Why are all my friends talking about the menopause??

[MrsJasonSudeikis]

Ok - I truly hope I don't offend anyone with this thread and I am fully aware that many women suffer with symptoms of the menopause. I know this is probably my own stuff/issues but where better to share/rant than than on AIBU??

I am 47 and a mother of 3 kids (14 and twins aged 11). I feel much more energetic now that my kids are older. I enjoy my job (meaningful) and have recently started back playing tennis and going to gigs/comedy gigs when we can with my husband. We have a really happy marriage (of course not perfect) and a great sex life! I would say we are having better sex than ever and I feel really at peace with my body and looks (although I looked great in my 20s but I never 'felt' it!) Life is pretty good and I don't wish to come across as the 'i'm alright jack' kind of person but almost everyone in my circle (some friends - not all have gone to the dark side!), work colleagues constantly talk about ageing, and being an older woman and the menopause in a really negative way and it it driving me crazy!! Life book the nursing home already!!?

They speak in the collective 'we' and this is not my experience at all! My energy (and I have to say sex drive) is much higher than it was!! I got my FSH levels checked and they are at 5 so I suspect I am not in menopause yet. My mother and sisters were the same (mid 50s more like). I totally understand that it is good to speak honestly about menopause and ageing but where are the positive role models and stories?? I know we have Emily in Paris (lol!) etc but I am really feeling so triggered and a bit angry about it that I honestly feel like I will start to not have anything in common with my cohort/circles!

Am I in complete denial? Is it ok to name this? After 2 years of a pandemic, I want to surround myself with people of energy and youth and I know this sounds awful selfish!! I can be anxious at times (did during pandemic) but I am making a conscious decision to live my best life! The menopause also seems to be a reason and almost a personality trait for some women and the cause of all their woes which also annoys me!! I always found the lack of exercise and the tanking a bottle of wine a night (in past) was what was that caused anxiety for me much more. Not hormones.

End of rant and just saying - I am much more sympathetic IRL but I need to get this off my chest and wonder does anyone else out there feel like me??

OP doesn't appear to have returned, so I think a wind-up.

Maybe they've got enough material for the article

Lots of women say they are delighted to stop menstruating. Is that not a commonly experienced positive?

Some women say they find it liberating, to be free of contraception worries & to be able to park their fertile life phase in the past. Some women like embracing a new type of female identity.

It's too generalising to say 'Only Negatives'

Menopause is horrific for a lot of women. Great for you that you are not suffering. Yet...
Hope your friends are more caring and understanding when you have a problem than you are with them.
Do you even like them? Doesn't sound like it.
On a lighter note, how brave of you to piss off a large group of peri/menopausal women. Hence the 10 plus pages and you have disappeared 😀

But you are not menopausal so no wonder you feel great. You sound as if you resent your friends talking openly about this.

IME what you are describing is the peak before a decline, last push at babies, leading to high sex drive, energy, confidence etc.

youre just in a different place to your friends. Enjoy whilst you can, either surround yourself with young people or be supportive to your friends, then hopefully they will be there to support you if and when you’re in the same boat and they’ve come out the other side

@lljkk thats at the end though. The symptoms most people talk about happen when you are perimenopausal

Probably too busy shagging like a rabbit and roller skating in white jeans to care about us miserable so and sos 😂

People do tend to talk a lot about major life events and life stages.

When you're pregnant, each stage the kids are at, and yes, menopause when it hits.

I'm 48 and it's been about 3 years since my last period. I'm middle aged. 🤷‍♀️

We should be talking about things that affect us. It's how we support each other and know what to expect.

Without talking about menopause it can be a lonely existence of struggling through symptoms it's not pleasant for some and others sail through. I'm in the opposite situation to you and I'm the only one in my circle of friends going through the menopause and I'm finding I can only seek advice and have a rant online to others who are in the same boat as me. Because the menopause wasn't really spoken about I've had no one irl who I could talk to other than my GP and I don't want my daughter to have the experience of a taboo subject so I'm glad it's being talked about.

I think it's great that awareness is much better now than before, but judging from the responses on here I am in the minority in that the only really negative effect I had going through the menopause were some horrific migraines.

I am out the other side now, and at 63 my main issue is thinning hair and a bit of weight gain. I feel lucky (and I hope I don't want everyone to think I am being smug about it) that I got off lightly.

I just want to give hope to those going through it that things are fine once through it and not everyone suffers badly while going through it.

Jesus Christ, do you think people choose to feel awful in perimenopause? It isn't a choice.

Hopefully you will be lucky and have no symptoms at all. I think 15% of women don't.

Obviously you could maybe empathise with your friends who are going through tough times.es but I guess you don't want to do that.

OP I hope you don't turn out to be like the slightly younger female entrepreneur who fired me when I was your age because my peri-menopausal symptoms made it almost impossible to control my moods at work.

and by the way, I'v always taken plenty of exercise and don't drink excessively.

Well don't go sticking your head too far in to the sand...because it will come.
I am 57, have not been without a period for more than 12 months so still classed as peri-menopausal and have only recently started HRT.
I exercise (road cycle about 300km/week as well as gym and spin classes), work, have a greta sex-life and am still living my best life. I have had an easy ride so far...and I count myself lucky. So many women out there are having a bastard time with it.
You don't have any idea how it is going to hit you...I just hope that your friends have more empathy for you when it does hit...because they might be out at the other end by then... and won't want to hear you banging on about it either.

@Tulipomania that happened to me too. To be honest I hope the woman who had me fired has a horrific time when her time comes. I briefly snapped at her, immediately apologised and explained why but she went straight to the MD and told him to get rid of me. He said "how are you going to deal with your mental health issues?"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA OP!

That was me until 14 weeks ago. I was shrugging off all those smaller symptoms across the years and riding high in my career, health and social life.
Currently hoping I can keep at least one of those of those after an attack of complete brain fog, insomnia, fatigue and low mood. HRT is also not a walk in the park.
How utterly smug and lacking empathy you are.

It absolutely needs talking about MORE - particularly Peri
I felt like I was going crazy - It wasn't until I'd had enough of feeling 'funny' that I looked up all my symptoms and then I realised what was happening to me. I was upset and relieved in equal measures as I thought once you'd reached actual menopause then you'd pass through that within a few years with some/a few/all of the awful symptoms of it and then that would be that, done! I knew nothing about Peri, nor how long it can last....
Nobody tells you or warns you that you could (in my own experience) enter a life journey down a road that makes you feel unhinged, unwell and as far from your normal self as possible.
I've found a sympathetic GP but I'm being forced to do blood tests before being treated, as I'm 'too young' to be peri- menopausal which is dogshit! but I'm finally on the right track at the moment.
If I knew what things to look out for because women were better informed and talked about it with each other when my symptoms first started happening then maybe I'd have began the journey of getting help a few years ago when it all began aged 40.
I don't care about the looking older part - that's fine I AM aging and nothing will or can stop that but I just don't feel we should have suffer in ignorance/silence about the whole host of other bullshit that comes from fluctuation/decline/loss of female hormones - regardless of whether people want HRT or not.

I'll shout it from the fucking rooftops in the hope that I can help my younger sisters and friends too when their time comes to realise that they are not seriously ill, becoming severely mentally unwell nor actually going crazy because of the symptoms they may be experiencing.

Maybe if I had "just lived my best life" then the fibroids which made my life hell with the heavy flooding periods would not have happened. Was that where I went wrong?

OP, don't be so smug. Some women do sail through the menopause, others don't and need support. I hope you do sail through it, but you aren't even there yet by the sound of it, so you can't possibly know.

I get what you’re saying OP. I also know of one woman (my boss) who blames every work mistake she makes on the menopause. She’s actually a (not so) secret alcoholic. Gives people with genuine problems a bad name.

I'm fed up of hearing about the menopause but then I've been lucky and have had no symptoms other than my periods stopping, which tbh is a blessed relief. Mind you, I have insisted on HRT from my GP from the very start.

The other thing I'm fed up of hearing about is people talking disparagingly about their age. OK, its mainly women, but its sometimes sounds as if...they are apologising for being alive. Whats the point? You aren't going to change your age, if you are doing it to remind people that maybe you were slimmer or prettier or whatever when you were young then thats not really going to help people out much. I don't think men do this nearly so much. I think when I'm 80 or whatever, I'll be disappointed in myself if I spent many of my good years rambling on apologetically about how I'm not 20 any more!

I didn't worry about menopause at 47 either...but it's a major concern now at 55.

You don't think being a secret alcoholic is a problem? She's clearly got stuff going on, she may be annoying but a little empathy goes a long way.