Perimenopause, for me, wasn’t so much about the hot flushes or the mood swings everyone warns you about… it was the sheer unpredictability of it all.
The disappearing periods?
You’d think that might feel like a small mercy — a quiet exit, a gentle closing of a chapter.
But no. Instead, it became a monthly game of “Am I… or aren’t I?”
There’s something uniquely absurd about being old enough to know better, wise enough to laugh at yourself… and still standing in the bathroom thinking, “Surely not? I mean… really?”
It’s like your body forgets to send the memo, and your brain is left to catastrophise in the meantime. Not glamorous. Not mythical. Just mildly unhinged with a side of Tesco pregnancy test anxiety.
And then there’s sex — or rather, the quiet absence of it.
Not for lack of desire, or connection, or anything lacking on my part… but because life had other plans.
His body had been through cancer, and although we both carried on — brave faces, practical conversations, a kind of unspoken understanding — I don’t think either of us fully grasped just how much it had changed things.
Not just physically, but emotionally too.
It’s strange how something so intimate can slip away not with drama, but with a kind of quiet resignation. No big conversation, no defining moment — just a gradual realisation that something that once was… simply isn’t anymore.
And yet, there’s no blame in that. No bitterness.
Just a soft acknowledgement that bodies go through things, lives take turns, and sometimes love looks different than you imagined it would.
Still real. Still meaningful.
Just… different.
Pips, 63, Sussex
