Could menopause lead to a sexless marriage and divorce? It did for TV host Ulrika Jonsson, as she writes in frank first-person article. When menopause took its toll on her — impacting her libido, memory, sleep and weight — she was hopeful her husband of 11 years would be supportive and help her rebuild their intimacy. That didn’t happen. In fact, they had sex once in eight years and eventually divorced.
In writing about how much menopause threw her for a loop, she heard from women across the world who thanked her for her honesty and shared similar experiences. Menopause had greatly impacted not only them, but their romantic relationships.
Why?
There’s a lot of attention paid to how puberty impacts young people, their sex lives and sexuality. Puberty is a normal biological process we all go through — it isn’t pathologized. But when it comes to the next big hormonal change that women face? Not so much.
Could it possibly be that’s because it only impacts women?
But it doesn’t — it impacts our romantic relationships, too.
‘Fixing’ menopause
Menopause causes lots of changes for women. But, as author Gail Konop writes, when you search for answers, you end up getting links to things like vaginal dryness, vaginal rejuvenation and hormone therapy. Why do we see the natural biological process as a problem that needs fixing, she wonders. All that does is help perpetuate the many myths about menopausal women — especially about the loss of libido, which is not true for all women — and the “narrow, negative cultural view of women and menopause and the shame surrounding it.”
What we really need is understanding and education, not only for us but also for our romantic partners.
When it comes to menopause, “doctors are not helpful,” says Philip M. Sarrel, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive services at the Yale School of Medicine. “They haven’t had training, and they’re not up to date.”
It’s par for the course, says The Vagina Bible author Dr. Jen Gunter, who is writing a book about menopause. “A lot of women’s anatomy has been neglected, a lot of women’s physiology, a lot of women’s symptoms have been neglected.”
Perpetuating myths
So we have millions of women and their romantic partners at a loss of ways to keep intimacy alive at a time when we often crave it the most. Unfortunately, while there are many myths that unnecessarily diminish older women’s sexuality, we barely hear about how many older men experience erectile dysfunction and how that impacts their romantic relationships.
Another problem with the myths we have about menopausal women is that the emphasis is almost always on vaginal intercourse. As lovely as that is, it is not the only way people have sex and are intimate with each other. And connecting in those other ways often leads to — surprise! — intercourse.
We have an aging population, and boomers — who created the sexual revolution in the 1960s — are not going to live their golden years as their parents did. A desire for sex and intimacy is not going to go away.
We are on the verge of having 50 million postmenopausal women by 2020, according to AARP. It’s time to change the narrative.
Want to learn how to talk to your partner about intimacy? (Of course you do!) Read The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels (Seal Press). You can support your local indie bookstore or order it on Amazon. And we’re now on Audible.
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