The Perimenopause Husband
Why Is My Wife Always Tired? It Was Perimenopause
She'd say, I'm tired.
And I'd hear tired the way I get tired. Big week. Bad night. Fixable.
So I'd say, get an early night then. Or have a lie down on Saturday. Or just rest when you can.
I thought that was helping. Here's a fix. Off you go. You'll be right.
Why is my wife always tired?
In our house, it was perimenopause. It took me a long time to see that.
It wasn't needs a nap tired. It was never rested tired. When she did sleep, she'd wake up like the sleep didn't count. Like she'd started the day already behind.
And from there it went straight into overwhelmed. The same list she'd always run. The house. The kids. Her job. Everyone's where and when.
Except now it was all too much. Not because there was more on it. Because there was less of her to go round. That's where the overwhelm comes from, and it sat right beside the tired every day.
Why doesn't sleep fix it?
Because sometimes she couldn't even get the early night I kept handing her.
She knew what was coming. Awake at two. Awake at three. Lying there. So bedtime wasn't rest for her. It was the start of another bad night, and she'd get anxious before she even got into bed, just knowing. The nights have their own article.
Here's the simple version of why, and it's all out there online. I'm just saving you the search.
There are hormones that affect your wife during perimenopause. Two of the big ones are oestrogen and progesterone. They have a hand in the parts of her brain that look after her mood, her sleep, her memory, even her body's thermostat. Progesterone is the calming one. It helps her settle, and it helps her sleep. Oestrogen helps keep her mood level, her memory sharp and her temperature steady.
In perimenopause they stop running steady. They rise and fall, with no warning, and over time they drop. So her sleep gets lighter and more broken. The heat wakes her up. Her mood has less holding it level.
So it didn't matter how much sleep she got. Those two buggers would make sure she was running on empty anyway. And they're not the only ones.
My tired, sleep fixes. Hers, sleep couldn't reach.
What did I get wrong?
I never added it up.
The nights she was awake at three. The heat. Her heart racing on the couch. The day she lost words. I'd seen every one of those. I just never put them in the same place.
She was carrying every one of them, and then getting up and running the house. Turning up for the kids. Turning up for work. Being expected to function properly, every day, like nothing was going on.
Imagine carrying all of that. And then someone tells you to get an early night.
That's what tired meant. Not one bad night. Everything, all at once, with no end date.
Is it perimenopause, or is something else going on?
Tired can have more than one cause, and I can't tell you which one is in your house. Neither can anyone who hasn't seen her.
If it doesn't lift, or something about it worries either of you, she sees a doctor or a specialist in this field. You go with her, if she wants you there.
What should I say when my wife says she's tired?
Here's one of the tools. There are plenty.
Stop offering sleep as the answer.
Not the early night. Not the lie down on Saturday. Not "just rest when you can". Not "you'll be right".
She's already thought of the early night. She's thought of it every night for months. When you hand it to her, you're handing her a fix she already knows doesn't work, and telling her the tired is hers to sort out.
When she says I'm tired, she's not asking you for a plan. She's telling you where she's at.
Take the fix out of your mouth. That's the whole tool.
What to say instead is its own line, and it's in the book, in the chapter on talking so she can hear you. Start with not saying the wrong one.
Will she always be this tired?
I can't promise you when it lifts. Nothing you say will fix the tired. Nothing you do will either.
But every early night I handed her was one more thing landing on a woman who already had nothing left. Stop handing them over, and that's one less.
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.