“I sometimes wished for five or six years that more men would get involved in the conversation.”
This is something that Ann Marie McQueen, the creator of Hotflash Inc said to me on our recent Substack Live.
Men And The Important Conversation
We are slowly seeing more men enter the conversation. The MATE survey shows that 72% of the men they surveyed said they were having conversations about their partners menopause experience with them. The data point that goes with that is less encouraging. 72% said their partner initiated the conversation.
We want men in the conversation, but they still don’t know how to enter it. They are reliant on women inviting them in. For some men, I believe what stops them is fear. Fear of saying the wrong thing, at the wrong time, and making the situation more tense than it needs to be.
Ann Marie and I agreed that men need to take the initiative to educate themselves about this transitional stage in their relationship and that it isn’t incumbent on women to be their educators. That education goes beyond books, podcasts and newsletters. All of those are very useful and allow men to ask well informed questions during those conversations. What they don’t replace is the education that the men can get from their partner’s lived experience.
It is one thing to have read about Hot Flashes, it is quite another to understand what that means to your partner. And until you do you don’t have the knowledge you need.
These conversations also need to extend beyond symptoms.
The Cracks That Are Already There
As the title of this article says, perimenopause doesn’t usually cause cracks in relationships, it reveals them. And this is the important extension of those conversations. Because they are still about the lived experience that the partner is having.
Those cracks can take many forms. Who carries the emotional load? Who remembers appointments? Who plans meals? Who knows what the household needs?
A University of Michigan study found that women with husbands pick up about 7 extra hours a week of housework, while men with wives saved themselves about an hour a week. The real takeaway here isn’t that women do more to operate a household, it’s that the arrangements that have set this up have been in place for years, sometimes decades. And at this stage those arrangements become no longer tenable. This is not the fault of individual relationships, this is a familiar pattern shaped by the society we live in. As I said during the conversation
“Men are centered and women are taught to orbit them.”
Ann Marie highlighted this with a simple question that a woman might ask herself
“Why have I been doing that?”
Time To Renegotiate
This is more than just the division of labor in the home though. This period of unmasking involves changes in biology and physiology for the woman. Those include the symptoms that she is experiencing but also how those symptoms show up. For example a lack of sexual desire can’t simply be ascribed to a low libido (though that is certainly one symptom) sometimes penetrative sex is physically painful. Changes in thermal regulation, showing up as hot flashes which can reduce the desire for physical contact.Sleepless nights can lead to irritability which can create tension in the relationship and a breakdown in communication.
All of this can change the way a relationship works. And to weather those changes the relationship needs to be renegotiated. This renegotiation requires a careful look at those cracks that have been revealed. As Ann Marie put it
“We both hold the responsibility for readjusting the relationship in this time.”
What does this renegotiation actually look like? As I mentioned this is more than who takes on which responsibility around the house (though that plays a part), it’s about making the needed adjustments that reflect the new reality that partners find themselves in.
For my relationship the outcome of the renegotiation was very simple. My Wife said
“I finally feel seen”.
Being in the conversation is more than just understanding or talking about symptoms. It’s being willing to listen to the lived experience of your partner and what that tells you about her, about you, and about the relationship you’ve built together.
You can watch the full conversation below
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Such an important conversation, Simon. Thank you and Ann Marie for having it and for sharing it with us all.