The Radically Well Podcast · Season 1, Episode 12
Dating While in Perimenopause: Love, Heartbreak and Starting Over in Midlife
Dating in midlife gets talked about as either a punchline or a triumph, and it is usually neither. In the season one finale, Rosie Acosta and Tessa Tovar hand the episode over to two listeners — Crystal and Raquel — who tell the truth about looking for love while your body, hormones and sense of yourself are all in motion at once.
Two women, two very different midlife love stories
Most conversations about dating after forty are written by people who are not doing it. This one is not. Rosie and Tessa step back and let two listeners take the floor, and what comes out is far less tidy than the usual advice: real heartbreak, real self-discovery, and a lot of humour about the parts nobody warns you about.
Crystal talks about dating while perimenopausal — what changed physically, what changed in how she read her own reactions, and how much of it she had no language for at the time. Raquel picks up after a divorce, rebuilding not just a dating life but a sense of who she is without the role she had been in for years.
The thread running through both, and the reason this ended the season, is that the hardest part was rarely the dating itself. It was working out which feelings belonged to the relationship and which belonged to a body in transition.
What this episode covers
- How perimenopause and menopause change dating, desire and intimacy
- Why self-awareness becomes the most useful thing you have in midlife relationships
- Crystal’s story: dating while perimenopausal, and what she wishes she had known
- Raquel’s story: dating after divorce and rebuilding an identity
- Rebuilding after heartbreak when you are already in transition
- Conditional and unconditional love, and telling them apart
- Midlife from the male side, and where the dynamics differ
- Challenging what we are told about ageing, desirability and starting over
What perimenopause actually changes about dating
The physical shifts are the ones that get named: changes in libido, discomfort, a body that does not respond the way it used to. They are real, and the episode does not skirt them.
The less obvious change is emotional bandwidth. Broken sleep, anxiety that arrives without a cause, and irritability that feels disproportionate all make the ordinary uncertainty of early dating much harder to sit with. Crystal describes reading her own reactions as evidence about the relationship, when some of it was hormonal noise.
Naming that distinction does not make it disappear. It does stop you drawing permanent conclusions from a temporary state, which several women in this conversation describe as the thing that changed everything.
Rebuilding after a divorce or a heartbreak
Raquel’s section is the most practical part of the episode, and the least sentimental. Starting again in midlife is not only about meeting someone. It is about working out who you are when a long-held role ends, and being willing to find out rather than rushing to fill the space.
She is candid about the loneliness in that gap, and about the pressure to present as fine. What she describes as the turning point is unglamorous: stopping trying to be the version of herself that the last relationship required.
Ageing, desire and the expiry date nobody agreed to
Underneath both stories is a cultural script that says desire has a deadline and that starting over past a certain age is faintly embarrassing. Rosie and Tessa take it apart directly, including the double standard that treats a man’s midlife reinvention as a story and a woman’s as a crisis.
This is a personal conversation, not medical or relationship advice. Symptoms that persist or interfere with daily life are worth raising with a qualified healthcare professional.
Timestamps
| 00:00 | Introduction |
| 01:00 | Navigating dating and menopause |
| 11:00 | Season finale reflections |
| 12:44 | Dating during perimenopause: Crystal’s story |
| 30:30 | Raquel’s journey: dating after divorce |
| 37:20 | Navigating relationships and heartbreak |
| 39:28 | Dating in midlife: challenges and considerations |
| 42:47 | Rebuilding after heartbreak: finding yourself again |
| 45:46 | Empowerment through change: embracing new experiences |
| 49:51 | The complexity of love: conditional and unconditional |
| 52:17 | Understanding midlife crises: a male perspective |
| 1:00:06 | The dynamics of desire: age and experience in relationships |
Explore the conversation
Questions explored in this episode
How does perimenopause affect dating?
It affects both the physical and the emotional side. Libido, comfort and energy can all shift, and broken sleep and unfamiliar anxiety make the ordinary uncertainty of dating harder to tolerate. The episode is clear that the emotional bandwidth is often the bigger factor.
Does libido come back after perimenopause?
For many women desire changes rather than disappears, and it often settles once hormones stabilise. What the guests describe as most useful is talking about it directly rather than waiting quietly for it to return.
Is it harder to date in midlife?
Different rather than simply harder. There is less patience for pretence and more clarity about what you want, which the episode treats as a genuine advantage. The difficulty is more often the cultural story about age than the dating itself.
How do you start dating again after a divorce?
Raquel’s answer is to rebuild a sense of who you are before trying to fit into someone else’s life, and to let the gap after a long relationship be uncomfortable rather than filling it immediately.
How do I know if it is the relationship or my hormones?
You often cannot tell in the moment, which is the point. What helps is noticing patterns over weeks rather than drawing conclusions on a bad night, and knowing that anxiety and irritability can arrive without the relationship causing them.
Should I tell someone I am dating that I am in perimenopause?
The episode does not prescribe an answer, but both guests found that being straightforward earlier was easier than managing it alone, and that it told them something useful about the person opposite them.
Starting over is not the same as starting from nothing.
Rosie offers mindfulness coaching grounded in self-compassion and practical tools for anxiety, sleep loss and the emotional side of midlife. Coaching is available in English and Spanish.
This episode is a personal conversation and is educational in nature. It does not replace care from a qualified healthcare or mental health professional.