The Perimenopause Husband
Perimenopause vs Menopause: The Difference, From the Bloke Who Got It Wrong
We have had four kids go through puberty in this house.
I know what that sounds like from the hallway. The door that shuts a bit too firm. The silence that is not really about nothing. The one who used to laugh at everything suddenly not laughing at anything.
So when it started with my wife, that is the file I put it in. Here we go again. Give it a year, it will settle.
I was wrong about the year. I was wrong about the settling.
Then my wife said the actual word to me, and I got that wrong too.
What did I think she said?
Prior menopause.
That is what I heard. Prior, as in before. Before menopause. Righto, I thought. That makes sense.
And I ran with it. For a couple of days I kept saying it. Prior menopause. And every time, she said it back to me. It's not prior. It's peri.
What the hell is peri. That did not make any sense to me at all. Prior menopause made more sense.
I am not telling you that to be funny. I am telling you because it shows how far off I was. I had one word in my head, menopause, and I was bending the new one to fit around it.
What is the difference between perimenopause and menopause?
Plain version, no science, because I am not a doctor and you did not come here for a chart.
Menopause is one day. It is the point where her periods have stopped for good, and nobody can put a date on it until it is well behind them. It is a marker, not a season.
Perimenopause is everything leading up to that day. The years before it. That is the part with the weather in it. The mood that turns between breakfast and lunch. The fog. The nights. The tears with nothing attached to them.
So peri is not a smaller version of menopause, and it is not a warning that something worse is on the way. It is the long part. It is where we already were, and had been for years, while I sat there waiting for the other one to turn up.
If your wife is in the weather, you are asking about the first word. How long that stretch runs is its own question, and the honest answer is longer than you want it to be.
So which one is my wife in?
If the weather is happening, she is in perimenopause. That is the whole test, and it is a lot less satisfying than it sounds.
I thought I had a marker I could count on. Her periods. I had it in my head that when they stopped, that was the thing, and until then this could not be that.
They did not stop. They went all over the place. Heavy one month, barely there the next. The full list of what a husband actually notices has that in with the rest, and most of the things on that list were happening in my house while I was still waiting for a marker that was never going to arrive on schedule.
So no, I could not tell you which stage she was in. She could not either. That is not a failure on your part or hers. It is just how this runs.
If you want the front end of it, the rough numbers by age are in the post on when perimenopause starts.
Why does the word matter if I am not a doctor?
Because of what each word makes you do.
Menopause sounds like an event. Something with a start and a finish, that turns up, does its business and leaves. If that is the word sitting in your head, then your job is obvious. Wait. Keep your head down, be patient, stay out of the way, and it will pass.
Perimenopause is not an event. It is a stretch of years the pair of you are already living in. You cannot wait out years.
That is the whole difference, and it is not a word game. I waited. I was not being cruel about it either. I thought waiting was the decent thing to do. Give her space. Do not make it worse. Let it run its course.
With a teenager, that works, and I had a rough map for it. My own teenage years. Other blokes' stories. Years of watching kids do the same thing in other people's houses. I knew roughly that it passes, and I knew roughly what to do while it did, which was mostly keep the door open and not take the slam personally.
I had none of that for her. Nobody hands you a map for a grown woman's body changing on her. No mate at the pub had been through it and come back with tips. So I used the only map I had, and it was the wrong one, and I used it for years.
What do I do instead of waiting it out?
One thing. When you catch yourself thinking right, here we go, just ride it out, do the opposite of what you would do with a teenager. Walk toward it instead of away from it.
It does not have to be big. A hand on her shoulder walking past. Are you right today, asked plainly, not as a test. And when the answer is short, you do not chase it for more. You stay in the room a bit longer than you would have.
She did not need me waiting in the other room until it passed. She needed me in the room. That is the whole correction and it took me far too long.
Same fine print as always, mate. This is not a switch you flip mid storm. It is a habit you build on the ordinary days so it is already there on the hard ones.
Does knowing the difference actually change anything?
It changed our house, and not because I learned anything medical.
It got me off the clock. I stopped counting down to a finish line that was not coming, and started reading the day in front of me instead. Some days are Sunshine. Some are Fog. Some are a Storm Warning and you get no notice at all. You cannot control any of it and neither can she. You can learn to read it.
If something is genuinely worrying you, or worrying her, that is a different question and it goes to a doctor or a specialist in this field. Not me, and not a search bar at eleven at night.
But getting the word right in your own head costs nothing. It is the difference between a bloke waiting for his wife to come back, and a bloke turning up for the one who is standing in front of him.
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.