A Question All Middle-Aged Women (and men!) Need To Address

 

“I don’t know you anymore.”

These were the ominous words of a husband to his wife after they’d had one of their worst fights during their fourteen years of marriage. Over the past year, she’d grown increasingly negative, expressing that negativity with more frequency and intensity until he was near the breaking point. 

When he’d proposed marriage to her a decade and a half earlier, he’d told her that he wanted to wake up every morning to her smile, that she made him laugh every day. By the morning of that fight, she must have, indeed, seemed like a completely different person to him.

The story comes from a memoir I’m currently reading, and it’s got my mind back on a train of thought that it’s been bouncing on and off of for several years. It’s a question, really, a question that occurred to me primarily because of my own experiences, and also because of the snippets of other people’s stories that I’ve heard.

It relates to the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad symptoms leading up – and persisting through – menopause. Specifically, the symptoms that cause a mentally stable woman to suddenly suffer from depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and paranoia.

The question is this: Does menopause cause divorce?

Why this is an important question.

The symptoms I just mention can convince a woman that life is meaningless, that there is nothing to look forward to after life on earth, that her entire life has been a sham, void of purpose, a mere game of survival, that there is no reason for going on because everything is dreary and gray and nothing matters because everything eventually dies.

If she doesn’t quite get to the bottom of that pit, then she wakes up one day completely discontented with her life for no reason other than her perspective has suddenly and (ostensibly) unaccountably shifted. Her husband isn’t romantic enough, doesn’t make enough money, doesn’t have enough self-motivation. Her job is joyless and pointless. Her home is ugly, and so is she. Regardless of how much weight she loses, or what kind of makeup she uses, or how fashionable she dresses, she knows she’ll never look thirty again and she. Can’t. Stand it. She’s tired of having to keep house, wishes her teenage or young adult children would just grow up already and leave her alone.

Any woman over the age of forty-five knows exactly what I’m talking about. Even if she didn’t experience this dramatic shift in thinking, she likely knows someone who did. However, most have never wondered about a connection between menopause and divorce.

It’s time to get our heads out of the sand. Because the first scenario, if it doesn’t lead to the woman’s suicide, could provoke her husband to leave. In the second scenario, it’ll be the wife leaving because she’s convinced she needs a new life.

Understanding what’s going on in a woman’s brain during perimenopause and beyond could be a gamechanger and marriage-saver. I’m going to get to that in a few moments. But first, let’s remember: I only have a theory, based on a question. What do the facts say?

Do divorce statistics support my belief?

The other day, spurred on by the memoir and the author’s poignant story, I did some digging on divorce statistics. I was somewhat surprised to find that the lion’s share of divorces are initiated by women. As several of the most common reasons for divorce include infidelity, domestic violence, and addiction, that makes sense. Not that women aren’t unfaithful, or suffer with addictions. I know, in rare occasions, wives have even physically abused their husbands.

But it could be that men commit such sins more often. I’m confident, as well, that men are better at turning a blind eye to such issues. Because, let’s face it, sisters – men lose a lot when a woman walks out of the house. Translation: they end up with a lot more work to do.

Also, men generally are more chill. Not as emotionally reactive, they tend, even in the midst of pain and heartache, not to take extreme actions when their wives have done wrong.

Back to reasons for divorce. Menopause was not listed as one. Of course not. Because the forty-plus women asking for “no-fault” divorces, or claiming that their husbands aren’t “meeting their needs” don’t have a clue as to the root cause of why they suddenly hate their lives.

However.

HOWEVER.

In the 2010’s, the percent of divorces between couples who were between forty and sixty years old skyrocketed. The divorce rate at that age used to be low; today, it’s the opposite.

One reason is that many members of Generation X have eschewed the faith traditions of their parents and grandparents. Life is about being happy, not about pleasing God; therefore, if you are no longer happy with the person you promised “death till you part” with, you don’t have to wait until death to part from them.

I’m not talking abuse or adultery here. I’m talking, he wants to live on the East Coast, she wants to live on the West. No agreement, so the obvious course of action is divorce.

Or.

OR.

Menopause literally messes with a woman’s head.

In the years leading up to menopause, a woman’s estrogen and progesterone levels bounce all over the place. The overall direction of both hormones, however, is down.

Ever heard of serotonin? It’s the happy chemical. It is THE reason anybody ever feels happy. Upbeat. Positive. It’s what keeps you from getting depressed, anxious, and angry.

Well, guess what other chemicals are essential not only for the production of serotonin, but for proper functioning of neural pathways in the brain?

Yep. Estrogen and progesterone. Take those out of the picture, and you get mood swings, depression, paranoia, anxiety, and panic attacks. You get women who used to be full of vivacity and a strong sense of purpose, suddenly wondering why they were even born. You get women who used to find contentment with ease, suddenly thinking that every decision they’ve ever made has been the wrong one.

Lower estrogen and progesterone levels leads to reduced serotonin production leads to despair, depression, and a chronic sense of impending doom.

Leads to… divorce?

I think it’s worth a look.

If you’re a middle-aged woman reading this article and you recognize yourself in the above descriptions, especially if these new and unwanted character traits are causing problems between you and your husband, may I encourage you that there is hope. You can get your old self back (the inside, not the outside, sorry). You can feel contented, even happy, again. You can fall back in love with your man… or at least see him once again as the friend and support that you always used to see him as.

There is hormone replacement therapy, or HRT.

If you don’t want to take that, or can’t afford it, I have two free books that will help most women. The first, So Long, Stress! takes you down a spiritual path. It’s a biblically based method of releasing emotions which has transformed my life. Clickhere to check out that book.

The second, From Suffering To Singing, addresses how to ameliorate the physiological effects of low hormone and serotonin levels with diet and supplements, including progesterone cream. Click here, or  the book image in the sidebar, to download it from Amazon.

Remember, both books are free. If you don’t want to obtain them from Amazon, they are available everywhere else, too, including Hoopla, Overdrive, and Everand.

It takes two to Tango.

As I finish up this blog post, I have reached the part of the memoir where the author reveals a little more about her husband. Enough so that I can see that she wasn’t the only one committing acts that put a strain on their marriage. Yes, menopause can change a woman in unhappy ways. And sometimes, the man remains the same and is doing his best with this strange and unfamiliar creature he used to know.

But as they age, men, too, go through hormonal changes. They are equally vulnerable to developing a skewed perspective on life, on themselves, on their wives, which can eventually lead to problems. I’ll be talking about that in the next post.

In the meantime, ladies, seek help. Seek healing. You don’t have to feel miserable for the rest of your life,

Or lose your decades-long marriage because of that misery.