Life after 40 can open the door to unexpected romantic possibilities. Experience has shaped each person’s needs, relationships have left valuable lessons, and the desire for companionship may feel stronger and clearer than ever.
In Encore: The best is yet to come, Susannah Schofield OBE and Johnny Nelson MBE bring honesty, wit and personal insight to the emotional realities of dating, intimacy and beginning again.
When Love Returns to the Conversation
Heartbreak can change how someone sees the future. Divorce, separation or the end of a significant relationship may leave a person questioning their confidence and wondering whether they’re ready to welcome love back into their life.
These emotions often surface during quiet moments. Someone may appear settled and successful while privately asking whether romance still has a place in the years ahead. Encore meets readers within that uncertainty and treats their questions with care.
The book understands that dating after 40 comes with history. People bring established routines, family responsibilities, professional commitments and memories from earlier relationships. They may also possess stronger boundaries and a deeper understanding of what makes them feel fulfilled.
Susannah and Johnny encourage readers to see this experience as something valuable. Their reflections show how self-knowledge can guide healthier decisions and more meaningful conversations. A person who understands their needs can enter a new relationship with greater awareness and emotional clarity.
Age also becomes less useful as a measure of where someone should be in life. One forty-something may be raising a toddler, while another is welcoming grandchildren. Some people are happily married. Others are rediscovering independence or downloading a dating app for the first time.
Every path carries its own questions. Encore gives those different experiences a place within the conversation and reassures readers that personal progress can follow many timelines.
Fourteen Questions That Invite Real Reflection
The book moves through fourteen chapters, each centred on a candid and necessary question. Susannah and Johnny answer separately, allowing their personalities and individual histories to shape every response.
This two-voice format gives Encore an engaging rhythm. Readers hear how a woman and a man can interpret dating, confidence, desire, heartbreak and sex from their respective positions. Agreement creates moments of connection, while different opinions encourage further thought.
Their openness makes the discussion feel like an honest late-night conversation between trusted friends. Sensitive subjects are treated with maturity, and humour appears at just the right moments. That combination can help readers approach topics they’ve previously found difficult to express.
There’s value in hearing personal experiences discussed without embarrassment. Questions about attraction, changing bodies and emotional readiness are common, even when people rarely speak about them publicly. The book brings these concerns into the open and helps readers feel understood.
Psychological case studies add another dimension to the fourteen conversations. They connect private emotions with recognisable patterns and offer context for experiences such as fear, hesitation and reduced confidence. A reader may discover that their reaction to heartbreak is widely shared and worthy of compassion.
Encore was developed from Noir, the members’ club focused on dating and intimacy for people over 40. The connection gives the book a close relationship with the audience it serves. These are conversations drawn from the realities of people who are actively navigating later-life relationships.
Published by Perkins Press, the book is available in Kindle and paperback editions on Amazon. It can serve as a companion for people returning to dating, rebuilding their self-belief or simply considering the possibility of love again.
About the Authors
Susannah is an entrepreneur, published author, BBC Radio contributor and founder of Noir. Her work explores dating and intimacy in the second half of life, informed by personal experience of endings, fresh beginnings, doubt and renewed desire. She brings an encouraging and perceptive voice to the book.
Johnny is the longest-reigning WBO cruiserweight world champion of all time and a familiar presence on Sky Sports Boxing. Alongside his celebrated sporting career, he has spoken movingly about mental health and the emotions beneath a public identity. His contribution reveals vulnerability, humour and thoughtful self-awareness.
Susannah and Johnny have each experienced the challenge of getting back into the ring in their own way. Their combined perspectives help make Encore personal, balanced and easy to connect with.
A Future Still Full of Possibility
Encore: The best is yet to come offers hope to readers who feel ready to explore what their next romantic chapter might hold. It recognises their history, respects their questions and celebrates the courage required to begin again.
With two honest voices and a compassionate outlook, Susannah and Johnny show that love after 40 can carry excitement, depth and discovery. For anyone standing at the edge of a fresh start, the encore may become the most rewarding part of the story.
We had the privilege of interviewing the author. Here are excerpts from the interview:
Thank you so much for joining us today! Please introduce yourself and tell us what you do.
I’m Susannah Schofield OBE, an author, businesswoman, speaker and founder of Noir. I’ve had quite a varied career. I spent 15 years at Royal Mail, ultimately as Sales & Commercial Director, and today I’m Director General of the Direct Selling Association UK & Ireland. I’ve always been fascinated by people, entrepreneurship and what makes us tick. But the latest chapter of my life is perhaps the most personal. I’m the founder of Noir, a new wellbeing and community platform created for people navigating the realities of life after 40, and I’m also the co-author of Encore, a book about relationships, identity, dating and starting again in midlife. At 51, I’m certainly not interested in slowing down. If anything, I think I’m just getting started.
Please tell us about your story and journey.
Like so many people, the life I have today isn’t necessarily the life I imagined I would have. I’ve built businesses, had a successful corporate career, raised two daughters, received an OBE, and experienced some incredible highs professionally. But I’ve also been through separation, major life changes, and those moments where you suddenly have to stop and ask yourself: Who am I now? That question became increasingly important to me. When relationships change, children become more independent, our bodies change, careers evolve, and we reach a different stage of life, it can feel as though society expects us to quietly settle down. I don’t believe that for a second. I became fascinated by what happens next. What happens to love? Sex? Confidence? Ambition? Identity? Dating? Friendship? And how do you rediscover yourself when you’ve spent decades being somebody’s partner, somebody’s parent, or fulfilling a professional role? Those conversations eventually became Encore and, on a much bigger scale, Noir.
What inspired you to write Encore?
I wanted to write the book I couldn’t find. There are plenty of books telling us how to survive divorce, how to date, or how to navigate menopause, but real life doesn’t conveniently happen in separate categories. You might be dealing with children leaving home while your marriage is changing. Your career might be thriving while your confidence has disappeared. You might feel fantastic professionally but terrified about taking your clothes off in front of somebody new. And you can be incredibly successful and still have absolutely no idea how to send a dating message! Encore is about those contradictions. It’s an honest conversation about what it means to start again, particularly after 40, and the baggage, humour, mistakes, sex, relationships, confidence and opportunity that come with it. The title says everything for me. The first act isn’t the whole performance. There can absolutely be an encore.
How did the idea for Noir grow from that?
Writing and talking about these subjects made something very obvious to me: people don’t just need information. They need somewhere to belong. That’s why I created Noir. The principle behind it is very simple: find yourself before you find others. Noir isn’t simply a dating platform. Dating comes later. We are beginning with wellbeing, education, expert support, and community. Someone might come to Noir because their marriage has ended. Someone else might be navigating menopause, loneliness, body confidence, intimacy or children leaving home. Another person might simply wake up one morning and think, I’ve spent years looking after everybody else. What do I want now? You don’t need to be ready for another relationship. You just need to be ready to invest in yourself.
Why do you believe something like Noir is needed now?
Because there is an enormous, vibrant group of people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond who I don’t think are being spoken to properly. We’re not finished. We’re not invisible. And we’re certainly not all sitting at home waiting to grow old gracefully! We’re starting businesses, travelling, dating, having sex, falling in love, getting divorced, changing careers and completely reinventing ourselves. But we’re also navigating some difficult things, and often doing it quite privately. Noir creates a grown-up, trusted environment where we can talk honestly about the subjects that matter, including relationships, confidence, sex, intimacy, health, wellbeing and starting again. I want people to come into Noir and have that wonderful feeling of: “Oh thank goodness. It’s not just me.”
What do you think people get wrong about starting again later in life?
That starting again means you’ve failed. I completely reject that. A relationship ending doesn’t necessarily mean the relationship was a failure. A career change doesn’t mean the previous career was wasted. Realising at 50 that you want something different doesn’t invalidate the first 50 years. You’ve learnt. You’ve changed. Hopefully you’ve become a little braver and much clearer about what you will and won’t accept. We talk about baggage as though it’s automatically negative. At this age, of course we’ve got baggage. We’ve lived! The important question is whether you’re carrying your baggage thoughtfully or asking somebody new to carry it for you.
What have you learnt about relationships and dating after 40?
Chemistry still matters enormously. I don’t think we’re ever too old for butterflies. But hopefully we become better at understanding that chemistry and compatibility aren’t necessarily the same thing. When we’re younger, we can build a life together from scratch. Later, two established lives are trying to come together. There may be children, ex-partners, careers, homes, financial independence, and decades of experience involved. That’s complicated. But I also think dating later in life can be incredibly exciting because you have an opportunity to choose differently. The challenge is knowing yourself well enough to recognise what you actually want rather than simply repeating what you’ve always known.
Noir talks quite openly about sex and intimacy. Why was that important to you?
Because we’re grown-ups and sex doesn’t suddenly disappear when you turn 40. Yet there is still an extraordinary embarrassment around talking about desire, intimacy, changing bodies, menopause, erectile difficulties, confidence, and what we actually want sexually. I want Noir to approach those conversations intelligently and without sensationalising them. Intimacy is part of wellbeing. Feeling desirable, connected and comfortable in your own body matters. And sometimes simply discovering that other people are experiencing exactly the same thing can be enormously reassuring.
What are the strategies that helped you become successful in your journey?
Resilience, curiosity, and being prepared to change direction. I’ve never believed that success comes from having one perfect plan and following it relentlessly. Some of the most important things I’ve done have happened because the original plan didn’t work. I’ve also learnt not to be frightened of starting again. I ask questions. I surround myself with people who know things I don’t. I listen to advice, but ultimately I’m prepared to make a decision and take responsibility for it. And perhaps most importantly, I keep moving. You can spend years waiting until you’re completely ready. Sometimes you have to start walking and trust yourself to work out the route along the way.
What does success mean to you now compared with when you were younger?
It’s changed enormously. When I was younger, success was much easier to measure: job titles, targets, money, recognition and the next promotion. Those things still matter, but they’re not enough anymore. At this stage of my life, success is freedom. It’s meaningful work, extraordinary experiences, my daughters, good people around me, laughter, intimacy, health, and being excited about what’s coming next. Success now is being able to look at my life and recognise myself in it.
What do you hope readers take away from Encore?
Permission. Permission to change your mind. Permission to want more. Permission to leave something that no longer works, to fall in love again, to have great sex, to reinvent yourself, to be ambitious, to be vulnerable, to make mistakes and occasionally have absolutely no idea what you’re doing. You don’t have to have your entire future mapped out. You just have to believe there is still a future worth getting excited about. That’s what Encore means to me.
What is your ultimate ambition for Noir?
I want Noir to become the trusted community for navigating later life. Not somewhere you visit only when something has gone wrong, but somewhere that helps you make what’s next even better. I want incredible experts sharing genuinely useful knowledge. I want conversations people aren’t having elsewhere. I want friendships and communities to form. And eventually, for those who want it, I want genuine romantic connections too. But I never want Noir to lose the human element. Technology can introduce us. Content can educate us. Experts can guide us. But ultimately people need people. Real Connections. Real Confidence. Real Chemistry. That’s what we’re building.
What message would you give to our readers?
Please don’t write yourself off because you’ve reached a certain age or because life hasn’t gone according to plan. Some chapters end. Sometimes painfully. But an ending creates space. You are allowed to decide that you want something different. You are allowed to rediscover who you are. And you are absolutely allowed to believe that some of the most exciting experiences, relationships, and achievements of your life haven’t happened yet. Don’t fear the next chapter. Make it your Encore.
Thank you so much, Susannah, for giving us your precious time! We wish you all the best for your journey ahead!
