Divorce and Menopause

There’s this movement on Social where dudes are advocating for women’s rights. Our right to govern our own bodies, our right to be free agents, our right to paid labor in the home. It’s all very progressive and it’s very nice of them, too. Handsome, young-ish, fit, they want to remind us that we are powerful, that the narcissists can’t get us, and that men, heretofore, have been remiss in thinking that they themselves were the greater sex. I follow them when they say something meaningful. Eventually though I end up unfollowing a lot of them because somewhere along the way they just get it wrong; they miss the mark, say something well, kind of offensive. One guy was talking about vaginas as if he knew them and I was like, um, no. Another guy came on, shirtless, talking about women’s vulnerability. Insert puke emoji.

Look, I’m not male bashing, I promise. What I’m trying to say is that no one, except for the women who are going through it, know what this time in our lives is like. Here we are, a bunch of Gen-Xers, raised to be fiercely independent, driven to the point of working ourselves into the ground, able to ignore our own pain with an air that can only be called apathy. And we got married under the same pretense as every woman in every generation before us got married—we were programmed to think that our purpose was deeply tied to finding a husband and raising kids. Ok, and look, half of us have been able to make that work. About 50% of all first marriages are happy ones, to someone with whom we have been able to grow, who feels like a genuine partner in this one, precious life. Soulmate, maybe, but definitely a good person, enough to stick by each other, work through the hard stuff and take some nice vacations together. The other half of us at some point were like, what the fuck, this sucks, this person is a man child, whatever, this guy is B.A.D-bad and I gotta get out of here. And the point at which we usually have this realization is when we are entering the fiery hell of perimenopause.

Let me talk briefly as the healthcare provider that many of you know me to be. For 22 years I’ve worked as a licensed acupuncturist and practiced functional medicine for the last 10. People come to see me at the end of their rope, when conventional medicine has failed them. Lately, my practice is filled with women at some stage in their menopausal journey. And while everyone’s symptoms are wildly varied, there are some that are consistent across the board. Hot flashes, sure. Insomnia, anxiety, check. The other one though is dissatisfaction with their marriage partner. That one I talk about with at least one woman every single day.

Maybe it’s a part of the process, maybe these women, like when the proverbial clock started ticking to make babies, are tuned in to some other clock at this stage in their lives, one that gives less fucks and tolerates less bullshit. Some genetic lever pulled, some cellular process unfolded, now we look with scrutiny at the person we thought we’d love forever. And it can be a very painful time. Our bodies and brains are less reliably ours. The things that used to work to get us to sleep, to lose a few pounds, to calm our busy minds, they simply do not work anymore. We start to become selective about how and with whom we spend our time, because both our time and our energy become more precious commodities. We look for meaning, for connection, and for peace in ways and in places we didn’t think to look before. And, maybe most importantly, we are evaluating the life we’ve built thus far while simultaneously looking ahead to evaluate what on this path needs a legitimate slash and burn.

What I hear from most divorce coaching clients is that they, in some way or another, deserve better. Their partner’s patterns of behavior have gone largely unchanged, and marriage has become a place where they feel unsettled, unhappy, and yes, even unsafe. Depending on the level of struggle in their homes, a lot of women (but even my male clients, too) are longing for a level of security that they thought they would get from the marriage, but either it was there and now it’s gone, or it never panned out that way in the first place. But just like we’re longing at this stage of life to feel comfortable in our own bodies, we’re also hoping for some more meaning from our relationships, so we feel comfortable in the life we’ve built, too.

I don’t necessarily have any special advice for this time in our lives. Not anything that differs from the things the influencers aren’t already trying to get you to do on your own, regardless of the state of your marriage. You want to get strong and healthy; you want to eat right and exercise and get enough sleep. You want to gain control of your finances, know where your accounts and investments are and how they’re doing; know your collective and individual spending habits. You want to get support, too; get a new therapist if you’ve been circling the drain with the same one feeling stuck, develop a spiritual practice or join a meditation group (like this one). Nothing you don’t already know. It just depends on how deep of a hole you feel like you’re in at this point, and how hard the climb out will be. But this is what menopause is all about really. If it were comfy, we’d all get complacent, and nothing would ever change.

It’s estimated that two-thirds of all divorces in the US are initiated by women, and the current stat is that 36% involve people over 50. The unfortunately coined, “Gray Divorce” speaks to the feeling we’ve been describing here, that women typically carry the relational work of the marriage, and that marital strain overlaps with this specific time in our lives, namely because it lowers our tolerance for the dynamics we previously just pushed through. Frankly, there’s nothing wrong with noticing that the bar has raised, that you expect and deserve to be treated with kindness, with respect, and that things in your lifelong partnership like sharing the workload and the emotional heavy lifting should be balanced. You should both want to to treat each other well and be treated well. You should both want to grow together, and to allow each other to grow separately, with friendships and hobbies and exercise routines. And if that’s not happening, and you’ve tried everything in your power to make it happen, then it’s understandable why at this very moment, with your heart pounding at 3am from that glass of wine you let yourself have and your hot flashes raging, you want to burn it all down.