The Perimenopause Husband
Perimenopause Emotional Fatigue: The Funk and the Thank You
We were moving through the day. Nothing dramatic. The ordinary rhythm of things.
And she stopped, and looked at me.
She said, I want to say to you, thank you for getting me out of my funk earlier today.
What did I do with that?
I played it cool. Made a joke.
Her funk. The only funk I knew was Funkytown, by Pseudo Echo. Good song. Not what she meant.
Then I saw her face. She meant every word of it. Soft. Like something had let go.
What is emotional fatigue in perimenopause?
Later on, I looked the word up. A low mood. A place you get stuck in and can't find your own way out of.
That was where she'd been, earlier that same day. And I hadn't known how far down it went until she thanked me for the way out.
It isn't the tears. Those are their own thing. It's flatter than that. Worn through. Going through the motions. In our house that's Overcast, one of the five weather patterns we use, the flat, tired days. Not angry. Just dimmed.
It sits right beside the tired that sleep doesn't fix, the kind that runs straight into overwhelmed. And she can go through all five patterns in one day, or one can hang over the house for days.
I'm not a doctor, and I'll keep the hormone side of this simple. Two of the big ones are oestrogen and progesterone. They have a hand in the parts of her brain that look after mood and sleep. Progesterone is the calming one that helps her settle. In perimenopause they rise and fall with no warning and no pattern, and over time they drop. There are others, and you can Google all of them. That's as far as I'll take it.
What didn't I see?
I'll own it. I didn't know any of it was landing.
On a flat day, nothing much comes back. You put a cup of tea down beside her. You take a job off her. The day stays flat, and nothing tells you whether any of it made a difference.
I didn't know how much of it was getting through. She did. She was the one in it.
If the low days stack up, or she can't find her way out of them, that's for a doctor or a specialist in this field, and you go with her. A funk that lifts is one thing. One that doesn't is another.
What do I do when she thanks me?
Here's one of the tools. There are plenty.
Take the thank you. Then remember what earned it.
Don't joke it off the way I did. Don't wave it away with "it was nothing". She has come up out of somewhere hard, and the first thing she did was tell you. That cost her something.
Look at her. Say you're glad. Let it sit there for a second.
Then think back over the day and work out what it was. Because she has just handed you the one thing you can't see from your side on a flat day: proof of what helps. That's your map for the next one.
Does the funk come back?
It does. I won't pretend otherwise.
An Overcast day doesn't book ahead. One turns up, hangs around, lifts. Another one comes.
But the next time, you're not guessing quite as blind. You know what got her out last time, because she told you.
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.