For some reason I worry that it might be offensive to admit this. Apologies if it is, I sincerely hope it isn’t: it’s a very real fear and I think I need to talk about it. Like the best horror films, I think this fear comes from the unknown. Or – worse – the partially known. I understand that menopause can give you vaginal dryness and hot flushes. I know that other changes happen as well, in your body and to your… I actually find it hard to write this down, so great is my terror at the potential loss of it… libido. I know enough about the menopause to understand that I definitely do not ever want it to happen to me. But I also know that it’s a privilege to go through. Ageing is a gift: it means I’m not dead yet. Bodies change all the time so we shouldn’t be frightened of change and… oh fuck. Sorry. Yeah. I can’t sugar-coat this, really: I am absolutely terrified of the menopause.
Note: this post is based off my experience as a cis woman, and conversations I’ve had with other cis women about menopause. Naturally many trans and non binary people will also go through the menopause, so while I won’t try to guess at your experiences here, if you’d like to share them I’d love to hear from you – please pitch me a guest blog!
Menopause: some symptoms
In recent years, some heroes in the public eye like Davina McCall have been demystifying the menopause, and I am incredibly grateful to them for talking so openly about something that for too long has been woefully ignored. However almost everything I hear about ‘the change’ scares the living shit out of me, and I am finding it hard to get to grips with this monstrous, all-consuming horror.
The physical symptoms sound awful enough: aching joints, vaginal dryness and pain, hot flushes and much much more. By the way, although people often laugh about this sort of thing (because older women are often a neat and easy target for a cheap punchline), I’ve listened to post-menopausal people talk about the agony of hot flushes, and how dismissed and belittled they feel when they ask for their needs to be accommodated: begging younger colleagues to wear an extra layer in the office rather than insist on turning the heating up to levels that are tantamount to torture, for example. I find it highly irritating when people dismiss the experience of ‘silly, hormonal women’, and I believe the women who tell me that hot flushes can annihilate your concentration, make you feel deeply nauseous, and generally throw a spanner into your life.
That symptom alone would be enough to have me absolutely terrified of the start of peri-menopause. That’s before you add in the possibility of vaginal dryness and outright pain – the inability to have sex as casually as I do now. I feel like I’ve only just got back into the groove of bareback sex after a period of singledom! Just as I relax into being able to slide onto my boyfriend’s dick at the drop of a hat, suddenly I have to start worrying that each and every fuck will require a helping of lube? And all the faff with hand towels and stickiness that entails?! What’s more, I hear that if the vaginal pain is bad enough… I might not be able to have sex at all!
Please understand me when I tell you this: I am not playing up my fear to make you either pity or laugh at me. This is very real and very present in my mind. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about the menopause, and dread the onset of the first symptoms that could upend my whole life.
Hormones, birth control and me
Note that this section contains brief but slightly graphic references to self-harm and suicidal ideation. Skip the final paragraph of it if you’d rather not read those.
When I say ‘my whole life’, that is not an exaggeration. Because the dryness and joint pain and hot flushes do not happen out of nowhere, they are caused by a significant …
…hormonal change.
This is where the true horror comes in. It’s the serial killer stalking me down the street late at night, or the vampire tapping on my window to trick me into letting him in. The reason I am so terrified of the menopause is that I don’t want to lose the cocktail of hormones that makes me… myself. That is one of my worst nightmares.
I truly believe that the mix of hormones which flows through my veins has a significant and noticeable effect on my personality. Noticeable to myself and to those around me. I know this because I’ve taken many different hormonal contraceptives in my life, and when those fuck with my balance, I have changed in ways I did not want or expect.
The birth control pill that I took during university was progesterone-only, I think. It was chosen so it wouldn’t interfere with some other pills I was taking to try and deal with excess hair growth on my neck and chest (I have PCOS). But the pills also clearly had an effect on my personality, because I found myself doing things that were wildly out of character. My mood was all over the place, and my decision-making was very different to how it had been before I started the pills. I once cried in Boots because they didn’t have the meal deal sandwich I had my heart set on. Which is kind of funny looking back on it but not so funny when you realise that not all my emotional overreactions during that time would have been so easy to spot and recover from. This particular pill turned me into an emotional wreck, and I suspect it might have been the cause a fair few tortured disagreements between me and my on-again-off-again boyfriend (though at least some of the blame probably lies at the feet of that on-again-off-again dynamic).
Who knows what’s to blame for this, though? That’s the scary part. Cis men I’ve known seem to find it absolutely fucking hilarious to make jokes about women being ‘emotional’ when their hormones are out of whack, but to me this is far from funny: there’s a cocktail of chemicals in my body that – when fucked about with – can disrupt my stability, causing anything from mild interpersonal friction to serious suicidal ideation. And this in turn often causes men I love to dismiss and belittle me, as if somehow I’m silly and hysterical when actually I’m battling significant physical and emotional distress.
Sidenote: cis men also have hormones as well as mental health crises and many other factors that can affect their emotional state and decision making. To me, it is far more irrational to believe that roughly one half of the population are acting entirely outside of emotion than to acknowledge that all of us have complex internal lives and emotional responses. But hey, what do I know? I’m probably just due on.
At other points in my life, birth control (or the swift removal of it) has caused such seismic changes as ‘literally making me feel like all my skin was itching, and I could not be touched.’ Extremely upsetting, although it has to be said: a very effective contraceptive. Another pill gave me wild mood swings that made me hate myself and feel totally out of control. About two months after I got the hormonal implant, I found myself sobbing in the clinic, begging them to take it back out. They thought I should wait a bit to see if I got used to it, I argued that if it stayed in much longer I might end up simply cutting it out of my arm. Dramatic? Sure. But rational. I maintain that response was rational. Only extreme mental health crises have ever made me feel similarly, and I would cut ten implants from my body without anaesthetic before I’d volunteer to feel that way again.
Who am I normally?
At the other end of the spectrum there is… normal. Me. Me without any additional hormones, on my (brilliant, wonderful, life-giving) non-hormonal birth control: the copper coil. It hurt like fuck getting my IUD fitted, and then swapped for a new one some years later, but I love this thing very deeply anyway. It is hard to articulate just how powerfully grateful I am that I no longer have to take hormonal contraception.
Yes, I still sometimes get mood swings, but they’re usually predictable and less severe than I’ve experienced in the past. The person I am right now, on the hormones that my body produces naturally, is someone I have spent my whole life learning to understand. This person has just, barely, in the last six years, started to make peace with her weird body (I get periods at extremely random intervals, but at least they only usually last a few days) and its physical needs (I need to have sex and/or masturbate, ideally both, on a very regular basis or I get sad). She has only just begun to grasp the idea that one day her body will cease to exist completely… now she has to face the idea that soon it might fundamentally change!?
Please… no! Spare me this horror. I will do whatever you like. I’ll burn down the haunted mansion. I will pick up a baseball bat and single-handedly fight off the zombie horde. I’ll put the fucking lotion in the basket. Just please please please do not make me go through the menopause.
One more big reason to be terrified of the menopause
I don’t think I’m unique in being afraid, that’s partly why I’m writing this. It’s why I write most of what I write: I believe there are other people with whom this will resonate who might get value from the chance to explore one of their darker fears. That’s partly why we enjoy horror, after all – right? If you’ve read this far, it might be because you want to sit with this terror, either for yourself or a loved one. You want permission to stare it down. I can’t promise that doing this will make that feeling go away, but sometimes the act of looking it directly in the face can help you gain a better understanding, and see some of the scary things as less apocalyptic than you originally thought.
Maybe we’re all this terrified of the menopause. I’m not special. I’m not different. But I am… oh God, fuck, Christ, shit, kill me kill me kill me… I am also a professional sex blogger. I don’t just enjoy sex like a hobbyist or love it like an enthusiast: I craft it like a fucking artist! I earn the money that pays my actual bills by dreaming up fun new ways to make the man I love bite his lip and give those sexy little whimpers… and then writing about it on the internet and recording it as audio. How many years have I got left of doing that, if the menopause takes a sledgehammer to my sex drive? How much time is left? And what do I do in the years after that? It’s not like I have a pension: I’m a professional sex blogger. The chance to make that weak, narcissistic ‘artist’ joke cost me the opportunity to have a real job and therefore stability and an income when I need to retire. But I have to keep fucking – and loving to fuck – or I’ll run out of actual money.
What if ‘the change’ makes me a different person?
I don’t want to end this post with that. Apart from anything else, leaving on that note implies that’s the worst possible thing to lose: money. The ability to use my libido to drive clicks and make that sweet sweet dollar. But although that’s a pretty heart-stopping menopause jump-scare, it’s nothing compared to my most intense worry…
The main reason I’m terrified of the menopause is that I think my love of sex is a fundamental, indivisible part of what makes me myself. Forgive me, this is such a wanky thing to say but… I truly believe that my lust is a foundational part of who I am. My essence. And if that changes then… who do I become next? What am I supposed to do with all this desire? This pleasure? This… fuck? Yes, that’s it: what do I do with my fuck, please? I have so much of it. It holds me together. It’s my backbone and my skin and my veins and my blood and my soul.
If my hormone cocktail is going to change drastically at some point in the next five years (or perhaps a bit more if I’m lucky – my Mum says menopause tends to come late in my family) then I genuinely feel such a gutpunch of abject despair we are no longer in horror any more. We’re in… tragedy perhaps? Romeo and Juliet are bleeding out; Leo DiCaprio’s sinking into the freezing North Atlantic while Kate looks on; Macaulay Culkin’s girlfriend is yelling about his glasses.
But no, this is neither a horror nor a tragedy: it’s just life. I am here, in a world where this happens to roughly half the population, and I happen to be in the half that has to deal with this hammer-blow. Menopause is literally called the fucking change. The change. What… do I do? How do I prepare? How can you prepare for your entire self to alter in ways that vary for each and every person who goes through it?
Thank you to these brilliant women
This is the sort of post that demands to end on an answer. A reassuring conclusion that takes the sting out of everything I’ve said to you above. And there’s definitely some light, for sure, thanks to awesome people who have shared their experiences so I can see what the future might have in store. I’m particularly grateful to the guest blogger who once wrote about how she enjoyed a sex surge during menopause: this is one I re-read with alarming regularity as I hope and pray and all but wish upon a star that it happens to me. Then there are other amazing people like my good friend Molly Moore.
Molly, like me, is a sex blogger. She and I are close – in age, opinion and outlook (we love fuckin’). In the last few years Molly has been writing some incredible posts about her experience of the menopause – the way it affects her, the steps she’s taken (HRT ftw!) and how physical effects of ‘the change’ have impacted her sex drive.
I recently interviewed Molly for my Patreon – please do come and join to hear the full thing, because even if you only chuck me a couple of quid so you can download the 2 interview files, Molly’s wit and wisdom is a treat that’s well worth your time. It’s a long chat and we cover a lot of ground: sex blogging in general, how to take a kickass sexy photo, some of Molly’s hottest stories from a smorgasbord of filthy life experience, and much more. I’d considered making a short compilation to promote the interview here, but then I realised there’s one part that’s so important I just want to share it in full. It’s the section where we talk about the menopause.
Here is my sex blogging hero and fierce, brilliant friend Molly Moore giving an unvarnished insight into her experience of it.
“Don’t be scared [of the menopause, of change in general]. I was scared. And while some of it has been awful, I guess you just have to embrace it and say ‘I learned something new about myself.’ And that is one thing I’d say to everybody: be open to learning new shit about yourself. Looking back over my journey, from starting to discover my inner slut to going on to discover my kinks, being open to learning something new about yourself is one of the key things about having a happy, good sex life.” – Molly Moore
I am still completely terrified of the menopause, but listening to stories from badass people who are going through it already helps me understand it much better. Just as seeing the monster in a horror movie often makes the whole thing far less scary. Even though the fear still thumps through my veins, it’s powerful to know that I’m not alone: better people than me have carved a path to follow.
And after all, as Molly says: going through the menopause is a privilege because ageing itself is a privilege. It means we’re not dead yet.
18 Comments
Thankyou for writing this. You are definitely not the only one thinking it!
Thank you! Glad I’m not the only one! I have had a few really reassuring stories (see Haiku’s below!) in response to this piece, which is definitely helping to ease some of my fears and I hope can be hlepful for you too <3
What an interesting, brave read. It’s great that there’s so much I more information and action about, and for, women who are struggling with menopause symptoms. On the whole it’s a massive force for good, but a downside is that it has slightly eclipsed the experience of those of us who had no trouble at all, and I wondered if there’s some value in hearing that? I, like you, couldn’t take the contraceptive pill without it making my moods unpredictable and uncharacteristic and (weirdly?) altering the sort of people and sex I’m attracted to. But for me menopause was a breeze. I’d be the first to try HRT if I was feeling unwell, but it was never necessary…and I though some advise taking it for other long-term reasons, I don’t because I feel great! My ‘self’ and my libido and my ability to act on it are entirely intact. Hope it’s not too Pollyanna-ish to point this out – wishing you a smooth transition to the next stage of YOU!
(Missing you and this community, but so glad to have dropped in today.)
ex @19syllables
Ohh so wonderful to see you Haiku! And YES this is absolutely the sort of thing I want to hear – knowing there’s a variety of experience that includes experience which might not be something to fear is very very welcome indeed. I am extremely grateful to you for sharing, thank you so so much.
The very thing you’re worried about happened to me in perimenopause. The vaginal atrophy was terrible and I ended up not wanting sex mentally or physically, which was a first for me – I couldn’t remember ever not being up for it.
However, thanks to an amazing nurse specialist, it was resolved. I was given pessaries and cream for my sore genitals and testosterone for the libido and crippling brain fog. It wasn’t a fairy story but there was a happy ending thanks to modern medicine. But I’ve got lots of friends who are absolutely fine and are rawdogging it with no meds at all, so I think I was really unlucky.
As a cis man, growing up, the only things I ever heard about menopause were that it meant the end of fertility and menstruation, along with the occasional sitcom joke about hot flashes that made it sound like a trivial problem. Never a word about sexuality and menopause. It was only when my former partner went through menopause that I began to look into it. And there’s more information in this comment thread than I found in medical advice websites that I’d read.
Thank you for putting into words every single last thing that terrifies me about menopause. When everything about the essence of “me” started fading, in spite of doing everything right, I found a practitioner at a cosmetic dermatology clinic, of all places, who took my symptoms seriously. Ran the right tests. And started me on HRT. At the age of 38. I’m 41 now and it’s been the best decision. The creeping feeling that my libido might disappear or my vulva wouldn’t be able to take a good solid pounding anymore was enough to override the worst of the night sweats to take seeking treatment seriously. I’ve finally accepted the fact my oozing sexuality is just part of me. I don’t want to lose it now that we’re finally integrated. Your writing always speaks to me on such deep levels, but this took everything percolating in my heart and nether regions and put it to wrenching eloquence. Thank you. Again.
As another cis man, I’m not sure I have much useful to comment here… I also knew relatively little about the menopause until recent years, when the media started talking about it more often. I’m not sure how old I was, but I can distinctly remember that I used to think ‘hot flushes’ were a joke – it was only when an older friend in the kink scene talked about how they were affecting her, that I realised they are an actual symptom that millions of women experience! (I thought, but didn’t say, ‘wait, you mean you literally feel physically hot? Oh, that makes more sense now…’)
Where I can sympathise though is on the loss of libido thing. Obviously not menopausal in my case, but I have definitely noticed that my interest in sex (never the highest to begin with) is lower than it was 10 years or so ago, and way lower than 20 years ago. I think of how much time I used to spend looking at porn, and how I virtually never do it these days. But that’s normal for men too! And it doesn’t mean I’ve turned into a different person – no more than the extent that we’re all gradually changing over time. Even if you lose your own libido entirely, or experience other unpleasant symptoms, you’ll still be you.
Fellow PCOS, I’m also delighted people are talking about menopause so we all can be more aware. I would like to echo that a not insignificant number of people have an ok time through and after. As a society we need to acknowledge that some folks have a ghastly time, and make sure support, understanding, and accommodations for those who would benefit from it. But that’s not necessarily the norm, the more we talk about it the more everyone can understand, and there are medical options to help if we are the unlucky ones. Personally I can’t wait to hear your kinky take on all that the future holds!
Hey, Girl on the Net! I found your blog way back in July when I decided to create a sex blog and was researching what was out there. Yours was the first blog I came across. You inspired me to start my own sex blog, despite the barriers I knew I’d come across. The most memorable text I read on your blog was something to do with the poasibilty of someone finding out the real you, or your mum found your blog. You apologised, but carried on anyway.
I knew at that moment that I’d take the plunge and start mine too. Thank you for this!
Back to your blog post, though. I’m also terrified of the menopause. My fear is more around the cold sweats and brain fog. Mainly because I recently started taking the contraceptive pill where you don’t take a week off. I was bleeding none stop, I would cry at any point that was emotional to me, and went through night sweats. I really thought I was premenopausal! Things have settled down now, but your post has reminded me about this.
I totally understand! Here’s hoping menopause becomes an open topic we can all talk about.
Much love,
Lexi xx
I’m not going to launch into a long spiel about my menopause journey because it would just be a trauma dump and I think my individual experiences might be too individual to be of use, BUT… although I’ve yet to find a balance with systemic HRT that feels wholly helpful, I am wildly excited about how great topical oestrogen is. I had been having a very glum time with vaginal dryness and topical oestrogen has completely changed everything. My cunt is lovely and gooshy again and my orgasms are faster and stronger than they have been in years. Many doctors will apparently only prescribe it if the main symptom is incontinence but many will prescribe it freely and it really works. I’m here to share the gospel of topical oestrogen with you! It’s the absolute best.
I am 51 and on the cusp of menopause itself, waiting to see if I have another period, or if I’ve started the year after which they say you have officially gone through it. My experience with sex and the change was that I lost my sex drive in my early 40s, which at the time I put down to perimenopause. Then it came roaring back in my late 40s when I developed a huge crush on someone and for the first time in my life started really exploring what my sexuality is as a result of that. With hindsight I think that the loss of desire was at least as much to do with no longer being sexually attracted to the person I was with, and with suppressing my kinks, as with hormones. Once I was having sex with someone different it was like night and day.
Whilst I’m not trying to suggest that Positive Mental Attitude can cure everything – clearly it can’t, and I’m really not trying to minimise people’s bad experiences – nevertheless my advice based on my own experience would be to try to keep fantasising and wanking, being curious about sex and thinking of yourself as a sexual being, and remember that physical symptoms like vaginal dryness can be treated. It may help. Also, one positive thing about the change that people don’t always talk about but which seems to be quite common based on me and my friends, is that you just really stop giving a crap about what other people think, which is absolutely bloody marvellous. Personally I feel like I am becoming more myself, not less.
HRT was transformational for my wife until she got diagnosed with breast cancer. She managed to get through that, even though she’s a nipple down now – but no HRT for her. It’s hard on her, and problematic for me (as well as suppression of desire I don’t actually fit any more) – but she’s alive.
Worry about the things that can kill you first.
Based on the amount of sex I had with different women over 50, I’d be tempted to say that the libido loss is a myth – although I’m well aware there’s a selection bias here :-) My wife (so far) hasn’t experienced any heat waves or dryness or libido change, on the other hand we no longer have to use condoms because she’s no longer fertile, we can go bareback (that’s a plus).
ah GOTN I hear your worry and anxiety! Finally sex-positivity and sexuality is a thing that is being talked about, and accepted so much more than in my youth (I’m 68), but along with that goes more information and talk about menopause. And of course it’s always the horror stories that we hear about!
My libido was always super high, I was the slut about town long before it was “fashionable”!! I didn’t even think about menopause, it wasn’t talked about. I did indeed get some lowering of libido, but it was gradual, so not too noticeable. I also had some hot flushes, but they were manageable. Then I got breast cancer (all good now!) And then over the next couple of years, with the gradual reduction of hormones in my body, vaginal dryness and atrophy began. That was when I started to worry! Fortunately with the help of my amazing gyne, and oncologist, I started using topical vaginal estrogen cream. I couldn’t use regular HRT due to having had estrogen positive breast cancer. The topical estrogen was a game changer! Then I discovered an amazing vaginal moisturiser, made by the Yes company, which is organic, PH matched for vaginal use, no preservatives, and is a long-lasting, fast-acting moisturiser. It’s also approved as a prescription on the NHS! HUGE game-changer! Just as you would use moisturiser on your face or body, this works and helps so much.
Additionally, I would say that all the sorts of things that are suggested for spicing up a draggy sex relationship, help so much in spicing up libido during and after menopause. For example, I’ve discovered kink in the last few years, and oh yeah that’s made me a different person! And with age and experience, generally comes more confidence. Every single new lover I’ve had in the last few years has commented on how sexy, confident, attractive, I am. I have so much more confidence in expressing my needs and desires, and urging the same thing from my lovers. It’s made sex so very much better now, even than in my raging hot youth!
There is hope!
Thanks for sharing.
We can’t know exactly the future, but your mind detected a risk, menopause. Or in a broader sence, you will grow older. What a great step to write about it on your blog.
This proves you’re not only a sex blogger in a narrow sence, since these kind of articles are not erotic. Since change in life is a fact, maybe this side and talent of you could grow. I’m looking forward to it.
How will you very specific kinks change when you grow older? You seem very creative to, so maybe you will innovate. Great material for a column in e.g. a womans magazine.
(And as a responsible man with a wife in menopause and a quite boring sex life my dirty side would still enjoy a story about a hard mouthfuck )
Your heartfelt writing on this is so touching, and I’m really glad you’re aware of how the transition will begin, meaning the peri-menopause.
I had no idea, and that’s the really sad thing. I had peri-menopausal symptoms, and I had no idea what was going on. Walking from one room to another to find something, and in between forgetting what I was looking for. That was actually the biggest scare for me, this sense of losing my mind.
Owning up to it feels shameful, but it shouldn’t and that bothers me so, so much. We shouldn’t feel ashamed of a perfectly natural thing that happens to half of us. But I did. I did not want to share this monster that I felt was directly connected to my vagina. But it’s not though, is it? It’s not shameful, it’s not connected to our vaginas, and it needs to be talked about more.
I’ve drafted a post on this and I’ll share it soon.
For me it was not all negative either though, in fact my peri-menopausal journey has shaped how our sex-life has developed. My most very amazing fall-out effect prompted our open-relationship journey. It also prompted me to start writing erotica, which I shared with a close friend, who recommended submitting a story to you, which launched my blogging career. So, thank you, peri-menopause!
I’ve researched this (of course, being autistic ;-) ). This symptom is most likely a direct result of my autism. Being an autistic woman, I have higher levels of the testosterone hormone running around in my body than your average neuro-typical person. And people with PCOS also have higher testosterone than those without. When testosterone overbalances the other hormones during peri-menopause, this heightened libido can be a very real side-effect, though there’s no direct research stating it that I could find. Another annoying point; this under-research in female health when it comes to menopause.
Plainly put, and as I understand it, high testosterone counter-balancing other hormones at certain points in your cycle can cause extreme horniness. My sex-drive, normally on a very healthy level *cough* went into overdrive.
Seriously, depending on which hormonal state my body is in, I have days at a time where I cannot do anything but think about how my sex is feeling, and reacting to everything going on around me in a heightened daze of gorgeous, oddly controllable and very lovely, heady lust. I could go on about this, and I will when I publish my blog on this.
I so very much hope this for you x
I can totally relate. What’s also not helpful, there’s so little helpful writing about it which goes beyond the usual medical or comical descriptions.
After some research, I found Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life by Darcey Steinke, which I can thoroughly recommend!
Fingers crossed and keep talking about it with everyone!