When your partner is also a woman

The assumption that gets quietly broken

You might have assumed that being with another woman would make this easier. The understanding would be automatic. The empathy would be on tap. The body would be a known country to both of you.

For some couples, it is. For a lot of couples, it isn’t, and the disappointment of that can be louder than expected. Because the loneliness has nowhere to go. You expected to be understood. When you aren’t, by the one person you most expected understanding from, the silence is doubled.

You expected her to understand. When she doesn’t, the loneliness goes nowhere. It just sits between you in the dark.

When you’re both in it, at the same time

Two perimenopausal bodies in one bed is a particular kind of weather. Two sets of hot flushes. Two 3am wake-ups. Two moods, swinging on different timings. Two libidos doing whatever they are doing. Neither of you is the steady one this week. There is no neutral body in the house.

Some of this is unexpectedly companionable. You both know what 3am tastes like. You don’t have to explain night sweats, or the way clothes have started to itch, or why ten different things have suddenly become unbearable. There is a shorthand.

And some of it is exhausting. Two depleted nervous systems cannot really hold each other up. The temptation to compete starts creeping in. My night sweats are worse. My anxiety is worse. I’ve been the one carrying it this week. None of it is conscious. All of it can quietly hollow the relationship out.

What tends to help when you’re both in it

• Separate duvets. Sometimes separate beds. There is no shame in either. Two bodies regulating temperature in opposite directions cannot share a single set of bedding for long.
• One safe outside person each. Not just each other. Both of you need an ear that isn’t already drained. A friend, a sister, a counsellor, SAM.
• Don’t make it a competition. “Mine is worse” is the start of something neither of you wants. The body keeps the score, and there is no prize.
• Name what you need, not what she is doing wrong. “I need a quiet half hour” goes a long way further than “you’re being too much.”
• Read the same pages of this site, on your own, and meet in the middle. Some things land better when nobody is watching your face while you read them.
• Make one small thing yours, weekly, that has nothing to do with menopause. A walk, a film night, a swim, a meal you both still love. The relationship needs something that isn’t about this.

When one of you has been through it already

The partner who has come out the other side. She knows how dark some of the days got, and is now five years past the worst of it. She means well. She may also be the wrong audience for your hardest day.

“I survived, you will too” is not always what someone in the middle of it needs to hear. And sometimes the woman who has been through it has forgotten how bad it was, in the way most of us forget childbirth or grief or any other unbearable thing the body insists on minimising. Her impatience can sting more than a man’s confusion, because you were expecting better from her.

Her route through was not yours. The fact that she made it does not mean she remembers how, or that her remembering would help you anyway.

• Remind her, gently, that her route was not yours. Same destination, different roads.
• Ask for specific kinds of support, not understanding in general. “Can you do dinner tonight, I’m wiped” is more useful than “you don’t get it.”
• Let her be clumsy sometimes without it being a betrayal. She is rooting for you, even when she gets it wrong.
• If she has years of perspective, ask her what she wishes someone had said to her when she was in your shoes. She often knows. She just needs to be asked.

When neither of you has, but you can feel it coming

The partner who is years younger, or simply later to perimenopause. She is watching you and seeing her own future, and that is its own difficult thing. She may not want to know the details. She may have very little patience for what she perceives as you “letting yourself go” or “becoming difficult.” Some of that is fear, dressed up. Some of it is genuine impatience. Both happen.

• Say out loud what is happening. Not because she has to be your patient, but because not naming it leaves her to invent worse explanations.
• Don’t catastrophise her future at her. She doesn’t need to be terrified into supporting you.
• You may be the early adopter of this stage in your relationship. Someone has to go first.
• When her turn comes, you will be the one who knows. Save the kindness now that you will want then.

The medical bit nobody warns you about

GPs sometimes make assumptions about lesbians, bisexual women, and queer women that affect your care. The “no risk of pregnancy” line that quietly skips half a contraception conversation. The cervical screening that gets dropped because somebody assumes you don’t need it. (You do.) The perimenopause symptoms attributed to “relationship issues” or “work stress,” because nobody thought to ask about your hormones first.

Be specific. Say the word menopause out loud. Say what you are experiencing. If your relationship is relevant to the conversation, mention it. If it isn’t, don’t apologise for not mentioning it. You are entitled to exactly the same investigation, the same treatment, and the same time as any other woman, and you should not have to fight for it.

• If your GP feels uneasy or makes assumptions, ask whether anyone else at the practice has more experience with LGBTQ+ women’s health. Most practices have someone.
• The LGBT Foundation has menopause-specific resources and a helpline.
• Some menopause specialists (NHS and private) are explicitly LGBTQ+ friendly. It is reasonable to ask before you book.
• Cervical screening matters whether or not you have sex with men. So does breast screening. Don’t let any of it lapse.

Sex, touch, and intimacy when both of you have a changing body

The touch aversion and the muffled-feeling are real for same-sex couples too. With one specific twist: there is no “neutral” body in the bed. Two bodies, two sets of changing skin sensitivity, two libidos doing whatever they are doing, often in opposite directions on the same evening.

Some couples find this easier than mixed-sex couples. The bodies are mutual. The symptoms are mutual. The language can be more direct. You can say “my pelvic floor is wrecked” and have it understood without translation.

Some couples find it harder, for the same reasons. There is nowhere to step out of menopause when you go to bed at night. The whole house is hormonal.

• Sit against each other before you sit on top of each other. Proximity before intensity.
• Name the muffled feeling out loud, if you have it. “I love you. My skin has gone strange. It is not you.”
• Don’t assume that because you are both women, you should both want the same things this year. Two women, two perimenopauses, two different libidos.
• HRT for one or both of you, if and when it suits. Talk to your GPs separately and properly.
• If the deadlock has gone on long enough that the relationship is suffering, couples therapy that is genuinely LGBTQ+ literate is worth the money. Pink Therapy has a directory.

The world, still mostly, isn’t set up for you

The doctor who asks about your husband. The new neighbour who clocks your wife at the door and pauses too long. The friend who, twenty years into your relationship, still says “your friend” when she means your partner. The menopause leaflets that show a heterosexual couple holding hands at sunset.

In your thirties and forties you may have had more energy for correcting all of this. In midlife, sometimes you don’t. That is allowed. Choose your battles. Save the fight for the ones that actually matter to you.

You are not a footnote to a midlife built for somebody else. This stage of life is yours too, and you are entitled to find it written down somewhere, in plain language, with you in it.

And this site

This site assumes you are here, and that you are welcome. We will use “your partner” instead of “your husband” wherever we can. When we slip up, please tell us, and we will fix it. The For Partners section is written for any partner of any gender. SAM doesn’t assume anything about who is in your bed or who isn’t.

The leaflets will catch up eventually. Until they do, you are not the exception here.