WTF Is Menopause
WTF is Menopause — The Playbook Men Never Get, a series unpacking the science and real-life changes of menopause to help men show up with confidence, empathy, and understanding.
By 2030, over one billion women worldwide will be in menopause. That’s not a hot flash. It’s a global shift in biology, economics, and relationships. For context, that’s three times the population of the United States. If women in menopause formed a country, it would be the third-largest nation on earth.
Most men couldn’t tell you what menopause actually is. If that’s you, you’re not alone. The difference between perimenopause and menopause trips up plenty of smart, caring men. But here’s the good news: you’re here, learning what matters most, and I’m here to help you show up in the right ways.
The Forced Upgrade
Menopause is the body’s forced upgrade. It arrives on its own schedule, without permission, and it reshapes how the system runs.
The official definition is simple enough: no period for 12 consecutive months. That is menopause. But the storm usually starts earlier, in the long run up called perimenopause. Think of it as puberty’s chaotic sequel. It can last four to ten years, marked by hormone swings that make daily life unpredictable.
Quick hormone primer: estrogen supports bones, the heart, the brain, the skin, vaginal function, and energy. Progesterone balances estrogen, helps with sleep, calms the brain, and steadies mood. When they fluctuate, as they do in perimenopause, the ripple effects are everywhere. Estrogen instability drives hot flashes, irregular cycles, and mood swings. Falling progesterone takes away its calming buffer, which makes everything feel sharper and harder to manage.
Menopause is not a single moment. It is a transition that begins years before the final period and carries lasting effects long after.
The Stock Market Correction
Menopause feels a lot like a stock market correction. You knew the steady growth could not last forever. Then volatility hits. The question is how you respond, panic and blow up the portfolio or rebalance and adapt.
Here is what that correction looks like up close. Hot flashes and night sweats that turn her into a furnace overnight, and sleep that disappears with them. Brain fog where names and appointments vanish. Mood swings that are not irrationality, but volatility. Sexual changes, desire dipping and comfort shifting, not about you, but about biology. And fatigue. Imagine running on three hours of sleep for weeks. You would be cranky too.
Four out of five women feel menopause symptoms. For about a quarter, they are severe enough to derail daily life. Translation: you will notice.
And yet most women go in unprepared. A United States survey in 2021 of women ages 40 to 65 found that nearly three quarters were not treating their symptoms at all. Almost half did not know the difference between perimenopause and menopause. One in five waited over a year before even getting assessed by a doctor. A third had never been formally diagnosed. Puberty gets a playbook. Menopause does not.
Why You Do Not Know This Already
There are three big reasons.
- Medicine has neglected menopause. Only about 20 percent of OBGYN residencies cover it, so symptoms often get brushed off as stress, depression, or just aging.
- Culture has kept it silent. We glamorize puberty and pregnancy, but menopause is treated like a punchline.
- Like women, men were never given a guide. Most were simply not taught what to expect or how to respond.
The result is predictable. Women think they are losing their minds. Men think their partner has suddenly become angry or distant. Neither recognizes the real issue.
Relationships and Risk
Here is a fact worth caring about. Divorce rates spike in midlife, especially in the years around menopause. It is not the only factor, but ignoring it is naive. Sex changes. Emotions swing. Sleep disappears. Those are stress tests for a relationship. Fail them and you pay the price in lawyers, custody battles, and a second mortgage.
The men who do better are the ones like you because you are here. They know it is not personal. They adjust expectations. They subscribe to this substack. They find ways to talk about it without sounding clueless. And their relationships survive.
Your Role
You are not a doctor. You are not a hero. You are a partner.
That means paying attention. “I have noticed your sleep has been rough. Want me to take the kids in the morning”
It means not minimizing. Never say “it is just hormones.” That is as dismissive as telling a drowning person “it is just water.”
And it means sharing the burden. If she is up half the night sweating through sheets, you can handle dinner or unload the dishwasher.
A useful tool comes from Brené Brown. In her conversation with Tim Ferriss, she explained how she and her husband check in by saying where they are at out of 100. Some days she might say 20 and he covers the other 80. Other days it is reversed. The point is not to always be at 100, but to be honest about where each of you are and adjust together. In menopause, that kind of check in can stop resentment before it builds and remind you both that this is a shared load.
Menopause Math
Awareness > Ignorance
Empathy + Patience > Fixing
Shared Burden = Stronger Bond
Simple rules. Get them right and your relationship gets stronger. Get them wrong and you pay compounding interest.
What to Remember
Menopause is not a single event. Perimenopause is where most of the chaos lives. Symptoms are biology, not personality. The transition lasts years, not months. You do not need to fix it, but you do need to understand it.
Bottom Line
Menopause is coming whether you like it or not. Pretending it is not happening does not make you strong, it makes you unprepared. The men who win midlife are the ones who learn, adapt, and show up. That is the playbook you will find here.
If this helped you see menopause differently, share it with someone who needs the wake-up call and leave a comment, I read them all.
Useful resources:
Article: https://www.businessinsider.com/brene-brown-tim-ferriss-50-50-rule-marriage-debunk-2023-6
Podcast and transcript: Brené Brown on the 50/50 myth and the “out of 100” check in