Tools

How to Deal With a Wife in Perimenopause: Lose One Word

By Phil, The Perimenopause Husband

How to deal with a perimenopausal wife.

I know that search. I didn't type those exact words, but I had them in my head for a couple of years, and I want to tell you what was wrong with them before I tell you anything else.

The word "deal".

You deal with a leaking tap. You deal with a customer who won't pay. You deal with things that are a problem to be managed until they go away. I was treating my wife like one of those, and she knew it long before I did.

What did dealing with it look like in our house?

Here's my version, plainly.

She'd be short with me. I'd feel cranky. I'd feel disrespected. I'd feel like she was deliberately punishing me for something I couldn't name.

So I did what a lot of blokes do in that moment. I told myself, if she wants to be like that, fine.

Fine meant I went quiet. Fine meant I did my own thing, and let her do hers, and waited for her to come round. Fine meant I'd dealt with it.

I hadn't dealt with anything. I'd left her alone in it.

Is it really perimenopause, or is she just difficult?

I can't tell you about your wife. I can tell you what I found out about mine.

Her body was changing the rules, and she had no say in it. A hormonal, biological change that doesn't pick a good time and doesn't come with a note. The sharp line wasn't a decision she'd made about me. It was what the day had in it, and I was closest.

That's not a free pass. Bad behaviour from either side isn't okay, and understanding something isn't the same as accepting it. Respect runs both ways, and if there's genuinely bad behaviour in your house, perimenopause doesn't excuse it. But a sharp line on a hard day is not bad behaviour. It's weather.

If she's being worn down by it, that's a doctor or a specialist in this field. Go with her, if she wants you there. That's not dealing with her. That's standing beside her.

What should I do instead of dealing with it?

Here's one of the tools. There are plenty.

Don't take the bait.

This was the hard one for me. She'd say something with an edge on it, and every part of me wanted to answer the edge. Match it. Point out the tone. Ask what that was for.

I don't any more. Not because I'm a saint. Because I worked out that answering the edge turned one annoyed person into two, and then there was nobody left in the house who could hold the day together.

That last part is the whole reason. Two adults, and in most houses kids as well. Somebody has to be able to think straight at any given moment. If she can't, that day, then it has to be me. Two of us heated is not a fight I win. It's a house with nobody steering.

So the edge comes, and I let it go past. I answer the question underneath it, if there is one, in my ordinary voice. I don't go quiet to make a point. I don't go loud to make a point. I just don't pick it up.

It feels like losing, the first few times. It isn't. It's the only move that leaves someone standing.

What do I say to her?

Less than you think. There's a short list of things that never work, and most of us have said all of them.

What I say now, on a Storm Warning day, one of the five weather patterns we use in our house, the days she's irritable and snapping at things that never used to set her off, is in the book. The chapter is called When She's Annoyed at Everything, and it has the other four moves that go with this one.

Does it get easier?

The sharp days still come. What changed is what they turn into.

One annoyed person in the house is a Tuesday. Two is a fight. I stopped making it two, and that was most of the work.

It helps if the two of you could talk before any of this started. If you had good communication going in, you've got it to come back to. The sharp day is the weather, not the marriage, and you'll both know the difference once you've named it.

You're not dealing with her. You're learning to read her. Different job. Same kitchen.

The whole story, and every tool I found along the way, is in Stepping Into the Storm With Her.