If you ask my husband, or perhaps even my adult children, they will tell you that I have changed. They might whisper that Mom has “lost the plot,” or that I’ve been corrupted by social media algorithms feeding me radical feminism, or that I am simply having a midlife crisis. They look at me—a woman who was once the peacemaker, the smoother of edges, the endless well of patience—and they see a stranger.
They see a woman who has suddenly become “selfish,” “cold,” or “intolerant.” Why am I buying my own diamond ring, which I have so long desired?
They are wrong. I haven’t lost my mind.
They are wrong. I haven’t lost my mind. I have simply lost my estrogen. And with it, I have lost the biological mandate to abandon myself for the comfort of others.
I am fifty-four years old. I am standing in the doorway of the last third of my life, and I am looking at the man I have been married to for twenty-five years. For the first time, I am seeing him without the soft-focus filter provided by my own biology.
People talk about menopause like it’s a joke, a punchline about broken thermostats and mood swings.
They talk about the hot flashes and the brain fog. But they miss the massive neurological and hormonal earthquake happening beneath the surface. For decades, my body was marinated in a cocktail of estrogen and oxytocin. These are the bonding hormones. They are nature’s sedative. They are the chemicals that help women tolerate stress, smooth over conflict, and override their own discomfort to keep the tribe together.
Oxytocin is the “tend and befriend” hormone. It is the chemical that makes you look at a man who is acting like a petulant child and think, I should help him soothingly, rather than, I should walk out the door. It is the biological imperative that whispers, Keep the peace. Absorb the shock. Swallow the irritation. It’s love.
But here is the cold, hard data that nobody wants to discuss at the dinner table: eventually, the supply runs out.
Most days of the week, my family remind me of how fat I have gotten! How I used to look, and why I am not trying to be thin again.
I ask myself that question today, buying a new top, because the wardrobe that sits behind closed doors belongs to a woman 18kg lighter.
I Am Leaving
When a woman hits menopause, that chemical bridge collapses. The estrogen drops. The oxytocin recedes. And suddenly, the ability to fawn, to placate, and to absorb emotional instability vanishes. It’s not a choice I made one Tuesday morning. It is a physiological eviction of the woman I used to be.
For thirty years, I was a shock absorber. That is the part most men—my husband included—do not want to hear. For the entirety of our marriage, I held the emotional load. I regulated the temperature of the house. If he was stressed, I became softer. If he was angry, I became smaller. If he was chaotic, I became organized. I anticipated his needs before he knew he had them. I managed his moods so our children wouldn’t have to. I smoothed everything over, making his life work, making us work.
I called it love. I really believed it was love. But looking back from the clarity of fifty-four, I realize a lot of it was just “fawning.” It was a survival response. I was biologically programmed to keep the connection safe, even if it meant suppressing my own reality.
Menopause didn’t create my dissatisfaction with my marriage. It simply removed the buffer that was hiding it.
It’s like the lights suddenly came on in a nightclub at 3:00 AM. When the lights were low and the music was loud (and the oxytocin was high), everything looked fine. But now the house lights are up. I can see the sticky floors. I can see the cracks in the walls. And I can see that I am the only one holding a broom.
So, when I look around my living room now, I think: I’m tired. I’m done managing this. I can’t keep carrying both of us.
This is the moment where men get confused. They say, “But you never complained about this before!” or “Why is this a problem now?” They feel blindsided because the contract changed without their signature. They are right; the contract did change. My biology rewrote it.
My biology rewrote it
I am no longer numbing myself. The shield is down. And this is where the tragedy happens for so many couples, including, I fear, my own. If a partner has never learned how to regulate himself—if he has never learned to contain his own emotions, manage his own stress, or lead himself—the contrast becomes unbearable.
When I was full of estrogen, I could compensate for his lack of emotional maturity. I could be the bucket that caught his leaking roof. Now, the bucket is gone. And he is just dripping water all over the floor, wondering why I’m not cleaning it up.
This is why you hear so many women my age say, “I just fell out of love,” or “I need to find myself.” It sounds like a cliché, but what we are really saying is: I no longer have the biology to survive an uncontained relationship.
Menopause is a truth serum
Menopause is a truth serum. It strips away the pretense. If the relationship only worked because the woman was absorbing the instability, biology will eventually collect the bill. And let me tell you, the bill is expensive. The cost is the marriage.
I look at my husband, and I see a man who confuses control with leadership. He thinks being the “man of the house” means being the loudest, or having the final say. But he is wrong. Masculine leadership isn’t about control; it is about regulation. It is about being a solid object in a chaotic world.
The men who survive this chapter—the husbands who don’t get served divorce papers in their fifties—are the ones who don’t get louder when their wives stop fawning. They get steadier.
When I stopped soothing him, he should have learned to soothe himself. When I stopped managing his schedule, he should have stepped up. Instead, he panicked. He felt the loss of my emotional servitude and interpreted it as a loss of love.
He didn’t realize that my “love” was largely labor, and I had simply retired from the job of managing him.
I crave steadiness now more than ever. My body is in flux; I am changing every day. I cannot be the rock for him anymore because I am trying to find my own footing on shifting sands. I need a partner who is a container, not a spill. I need a man who can stand in the storm of my transition and not make it about his feelings of rejection.
But he can’t do it. He never learned how. He spent decades relying on my hormones to balance his psyche.
So, am I walking away?
So, am I walking away? Maybe. The statistics say I likely will. The data shows that women initiate the vast majority of divorces in this age bracket. We don’t do it because we want to destroy families. We don’t do it because we are cruel. We do it because we are finally awake.
I am looking for peace. I am looking for a life where I am not responsible for another adult’s emotional state. I have spent my youth and my fertility in service of others. Now, I have this fire in me—this clarity—that demands to be honored.
If he cannot meet me here, in this place of truth, then I will have to go alone. Because the alternative is unbearable. The alternative is to pretend I am still that soft, accommodating girl who could swallow anything. But she is gone. She dissolved with the estrogen.
I am Gracie. I am fifty-four. And for the first time in my life, I am not afraid of being alone. I am only afraid of staying in a house where I am expected to be the insulation for a man who refuses to build his own walls.
This isn’t an insult to men. It’s just the math. It’s the biology. And for the first time, the math has to work for me.
You must be logged in to post a comment.