Meeting Your Life Partner. After 40. ❤️

Meeting My Partner.

At Forty.

And What I Had to Heal to Make it Happen.

By all accounts, I was a difficult woman.

I wanted an equal, and I needed romance. I longed for a big, faraway love that nourished, protected, and grounded me. It just didn't happen.

Until I was 40.

I was traveling and working remotely in Paris, and I posted on every dating app imaginable. I had given up on a steady relationship or a deep commitment. What I wanted just wasn't out there, it seemed.

So I thought I'd live it up.

I had raised my daughter alone since my early twenties, and I could finally focus on myself, my career, and my dreams after she settled in NYC after graduating.

So I flew to Paris for a project and stayed for three months.

I dated every beautiful man you can imagine. They played the guitar, brought wine, and kept me up for hours, discussing literature and sharing tales of their travels.

We rode scooters around the Sacré-Cœur, strolled through art museums, and had mad, passionate love affairs.

I did something crazy and lowered the app ages to 24–40. French men are just, well, different. They cook, read, clean up after themselves, discuss art and literature, wear scarves, and view "older" women as sexy. I loved it all—someone I didn't have to look after or pick up after.

Then my heart got crushed. He was a Sagittarius. I should've seen it coming. All of my deepest wounds were triggered and exposed, raw, and unmanageable. I became inconsolable. That quiet voice of "you'll never be enough" became an all-out rager. I was overwhelmed, and my thoughts were becoming darker every day.

I reached out to my friend Danielle LaPorte and could barely string sentences together. "I need help. I'm not sure I want to live."

She sensed the urgency and gave me an email address for a therapist. I wrote, Hi, I'm Maranda. I think I'm dying. I'm too close to that invisible edge we secretly fear will come for us one day. This pain is too much to carry.

Have you been there?

The therapist asked me to repeat all my negative self-talk. It was brutal.

Then she said the thing that changed my life.

"Now, tell me the person who said those things to you growing up."

Meet the mother wound. I did intense sessions four times a week. I realized that until I dealt with this core pain, I'd never be able to have a healthy, lasting relationship. I never let anyone get close enough. I felt like I always had to impress people, prove myself, overperform, and earn my worth. It was exhausting and a true intimacy killer.

When you've got tons of childhood abuse or trauma, separation can feel like death, even when you initiate it.

When I would break up with people, I would melt on the bathroom floor, torn up. I would fall apart, even when I didn't like them very much. I had warped attachments, and any goodbye felt life-threatening. That's a hard way to live.

All my life, I had dated men who would minimize my success or wanted to capitalize on it, treating my friends and contacts like a buffet to feast upon. Eventually, the last one turned to abuse, and I hated myself because I just couldn't leave. I lost friends and all self-respect because I couldn't leave the man hurting me. I still felt like a scared child, with no shelter or protection. I was walking through life with open wounds, repeating the same cycle. My longest romantic relationships maxed out at around four or five months.

This time, I knew the common denominator was me. I told the therapist I could not go on another day living that way. I'd rather end it.

Good news, that's the point where real miracles can happen.

I also made peace with the idea of being alone and traveling the world for the rest of my life. After I surrendered, I was actually excited about it.

Yes, healing is a long process, but it can also happen quickly.

A month later, I met the most beautiful Frenchman. We both told each other that we were not looking for anything serious or long-term. I kept up with my weekly calls with my therapist, making sure I didn't abandon myself in this new way of dating.

I thought he was a little older; he thought I was a bit younger. I had a street art project plastered all over Paris, and he tore down anything that covered it. He helped me spray-paint my project on approved walls, papered the streets with my stickers, and we passionately argued over concepts, authors, and art. My visa date was drawing closer, and I didn't have much time left, but we made the most of it. I'm a bit quirky and different, in the same ways he was odd and eccentric. It worked.

I finally had to make my flight back to the U.S. after three months in France, with my world and my inner dialogue completely rearranged.

My old life and new self were about to meet.

Shortly after returning, I realized I kind of missed him. I asked him if he wanted to fly to L.A. for three weeks, then to NYC for a 14-day trip with me while I attended conferences. He hopped on a plane the next week.

A rockstar offered his music studio and warehouse apartment for me to stay in LA. He wasn't fazed. He didn't even want to meet him. My fancy high-profile parties? He sat outside talking to the guy pushing a shopping cart. I wasn't his buffet or his ladder to climb. I had dated people twice his age, but none had his emotional depth and expansive scope of interests and awareness.

So I asked. "Hey, do you want to go to Greece for a month? I'm going to work from the road."

I had been planning on doing a bucket-list year, since my daughter was grown and it was the first time I could travel since I was young.

Then there was a conference in Istanbul. "Hey, do you want to come?"

Every two weeks, I'd check in and see if he wanted to keep going.

I'll never forget. It was one of the sweetest days of my life. After a couple of months, he said, I'm not leaving. I don't want to leave you. I'd like to stay together.

Nine and a half years later, here we are. He's 18 years younger, yet he's the adult in this partnership.

It's the first time I've felt safe in my life with a partner. He takes care of me and handles life so much better than I do. I feel loved for the first time in a relationship. He's got that natural confidence, a gentle kindness, and a razor-sharp mind. I finally found an equal.

For the first few years, we continued to live and work full-time on the road. For longer stints, we settled in Portugal, London, Paris, Barcelona, Greece, and Italy. I had spent decades trying to design a life I loved, where I didn't have to lie awake scared about money or shadows from my past, and at 40, it finally began to come together.

It's a story of self-abandonment, recovering those most wounded parts of ourselves, and witnessing how much good we block by continuing to carry our unhealed wounds.

It's a story of hope, about how it's never too late to create your life and discover the world once your kids are grown. Perhaps it's even your invitation to move to Paris, date younger men, and discuss art.

I was alone as a child, and I thought that it would always be that way. I wasn't one of the lucky ones, you know?

I promise, it's never too late, as cliché and trite as that sounds.

This is just your beginning.

If I had found love earlier, I would have sabotaged it.

You have to trust the timing of your life and follow that yearning, that impractical call of your heart.

I packed up my life in America almost a decade ago. So much of my life and dreams had been put on hold for so many years, and I felt like I was slowly sinking into some sort of gray melancholy, like there was nothing left for me at the end of each day, exhausted as a single parent.

Many of you know this feeling, all too well. Sometimes the best way we can see ourselves and our patterns is in the lives and stories of other people. This is my offering.

You don't have to settle, negotiate your worth, or beg for a text back.

Your wild, beautiful story is being written.

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