The Perimenopause Husband
Perimenopause Anxiety: She Woke Up Scared and Nothing Was Wrong
We were in the van on the way to a job, and I could feel it in the cab with us.
She had woken up with it. From the moment she opened her eyes it was there, and it came to work with us.
Nothing had happened. No bad news, no fight, no bill. Just little things at home that needed doing, and her stuck in a van with me, a full day of work in front of her, nowhere near any of them.
So I told her not to worry about it.
She was not having a bar of it.
I have said some version of that a lot of times over the years, and I thought I was being a good bloke every single time. I was not. Not worry about it, what are you worried about, it will keep. They are all the same wrong answer to a woman who is frightened of nothing.
Why is my wife anxious when nothing is wrong?
Because it does not need a reason.
That took me far too long to accept. I am a fixer by trade. Something is wrong, you find the cause, you sort the cause. That is the whole shape of my thinking, and it is useless here.
There was no cause to find. She was not hiding one from me. If there had been a reason she would have told me, because telling me would have been a relief.
What was actually happening was her body doing something she had no say in. Perimenopause is not a mood and it is not a mindset. It is a real change going on inside her, and one of the things it can hand her is fear with nothing under it. The heart going for no reason. The morning that starts on the back foot before her feet hit the floor. The full list of what a husband actually notices has it sitting in there with everything else.
She said to me more than once that she just felt silly about it, and that is the part I missed completely. She knows there is nothing to be scared of. That is exactly why it rattles her.
What is the worst thing I can say when she is anxious?
What are you worried about. Or its cousin, the one I used in the van, don't worry about it.
I know why we ask it. We are trying to get to the thing so we can deal with the thing. It sounds like interest. It sounds like paying attention.
Here is what it does. It hands her a question she cannot answer, on the one morning she has the least in the tank to answer anything with. Now she has the fear, and on top of it she has the job of explaining the fear to her husband. She will try, because she does not want to leave you standing there. And trying costs her more than the fear did.
I kept asking for far too long. I was not being lazy about it. I genuinely thought an answer was the way through.
Is there really no reason at all?
There is a reason. It is just not the kind you can fix by tea time.
In the van that morning, it was the jobs. None of them mattered. But she had the energy for them today, and she knew that could be gone tomorrow, or by lunchtime. So they had to be done now, while she could, because if she did not do them nobody would. And she could not get to them, because she was sitting next to me on the way to work.
That is what out of control felt like for her. Not a big thing. A pile of small ones, and a clock she could not see.
It had kept her awake the night before, and it was still there at breakfast, and it would still be there at knock off. And she still came to work. She did not want to let the business down. She was not looking for a way out of the day. She just could not see a way out of the feeling.
Think about what else she is living with. She cannot tell you what her body is going to do this week. Her periods stopped making sense years ago, heavy one month, barely there the next, then six months of nothing, long enough to start thinking menopause must be close now, and then a heavy one out of nowhere. She is on guard all the time, because it can spring on her with no notice. Same with the nights. Same with the heat.
None of it runs to a timetable. She cannot plan around any of it, and she has no control over when it turns up.
Carry all of that around for long enough and the on guard feeling stops needing a trigger. It just becomes the setting she is on. My wife said it better than I ever have. She does not feel like herself any more, and she does not know why.
That is not a reason you can argue with. It is a weight she is carrying, and the fear is what it does on a bad morning.
What do I say instead?
One sentence. This is the one thing I would hand any bloke reading this.
It does not need a reason. It is real anyway.
That is it. Say it plainly, then stop talking.
It sounds like nothing. It is not nothing, because of what it takes off her. It says you believe her without needing proof. It tells her she does not have to explain herself to you this morning. And it pulls the whole thing out of the argument she is already having with herself about whether she is being ridiculous.
Do not follow it with a question. Do not follow it with a plan. She will tell you what she needs, or she will not, and both are fine.
And say it on the ordinary days too, not just the hard ones. A sentence you have only ever used in an emergency sounds like an emergency.
There is more to this, and a whole lot more to what you do with the rest of that day once you have said it. That part is in the book. This is the bit I would want you to have tonight if you only got one.
When does perimenopause anxiety need a doctor?
When either of you is frightened by it, or when it is not shifting.
I am not a doctor and I am not going to pretend to be one. What I will tell you is what we do in our house. Anything new, anything getting worse, anything that frightens her, that goes to a doctor or a specialist in this field, and you go with her. You do not drop her off. You sit in the room with a note in your phone of what happened and when, because she will be asked on the day and she will not remember, and you will.
If it comes with her heart going, or her head, that is its own thing and it is not something to sit on. We went through the frightening ones and ended up in a hospital over them, and I waited too long before I drew a line about it.
Nobody has ever regretted being told it was nothing.
Does it get better?
The anxiety comes and goes on its own schedule, same as everything else in this stage. I cannot promise you it stops, and I would not believe anyone who did.
What changed in our house is that she stopped having to manage me on top of it. That is a real thing you can give her this week.
It helps that the nights are better too, because a woman who has been awake since three has nothing left to meet a bad morning with. That side of it is its own post.
And it helps that I stopped treating a bad morning as evidence of something. It is weather. It came in, it will go out, and how I stand in it is the only part I get a say in.
She has not lost her mind and you have not lost her. She is in weather you cannot see.
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.