I can't talk about peri-menopause with my partner.

[Anon543210]

I'm a 41 year old (f) and been having lots of peri symptoms for the past year now including brain fog, irritability, hot flashes among a few other symptoms. I haven't been to the doctors because a lot of the symptoms I can manage without medication.
Now here's whats making me really angry and I want to know who is BU I'm prepared to be told I am.
So yesterday my partner asked me if I could put this little gammon ham in the oven for him in the morning when I got up so he could have gammon sandwiches when the football started at 3pm, so I said to him last nignt before we got in bed please remind me when I get up in the morning and he said he would all fine....or so I thought.
Anyway I get up this morning and obviously I'm not thinking of gammon ham as soon as a open my eyes, I get up and start getting on with my morning have a cup of tea, take the dog out for a walk etc. It gets to 3pm and he pipes up "what happened to my gammon ham?"
I said "you never reminded me and obviously I forgot" he said "you're a grown adult you shouldn't need reminding, at least that's what you say to me sometimes" I said "thats different I'm going through peri and suffer with brain fog, you know this" he raised his voice slightly and said "you haven't even been diagnosed by a doctor, its just you coming up with excuses" I said to him "I don't need to be diagnosed it goes off symptoms and do you really think I want to be this way?" He gets so stubborn when it comes to anything to do with womens health which i just usually brush off as him being a typical man amd not really understanding womens health. But today this has made me so so angry I basically told him that hes made me feel like a right horrible cow now forgetting to do that for him and him bringing it up when it was too late. I also offered to do it now but he said its too late now and we will have it another day. I know this also gets said a lot of mumsnet but he is genuinely a good and nice man in every other aspect its just this 1 area that is now starting to grate on me so much that I'm actually irrationally questioning my whole 12 and a half year relationship which obviously once I've had a chance to calm down I will realise I was just too angry but at the moment I'm not speaking to him because I'm that angry its also my time of the month at the moment so I'm guessing thats heightening my emotions.

YABU.

You want to do the cooking - so that side of things isn't an issue.
You are aware you are quite forgetful at the moment. So, if you want to remember to do something you could either have put a note in the kitchen so you saw it when you got up or put a reminder on your phone, or on your Smart Speaker or whatever you use.
You promised to do something and you forgot.

Own it.
It's not the end of the world, but believe me, things are quite likely to get worse before they get better, so sort yourself out some strategies to help yourself (obviously not just to cook for him, but for everything you need to do for yourself over the next 10 - 15 years.)

He said "you're a grown adult I shouldn't have to remind you, at least thats what you say to me"
I told him thats different he doesn't have peri hormones causing him to have forgetfulness and brain fog amongst many other symptoms. But he wasn't having it thinks I don't care about him enough to remember and if it was something for me I would remember which isn't 100% true I forget things for me all the time.

I’m not going to get into the ins and outs of your ham situation, but honestly I do think a lot of men really do struggle to understand perimenopause.

Mine is one of the lovely ones, but he’s a doer not an empathiser or someone who gives a lot of thought to what’s going on inside someone else. I do remind him what is biologically going on with me and he understands it theoretically but he can’t relate to it. I wonder if it’s maybe because men don’t have much experience of their hormones/bodies transforming and affecting them in such dramatic ways. Sure they go through puberty, but after puberty we get periods every month, and then many of us experience pregnancy, and then perimenopause. In comparison men’s bodies are pretty stable.

Set the reminders in your phone immediately regarding the thing you wish to be reminded of. I do this with all appointments. I am so sorry to hear of the loss of your daughter. I hope you can get to the root of your physical symptoms.💐

You're 100% right and I do own it when I forget but I also know I don't and am not doing it on purpose or out of not caring about him enough to remember.
I do like the idea of writing out reminders and such but and I'm not being deliberately stubborn or anything here but what if I'm that forgetful I forget to write reminders?

What is this new thing, peri menopause? Never had it labelled in my day. 😄

You set the reminder the minute the situation arises

I think the thing is, if you do all the cooking for years, it becomes expected. My husband does all of the cooking and prep in our house and as a result, I’m pretty useless and expect him to wait on me. His favourite thing in the world is cooking and looking after me, but it’s made me really lazy.

That’s not really the issue.

He needs to step up and support you if you’re experiencing peri issues. Yes, it’s a bore for everyone but it’s just one of those downsides of getting older for some women. He needs to do better.

I think there are two things here:

1. You asked him to remind you and he agreed. He agreed to take on the responsibility for remembering this and then had a go at you for something that was his fault. That's crap.

1. Perimenopause shouldn't have even featured in this discussion, what's his 'excuse' for forgetting? But I agree that if you're experiencing symptoms it's incredibly dismissive of what you're going through to a. say you need a diagnosis for it to be true (when you clearly know more about this than him) and b. To minimise your experience. That's really rude.

I think I'd be sitting down with him and saying that normally he's your rock so you're surprised that he's not being more supportive of something that you're genuinely struggling with. I'd say I'm assuming it's coming from a place of him not understanding rather than not caring so you want to share some info, and go through some details with him eg 60-90pc of women suffer brain fog, and examples of what this might look like.

Ironically irritation and disconnection from partner can also be a symptom

I can see it has already been answered, but you do it when you think about it (that's another time where everyone having a phone on them all the time makes life easier now than it was back in the day).
But I also keep a pile of paper / card in the kitchen and a pen so have what is needed to write myself notes when I think of things in there.

At work I kept a pad of post its and a pen and would stick them on my laptop.
If it is about something to get when I am out I leave a note on the floor by the front door.
I have pen and paper by the side of my bed for when I think of things once I am in bed.
I am a fan of pen and paper as I didn't grow up with a phone, I imagine with you being that much younger, a reminder on your phone or smart speaker will come more naturally to you.

That gammon would be going straight up his arse. Really can’t be dealing with men like this. He sounds so bloody rude!

Lucky you!

Men should really think what would happen to them if they lost all their testosterone, maybe then they would be more sympathetic.

Oh so he refused to remind you despite you asking, knowing youre struggling with your memory. Waited until there was nothing you could do before rubbing it in your face that you forgot something becuase it's usually him that forgets.

Yeah sounds like a great bloke. He'd rather spite himself than be helpful.

Yes same here.

I know that fear and share it. But I find that I can usually make iit work by literally setting ann alarm the minute I make an arrangement . So rather than asking DP to remind me, I would have got my phone out and done it. It means fewer problems if not none.

There’s forgetting, which you both did and then there’s being a dick about and blaming someone else, and making them doubt themselves and feel like shit, that only he did.

I'm afraid you're at risk of setting yourself up to fail here.
You haven't even tried reminders and you've already decided you might be too forgetful to even use them?
Just make it as soon as you think of the task. He says can you do X, instead of saying "remind me", just grab your phone and set an alert.
I don't have "peri" but I'm really busy some days and at risk of mental overload so I make very tedious lists with stuff like exactly what time I need to start getting dressed, what I need to pack for work, where my coffee mug is, what emails I need to send while on train, etc.

Also you say he said "you're a grown adult you shouldn't need reminding" because that's what you say to him? Sounds like you're not very sympathetic when he forgets stuff either?

No-one does it on purpose, why should he get chastised for it but you get a free pass, when you both did it by accident?

Even if your forgetfulness is due to a health issue and his isn't (and don't forget he's working hard and might have stress related mind fog too, even if it doesn't have a fancy name like peri), it still shouldn't be a reason to have a go at him if it's an accident should it?

eg if you broke a mug because you have arthritis and he broke one just by accident, you wouldn't kick off at him and expect him to be nice to you would you?

It sounds like she's also sometimes a bit of a dick to him when he forgets stuff, though
"He said "you're a grown adult I shouldn't have to remind you, at least thats what you say to me" I told him thats different he doesn't have peri hormones causing him to have forgetfulness and brain fog amongst many other symptoms."

It is not ok to have the attitude of its ok for me to forget things because I stck a label but you are not allowed too

I forget things a lot i own it and I expect my husband too we are both grown adults

It's been labelled as such since the 1960s but the public conversation about it has been much louder for the last 5 or 6 years. I wish that loud conversation had started earlier as I was a few years into peri before that happened and it made so much sense of what was going on.
I'd been under the impression that you hit menopause and then all of the symptoms like hot flushes happened, so thought I had a good few years to go. Once i understood that the mad shit mostly happens during peri, and how long peri can take, a lot made sense.
OP it's really frustrating that your husband doesn't seem to believe you when you're telling him what's going on with you. It doesn't matter if it's peri, early onset dementia or something else altogether - for whatever reason your memory is fucked at the moment. He just needs to believe you, accept that and work with you on solutions. PPs are right that reminders are your friend here. Set them as conversations are happening. He also needs to take responsibility too. If he knows your memory is currently bad then he needs to set his own reminder to ask you to put a bloody ham in the oven for him.

He’s a twat. Tell him to do one.

I was an absolute nightmare to live with before I started HRT. My marriage was on the rocks and I reached a very dark place indeed. It all sorts of crept up on me and became debilitating. I feel absolutely fantastic now, it's really been a miracle. I'm so much calmer and more level, my energy levels are great (the testosterone has been great in this respect), the cognitive benefits have been remarkable. I'm actually feeling better now than I have in years. The weight I gained has all dropped off and I'm able to train (strength and running) with the same intensity I did in my twenties.

Brain fog can be severe enough to mean you can’t even do this sometimes. It leaves my jeans before my phone has even unlocked or before I’ve picked up a pen, my brain fog has me forgetting the words I’m trying to write and then someone distracts me and whatever I was doing has totally gone. I struggle to figure out how to navigate the UI of the app even though I have used it daily for decades. I genuinely thought I had dementia.