Reading the room

What Is Perimenopause Like for Husbands? Here's Ours

By Phil, The Perimenopause Husband

I'd set something up. A dinner. A day out. Something that was supposed to be nice.

And the weather would just change. No warning.

Then it would pass, and we'd both pretend it hadn't happened.

That's the honest answer, if you're asking what perimenopause is like for husbands. In our house it was not knowing which day I was going to get.

What is perimenopause like for husbands?

Here's ours.

Some days were Sunshine, one of the five weather patterns we use in our house, the days she's herself. Some came with a Storm Warning, the pressure high and close to the surface. For a long time I had no way of telling which was which until I was already standing in it.

The first clue was at the door in the morning. Lips or the cheek. Then a day's work turning it over.

There was a stretch where I braced every time she came home from coffee with her friends.

I'd ask her something completely ordinary, did she want a cup of tea, and get a short, flat answer back. Some days I reckon I could have just been standing in the room, doing nothing, and it would have got under her skin.

That's what it's like. You're living with weather, and nobody has told you there is such a thing.

What did I do with it?

Here's the honest version. I kept score.

The cheek instead of the kiss went on the board. The short answer when I walked in went on the board. The day out that turned went on the board.

And the air con. We left it running in the bedroom even when the room was cool for me, so it ran a lot cooler than I'd ever have picked. For a while I kept count of that too.

What I'd given. What I'd got back. Fair. Not fair. What is her problem.

I wasn't keeping score because I didn't care. I was keeping score because I didn't know what I was looking at, and a scoreboard was the only thing that made it feel like I had a grip on it.

Why does keeping score make it worse?

Because only one of you knows there's a game on.

She wasn't playing against me. She was in weather. Every mark on my board was a point against a woman who didn't know she was being scored, for things she had no say in.

And it doesn't stay in your head. It gets into your tone. The way you say righto. How long you take to answer. She reads that faster than you'd think.

This isn't a free pass for anyone, either way. Bad behaviour from either side isn't okay, and understanding something isn't the same as accepting it. In our house, what I was scoring wasn't bad behaviour. It was weather, and I was scoring it as if it were a choice.

It was never me against her. It was the two of us against the weather, and respect both ways is what gets a couple through it.

What should I do instead?

Here's one of the tools. There are plenty.

Stop keeping score.

When you catch yourself putting one on the board, the cheek, the short answer, the cold room, name it for what it is. A scoreboard. Then put it down.

Not once, as a big decision. Every time it starts up again. It will.

I've written about the smaller boards before. The jobs that didn't get done was one. This is the whole thing.

The air con stayed on. I stopped keeping score of that.

Does it get easier for husbands?

Not knowing which day you'll get doesn't go away. Perimenopause doesn't hand you a timetable, and it doesn't hand her one either.

What changes is what you do with the day when it comes. I read it now, instead of scoring it. That's a different job, and it's a better one.

I can't tell you how it goes in your house. I can tell you what I'd say to any bloke standing where I stood.

Stand beside her. Face the weather together. You're not alone. And neither is she.

The whole story, and every tool I found along the way, is in Stepping Into the Storm With Her.