At some point, the life you built starts to feel like it belongs to someone else.
Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just a persistent, low-grade sense that you're moving through days that were designed for a version of you that no longer quite exists. The job that made sense at 32. The routine you fell into after the kids arrived. The version of ambition you inherited from other people's expectations.
This isn't a crisis. It's information. And the question isn't what's wrong with you — it's what has accumulated in your life that no longer needs to be there.
"The restlessness of midlife is not a malfunction. It is the system asking to be edited."
What midlife friction actually is
Friction, in physics, is the resistance that occurs when two surfaces move against each other. In life, friction is the resistance generated when who you are now moves against structures built for who you used to be — or who others expected you to become.
Midlife tends to concentrate this friction because enough time has passed for the misalignments to become undeniable. You're no longer too busy to notice. You're too tired not to.
The friction shows up in predictable ways. You might recognise some of these:
The signals worth paying attention to
Sunday dread that arrives earlier every week. A sense of going through motions rather than making choices. Resentment that appears and then gets suppressed. Physical exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix. The quiet thought — arriving more frequently — of there has to be something else. Boredom masquerading as contentment. Competence in a life that no longer fits.
These are not signs of ingratitude. They are not midlife crisis clichés. They are signals from a system that has accumulated too much friction and is asking, with increasing urgency, to be edited.
Why it happens in midlife specifically
The structures most of us live inside — career trajectories, relationship roles, geographic locations, social identities — were largely chosen or inherited in our 20s and early 30s. At that point, we were making decisions with incomplete information about ourselves, enormous pressure from others, and very little permission to deviate from the expected path.
By midlife, two things have happened. First, you know yourself substantially better. Second, the accumulated cost of misalignment has become harder to ignore. The body keeps score. So does the nervous system. So, eventually, does your sense of self.
Perimenopause, when it arrives, amplifies all of this. The hormonal shifts don't just affect sleep and mood — they lower the threshold for tolerating things that were never really tolerable. Many women describe this period as a kind of involuntary truth-telling. The things they had been managing suddenly become impossible to manage. The things they had been deferring suddenly feel urgent.
This is not a problem. It is the body doing what bodies do — prioritising what actually matters when resources become constrained.
The instinct is to push through. It rarely works.
Most of the advice available to women at this point is some version of trying harder: more resilience, better routines, improved mindset. The implicit message is that the problem is internal — that with sufficient personal development, you can optimise your way into comfort within a structure that is fundamentally the wrong shape for you.
Low Friction Living operates from a different premise. The problem is not your attitude toward the friction. The problem is the friction itself.
Subtraction is almost always more effective than optimisation. You cannot manage your way out of a structural misalignment. You have to change the structure.
In 2021 everything compounded at once — burnout, ADHD diagnosis, perimenopause hitting hard, postpartum depression. I had spent years trying to perform my way through a life that was slowly becoming unbearable.
The turning point wasn't a mindset shift. It was accepting that the structure itself needed to change. In February 2023 I sold everything, packed up three kids, and flew from Cape Town to the Philippines. We've been moving ever since — ten countries, a completely rebuilt life, and a much clearer understanding of what freedom actually requires.
It wasn't brave. It was the only thing that made sense when the friction became impossible to ignore.
Start by noticing where the friction is.
The Low Friction Audit is a free, gentle guide to help you identify where life is asking more of you than it should. No action plan. Just honest noticing.
What editing actually looks like
Structural change doesn't have to mean selling everything and moving to Southeast Asia — though for some people, something that significant is exactly what's required. For most, it starts smaller.
It starts with identifying the specific sources of friction — the commitments that drain rather than sustain, the roles that have outgrown their usefulness, the daily structures that cost more than they return — and making deliberate choices to reduce them.
This is harder than it sounds, for two reasons. First, friction is often invisible when you're inside it. You normalise the cost. You stop noticing what's heavy because heavy has become baseline. Second, many of the things generating friction are also things other people depend on you to maintain — which means changing them involves disappointing someone, renegotiating something, or simply accepting that you can no longer afford a particular cost.
Neither of these is comfortable. Both of them are necessary.
Three questions worth sitting with
If I could change one structural thing in my life — not my attitude toward it, but the actual structure — what would it be? Notice what comes up immediately. That's usually the thing that matters most.
What am I maintaining out of habit, obligation, or fear of disappointment rather than genuine choice? These are not the same thing. Genuine choice involves agency. The others involve compliance.
What would I need to stop doing — or stop being — to have more capacity for what actually matters? Not add. Stop. Subtract.
These questions don't have quick answers. They're worth returning to, sitting with, letting develop over time. They are, in some sense, the central questions of midlife — and the most generative ones available to you.
"Freedom is not something you find on the other side of a dramatic decision. It's something you create, incrementally, by removing what no longer belongs."
