After heartbreak, healing, and a brutal return to self, author Sacha Hughes shares what dating in midlife really teaches you about love — and why the relationship that changed everything wasn’t the one she expected. https://www.sachahughes.com/ https://mybook.to/LoveGriefPinot

I had just turned forty. Post-divorce, I found myself licking my wounds and knee-deep in soul-searching mode. Devouring every spiritual and self-help book I could get my hands on, I tried to make sense of my part in the breakdown of my marriage. Determined not to repeat the same patterns. Determined to finally know my worth — and what self-love actually means.

A year later… ding dong! Like an Amazon Prime delivery, the man of my dreams lands on my doorstep – smart, kind, emotionally aware, clearly someone who’d done a fair bit of inner work. Surely, this is it!

Within two months of our blind date (introduced by friends), I was completely smitten. Falling fast. Putting him on an extremely high pedestal. Completely abandoning myself in the process.

Three months later, he dumped me over the phone.

My whole body went into shock. After everything I’d done to heal from my divorce—to try to love myself, to understand my worth—I still wasn’t enough?

It took me two years to recover from that. It honestly felt like I was 24-years-old losing my mum all over again; the pain just as raw, for reasons I couldn’t make sense of at the time.

But this time, with two beautiful children to look after, I didn’t turn to pinot grigio to numb it. I felt every stabbing shard of it. I hit rock bottom all over again, but this time, fully present. Ouch.

One of the hardest parts wasn’t the heartbreak itself, it was losing faith in myself… and in the Universe. I’d tried my best, during and after the divorce. I’d turned to spirituality. I’d done the work. And still, I ended up heartbroken. What the…?

After a couple of years processing the pain, I slowly began leaning into the lessons instead of the hurt. What was this breakup trying to show me? It didn’t take long to realise that it was exactly the relationship I needed. It was a mirror to reveal to me what still needed healing, to crack me wide open, to force me to face the messy, hidden parts of myself that still didn’t believe I was good enough… or worthy of real love.

It wasn’t designed to break me, it was designed to awaken me. My breakdown… to lead to my breakthrough, to make me realise that I still didn’t love myself and that I hadn’t yet let go of the pain of my mum dying.

For the past three years, in my mid-forties, I’ve been pouring all the energy I used to spend trying to find someone to love me into loving myself. Through daily meditation, and some brutally honest (and often highly humorous) self-reflection, I’ve created my Soho Summer Series, inspired by personal experiences. My debut novel, Love, Grief & More Sex Than Pinot, a Bridget Jones–meets–Fleabag vibe, is now out on Amazon having launched at the Bournemouth Writing Festival in April 2026.

Writing has been my greatest therapy. It’s made me realise that for most of my life, I was looking externally, for someone or something to fix me, to make me feel lovable. But I’ve learned that until I love myself unconditionally, the relationships I enter will always mirror my old patterns and beliefs.

Now, at 46, I’m no longer chasing love or validation from anyone else. No more wound-mates, just soulmate energy, please. And for that, I know self-love must come first… always…and with a capital ‘S’. And now that I’ve finally taken 100% responsibility for my life and I’m saving myself through my writing, everything feels like it’s aligning beautifully. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I think I’ve already found the one, the love I’ve been searching for all along… me.

Hmm… that is, until my King energy arrives, of course — emotionally evolved, self-aware, and fully in love with himself too. And as we meet from a place of wholeness, there’ll be no saving, no fixing… just love. Universe, I believe in you!

Advice for those who find themselves single in mid to later life

People who don’t love themselves often look for a partner to rescue them, so without even realising it, they show up to take, not to fully give or share because they are consumed with their pain, fear, loss, their story projected onto everything they do… and everything they don’t do. When someone doesn’t love themselves, they are not accountable in relationships. They mistake boundaries for rejection… and when asked to grow, they’ll hear: I’m not good enough.

Low self-worth, self-hate, lack of self-love — they have sharp hands. They cling, demand, blame, and complain. No matter how much you give, it can never be enough for someone who feels empty inside. Their self-abandonment becomes your burden… and eventually your misery. It breaks what comes close, proving to itself that “nothing good ever stays.”

How do I know this? Because I used to be that person. The one who didn’t take 100% responsible for her own life, the one who wanted so much to be saved and fixed by someone else, i.e., the knight in shining armour. I became intensely enmeshed in relationships—insecure, often jealous—and I would repeatedly attach to avoidant partners, or those who were inherently unfaithful.

Looking back, it feels like some kind of cosmic joke; each dynamic pushing me closer to a truth I wasn’t yet ready to face. That until I gave myself the self-love and self-worth I was searching for, no one else ever could. It was never any partner’s job to fix me — it was always my work to heal myself.

So, if you’re in your late 40s, 50s, or beyond and wondering why you haven’t had much success on the dating scene, it might be time to look in the mirror. To gently bring into the light all those uncomfortable, messy parts of yourself that you’ve been trying to avoid or hide… and take the time to heal them.

Because if you’re looking for your soulmate, you have to enter that relationship from a place of wholeness. Anything less, and the same cycles will keep repeating — until one day, they don’t.