About that scary midlife shift in relationships...

... and finding the true true on the other side of menopause

Photo by Michael Fenton on Unsplash

I’m a few relationships lighter as the time between me and menopause grows.

I’ve stopped dating anyone new, for a while. I ended two off-and-on romantic entanglements that kept me feeling wanted and unwanted at the same time.

And some friendships that did the same thing.

If there was a common thread to all this, from my perspective, I’d have to say things went better when I was less myself. After menopause, that becomes impossible.

The more I became the me I was meant to be, the more the friction it caused.

Tamsen Fadal writes about this sort of thing in her new book How to Menopause (out March 25). I spoke about it with her while recording an upcoming episode of the Hotflash inc Podcast.

"Friendship in midlife shifts,” she said. “I don’t want to have to put on a mask every time I talk to someone. If I have to, that’s not the right person to be around."

And while previous iterations used to keep trying to make things better, to infinity and beyond, me now has shifted to asking what I want and like first.

And that’s support, kindness and fun. Curiosity, compassion. A long conversation. Both of us making an effort. Intellectual flexibility. Showing up.

I can’t abandon myself in the vital pursuit of connection anymore.

My days of settling for less because it’s available romantically – or platonically – are done.

Decades of letting digs and judgmental comments slide, only to stew and talk about them endlessly later, are over.

I was still doing this a few years ago when I met a wise older woman.

She gave me the best advice.

It was something like: ‘With friendships you don’t always need to have a big dramatic scene or talk. You can just let it fade away. And maybe you can come back to it, later.’

Enter my “Homer in the hedge” post-perimenopause approach:

Here if you need me!

We hear a lot about how perimenopause wreaks havoc on our lives and relationships.

We hear less about how it somehow removes the conditioning that has prevented us from seeing things, as Kirsten Miller wrote about in her novel The Change, with our “own two eyes”.

Like the transition itself, that can be jarring – and painful.