Twenty-two years ago, I spent six months backpacking around the world with the man who was then my fiancé.
We camped, stayed in hostels, met people everywhere, drank too much, stayed out late, changed plans on the fly, and kept saying yes to every opportunity and invitation that came our way.
It was one of the great adventures of my life, and I still tell stories about the people we met and the incredible experiences that unfolded from those encounters.
This past weekend, four weeks into my six-week, solo trip to France, I agreed to make an overnight trip to Paris. The man who is now my ex-husband was in town to visit friends on a two-night layover and I was invited to meet with them for dinner. In a strange coincidence of timing, my ex was going to make a brief guest appearance in this very different journey.
And during that overnight, I felt the old pressures to be socially outgoing and adventurous that I used to feel in his company.
While he and his friends were planning a weekend of late nights, parties, and visiting people around the city, I felt absolutely no desire to join them. And for a few hours, I found myself wondering: Had the adventurous part of me faded while I wasn’t paying attention, or had I simply become less willing to push myself in the ways I once did?
The Woman I Remembered Being
When I think back on that 2004 trip, I remember the big adventures easily.
I remember Australia and Thailand, New Zealand and Europe. I remember crowded hostels, shared meals, live-aboard diving trips, epic hikes, long travel days, strangers becoming temporary friends, and the spontaneity of a life that rarely seemed to stop.
My ex thrived in that kind of life. He loved people, activity, conversation, parties, being out, meeting someone new, and finding the next thing to do, while my energies naturally moved in a different direction.
At the time, though, I didn’t understand that difference very well. I mostly understood that he wanted to keep going longer than I wanted to, and that I kept trying to keep up anyway.
What Memory Left Out
The funny thing is that some of my favorite memories from that journey, the ones I don’t tell people about, were the times I slipped away from it.
On a live-aboard diving cruise in the Similan Islands, I remember retreating to my tiny enclosed bunk below deck and feeling a relief so profound when everything around me finally became quiet that I cried.
I also remember making excuses to rest while everyone else kept going. Sometimes I’d say I needed a nap because it felt easier than saying what I really needed, which was simply to be alone long enough to feel like myself again.
In Berlin, my ex and I spent an entire day in the hostel doing nothing, and I remember loving that day. I remember the quiet room with the sun streaming in, the cool, crisp white bed coverings that seemed absurdly luxurious to a traveling backpacker, and the feeling of finally slowing down enough to recharge.
Looking back now, I realize I had edited those moments out of the story I told myself about who I was then. I remembered the backpacking, the spontaneity, the people, the parties, and the thrill of constantly moving, but I had forgotten how often I needed to retreat from all of it.
And with hindsight, I can also see that our marriage often followed the same pattern. My ex wanted to be surrounded by people, always on the go, and there was nothing wrong with that; it was simply the way he moved through the world.
But being in a relationship with someone who recharged around other people was exhausting for someone like me, who could recharge only when I was alone. Every time I pushed past my own limits to keep up with someone else’s idea of living large, because I was afraid of being left out or of being boring or unlikeable, it took something out of me.
When an Old Dynamic Returns
I wasn’t expecting anything emotionally complicated when I went to Paris to see my ex. We’ve been divorced for more than ten years and are good friends now. I went into the weekend simply looking forward to dinner and an evening with someone I knew after traveling alone in France for a month.
But seeing my ex in Paris stirred up an old measuring stick I thought I’d long since thrown away. Being around the person I’d once tried so hard to keep up with made me briefly see myself through the eyes of the woman I thought I’d been back then.
I noticed how much quieter my life has become and how carefully I manage my energy now. I noticed that I wanted time alone before dinner, that I didn’t want to fill every hour, and that after weeks of traveling mostly at my own pace, the social energy of Paris felt like more than I wanted to handle.
For a brief moment, I judged that. I wondered whether I’d become boring, whether I’d withdrawn too far, and whether I’d somehow lost the version of myself who once traveled the world with a backpack and seemed to have an endless appetite for whatever came next.
Maybe that’s one of the stranger things about growth. We can live differently for years and begin to believe an old insecurity is gone, only to find that one familiar person or situation can make the old script audible again.
But hearing it again doesn’t mean we’ve gone backward. Sometimes it simply gives us a chance to notice how differently we answer it now.
What I Had Forgotten
The next morning, I thought more honestly about that earlier trip and this one. I remembered that even during that supposedly more adventurous phase of my life, I was often exhausted.
I remembered how much energy I spent overriding my own limits and how often I used alcohol to help me stay social, stay out, and keep going after I had already had enough. I remembered that I was adventurous, yes, but I was also frequently depleted.
And suddenly the comparison I had been making between my younger self and who I am now no longer seemed very fair.
I hadn’t become less adventurous. I’d simply stopped defining adventure by how much I could tolerate.
That was a lesson I had already begun exploring in my earlier writing about solo travel and self-trust, but Paris reminded me how easily an old dynamic can make us forget what we’ve already learned.
Adventure Looks Different Now
This trip through France has hardly been a retreat from life. I’ve driven unfamiliar roads alone, wandered medieval cities, climbed towers, explored ruins, navigated train stations, stayed overnight on Mont St-Michel, followed family history into tiny Norman villages, and walked into churches where my ancestors may once have stood.
I’ve done things that scared me, gotten lost more than once, figured things out, and gone places where I knew no one. I’ve kept moving forward without needing someone else beside me to make the experience feel safe or legitimate.
But I’ve also taken entire days off, cooked early dinners, spent evenings reading, left crowded streets for quieter ones, and changed plans when my body or mind told me I’d had enough.
At Mont Saint-Michel, when the Grand Rue became crowded, I left it and found quiet at the Chapelle St-Aubert on the back side of the island. At other times, I’ve spent hours journaling instead of sightseeing because that was what I needed more than another church, château, or museum.
The Life I Actually Want
When I arrived in Paris before dinner with my ex and his friends, I checked into my hotel and rested first. That small choice would once have felt antisocial, but this time it felt like simple wisdom.
I knew I would enjoy the evening more if I entered it rested instead of depleted. I also knew that taking care of myself beforehand didn’t mean I wanted the evening any less.
This is where age has changed my definition of adventure.
Adventure still means curiosity, movement, risk, discovery, and saying yes to things that matter to me. But it no longer means proving how late I can stay out, how much socializing I can tolerate, or how thoroughly I can ignore my own need for quiet.
That distinction feels especially important now because I’ve written before about boundaries, self-trust, and learning to stop organizing my life around other people’s expectations. This experience in Paris didn’t teach me those lessons for the first time; it reminded me how easy it is to forget them when an old version of ourselves gets stirred up again.
When Old Questions Return
I don’t think we outgrow our old patterns in a clean, permanent way. Sometimes the right person, place, or circumstance brings them back, and suddenly we find ourselves entertaining questions we thought we’d already answered.
Paris with my ex did that for me. For a few hours, I wondered whether needing less stimulation meant I’d somehow lost my thirst for travel, adventure, or a bigger life.
But when I looked at the month I had just lived, the answer was obvious.
I hadn’t lost my adventurous self. I had stopped confusing adventure with exhaustion.
That may be one of the quieter gifts of getting older. We don’t necessarily stop hearing the old questions, but we become more capable of recognizing when they no longer fit the life we’ve built.
And maybe that’s what adventure after 50 looks like for me now.
Not less courage. Not less curiosity. Not less appetite for the world.
Just a clearer sense of which experiences are truly mine to say yes to.
