Female Friendship After 50: Falling In Love With Women In Midlife

February doesn’t need more clichés about love and romance, and midlife women don’t need another reminder to buy flowers for themselves, take themselves out to dinner and a movie, or “put themselves back out there” as if love, for others and/or for self, were a task left undone.

What I believe we crave at this age is love that’s multilayered, curious, positive, forward-thinking, discerning. Love that doesn’t require erasing who we are or shrinking the life we’ve aspired to, worked so hard to build, and—in many cases—repeatedly had to defer. (Read: love that isn’t much like most relationships I’ve been in and observed.)

Female Friendship After 50: The Love That Surprised Me Most in Midlife

This February, I want to talk about the love that surprised me most in midlife: not romance, not butterflies, not the swipe-right promise of “maybe this one”, but the deep, steady, soul-anchoring love I’ve found in my community of women.

A Meaningful Dating Profile

I’m pretty cynical about all the dating apps. Or perhaps I’m simply more discerning in a way I couldn’t have been at twenty, thirty, or even forty.

Honestly, I don’t want to know much about someone’s age, height, weight, career, accolades, or achievements. I want to know about their values and how they’re aligning with them.

With apologies to my Kuel Life colleague Laurie Gerber (because I’m probably breaking all her rules here), if I were to write a dating profile, it would probably say something like this:

• I don’t need to be rescued, taken care of, or spoiled, and you can be sure I won’t do that to or for you. I don’t have time for that.
• Don’t tell me about your grievances with your ex. Tell me about what you learned in the process of forgiving them
• and yourself.
• Don’t tell me how terrible the present is and how wonderful the past was. Tell me what you’re actively doing to create a meaningful present and a more hopeful future.
• Don’t call yourself “old-fashioned” or “old-school” as if it were a badge of honor. Tell me how forward-thinking you are. (Honestly, when I think about who uses this term most, it’s middle-aged to older white men who yearn for a time when the world worked so well … for middle-aged to older white men. News flash, guys: it didn’t work well at all for a lot of other demographics.)
• I adore my midlife life: it’s like a delicious cake, and if you want to be the icing, join me on the adventure of aging disgracefully. And know this: the cake is already complete without the frosting.

That last line matters most.

Because midlife love—real love—doesn’t arrive to complete us. It arrives to accompany us.

And here’s a truth I didn’t expect to encounter: the people who have most consistently shown up to accompany me in this season are women.

Falling in Love

For most of my life, my closest friendships were with boys and then men. I connected easily with them, loved the banter and the fact that there was a lot less cattiness and grudge-bearing, enjoyed the “other” perspectives and a lack of emotional entanglement. Many of those friendships were and are still genuine and important to me.

And yet, as I moved deeper into midlife—through loss, reinvention, caregiving, hormonal upheaval, vocational shifts, and the slow shedding of who I thought I was supposed to be—something shifted.

I found myself craving a different kind of intimacy—what the woo world calls “into me see” (say it quickly). This intimacy is not louder or more dramatic. It’s simply truer and deeper.

I wanted relationships in which I didn’t have to translate everything I said (because Mars and Venus do speak different languages and because maybe men are like waffles and women are like spaghetti). Where problems didn’t need fixing but rather reframing as opportunities. Where my joy wasn’t minimized. Where my body wasn’t something to apologize for or optimize. Where my wisdom and power weren’t threatening or inconvenient.

I found that kind of love … with women.

• Women will sit with you while you say the unspeakable and understand the guilt/shame that follows speaking it.
• Women who celebrate clarity without asking for its softening.
• Women who don’t flinch when you change—or when you decide not to.
• Women who let you be a work in progress all. the. time. And forever.
• Women who are curious rather than judgmental.

This is not a rescuing love. It’s a love of recognition, of “I see you” and “You are not invisible to me.” And it has completely redefined what I mean when I say “I am in love.”

Why Female Friendship After 50 Feels Like Real Love

I’m in love with the way women gather:

• We come together to collaborate rather than compete.
• We don’t perform wellness or success or resilience but strive to embody true wellness, success, and resilience.
• We nurture rather than challenge.
• We laugh hard and long (it’s always funnier if you pee a little), cook together, walk side by side, and witness each other becoming.

I’m in love with my chosen family of women of all ages: from my work kids (now younger than my own) to my older colleagues to my clients (the oldest of whom is in her mid-80s) to my mentor (who just reached 96—thank you for all the wisdom, Anna Mary).

I’m in love with a community that doesn’t ask, “What can you do for us?” and instead wonders, “How can we hold this together?”

This new love has taught me something I suspect the dating apps never could: that compatibility in midlife isn’t about shared hobbies or surface chemistry—it’s about shared values and active alignment with those values, shared capacity, shared willingness to keep growing and stay curious and nurture wonder.

Asking Better Questions

Romantic love will still have a place in my life, I’m sure. And I am no longer waiting for it to begin my life, sweeten my days, or validate my worth.

That work is already done.

By women who know how to love without an agenda.

By friendships that feel like home.

By a community that says, “You belong here, all parts of you, exactly as you are.”

So this February, instead of asking whether we’re single or partnered, desired or chosen, let’s ask better questions:

• Who sees you clearly?
• Who walks with you honestly?
• Who celebrates the life you’ve already built?
• And who invites you into the life you will build in the coming years?

That, to me, is falling in love in midlife. And it turns out—I’m already there.

What Does February Ask of Us?

Perhaps this February isn’t asking us to look harder for love, or to present ourselves more appealingly, or to explain why we’re still single, partnered, searching, or waiting to be chosen.

Perhaps it’s asking us to notice where love has already taken root:

• In the friendships that have grown deeper with time even though deeper felt impossible already.
• In the women who know our stories and stay anyway.
• In the communities that hold us—not because we are impressive, productive, or agreeable, but because we belong.

What if the love we’re being invited into now doesn’t ask us to audition, compromise, or contort ourselves into someone more palatable?

Maybe falling in love at 50+ has less to do with romance and more to do with (re)alignment. More to do with our visibility to and by ourselves, a visibility we discover when it’s reflected back to us by others.

And if that kind of love is already present in your life, even in quiet ways, maybe this season isn’t about longing at all: maybe it’s about letting ourselves really receive what we’ve already been given.

Many of us were taught to center romance—to measure our worth by desirability, partnership, or being “picked.” And yet, here we are, surrounded by women who choose us daily. Who show up with soup and laughter. Who tell the truth. Who witness our becoming without asking us to perform.

So perhaps this February isn’t asking us who we’re dating; instead, maybe it’s asking who we’re devoted to and whether we’re finally willing to call the love we’re already living by its rightful name.

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About the Author:

Liza is a certified Integrative Nutrition® Health Coach, author, and passionate advocate for women’s wellness in perimenopause and beyond. 

Her EAT | Your Way to Health™ and Stewarding Emotional Eating™ programs support women in renegotiating their relationship with food, stress, and themselves, finally coming into full alignment their intuition and entering a season of sacred harvest in place of decline.

You can learn more about Liza here: www.simplyhealthcoaching.com