The Perimenopause Husband
Perimenopause Good Days and Bad Days: When to Ask Her for Something
The day before, I had asked my wife for one thing.
We were selling a car. Two cars, and we needed to sell one to keep the other. The service book needed stamping for a service that had already been done. Could she ring our mechanic, if she got the chance, and set a time to get the paperwork sorted.
She was in a storm when I asked. A day and a half of it by the next morning.
It did not get done.
Why did I leave it, with the clock running?
Because I could see the weather.
When I did my check that next morning, the storm was still in. Obvious to everybody in the house. Limited eye contact. Lips tight. Moving around doing what she felt she had to do, almost robotic. Do not get in my way. Literally, do not stand in front of her.
The sale was a couple of days off. The paperwork needed to be ready before it. Time was running out.
I left it anyway. She had had enough on her plate in the last twenty four hours. Asking again would not have got it done. It would have been one more thing landing on her in the middle of a storm.
What would I have done years ago?
Years ago there is no way we would have got through that day the way we did.
We were not on the same page. We did not know we were both in a storm pattern, and neither of us had the patience or the knowledge to get through it. I certainly did not.
A lot of blokes wake up every morning as if it is a brand new day. I did, for a long time. Nobody tells you there is already a weather pattern sitting in that day, and that it carried over from yesterday.
So yesterday's ask is still a live ask in your head. It has not been done. You chase it.
What was actually going on that morning?
She had not had a good night's rest. But it was more than tired. That overall feeling of not being comfortable. Down. Irritable. It would not have taken much to throw her into a spiral for the day, and she was already close to it.
That is perimenopause on a bad day in our house. Nothing had happened. There was no row behind it. It turned up and sat on her, and she was still getting everyone out the door.
A job like ringing a mechanic sounds tiny from the outside. It is a phone call, a time, a bit of back and forth. On a storm day it is one more decision on top of a pile she is already struggling to get through.
She had not forgotten. It was not that she did not care. She had nothing left for it.
When is the right time to ask my wife for something?
In the sunshine. That is the whole tool.
The storm did not last. By later that same afternoon she was in full sunshine. Out buying fresh food for dinner, lighter, herself.
I already knew she was there before I said a word. So that afternoon I asked again. Same mechanic, same paperwork, same deadline. And I made it easy. I said, you go and have a coffee with your cousin while you wait, catch up.
We drafted the text together. She sent it. By mid afternoon it was all done.
Same ask. Same woman. A day apart. The only thing that changed was the weather.
This is one of the tools, and it is the one I would hand any bloke first, because it costs nothing:
Pick your weather for the ask. Check her weather in the morning when you wake up. Check it again at night when you go to bed. If you are together through the day, keep an eye on it, because it can turn more than once. If it is Storm Warning, Overcast or Fog, the ask waits, even when the clock is running. If it is Sunshine, ask, and make it easy for her to say yes.
Ask in a storm and you will not get the answer you want. Ask in the sunshine and you usually will.
Isn't that just walking on eggshells?
No. Walking on eggshells is being scared of her. This is paying attention to her.
I have trained myself over the years on what I can and cannot say, and how I say it. That is not tiptoeing. It is the same thing you would do for a mate who had just had the worst week of his life. You would not hand him a job and a deadline on day one.
And it goes both ways. Perimenopause is not just her thing to deal with. It is a relationship thing. She knows I am reading the weather. That is part of why the afternoon went the way it did.
Some of what she is carrying on the way through to menopause will not make sense to you, and a lot of it you will never see. You do not have to understand all of it to get the timing right.
The whole of that day, and how the storm actually turned, is 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.