The Perimenopause Husband
Signs My Wife Is in Perimenopause: The Seven I Missed
Seven signs of perimenopause turned up in our house.
I had another explanation for every one of them.
Here they are, side by side, the way I wish someone had shown me.
What are the signs my wife is in perimenopause?
Not every sign there is. Just the seven I missed in our house. Your house might have three of these, or none, or a whole lot that never turned up for us.
One. She stopped sleeping. Awake at two or three in the morning and not getting back to sleep. Night after night. I'd wake up and she'd be lying there wide awake. Or she'd be up and gone out to the lounge. I'd even seen her walking around the room at two or three in the morning.
What I told myself: stress. Work, the kids, too much on her mind. All of it a bit true. None of it the reason.
Two. Burning up from the inside, fast. A hot flush, or a hot flash in other parts of the world. One minute she's fine. The next the covers are off and she's out of the bed.
What I told myself: the house was warm. The doona. I thought a lot of things. The winter night I read it completely wrong is a story on its own.
Three. Her heart racing. On the couch, at night. Heart palpitations. The big one.
What I told myself: the first thing that came into my head was, it's probably nothing too serious. The times before, she said she just needed to rest, and I took her word for it. Then came the night we went to hospital.
Four. Walking into a room and forgetting why. Losing a word halfway through a sentence. She'd stop, and you could see her reaching for it. And I'd jump in with the word.
What I told myself: she was just busy. Too much going on to keep track.
Five. Short with the people she loves most. The kids, mostly. She's not a yeller. A sharper edge. Not her normal tone. Then the guilt, straight after, all over her face.
What I told myself: it was me. Sometimes it was. Mostly it wasn't.
Six. Sad, with nothing attached to it. Tears, and no reason she could give me. I'd ask what's wrong, and ask again. She told me once she'd cried, and an hour later she couldn't remember why. The tears have their own article.
What I told myself: a bad week.
Seven. "I don't feel like myself any more, and I don't know why." She said that out loud. And I didn't know what to say back.
What I told myself: getting older.
Why did I miss them?
Because every explanation made sense on its own.
Stress. A warm house. Probably nothing. Busy. Me. A bad week. Getting older. Seven signs, seven other explanations. I could have defended any one of them.
Put them side by side and it's one thing. I didn't put them side by side for a couple of years, because nobody had ever told me they belonged on the same list.
What was actually going on?
Perimenopause. A hormonal, biological change, on the way through to menopause. She didn't choose any of it, and she had no say in when the next one would turn up.
None of those seven was the whole story. Together they were. The full list of what I watched her carry is longer than seven, and all of it was real.
I'd noticed every one of these. I just hadn't paid attention to what they meant. Noticing and paying attention are not the same thing.
What can I do so I don't miss them?
Here's one of the tools. There are plenty.
Write down the one you saw today.
One line, at the end of the day. Not a diary. Not a report. Just the one thing: awake at three. Lost a word at dinner. Hot in a cold room. Short with the kids, then the face after.
Put it in your phone, or a notebook in your drawer. It's for you. Not on the fridge, not to show her, and never as evidence.
That's how you do what I didn't. You put them side by side. After a couple of weeks you'll be looking at one thing, where I spent a couple of years looking at seven.
Should I tell her what I've written?
Not as a list. Never as a list.
It's there so you can see the pattern. Not so she has to answer for it.
And if any of these are worrying either of you, she sees a doctor or a specialist in this field. You go with her, if she wants you there. Some of these signs can be other things, and not every storm is perimenopause.
Is it definitely perimenopause?
I can't tell you that, and neither can a list on the internet. I can only tell you what I saw in our house, and that there were more than seven.
What I can tell you is that if you're reading this and ticking them off, you're not a bad husband. You're just uninformed. That changes now.
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.