Do You Still Believe in Love?

By Laura Lee Carter

One of the most important lessons I have learned from my midlife struggles, is the need to be willing to fight for my dreams. This journey began for me back in 2004 (at age 49), when I lost my job and then spent months in introspection.

I focused on this question: What do I need to happen before I die?

I concluded that for myself I needed to find ways to believe in love again. I so wanted to find one genuine love in this lifetime. This book is a summary of what I learned in this process: I fought through a lifetime of tragedy and disappointment, did some serious soul surgery, and changed my perspective on love.

In this way I found new faith in the power of love, made my life worthwhile again, and found a great partner within a few months. We married eight months later.  We will celebrate our ten anniversary this week!

With Mike I found true partnership, one where we are able to work successfully together towards shared goals. One of his lifetime goals was to build his own solar custom home with an incredible view. This is the goal we have been working on for the past few years.

So many obstacles have arisen in this process. Leaving behind our life of 20+ years in Fort Collins was our first challenge. I wrote about that extensively on my Midlife Crisis Queen blog in April and May of 2014. Suffice to say this kind of change is never easy, and it’s plain HARD on relationships!

We moved into a 100-year-old little house in Walsenburg Colorado, and put much into storage in June 2014. It took five months just to get a proper slab completed in this rural Colorado county.

We noticed every step of the construction process was costing much more than we had budgeted. We found that our contractor was not taking bids for work, but simply using his regular sub-contractors. At that point Mike decided to take over the contracting part of the process. He took bids from both local and Pueblo companies and cut over 30% off the cost of the electrical and stucco work. Our builder was not happy.

After almost a year of struggle, we were finally ready to complete the inside of our home. We had collected everything we needed to complete the kitchen, baths, etc. The response from our builder? I may be able to get to that in a few weeks. I went ballistic! And of course he hung up on me.

Laura Lee Carter, MA Counseling Psychology, the writer behind the popular online blog How to Believe in Love Again, has been helping others turn midlife difficulties into opportunities for personal change since 2007. Besides working as a psychotherapist, Laura Lee has authored a number of books and e-books on midlife transformation.  Don’t miss her new book: Find Your Reason to Be Here: The Search for Meaning in Midlife. Follow her on Twitter: @midlifequeen.