriage advice, let me say this marriage is a fucking project just like everything else in life shit is not easy. You want to get fit, you have to put in the work, you want to self reinvent, you have to put in the work. You want to reduce your stress levels that even takes fucking work reducing your stress levels. I mean, you know, you've tried meditating, it's hard, like it's hard work. Good marriages are hard. It's a work in progress. I'm not even going to try to define a good marriage. You know if something is working or if it's not, and guess what mine is working mostly working, probably with like a 10 to 20% fluctuation like he forgot to pick up a prescription or he didn't cheerlead me properly through my colonoscopy. You can listen to my colonoscopy episode to hear me Terran to him on that one. But I did get a new toilet because I laid into him so hard, I came home to a new one. It's fantastic with all the spraying and the bells and whistles. Bottom line, marriage is a co creation project. It can't just be a one sided show, and no one is a fucking mine writer. If you want something to change, or to happen, you have to fucking set and you have to put in the work. Okay, look, my husband got a little sloppy with birthdays and Mother's Day, I think the pandemic was a good excuse not to kind of check all the boxes. So guess what, I got pissed. And then I was like, Oh, sweet. That's all worked out. He totally got that. But nope, had to get pissed again. I know it seems harsh. But guess what, I do shit all day long. That's like an extra 19 steps out of my way for him and my kids, he can do the same. I explained that booking airline tickets and paying bills is not the same. I care about you as like a heartfelt card or a gift that he picked out that I didn't pick out. I mean, I can pick out my own gifts on any day. But like I want to give that like he picked out. Today is our anniversary, like I've said and this was recorded three days prior to today. And I'm praying for his ass that he got the message after the last two blobs of mine on how to make the anniversary better. Okay, anyway, let's get to the list. Number one, make sure one of you knows technology better than the other. Because if one of you doesn't know it, you're fucked. Look, I'm Tech deficient. I'm not gonna hide it. It's a fucking fact, technology in my brain just don't match. I can't memorize logins or passwords. And he keeps yelling at me to use the family password locker, I still have no idea how to use that the printer never connects to my laptop or phone properly. And the podcast is a whole tech clusterfuck unto itself. So one person has to be tech support. And like those are the times when he talks to me and like sort of like, I don't know, like I like work for him voice it's like why don't you fucking under CMS, like you've been doing this for 19 months, like you should know how to drag this file over here. And then of course I get past whatever. Okay, number two, let's move to online shopping. I'm not gonna lie, there is nothing more satisfying than boxes from Amazon. You know, Amazon's my best friend shop up or revolve. So piece of advice. Number two, try to hide your boxes before your spouse gets home. I sometimes call my teenagers and ask them to put the boxes behind a piece of furniture. But this is where my plan goes wrong. I am so tech illiterate that online returns that aren't just stick the label on the box without reconciling receipts and numbering, what you returning and what you're fucking keeping and all of that nonsense. And then I have to ask him for help because I don't really want to learn it. And then he starts to ask annoying questions like, Why did you have to order the same shirt and three colors and in two sizes in each color? Can you just buy one and see how it goes? And then I just tell him to focus on him and this is my mental process. And that doesn't go over really well. And then we always end up like in some kind of argument. Okay, number three. Only one of you in the couple can be in charge of Alexa. Alexa gets confused. It's like I at night I say like Alexa, good night. Shut the shades. Alexa, turn off the fucking lights. She never ever listens to me than Jeremy's has like three words in the same order. I don't even know what they are and she listens. It's like it's so annoying. I can't remember Alexa commands or password. So definitely have one person in charge of Alexa. Okay, number four number fours. Oh my god. So buckle up midlife peeps. I have a million episodes on midlife, vaginas menopause libido. So here it is. You don't have to be

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You're fucking erotic dancer or a stripper in Vegas, but you gotta get busy sometimes, for you and your partner. Look, some women will say that they never have sex with their husbands and I'm like, Ooh, that sounds tricky. My answer is I know it's hard sometimes, but you got to like, honestly, you have to for the sake of you, your spouse, your marriage, you know, they say sex begets sex. The more you have it, the more you want it. I'm waiting for that to happen, but I'm working on that. And the other annoying part is I like to shower after sex but like 11 o'clock at night and I'm so fucking tired. And I also think that the problem is that our our age, we don't have spontaneous arousal. Well, most of us, most men can make themselves in the mood if they have to. I've told you before my husband says that I have a one minute open for business window and it's hard to know when that is and it's not frequent. So we have to get our minds in the game. Listen to my midlife vagina episodes fine this CBD lubes and all that stuff and more tips on the VJ revamp. Because look guys, I'm in it with you. I hear ya. Okay, five. Number five. If one of you insists on dishwasher organization, then that person is fucking in charge of the dishwasher. My husband is a dishwasher enthusiast psychopath. He believes that everything should go organize and perfectly clean into the dishwasher. He says that if you put all the silverware like like with like so all the forks together all the knives together, then when you unload, it's faster because you aren't picking for the forks and doing a scavenger hunt and putting them all together. I personally don't have the mental patience for this. I think it takes too much time I have many more important things to do like scroll Instagram, and I also don't understand why you would clean everything perfectly before you put it in the dishwasher. So during COVID I designated him the dishwasher specialist and then if he wanted to delegate to the kids and supervise the fuck out of them and organizing the dishwasher contents in his fashion then that was totally okay with me. But I just could not be supervised on the dishwasher. Okay, number six room temperatures at night for sleeping. Look, you guys we have to compromise on the night time thermostat. Menopause is brutal. He says that I'm freezing and sweating all in the same minute. He's not wrong. I'm totally fucking irrational. I have a weighted blanket so the temperature can be like 68 in the room. Then once I'm in bed, and I've put my cold toes on him and I've warmed up, and I started sweating and tell him that he doesn't have the air conditioner on at all and he keeps telling me that he hasn't touched it and it goes like this every single night. Our family room is either too hot, too cold. He says I'm wasteful with the temperature settings. I've lost the air. I don't know how much the air conditioning costs every month, or I blast the heat and I'm incinerating his nasal hairs, whatever. So I went to my best friend Amazon and I got myself a $68 tall skinny white heater that I plug in the wall in my family room. It's not like a suddenly the most attractive item in my home. But at least I can like blast it up next to me and get myself like as warm as possible until I cracked my midlife sweat again. Okay, marriage Tip number seven. Self maintenance goes both ways. Guys. If you want your spouse or partner to keep his or her shit together, you better look good too. It goes both ways. Sometimes men will say that their wives have let themselves go yet they have this like giant belly and other shit going on. Midlife aesthetics and medical maintenance goes both ways. I went to a doctor to talk about my thinning hair. And then I made my husband go to like, look, there are things that we can't control about the aging process. Like we're probably all gonna get age like thinning hair, we're all gonna gain some weight and get wrinkles. But there are certain things that we can do and just make sure that it's a two way street. It's not a one way street. If you want your spouse to look good Get your shit together to number eight. Be your spouse's biggest cheerleader. No one wants to feel small or feel doubted, especially if your midlife woman hasn't worked outside of the home and is wanting to do something new. Now. Some spouses Believe me I've heard it or like, Oh, that's such a cute hobby. She started a little store, or that's just a vanity project. Be clear about what your expectations are with your spouse with whatever you're doing, and what support you expect from them. Spouses again cannot be mind reader's I mean honestly, we'd be like in heaven. If spouses could read our minds. Sometimes I wish my husband

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Read my mind like, why the fuck do I have to explain why my Mother's Day gifts are important. We need to model to our children what appreciation looks like go the extra fucking mile even if you don't feel like it, inspire each other go to the next level in everything. Even if it's just one more hour event or intermittent fasting, Sarah, you got this are getting your butt moving with a weighted vest. My husband inspired me to get the weighted vest. Okay, well let me rephrase that he got one and made and I made fun of him because he looks like the fucking SWAT team and you can go into my Instagram highlight reels and see how horrendous his weighted vest is. And he wears it outside when we walk. Oh my god, you guys I'm sitting on my phone and it's vibrating talk about midlife pleasures. Wow. Okay, so the weighted vest was so ugly and I felt like I needed to step up my fitness game like now he's getting like a double workout like weights and cardio at the same time. So even a little competition can be kind of God. Okay, number nine toilet flushing at night pre agree on nighttime toilet flushing, either both of you are flushers or neither of you are flashers one toilet flusher is disruptive. It's all or nothing baby. But the toilet seat position is not optional at all ever. And I'm teaching my son that too. He's 17 and a half. Every guy has got to close the fucking toilet. Okay, number 10. Dog poop. Someone has to be the most of the time dog poop picker upper or there's no accountability. Make sure it isn't you. Haha, look, the family dog is essentially my husband's boyfriend. That's his shit to deal with. I did a lot of human baby shit. I'm not saying he didn't do some of it. But I did the brunt of it. So I feel like dog shit. That's okay for it to be his job. I even ordered him like a cute little white trash can that has like the step foot, like opener and mini dog bags all this for the backyard so he doesn't have to walk five miles to put the dog shit in the trashcan. Okay, number 11. If your spouse to midlife woman, don't be the finisher of the last cookie. Okay, when hormones call, we need to know that we have our final dopamine hits in place. The last scoop of frosting the last bite of ice cream, the last cookie, the last three chips. So tell your spouse to think before they eat, do they want to be the fucking finisher with a mid life spouse? Okay, number 12. My nan Instagram Instagram husband has finally surrendered and appease me and lets me take photos. I won't say 100% of the time, but most of the time, oh my God, my phone is vibrating on my ass again. Okay, so if photos, family photos and sharing of photos amongst friends and family and Instagram is important to you, then make that very clear and tell your spouse what you need. Get in the fucking photo or your life will be miserable. And I will keep asking complaining. Well, I did that. And I was sort of nice. And I sort of just did it. And now he's sort of knows that it's part of the routine. I mean, doesn't have to be on Instagram all the time, but like some of the time, Okay, tip 13 Help your spouse develop a five point checklist for your birthday. So they don't fail. It might make your birthday seem like an obligation. But it's better than being in a fucking fight every year. So here's husband, Instagram husband's list, make sure he and the kids write cards that are at least three sentences, make sure there's a gift of some sort, even if I have to pick it out in advance, but I would prefer not to. Or I'm happy with both a version that I pick and a version that he picks won't disrupt that. Make sure there's a dinner plan, whether at home or at a restaurant, and make sure that I'm not fucking involved in the planning of it. Make sure to call my parents and include them in the plans set up the breakfast table to acknowledge my birthday as I do for everyone else in the family. And again, this is not about reciprocity. Well, it's not all about reciprocity. Some of it is but it's about love respect, showing the details matter showing that everyone in the family matters and modeling for our kids how to treat spouses and family members on special occasions in the future. Okay, 14 number 14 will be a quick one. Shut the fuck up about luggage. Tell your spouse that you will never be a carry on luggage person and to get over accept it and move on. I will never be a carry on luggage kind of girl. And she says he's accepted it but he really hasn't. He gives me so much shit about it. I'm sure you saw my Instagram highlight reels for the two week college tour. Honestly, the whole

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luggage discussion was like the Twilight Zone. If you haven't seen it, go back and look at it, you'll get a kick out of it. Even though that probably took 10 years off my life. Tip 15 is one of the most important, if not the most important piece of a marriage advice. Love yourself individually. And as a couple. If you don't love yourself separately from the marriage than the marriage can't withstand. No one can be solely and fully dependent on a spouse to give them love, purpose and recognition. We have to have these things for ourselves outside of our spouses. And then when we bring this back into the marriage, it just makes life even more satisfying. But so many women, including myself, including many of the guests on my podcast, have talked about the fact that they expected their spouses or husbands, to be there everything to be their hobby, to be their love to be the father of their children to be everything and they didn't have any of those things within themselves. So then as soon as their marriage got Rocky, they were like, Wait, what the fuck do I do now? What do I do with myself? So these are the things that we have to attend to, in the midlife self reinvention journey, finding those things that light us up, keep us connected to ourselves outside of our marriage, while at the same time because marriages work and life is work, finding those things that keep our marriage together. Okay, so I touched on this in my midlife shadows minisode. If you haven't heard that, go back and listen, you realize that midlife self reinvention is your responsibility. You can't buy it from Amazon or Bloomingdale's, and your spouse cannot give it to you again, it's your own work. It's my own work. Part of this work, is what one of my past guests talked about. It's called it's like a concept called basically to be interesting and to be interested. You don't want every night's dinner to be about what your kids did or your spouse did. We have to be able to add our pieces. Whether it's starting a new company, a new hobby, making new friends, we have to stay curious and be interested in the world and those around us and be interesting to others have something to talk about. You might not run a fortune 500 company I don't you might not be one of the world's leading yoga teachers. I'm not. But guess what I mean? And there's only one of me, and you're you and there's only one of you. You might say I don't have anything interesting to say, but you do you honestly do. Go back and listen to my last minisode called still got it. Basically part of the midlife journey is digging up pieces signature pieces of our past selves that have been buried for decades. We all have something to be interesting about. Okay, so this post got 235 comments, again, Sanibel metrics, it sometimes shows me that which kind of midlife messages are resonating with people. So let's hear a few. Okay, a few comments from this post. I agree on all of this marriage takes work. No time for laziness. Comment number two. I read these to my husband. He laughed and agreed but insisted that I care more about dish or washer organization. I do care more, but I don't want to load the dishwasher. So I keep my mouth shut. See I told you she knows her shit. The thermostat battle is real. Another comment was okay, we have an 8:30am to 8:30pm rule. We can't talk about anything important finances plans or children before or after. He's a morning person. And I'm a night owl. Okay, a couple to add. Make sure one of you knows how to build cook or order Postmates and agrees to be the primary driver on long road trips. That's a tough one. Like Jeremy hates driving and so do I and I always have to pee. So that's kind of a toughy Okay, so before I wrap up, I'm trying to keep your midlife marriage together with not so ordinary marriage advice. Let me say this. I'm realizing that having a hobby to do together as we approach empty nest is key. I'm struggling with that a little bit. A lot. Actually. I'm going to be honest, Jeremy and I don't have that. This is part of the reason why about the way to vas. Look. He was a college athlete playing tennis and golf. Like I mean, come on, like as if I'm going to start playing tennis and golf at 47 with like a college athlete. He plays the piano. I'm not a piano player. He's not a tango dancer. We took dance lessons for our wedding, but I'm not exactly the most coordinated person so for now it's the midlife walks with the weighted vest. I'm okay with that.

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I think we get really judgmental with ourselves in our marriages that we have to have these huge common interests and these amazing multi leveled hobbies together. Nope, we don't. We just have to have common values and find a few things that we can do together. I mean, obviously, raising the kids has been a major thing, but now they're 17 and a half and 15 and a half not to say that's not a fucking project. Of course it is. But it's a different kind of time commitment. Oh, but we do participate in each other's philanthropies of choice like he has certain philanthropies that are important to him and I have certain ones that are important to me. So we sort of participate in both of those he hates cooking and sort of why so recently I suggested to him that we both learn to cook so that when we are empty nesters we can be like big and carry and how big insects in the city and carry cook together. He didn't say no. So I'm gonna take that as a maybe for now. Okay, it's getting late. It's 920 I really want to shower again for the second time today. I'm into this like two times a day midlife shower and trying to keep my skin from not drying out. Okay, love you guys. Thanks for listening to the flexible neurotic podcast and edgy midlife self reinvention podcast. There are three things you can do first, fucking subscribe to the podcast. Don't just be a listener, subscribe commit. It helps grow the podcast and it's fucking free. Send and share with friends who like midlife shed and third write an apple review. Yes, writing reviews is a drag and stone boy. But your minute and half job of writing the review helps the podcast grow. And the fourth even though I said there were only three is follow my instagram at the flexible neurotics. Talk soon.