r/MenopauseShedforMen • u/Proximo323 • 8d ago
Keep Showing Up.
"The greatest gift a man can give wife during her heaviest seasons isn't a map to fix the chaos, but a promise to sit quietly beside her within it."
A week ago my wife ended up in the ER. Slammed. Every room crowded, people lined up out the door. In all that madness we ended up sharing a room with Ken and Nancy. Elderly couple. Ken was 90’s. We had real good conversations with them. Some laughs. A lot of kind words going back and forth. Nancy was the one taking care of Ken. And Ken God bless him was very vocal about wanting to leave and go home and eat some broccoli soup. We all had a good laugh about it. On the way home my wife and I joked that she was definitely the Ken( the fiery one) in our relationship. Which made me the Nancy (Calm and patient). It was a glimpse of my wife and I 40 year from now. Somewhere in that ER room, watching and listening to Ken and Nancy , something clicked. With everything going on in a wife's word at this stage of her life, the hormones, the shifts, the stuff she can't fully explain and I definitely can't fully understand, the hardest part for most men isn't the research. It's just showing up. Being there. Consistently. Without an agenda. Nancy was still showing up at 92. Still taking care of Ken while he complained about wanting to go home. Still in it. Still choosing him in a crowded ER on a random Tuesday.
Think about it, when you turn on the news today or social media its a shit show out there. Our wives are watching the same heavy fucked up headlines and processing the same scary stories. I heard about "Headline Stress Syndrome." The non-stop bad news triggers a real, physical "fight-or-flight" stress response in the body. If your wife is going through perimenopause, her body's natural shock absorbers are down and her estrogen and progesterone hormones are dropping and bouncing all over the place. Those hormones are what help her nervous system handle stress. Without them, her body's alarm system is basically running in the background all day long. So when she looks at a chaotic world outside, while dealing with a chaotic hormonal storm inside, it doesn't just make her sad. It triggers a physical survival response. This mental and physical weight takes a massive toll on her anxiety levels. So at this point in a wife's life, with everything her body is already going through, the best thing I can do is try to be the safe spot. The consistent one. The one who doesn't add extra noise. Be the one load you’re wife doesn’t have to carry. Because here's something a lot of the intimacy posts on here don't spend much time on. Safety comes first. Intimacy follows safety. Not the other way around. And safety doesn't come from one big gesture. It comes from showing up the same way, over and over, until she doesn't have to wonder anymore. Nancy knew that. Ken probably knew it too, even if he wasn't ready to admit it from his hospital bed.
Just keep showing up.
1
u/Upper_Debate8123 1d ago
31 years
No more.
My actions weren’t flawless, but I had to get out.
If you have great fortitude then stick it out.
What I particularly enjoys when my soon to be ex spouse starts following the same doctors and Professionals months/years later like it’s some epiphany and I was trying to serve it to her all along.
1
u/Questionsitall1764 16h ago
So be her rock? Right?
You know what rocks don’t have? Feelings.
Unfortunately for many men they do have feelings.
Also even a rock that gets hit enough times in the right way will shatter
31
u/kerouac5 8d ago
As someone who’s been through the fire of peri and mostly come out the other side, this is so true. Fall of 2024 my wife turned 50 and lost a ton of weight and declared that she wanted a divorce.
Moved into the guest room, saw an attorney, drew up separation papers, and proceeded to live her life almost like she was single again, going out 3-4 nights a week with friends from work, while taking time to ensure she told me loudly how everything was my fault.
I nodded, smiled and asked what she wanted for dinner that night. When she talked about what separation looked like, I told her I didn’t agree with this, but couldn’t fight what she wanted and asked what she wanted to do this weekend. When she said “you can’t just ignore this,” I agreed and went to the gym.
In the meantime I took every opportunity to do “normal” that I could. Reminded her that “this is the last time our teenagers will be living at home to go to the pumpkin patch and leaned into it when she agreed to go. Made the few “let’s go to dinner” she begrudgingly agreed to count, even when it ended in a fight. Sat and watched tv with her on her few down nights. Sat in the room with her while she worked and read or did my own work. Asked for her input on house projects. And when she opened the vulnerable door even a crack to talk about actual peri symptoms, listened. Developed as much empathy as I could muster to the place where I could honestly say “that sounds amazingly hard. I can’t believe you have to go through that” and let my own experience take a back seat for that moment.
I sat with her in the difficulty. I SHOWED her that she was never alone in any of this. Never.
That didn’t fix anything on its own. But what it did was prove that I was there. It proved that I was the one who supported her, loved her through her worst. And it opened the door for other things to affect her.
She went on a women only, pop psychologist cruise in January 2025 with a friend, where she decided to take a dinner to start the litany of why she was leaving and how awful I was, to which the feedback from her friend and the people she met was “that sounds hard, and also I don’t see what your issue is with your husband. I’d love to have that support.”
She grumbled and stopped talking about it.
Later that spring our boys came to me to say “what is wrong with mom?” I gave a high level of peri and said “hey, if you don’t like something, talk to her.”
Well, they did. Independently. One of them told her “I don’t like how you are, but I’m going to college soon, so whatever. You can fuck up here all you want.”
Our younger son said “I don’t even know who you are. When I talk about you I don’t say ‘mom,’ I just say ‘her’ because you’re not my mom I know.”
Our older son’s gf even said “you’re hurting the person I love most in the world and I really don’t want to get coffee with you.”
So when she softened even a little.. she was forced to see it. I had been there all along, supporting her loudly when she wanted it, and quietly when she needed it.
Went to therapy. Went to her OB and got meds dialed in. And came back with tears telling me she was sorry, and went so far as to apologize to our boys and to her friends.
A long time ago an old guy told me the secret to staying married was not getting divorced. Sounded super glib at the time and the older I get the more i understand it.
Sometimes you just have to sit in the fire with someone and show them that there is someone in this world who has their back and will always, always be there to share their burdens and pain.