The Perimenopause Husband
Showing Affection in Perimenopause: When Holding Her Hand Feels Awkward for You
Walking through the shopping centre with my wife, her hand was right there.
For a long time, I left it alone.
Not because I did not love her. Because holding it felt exposed, and I did not like how that felt.
Why did holding her hand feel so awkward?
I am not short on affection. I hug my mates. I hug my kids. We do a kiss goodnight and a kiss in the morning. That is just how our house has always run, and none of it ever felt forced.
So I never thought of myself as a cold man.
But there is a particular kind of affection. The kind aimed at your wife, in public, with no reason attached to it. Her hand walking through the shopping centre. A kiss on the neck in the kitchen for no occasion at all.
That stuff felt different to me. Hugging my kids never felt exposed. Holding her hand in front of strangers did.
What did I tell myself?
That it just was not me.
I had it in me. I knew I did. I left it alone because it was uncomfortable, and I let uncomfortable make the call.
Here is the wrong read, plainly. I was treating two things as the same. Something being uncomfortable for me. And something being necessary for her. Those are not the same thing, and for years I ran them together without noticing.
Why does it matter more now?
Because of what she was carrying.
Perimenopause is real. It is a hormonal, biological change, and she did not choose any of it. On the way through to menopause there were days she woke up tired and stayed that way, tired as in never feeling rested, and that is just one thing on the list of what I watched her carry.
And I knew her hand in mine made her happy. That was never a secret.
So on one side there was a woman carrying something that large. On the other side there was my mild discomfort about something that small. Put like that, it is not close.
It goes both ways, too. This is a relationship thing, not just her thing. Respect runs in both directions, and part of respecting what she is living through is not holding back the small stuff because it makes me feel a bit self conscious.
What is one thing I can actually do?
This is one of the tools. There are plenty. It is the one I would hand any bloke who, like me, does not think of himself as the showy type.
Next time you are out together, hold her hand. Walking down the street. Through the shops. Across the car park. Do not make a thing of it. Do not ask. Do not say anything about it. Just take her hand and keep walking.
That is what I did. I felt awkward the first few times. Self conscious, almost, like it was not me. I held her hand walking down the street anyway.
None of it needed me to become a different man. It just needed me to stop letting my own comfort be the deciding factor.
It is not a fix for anything. It does not need a bad day to earn it, either. It works on a Sunshine day as much as any other. If you want the version of this for home, where touch asks for nothing back, that is its own conversation. And if she is already hurting and walking away from you, the move is different again.
Does the awkward feeling ever go away?
It did for me, and faster than I expected.
The reason was her. The effect it had on her was obvious, every single time. That became its own kind of reward, and after a while I stopped noticing I was doing it.
It is second nature now.
There are other small physical things that did more in our house than I ever would have guessed. They are a whole chapter in the book.
Start With the Weather
The Weather Report is the two-page guide to reading these days: telling a storm warning from an overcast day from a fog day, and knowing the one thing to do in each. Free, on your phone in thirty seconds.