The Perimenopause Husband
Perimenopause Periods All Over the Place: His Side
I thought her periods would just stop one day.
That's not how it goes.
Heavy one month. A light trickle the next. Then six months of nothing.
And you both think, right, we're nearly there. Then a heavy one out of nowhere.
This is her body, and her call on how much gets said. She said yes to this one.
Are periods all over the place a sign of perimenopause?
In our house they were.
I'm not a doctor, and I'll keep the hormone side of this simple. Two of the big ones are oestrogen and progesterone. You can Google them. They don't just run her cycle, they have a hand in her sleep, her mood and her temperature too. In perimenopause they stop running steady. They rise and fall with no warning and no pattern, and over time they drop.
So the calendar she has known for most of her life stops making sense. Not slowly. All over the place.
Menopause itself is one day, the point where they have stopped for good, and you only spot it looking backwards. Everything before that is this.
What did I get wrong?
Twenty odd years of marriage, and I'd hardly given it a thought.
I had no idea any of that was happening. I had it in my head that her periods were a marker. When they stopped, that was the thing, and until then this couldn't be that. I waited for a marker that never came on schedule.
And the one time I did bring her period into it, I got it about as wrong as you can. I asked if it was hormonal. If she was getting her period. Short answer. Flat. End of conversation. That one has its own post.
What is it like for her?
She's on guard all the time.
Every day out. Every long drive. Because it can turn up with no notice.
Think about planning a day around something that won't tell you when it's coming. Then doing that every day of the year, for years.
That on guard feeling doesn't stay with the periods. It spreads into everything else. Anxiety with nothing attached is where some of it ends up.
What can a husband actually do about it?
Here's one of the tools. There are plenty.
Keep the house stocked, and never make her ask.
Her things in the bathroom. In the car. In the bag when you go away. Checked and topped up, without a word.
You know you can go and buy this stuff for her, fellas. She's got enough to be on guard about.
How do you know what she needs on hand? You don't guess. None of this works without the honest conversations, the first one and the small ones after. That's how you find out.
Should she see a doctor or a specialist about it?
That's hers to decide, and yours to back.
When we were sitting with a specialist about her headaches, one of the questions was whether she was still getting her periods. It surprised us both. The headaches post has that year.
If something about it is worrying her, or it has changed in a way that worries either of you, see a doctor or a specialist in this field. Go with her if she wants you there.
Does it settle down?
I can't tell you when. Nobody can, from the outside.
What you can do is make it one less thing she has to plan around. That's the job.
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.