Well, I’m not in full menopause but the peri one. I don’t know that much about it, frankly.
But I do know, right around the time I turned 40, things in my brain started to change. Not my body, my brain.
- I wanted connection in general. I wanted emotional connection, bonding, authentic deep conversations. Surface level was all of a sudden boring. I wanted emotional intimacy, but explaining that was SO difficult AND my ex didn’t value it AT ALL.
- I wanted connection during sex. For the first 16 years it had been performative. For him. I don’t even want to describe it, it makes me sad and angry. But when I see movies where call girls interact with johns… it was like that. It wasn’t for me, it wasn’t for us. It wasn’t for the relationship. At all. I wanted some sex that fed my soul. And I was met with mocking laughter when I told my ex this.
- I had less patience and tolerance for his bullshit. For his weaponized incompetence, for those things he did that whispered “I can get away with anything, what are you going to do?”. I would look at him, know he was lying or faking something to get out of helping and I would just let it go. Because I would rather do it myself than start a fight. But one day, out of the blue, I started opting for the fights, I was ready. I don’t know what changed other than I wasn’t going to let him opt out anymore. Fuck that. (I was later told that me not giving in, that me standing up for myself was the reason my marriage failed.)
- I started saying no more often without guilt. To friends, customers etc. If it felt like it wasn’t worth my time or I didn’t want to do it, I started saying no and it wasn’t keeping me up at night. It was so freeing!
Every woman is different, but just reading stories online I’m noticing that many women say that they feel more like themselves now. That they had this governor, some regulator on them that kept them nice, sweet and compliant and then bam… they stopped doing that and started voicing their opinion. The estrogen keeps you quiet, patient to your own detriment. It makes you a doormat.
So for some of us, NOT ALL OF US, once the estrogen fog lifts, we start setting boundaries. We don’t want to have sex that isn’t good for us. We stop doing thankless tasks. And guess what? Society calls us terrible names. Our husbands start to hate us. We are dubbed “chronically unhappy” etc and so on. JUST for wanting more out of life and no longer centering everyone else.
That is some bullshit right there.
Why does everyone equate standing up for yourself, craving an equal partnership and meaningful sex make us a bitch? Make us disposable? WTF?
So many of get to our 40’s, look around, want to rearrange some furniture and then our spouses dump us. Kick us out. For voicing needs.
There was an Oprah episode where women say that they became lesbians when they hit menopause. I wish I could find that. One woman described it as just wanting feminine softness in her life. That she had served her husband, her kids, been swimming in a testosterone-filled life and she wanted to experience the opposite. We are women, that makes sense. But we get punished for saying this. Mocked. Shamed.
I wish I was a lesbian, but alas, I am not. But I am feeling that “I want to be more feminine” and surrounded by softness thing. I crave connection, less competition, collaboration, creativity and like… eye contact.
So, society wants to say that my period stopped and I became a bitch. That I became an A-sexual, anti sex, anti man witch who wants to live in the woods (that could happen).
But the truth is, my libido is healthier than ever, I’m MORE sexually intense, I’m MORE empathetic, I’m more in tune with who I am and I’m finally vocal about it. I don’t hate men, but I’m not longer letting them dictate everything, I’m no longer deferring to them (which means I might as well hate them).
First they complain that I can’t communicate efficiently and now that I do communicate well… I’m a bitch. I’m saying “I finally know who I am and what I want! I know what you want! Let’s have a great life together” and I’m met with… nah, that means I’ll have to DO shit for you.
I’m currently looking at land in the NC and TN mountains. I’m about to tap out of this mess.
