The Perimenopause Husband
Perimenopause and Noise: When the Sound of You Eating Is Too Much
I used to eat an apple standing right next to her. Big crunching bites.
She mentioned it to me a couple of times. That, and the way I breathe heavy when I'm concentrating.
That was about it, in our house. Not every day. On her harder days.
Why does every little noise annoy my wife?
Because on some days, the little noises get through.
In our house it was mostly the Storm Warning days, and probably some Overcast ones. On those days her system was already running hot, and a crunch or a heavy breath right beside her landed on top of that.
She knows an apple isn't a crime. On those days she still didn't want to hear it.
Is every house like ours?
No, and I'll be straight about it. What I hear other couples talk about online is a lot more than anything we had. For some women it sounds like nearly every noise in the house gets through, and on a lot more days than ours.
So if your house is louder than mine, that is not you failing and it is not her overreacting. It is her version. Our house is not every house.
What did I get wrong about it?
I'll own this one. I read it two ways, and both were wrong.
The first was that it was about me. Some days I reckon I could have stood in that room doing nothing at all, and it still would have got under her skin. So I took it as a verdict. I'm annoying to be around now.
The second was that a bad day needed cheering up. Lift the mood. Get her out of it.
A storm day doesn't need cheering up. It needs turning down.
Is it perimenopause, or is she just over me?
In our house, it was the weather, not the marriage.
On the way through to menopause, her body is going through a hormonal, biological change, and it does not wait for a good reason before it shows up. The sounds she used to tune out without thinking start getting straight through. Not every day. On the hard ones.
That is not her being precious. It is not a review of you. It is the day she's in.
And this is a relationship thing, not just her thing. She is not asking you to disappear. She is asking for a bit of quiet on a day she cannot make any for herself.
What can I actually do about it?
Here's one of the tools. There are plenty.
Turn yourself down. On a Storm Warning day, the noise you make is yours to move.
The apple gets eaten in the kitchen. The loud job goes outside.
And you don't sigh about it. The sigh is the thing she hears, same as at three in the morning when the bed moves.
Don't announce it either. "I'll go and eat this outside then" is a sigh with words in it. Just move it.
If she's in a full Storm Warning, this is not the whole answer. It is the easiest place to start, because you are the one noise in the house you control completely.
What about the telly, the kids and the dog?
That is the rest of the house, and it is a bigger job.
Start with you. Get your own noise sorted first, then look at the rest. How I turned the whole house down on a storm day is in the book, in the chapter on when she's annoyed at everything.
She can't turn the day down. You can turn yourself down.
Does it get easier?
I asked her about it again while I was writing this. She said it hasn't been a big issue, apart from what were probably Storm Warning or Overcast days when I was around.
Now that I read the weather better, she couldn't point to anything.
That is what reading the weather does. I turn myself down on the right days, and there is nothing left for her to point to.
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.