Menopause, marriage and the fine art of not committing murder over a wheelie bin
They say menopause can affect your mood, your patience and your ability to tolerate things that never used to bother you.
What they don’t tell you is that a blown lightbulb, a packet of crisps and a forgotten wheelie bin can very nearly bring an entire marriage to its knees.
Ladies of a certain age, I suspect some of you will recognise this story.
I’d been going through one of those particularly delightful phases of menopause. My sleep was all over the place, my patience had apparently packed its bags and left the country and little things that I might once have brushed off were beginning to feel like personal acts of sabotage.
My husband, meanwhile, was blissfully unaware that he was living with a woman whose tolerance levels were hovering somewhere between zero and minus ten.
And so began Lightbulbgate.
It started with a lightbulb…
One evening, while we were having dinner in the kitchen and chatting about our day, I happened to look up and notice that one of the lightbulbs had blown.
“Could you change that bulb, please?” I asked.
“Sure,” he replied.
Simple enough. Job delegated. Mental note made.
Four days later, the bulb was still out and another had joined it in solidarity.
Now, in my pre-menopausal days, I might have reminded him, rolled my eyes or simply changed them myself.
But this was menopause. My internal thermostat was malfunctioning, my hormones were having a party without inviting me and my ability to remain calm over minor domestic irritations had gone AWOL.
So there I was, standing on a chair, changing the bulbs myself, when my husband wandered in and casually threw his jacket over another chair.
A jacket.
On a chair.
Approximately three feet away from a perfectly functioning coat hook.
I could practically feel my blood pressure rising.
“I was going to get round to those,” he announced, watching me unscrew the bulb.
“Oh really?” I snapped. “When exactly? After your nightly family-sized packet of crisps and three tins of beer?”
Not my finest moment, admittedly.
But it wasn’t really about the lightbulbs. It was about asking for something to be done, remembering it needed doing, waiting for it to be done and then eventually doing it myself.
And when your brain already feels as though it’s trying to operate through a thick menopausal fog, having to remember absolutely everything for everyone else is enough to send you over the edge.
A few choice words were exchanged. Doors were banged.
The bulbs were changed.
Marriage survived. Just.
Then came BINGATE…
A couple of weeks later, the lightbulb incident had faded into history.
Or so my husband thought.
One evening, we were sitting in front of the fire. He was in his usual position on the sofa, accompanied by his faithful companions, Crisps and Beer.
I asked whether he could fetch some more coal while I got dinner ready.
“Yeah, alright.”
After dinner, I returned to the lounge to discover that the fire was practically out.
No coal.
Of course there was no coal.
I put on my jacket, went outside in the rain and fetched it myself, quietly muttering things that would have made a sailor blush.
While I was outside, I remembered that the following morning was bin collection day.
Now, like much of the country, we have a colourful collection of wheelie bins. Blue for paper, green for plastic and black for household waste.
The black bin is affectionately known as the smelly bin.
Coming back inside, I said, with what I considered remarkable restraint:
“Right, I’ve sorted the coal. Could you PLEASE manage to put the black bin out for tomorrow morning?”
I received a grunt.
I took this as confirmation.
Big mistake.
The next morning, I left the house at my usual ungodly hour of 5.30 am.
And there it was.
The black bin.
Still sitting exactly where it had been the night before.
Something inside me snapped.
I stormed back into the house, slammed the front door, thundered upstairs, switched on the bedroom light and launched into a full-scale menopausal eruption.
“WHY CAN’T YOU DO THE ONE BLOODY THING I ASKED YOU TO DO?”
My poor husband was barely awake.
I, on the other hand, was wide awake. VERY wide awake.
Years of accumulated domestic frustration came pouring out.
Why did I have to remember everything? Why did I have to keep asking? Why couldn’t he just SEE what needed doing?
And while I was at it…
“AND WHAT ABOUT THE HEDGE? ARE YOU LEAVING THAT FOR ME AS WELL?”
The hedge had absolutely nothing to do with the bin.
But by this point, every unfinished job in the house and garden was being entered into evidence.
There were more expletives. More slamming doors.
And thus, Bingate was born.
The menopause made me angry. The mental load made me furious.
Looking back, I can see that my menopausal symptoms were making everything feel more intense.
The broken sleep, the irritability, the feeling of being overwhelmed by things that once seemed manageable.
But the real issue wasn’t the bin.
Or the bulbs.
Or even the hedge.
It was the exhausting feeling of being the household manager. The person who notices, remembers, organises, reminds and ultimately does the jobs when nobody else gets round to them.
It’s difficult enough keeping all those plates spinning when you’re feeling your best.
Throw menopause into the mix, when you’re already struggling with fatigue, brain fog and unpredictable emotions, and the smallest thing can become the final straw.
Or, in my case, the final wheelie bin.
A hedge, a lawn and a medal-worthy performance
Saturday arrived, bringing my weekly shopping trip and, more importantly, a chance to catch up with the girls over a few lattes.
Naturally, Lightbulbgate and Bingate featured heavily in the conversation.
There was laughter, plenty of sympathetic nodding and the comforting realisation that I wasn’t the only woman whose husband seemed to have developed selective blindness when it came to household chores.
When I arrived home, something extraordinary had happened.
The hedge had been cut.
Well, that’s a result, I thought.
Then I turned the corner towards the house.
He’d mowed the lawn too!
Two jobs. In one day.
I nearly fainted.
And didn’t I hear about it!
How long the grass had taken. How much effort he’d put in. How difficult it had been.
Blah, blah, blah.
At one point I seriously considered presenting him with a medal.
Perhaps a small ceremony on the patio.
Meanwhile, I was unpacking the shopping while he returned to his usual position on the sofa with his crisps and beers.
Some things never change.
Sometimes we don’t need grand romantic gestures. We just need someone to change the bloody lightbulb.
We need to talk…
That afternoon, I realised something had to change.
Not just the distribution of household chores, but the way we were communicating.
I couldn’t carry on exploding over lightbulbs and bins, and he couldn’t carry on assuming that everything would somehow magically get done.
So I sat opposite him and said those four words every husband dreads:
“We need to talk.”
This time, though, there was no shouting.
I explained what menopause was doing to me. How tired and overwhelmed I felt. How my emotions sometimes seemed to arrive without warning and how little patience I had left by the end of the day.
But I also explained that my frustration wasn’t simply hormonal.
I needed help.
I needed support.
I needed him to listen, to understand and, most importantly, to take responsibility without waiting to be asked.
I didn’t want to be the household project manager anymore.
I wanted a partner.
To his credit, something must have sunk in.
Bin night became his responsibility. Every week. Without fail.
Rain, hail, ice or snow, the black bin now makes its weekly pilgrimage to the kerb.
And the marriage?
Still intact.
But what about the lightbulbs?
Ah, yes.
The lightbulbs.
You didn’t think I’d forgotten those, did you?
One day, I borrowed my husband’s credit card, explaining that the chip on mine was playing up. Then I popped down to our local hardware shop.
And bought 100 lightbulbs.
Yes. One hundred.
Different shapes, sizes and wattages.
The shopkeeper looked utterly bewildered as I practically cleared his shelves.
I took my haul home, packed them into a large box and hid it at the back of the wardrobe.
On the outside I wrote:
XMAS DECORATIONS
A guaranteed hiding place. My husband would never voluntarily investigate a box of Christmas decorations.
Now, my husband scrutinises his monthly credit card statement with the forensic dedication of a tax inspector.
And sure enough, when the statement arrived, I was standing in the kitchen making a sandwich.
“What the **** did you buy at the hardware shop?” he demanded.
I smiled.
Put down my sandwich.
Poured myself a glass of wine.
And replied, with the sweetest smile I could muster:
“Lightbulbs.”
Oh, the satisfaction.
For once, I had the last word.
And enough lightbulbs to see me through the rest of menopause.
Possibly the next century.
The moral of the story?
Menopause can turn up the volume on emotions we may have spent years quietly suppressing.
Things that once seemed mildly irritating can suddenly feel completely intolerable. And sometimes, underneath the anger, there’s exhaustion, frustration and a desperate need to feel supported.
It doesn’t mean every outburst is justified, or that our partners are responsible for every difficult feeling.
But it does mean that a little understanding, a bit of empathy and sharing the everyday responsibilities can make an enormous difference.
Sometimes we don’t need grand romantic gestures.
We just need someone to change the bloody lightbulb.
Over to you…
Have you had your own menopausal Bingate moment? One of those occasions when something completely ordinary sent you spectacularly over the edge?
Whether it’s socks on the floor, an empty toilet roll or a dishwasher loaded by someone who clearly has no spatial awareness, we’d love to hear your stories.
Because sometimes the best way to survive menopause is to share a laugh with women who completely understand.
And if all else fails, there’s always the hardware shop.
