A Marriage Sabbatical: The Bold Choice That Strengthened a 30-Year Partnership with Psychotherapist Leah Fisher
Show Snapshot:
Craving adventure without jeopardizing your relationship? In this episode, psychotherapist Leah Fisher shares transformative insights from her memoir 'My Marriage Sabbatical,' which chronicles how her year-long solo journey at age 60 unexpectedly deepened her 30-year- marriage. You'll discover practical communication strategies, planning frameworks, and relationship wisdom that turned potential conflict into growth as Leah traveled the globe.
We explore creating healthy space in long-term partnerships, honoring individual dreams while maintaining connection, and the courage it takes to reimagine midlife marriage. Listen as we unpack the lessons from a book that took 16 years to bring to life—powerful proof that midlife is ripe for both personal reinvention and renewed intimacy with your partner.
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My Marriage Sabbatical: A Memoir of Solo Travel and Lasting Love
Quotable:
I had close friends who would bashfully ask me—Is your marriage alright? And I would say—Absolutely, there's no way I would leave my husband for a year if it weren't.
Transcript:
Leah Fisher (00:00): I had close friends who would bashfully ask me, you know, "Is your marriage all right?" And I would say, "Absolutely, there's no way I would leave my husband for a year if it weren't."
Katie Fogarty (00:15): Welcome to A Certain Age. A show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. I'm your host, Katie Fogarty. Many of us hit midlife and dream of travel and adventure while still building a life with someone we love. But what happens when dreams run the risk of pulling people in opposite directions? Today, we are spending time with the woman who asked and answered this question and has a singular story to share—a story that might change the way you look at your own relationships. Leah Fisher is the author of a captivating new memoir, "My Marriage Sabbatical: A Memoir of Solo Travel and Lasting Love." After 30-plus years as a respected psychotherapist and marital counselor, Leah took an unconventional step at age 60—she embarked on a year-long solo journey around the world while her husband stayed home to work, and together, they worked on maintaining a strong marriage through distance and different time zones. Today, we dive into her remarkable journey, explore how couples can stay connected while apart, and discover why sometimes the best way to grow together is to spend time growing individually. If you like conversations about love, adventure, wanderlust, or want a blueprint for nurturing a strong relationship, wherever life may take you in 2025 or the years ahead, stick around. This show is for you.
Welcome, Leah. Hi. I am excited to have this conversation. You and I have ping-ponged back and forth over different dates. You've been very patient, but we have landed the plane. We are finally behind the podcast mics together, and I'm very excited. Your book, "My Marriage Sabbatical," takes readers on two journeys. One is a bucket list global adventure as you spend a year in solo travel, and the second journey is the relationship journey you and your husband go through as you negotiate your different priorities and interests. The book captures a series of reunions, a lot of poignant farewells as you work to stay connected, and as you gradually grow more comfortable being together and apart. We are going to explore this all today, but I would love to open by asking you about the backstory of your sabbatical. When and how did you decide you needed a marriage sabbatical?
Leah Fisher (02:30): This story goes back to age 22 when I graduated from university, a person with big dreams and a lot of bashfulness. I wanted to go into the Peace Corps. The idea of traveling to different cultures and being of service was so attractive. Anyway, I filled out an application to the Peace Corps, but I never mailed it in. So needless to say, I didn't get into the Peace Corps. That wish stayed with me and never stopped making me disappointed with myself that I hadn't done it. So fast forward, my children have left home, gone to college, the tuitions are paid, the mortgage is paid, and I have this opportunity, kind of a window of opportunity, and boy, I'm not going to turn my back on it twice.
Katie Fogarty (03:15): I love that. I love that. I think many of my listeners can relate to that. We've all had something, a passion, idea, a dream that we might have tabled when we were younger, as we moved on with our lives and developed careers, got married, raised a family. You had a conversation with your husband, you broached the idea of the sabbatical. What did that look like?
Leah Fisher (03:35): I want to back up for a minute and say that another really important factor was my father dying. I had greatly admired him, and what I realized is that, gee, if my dad can die, I guess everybody is going to. And I thought, is there anything at the end of my life that I'm going to regret? And what came up was this idea of traveling and seeing how I could be helpful in the world. So that was the other part, how I ended up having this conversation with my husband. He's somebody who does not eagerly make changes of any kind. So I'd been hinting at this for a few years. I had to look back to realize that I was feeling bored, and not with my career—I loved it—bored and frustrated and really aggravated that we had such different priorities, you know, you and your loved one can have very similar values, but have different timetables or different priorities. We both loved our work and we both loved exploring the world, and my husband loved his work more than exploring, and I was ready to set my work aside for a period of time and do some traveling.
So I had said to him, "Would you spend a year and take a sabbatical and let us spend time in other parts of the world?" And he said, "Absolutely not. I really want to keep working." So my sassy streak sometimes comes out, and it did in this situation. And I said, "Well, what if you were to keep working and I were to travel the world?" And his initial reaction was, "I would hate that." He has a voice I call the "case's closed" voice. So it was announced in his case's closed voice, and having learned a lot through 30 years of marriage, I just sat there. At an earlier time I would have made a strong case, argued, told him he was a stick in the mud. I just sat there, and he said, "But I would like to make your dreams come true." And I said, "I can live with that." And so that was when the spark happened, that I thought, you know, this might really be something I could make happen.
Katie Fogarty (05:35): And you did. You not only made it happen, you traveled the world. You were in multiple countries. You had multiple adventures, you did multiple service projects. You've now come back to write a book on it. And one of the things that I love when I was researching this book is that you say this book is for readers who, quote, "think they're too old for 'Eat, Pray, Love,'" and of course, I laugh, because I think most of us has spent time with Elizabeth Gilbert. I'm pretty sure it was required reading in 2007—I think every single person I know read it, but Elizabeth embarked on her "Eat, Pray, Love" journey as a young woman who was dissolving her first sort of serious relationship, her first marriage. You embarked on your "Eat, Pray, Love" journey at a time when you wanted to keep your marriage, keep it solid, and yet still have these adventures. And so I'm curious. I think you alluded to it a little bit when you talked about losing your father, but what role, if any, did aging play in your willingness to take what a lot of people would think of as a sort of an unconventional step and unconventional year?
Leah Fisher (06:36): You know, Katie, I love how you started this. Because Elizabeth Gilbert was coping with the divorce. And as I look at other travel memoirs, women's travel memoirs, all of them are single or divorced or contemplating divorce, and I did not find another book where intentionally, the woman traveler was trying to be respectful of her marriage and of her partner at the same time as she wanted to make her own dream come true.
Katie Fogarty (07:15): And you are proof that you can do both, that you can put the work in. You can create a framework to allow a relationship to continue to grow and evolve as you pursue your own dreams. We're going to be heading into a quick break, Leah, but when we come back, I want to explore a little bit about what that looks like in practice. What did you and your husband have to do to set up beforehand? What was the kind of conversation and communication that needed to happen throughout the year to really make sure that the journey ended with your marriage as strong as it was when you went into it. We'll be back in just a minute.
Katie Fogarty (08:25): Leah, we're back from the break. When we went into it, you said you wanted to write the book you couldn't find. You were seeing a lot of travel memoirs that talked about women traveling after divorce or maybe seeking adventure as a single woman, but you were a married woman, even though you were spending your year solo traveling. How did you and your husband create a framework to allow this to happen? Walk us through. You know, was there an agreement? Was there structure? Was there communication about how often you would check in? What did it look like?
Leah Fisher (09:25): Well, here was the structure, and it definitely evolved from numerous conversations. And I should start by saying that we're both psychotherapists, so however we may behave in our kitchen when we're pissed with each other, we really have a strong belief in reciprocity and respect and remembering that the other body is inhabited. So that goes a long way. And I had a mom who had dementia at that time and two grown children. So we decided that I would travel. It wouldn't be a solid year, and it definitely wouldn't be a year where I just didn't see him—"catch you in a year, honey"—that I would travel for four months and then I would come home for some period of time. It turned out to be sometimes a couple weeks, sometimes a month. I would check on my mom, visit with friends, and my children, remind my husband he was happily married, do the laundry and set out again for another four months. So that became our pattern. We also agreed that my husband, who wasn't willing to take a year away from his work, would take a two-week vacation during each four-month period, and would come and visit me. So he came for two weeks when I was in Guatemala. He came for another two weeks when I was in Bali, and we visited Java, and then in the last section of travel, he came for two weeks, and we went to Colombia. So that was our structure.
Katie Fogarty (11:12): So this required a lot of planning, a lot of forethought. You know, your long journey requires exactly that. It's passports, it's packing, but your journey also required explaining it to other people. You obviously got your husband's buy-in, even though he was first attempting to close the case and say he wasn't on board with this. What was it like to share this with your children or other people in your life? What kind of reactions did you get from people?
Leah Fisher (11:37): A lot of different ones. My children were proud of me. Both of them had spent time studying Spanish. Both of them had done some traveling, and the fact that their mom was going to go off and have this exploration, they were proud, and that's always fun for a parent. I had close friends who would bashfully ask me, you know, "Is your marriage all right?" And I would say, "Absolutely, there's no way I would leave my husband for a year if it weren't." So those were some of the reactions that I got.
Katie Fogarty (12:16): Were people envious? I could imagine that some people—I like, I'm, frankly, I'm a little envious.
Leah Fisher (12:22): I had one male psychotherapy colleague who said, "Boy, tell your husband I'd marry him in a heartbeat. I'd sure like someone to support me in going for a year of travel."
Katie Fogarty (12:35): That's hysterical.
Leah Fisher (12:37): My husband got a proposal of marriage, and his colleagues began referring to him as "the hero husband." Oh my gosh, once he got past the "I'd hate for you to be gone for a year"—and it wasn't a whole year—he began to feel proud of how edgy this was, and how he was, in a sense, having a relationship both with his 60-year-old wife, but also with the young girl who had been afraid to go to the Peace Corps. And he was helping to make that dream come true. And in that way, it was very romantic.
Katie Fogarty (13:21): The book covers a lot of the romance. There are steamy chapters where there are reunions. You know, you're having the best sex you've ever had. And I think it was Bali, and I've been to Bali, so I guess that—although, when I was in Bali, let me tell you, my husband was afflicted with "Bali belly," and it was not romantic. But there are so many beautiful places around the world, and I do agree, as a long-married couple—I've been married for 30-plus years myself—when you're in new environments, the spark just reoccurs, because there's something so delightful and inspiring and galvanizing about just being in new environments. But you also explore something complicated with your husband in the book that you have a whole chapter on, I think it's called "Sex and the Single Spouse." And I'm wondering if you're willing to share with our listeners what that chapter was all about and what you discovered both about yourself and your partnership in the process of writing that—sort of going through and living through that moment.
Leah Fisher (14:19): Well, I'll be delighted to tell you about it, if you'll also be open to my telling you what kind of a reaction reviewers and other people are having.
Katie Fogarty (14:33): Leah, I want to hear it all so you can tell me everything.
Leah Fisher (14:37): Okay, so I was so grateful. I was so grateful that my husband was willing to do this thing that I never ever thought he'd agree to. I remember just shaking with excitement when I realized that we were heading toward an agreement that he wouldn't come with me, but he wouldn't hold me back either. And I asked him, what would be the hardest for him having me gone for such a long period? Now, you know as well as I do what he was going to answer. And of course, that's exactly what he said.
Katie Fogarty (15:19): Well, I'm assuming you weren't taking his favorite dog or his favorite pair of shoes with him, right? Yes, he was going to miss you and your romantic and sexual relationship.
Leah Fisher (15:29): Exactly. And so I did something that worked fine for us, but hasn't sat that well with some people who are reviewing this book, and that is I said to him, "Look, I was a young person of the 60s. I didn't get married till I was 33. I couldn't bear it if anything would happen to jeopardize our marriage," and I knew we were both in agreement about that. And I said, "But you know, if you decide you want some kind of a hookup, a brief hookup, I think I could live with that. It would just be important that you keep me in the loop, let me know that there'd be nothing sneaky about this, that if we stayed in communication, that's not out of the question." And he said, "It's unlikely I would do anything about it, but it's very nice to feel like I have that freedom."
Katie Fogarty (16:33): So you were saying that casual, non-relationship sex would be fine. You were willing to extend that offering. What came next, though?
Leah Fisher (16:44): Absolutely nothing for another seven months. And then I came home from Bali and told him all about my adventures in that part of Asia. And he said, well, he'd had an adventure of his own, that he had met someone he was interested in having sex with. I was totally surprised and curious. Asked him a bunch of questions, including whether this was something that had actually been begun, and he said no, but they were both pretty interested.
Katie Fogarty (17:21): And it just didn't sit well. And gradually it dawned on me that my hippie days were over and my women's lib days were over, and that I didn't think that would work well. I think women's lib and feeling unhappy that you're realizing that your husband might do something with somebody else—there's sort of two different things. I think you can still be a complete feminist and say, "You know what? Like, I actually realize I don't want to be sharing my partner with somebody, and that's more painful than I could have imagined."
Leah Fisher (17:58): It was weirder than that, because I might have been okay with it, except I reached out by email to the person he was thinking of getting involved with, and said, "We've never had an arrangement like this, my husband and I. It's absolutely crucial to me that this not disrupt our marriage." And she wrote back and said, "I don't want to have any contact with you unless something horrible happens to him. Then I'd like you to let me know." And I thought, that's not okay with me. I don't want to be shut out of my husband's sex life. And that's when it began to feel creepy.
So I went and visited a psychotherapist to have a consult with somebody that both my husband and I knew, and told him about this situation. And he said—this is a guy who's usually a very good listener. He said, "This is the dumbest idea I've heard about in a long time."
Katie Fogarty (19:04): Talk about cases closed. He's like, this is not gonna work.
Leah Fisher (19:07): But he did it—how can I say it? I have so much respect for this guy's wisdom that I knew if he jumped in like that, there was something important he had to tell me, and he explained in a very non-judgmental way what the problem is with sex play, which right now is being called non-monogamy, and it's interesting, there are books being written about it. I didn't know it's like a "thing," which is a shared agreement to not be monogamous for a period of time, and he said that my husband has to pretend to me that the relationship is not important, while he has to pretend to her that the relationship has meaning, that it's meaningful, and it puts him in a bind where he can't really be completely open with either of us.
Katie Fogarty (20:00): That was one of the chapters in the book that really made me think and spoke to me, and I spent a lot of time thinking about it, which is why I wanted to ask you and explore this with you. And you know, it made so much sense. You're—in some ways, it was fortunate that the psychotherapist that you consulted with knew both of you, because he said, "I know your husband, and he likes to be in relationships, and he loves being in a relationship with you, and he's somebody who's going to want to be in a relationship with somebody that he's involved with physically," and then it's very difficult to put that Pandora back in the box. Potentially, this system or this philosophy works for people who perhaps are not interested in relationships or behave in different ways at different stages of their lives. And it was just—it was very interesting to think about, and I'm very curious to hear that this chapter has raised, it sounds like, maybe some harsh reactions from reviewers and readers. Tell us about that, Leah. Yes, well, what's going on?
Leah Fisher (21:00): Thank you for giving me the chance to talk about it. I've had reviews where they said, "Why can't the dude just keep his fly zipped for six weeks?" A tabloid magazine approached me and wanted to do an exclusive involving this chapter. I've had this arrangement described as "infidelity" and as a "cuckold arrangement," and it's like, oh my goodness, they don't get it. They don't get that this wasn't about swinging. It was really about gratitude. And what do I have that I can give back that's anywhere near as meaningful as what my partner is offering me? Infidelity to me means one person's getting cheated on, and here we were so carefully discussing it and negotiating it and making it part of our intimacy, rather than a disruption.
Here's the other thing, what really made me want to pull the plug was when I asked him while I was home, whether he thought about having sex with her when I was around and he said yes, but I also think about having sex with you, and what I realized is that when I'm not around, his having sex with someone else and fantasizing about her is no big deal. The fact of his fantasizing about her when I'm right there felt terrible. So here are all these surprises coming up. And you may have already gotten the idea I'm a fairly curious person, and I was just curious about my own reactions.
Katie Fogarty (22:50): And what did you learn? What did this teach you?
Leah Fisher (22:53): Oh, my God. Do you have the afternoon free?
Katie Fogarty (22:57): Well, we're going to talk about what you learned from the whole journey. But just like, you know, let's just sort of look to close out this chapter on "Sex and the Single Spouse" before we move on. Like it sounds to me—it sounds a little bit like your big takeaway is that you were not as willing to kind of experiment or to open this, you know, marriage up in a way that you thought you might be. Well, and that—you tell me more specifically.
Leah Fisher (23:23): I realized that there are different stages of life, and that patterns that make perfect sense in one stage may not at another. And so that phase of my life was over, and I found out through this potential experiment. What I also discovered, and I know we're going to get to it later, is that there were certain stages of marriage that can be over for a couple, and if they know it, then they're going to reshape, reconfigure what their marriage is like, and if they don't recognize that, they're going to keep on being the same kind of married they were when they had kids, and may find themselves bored or distressed or angry, or—there's this huge spike in gray divorce. I wonder how much of gray divorce has to do with couples who are still trying to live the pattern of marriage that worked great for them when they were 30, but not now.
Katie Fogarty (24:30): Let's talk about this pattern of marriage. You know, when you look at—first of all, you work in this space, sort of professionally too. You've worked as a marital counselor. You worked on your own marriage over your decade-long marriage, and you had a very unique opportunity to re-evaluate your marriage during this year, when you were living and relating to your husband in an entirely new way. So what is a pattern that you let go of, and what is sort of a pattern that you think most couples go through that they sometimes get stuck in?
Leah Fisher (25:04): I think that some of my anger with my husband was my feeling held back by his preferences for how to live a life.
Katie Fogarty (25:18): Like workaholism, because you talk about that, you're lonely at different times. You're eating dinner by yourself because he's working late at night. I have a lot of friends in that pattern. My own father, who was a lawyer, a wonderful man, a loving dad, but you know somebody who worked a lot, he really loved work, and it gave it—was a big part of his identity in a way that made him unavailable to my mom or to us as children at certain points. So it sounds like you went through that as well, this sort of this loneliness where you weren't always—you didn't always have access to your husband who you loved and wanted to be with.
Leah Fisher (25:55): This loops back to my father dying, and for your listeners who are in the second half of life, there comes a time when you realize that you're closer to the goal posts than you've ever been before, and the desire is to live out all of who you are, to complete parts of yourself that may not have been explored or expressed, and that isn't a bucket list—that has to do with living as fully as you can, being who you were meant to be, and that was what was coming up for me. And I think that fundamentally, that's where the shift came, that there were parts of myself that hadn't yet been expressed, experienced and lived, and I wasn't gonna sit home for the rest of my life, because women are supposed to make dinner at the end of the day. And so that's where the shift started.
Katie Fogarty (27:00): And you were fortunate to be in a relationship where you were able to have these conversations with your husband. So this is gonna be a two-part question, but I'm gonna just start it off with part one. You have professional training, also because of your personalities—you know, we learned that your husband likes to negotiate and he appreciates being in an honest conversation, an open conversation. You already had some very wonderful practices in place in your marriage, where you have an annual planning retreat as a family, where there's actually a set time to talk about goals and what went well and what you want to see different. And during these annual retreats, you would use something that you called a "satisfaction scale," where each of you and your husband would rate satisfaction with really critical important aspects of life—family, love, home, friends, health, money, work, community—and you'd compare lists. I thought that was so wonderful and so smart, so it really gave you this bedrock of open annual conversation about where things were working and where things were not working. I can imagine, because you're two people, just like anyone in a partnership, is whether they're perfect—wasn't this—didn't always work perfectly, because I'm like, sometimes my satisfaction scale is like shouting at top 10 volume, "This is not working," and you may be a bit more restrained, but you did have a lot of good systems in place. For a listener who's thinking, "I can't even imagine having any of these conversations with my partner," what would be a coaching for getting started—kind of sort of more baby steps to having these open conversations so people can get an action on their personal dreams within their partnerships in this phase of life?
Leah Fisher (28:48): This isn't what you expected to hear, but the first preparation is to be a couple that are very competitive, that are willing to fight like crazy, that both want what they want when they want it, and realize that's not very effective. It's definitely not a nice thing to demonstrate in front of your children. And then after decades of trying to solve issues like that, you figure out there's got to be something better. So basically, this very, I mean, it sounds so healthy and sophisticated and sensible, but it sure grew out of two people with a lot of brat in them who were trying to figure out how to be more effective as partners.
Katie Fogarty (29:44): So the starting point was, you guys weren't perfect. And guess what? Leah, that's everyone's starting point. I feel, I feel like some of my listeners might be like, "All right, you know, I mean to be in a relationship with another human is to be in a relationship with another human and to be human is to be full of flaws and foibles and failings and also amazing good stuff too." We want to work on the good stuff. So the starting point for you was "We need to make things work differently because we don't like the way maybe we're communicating as we kind of spar in our younger years." But for somebody right now, today, at this moment of time in their midlife, when they're thinking to themselves like, you know, "I want to be having more honest conversations with my partner, with my spouse, with my wife," what is a baby step to get them in action?
Leah Fisher (30:33): First of all, I want to mention that on my website, I have some of those materials and some pretty clear instructions on how to use them effectively.
Katie Fogarty (30:45): And what's the name of the website, Leah, where can we send people?
Leah Fisher (30:49): It's called MyMarriageSabbatical.com, and I refer to them as planning retreats. If I were going to just use one example of what can make a difference, it is that, instead of competing, instead of having your wish and my wish doing battle, to say, "Here's this wish of mine, or here's this problem that I'm having with the relationship, what can we do about it?" And the "we" immediately shifts it from two people tugging on a rope in opposite directions to "Let's collaborate around this issue. If it's a problem for one of us, it's a problem for both of us." Or about this dream you have and I have, if I had marched in and told my husband, "I've always wanted to travel the world. I've got this year free. I'm going"—even if I had succeeded in getting my way, it would not have been the same year it was with my husband feeling like a hero husband, someone who made his wife's dream come true.
Katie Fogarty (32:01): That's a great starting point, because the starting point is "we" rather than "me," because it makes the person, it's a shared decision. It pulls them into the loop. It makes it a group project, and it sort of knits you more closely together than to be in competition. So I think that is a wonderful starting point, probably for almost any conversation that you're having with your partner, like, "How can we do this together?"
Leah Fisher (32:24): Yes, and another thing that turned out to be very useful is an agreement that we made, that important decisions aren't settled until each of us can say, "I can live with that"—not "I love it" because, I mean, the reason there was conflict in the first place, or competition was that it was going to make one partner happier than the other, but in knowing that something big was not going to be settled until I reached the point where I said, you know, "I can live with that" makes a relationship feel safe in a way that it just doesn't when it's a tug of war.
Katie Fogarty (33:04): So beautiful. "I can live with that." All right, that's something that I'm going to put into my toolkit as well. I think that's such a smart piece of advice. In a minute, we're going to switch gears. I want to hear a little bit more about travel. I want to hear a little bit more about what was exhilarating or challenging about traveling solo. And I also want to hear about how this book actually came to fruition, but I do want to ask one last question about the sabbatical before we move on to some of the juicy travel tips. After your sabbatical was over, what surprised you the most about how your marriage changed or stayed the same?
Leah Fisher (33:38): I think the surprise was looking back and realizing that we were unconsciously reconfiguring what a later life marriage could look like, that it could be more spacious, it could be more flexible, and that that wasn't the picture of a good marriage we had started out with, but that we had kind of redesigned what a good marriage could look like in the second half of life. And so that, in itself, was a surprise.
Katie Fogarty (34:13): I love that. I love the use of the word "spaciousness" too, because that's something—it makes me think of—I had the pleasure of interviewing Chip Conley, who is just sort of a midlife wisdom OG and he's written a very wonderful book called "Learning To Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age." And he talks about how midlife is an atrium. It is sort of a vast glass dome with a sense of spaciousness and possibility. And I love that you were able to create that in your marriage as you move into the middle third of your life. What a beautiful, beautiful idea.
Leah Fisher (34:48): That gives me another thought, which is that what we need from our partners can change over the life cycle. What I needed and wanted desperately when we had little bitty children, was more time and more home care involvement and more wanting to be with the family. And here I am, at the time in my 60s, and what I wanted was, "You do your thing and let me do my thing, and we won't hold it against each other." So recognizing that what partners need goes through a life cycle of its own.
Katie Fogarty (35:46): Leah, how long have you been married for?
Leah Fisher (35:46): Well, right now, we're married for 47 years, and I gotta say, I like my husband and I like my marriage better than I ever did up till now, including when we were courting.
Katie Fogarty (35:46): Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, yes, I hear this sort of theme repeated all the time, that there's so much good stuff that lies ahead, no matter what age you're at. And I think that for so long, pop culture will tell you that things end or expire, run out of juice and run out of steam and run out of vibrancy, and that is simply not true. So actually, this is the right segue into this question, and then we'll talk about the travel tips. I know from connecting with you earlier and sort of prepping for the show that it was not an easy path to get this book into the hands of people and on store shelves. The book is out this year, but this, too, has been a long time project, and I would love to hear a little bit about, you know, sort of a quick overview of, why was it so hard to get this story on store shelves?
Leah Fisher (36:32): Oh, the book's only been out for two weeks, so I don't think you literally mean on store shelves, but I think you mean getting it off of draft after draft after draft on my dining room table between covers. Am I right that that's your question?
Katie Fogarty (36:44): Yes.
Leah Fisher (36:44): Okay, there are multiple reasons, and one of them was that I wanted it to be perfect. And I want to say something sort of tangential—perfectionism, I'm realizing, is a combination of insecurity and self-doubt and entitlement. "No book of mine is going to be anything except perfect and oh dear, it's not perfect enough." So I don't think I realized that before I started to write a book.
The other part was that my book didn't have a happy enough ending. We got back and gradually drifted back into our old pattern where his evenings were full of meetings, and I was eating many meals a week on my own, and we looked back fondly on the sabbatical, but it wasn't enough of a change for me to finish a book in a way that felt satisfying. We grew, we took some time. I actually spent two years having weekly talks with a woman who was both therapist and Buddhist practitioner, and I gradually got to the point where I believed that a good enough marriage is a good marriage. I mean, our marriage was good enough, and I thought a good enough marriage needs to be fixed and improved or complained about or suffered. And I finally came to realize that it didn't have to be perfect, and that the fact that it wasn't didn't mean I had chosen badly or was doing a poor job. It meant that a good enough marriage—that I could think of our good enough marriage as a good marriage. And then I had a happy ending to my book.
Katie Fogarty (38:47): I love it, I love it, I love it. And so did publishers agree? Did they snap us up? How did that work?
Leah Fisher (38:53): Well, there's an interesting story. Yes, at that point, there was eagerness to publish it, and I'm getting a lovely, lovely positive response from readers, but I'm flashing back to when I first started writing this book. So we're talking 16 years, start to finish, and at the time, about 16 years ago, my agent's effort to sell this book to a publisher resulted in, "I'm sorry, memoirs simply don't sell. I'd love to take it on, but memoirs don't sell." And then the other thing, usually in the same sentence, "And people really aren't interested in books by or about older women." So in some ways, it's wonderful that I took my sweet time, because neither of those is true anymore.
Katie Fogarty (39:55): Absolutely not. And by the way, it never was. People have always been interested in stories about older women in real life, but they just weren't given the platform, and the gatekeepers didn't turn over the key, but we are starting to unlock it. We are telling the stories of women in midlife and beyond. Every single day, I am interviewing a wonderful director, Brooke Berman about her independent film, "Ramona at Midlife." We're seeing midlife actresses taking stages, winning awards. I talk to incredible women every week. I love that you stuck with it for 16 years, and that this story is out and about in the world. Leah, before I let you go though, I do want to ask—you've visited so many wonderful countries. Was there a top favorite? And then if you could share some quick tips about what it takes to travel solo, because I know most people dream of traveling and long for an adventure, but many, I think, are scared by the idea of doing it alone.
Leah Fisher (40:58): No, I don't have a favorite country, what I have are favorite families. The way that I traveled that gave me so much joy was I would live with families, which made me part of the community and culture right off the bat. I loved living with families that had young children, and after a while, I realized that what was so pleasurable about this was I was never lonely, and I got to be around young children and didn't have to be the mom, which was just wonderful.
Katie Fogarty (41:30): Which is the best part.
Leah Fisher (41:32): People wondered whether I'd be lonely, and whether I would feel safe. And here's the surprise, I felt so much safer than when I traveled as a young person. I wasn't lonely. Other travelers, if you're the least bit playful, you find out who feels like playing. And there are lots of people in the world who are happy to be playful with you. When I was in my 20s and I would travel, I couldn't cross the street in Europe without having my butt pinched. That never happened in all this time of travel. People would call me "Little Mama," and they took care of their little mamas, and so I had the sense of a whole community looking after the little mama, and I felt safer and happier than I ever had been as a traveler.
Katie Fogarty (42:36): Oh, so marvelous. Well, you've gotten me excited and inspired, and I've been to a number of the locations in your book. I mean, you write about Guatemala, Ecuador, Cuba, Bali. Many of them I've seen. Many of them are on my list. I loved reading this. I loved thinking through some of the questions that you and your husband navigated. I loved hearing about your experiences. It was truly a pleasure to read. Leah, thank you so much for coming on the show. Before I say goodbye, though, where can our listeners find you in the book and learn more about the coaching work that you have and the questions that they might use for their own family annual planning retreats?
Leah Fisher (43:14): Okay, the books are going to be in all the places you would expect to buy books, and hopefully soon in libraries, and my website, MyMarriageSabbatical.com, has photographs from many of those different places, including pictures of the children I loved the most, and the materials for having couples weekend getaway of your own, chances to correspond about questions you might have or things you might share with other people.
Katie Fogarty (43:47): Phenomenal. Those are all going into the show notes which—listeners, I have finally updated. So click-clack over to ACertainAgePod.com to find all of that. Thank you so much, Leah.
Leah Fisher (43:59): Katie, yes, before you make me go away, I have one more thing I wanted to talk about, if you feel like it. People have said I've called the book audacious, and have called me audacious. And I have something I want to point out, the how much scope there is for women to be audacious, as long as they do it graciously.
Katie Fogarty (44:25): Love it. Love it, love it. What will you be audacious about next, Leah?
Leah Fisher (44:35): Oh, what an interesting question. Putting my book out in the world, telling people it's a good book, and they should read it.
Katie Fogarty (44:43): And everyone should skip ahead to chapter six, "Sex and the Single Spouse," and keep your open mind, because that's what we want. That's how you best enjoy a book. And you have new perspectives and new ideas, is when you read something with an open mind, and I read this with an open mind and an open heart, and I so enjoyed it, and I'm so happy you came on the show. Thank you again for your time today, Leah.
Leah Fisher (45:04): Thank you. It's been a pleasure.
Katie Fogarty (45:08): This wraps up A Certain Age, and this wraps up another fantastic conversation. It was really wonderful to spend time with Leah today. I was so intrigued by her book, the notion of a marriage sabbatical. I really enjoyed hearing how they made it work, what some of the challenges were, what they walked away with together as a couple when the entire experience was over. I also really appreciate Leah's vulnerability, her candor, her open-hearted way that she shared her story with us.
If you like cracking open the pages of a book and hearing the stories of midlife, stories that spotlight midlife voices, I want to encourage you to come hang out over on our sister podcast, The Midlife Book Club. Once a month, I sit down with an incredible author to dive into the pages of their books. We feature fiction and non-fiction memoir. There is truly something for everybody. So come hang out. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts, at The Midlife Book Club. We are on Instagram sharing all things midlife books at @TheMidlifeBookClub, and you can find all of our back episodes at TheMidlifeBookClub.com. Thanks for sticking around to the end of the show, and thanks to Michael Mancini, who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then, age boldly, beauties.