The mental health of women dealing with menopause has long gone under-reported – a new study commissioned by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) has found almost two in three women over 50 struggle, but nine in 10 of those affected seek no help to cope.
Andrea Newton was one of those women. It was during her menopause that she realised she wanted to end her marriage of 22 years. “It wasn’t the cause of my divorce, as it had already been an unhappy marriage for some time,” she says. “But it was definitely the catalyst.”
As her hormones shifted, so did her perspective on her husband. “It impacted my tolerance, my emotional capacity, and what I was willing to put up with. That was enough for me to say one night, ‘I’ve had enough. I’m done with this. Enough is enough.’ Had I not been menopausal at the time, I don’t think I would have been quite that bold. Everything I was going through mentally and physically, it made me realise, ‘I don’t need this shit.’”
Did Andrea, now 59, understand what was going on at first? “I was 49, and I wasn’t sleeping, I was feeling a lot of self-loathing, a lot of anxiety, and a slow, creeping sense that I was losing my mind. I put it down to being a busy, working woman, running my own business, doing lots of stuff. I thought it was probably just stress getting on top of me.
“I started to feel very depressed, and ended up on diazepam, and other heavy duty stuff, and it wasn’t lifting. My GP kept telling me I was too young to be menopausal, that this was anxiety, and that I was now on the right medication. But the more I was on, the worse I felt, and started to think I was truly losing it.
“I also thought that everyone thought I was stupid, a burden, that they wanted me to go away. Then I started to look at my relationships through this lens, too.”
At the same time as the menopause kicked in – and nobody in the medical profession identified that that might be the root cause of her depression – she also become an empty-nester. Her son was off to university. “This was another thing that lifted the veil on the marriage, because now this child we had in common was out of the house. I looked at my husband and thought, ‘What, just you and me for the rest of my life? Absolutely not.’”
Andrea, who lives near Liverpoool, is one of an increasing number of women filing for divorce in mid-life – just at the time that menopause tends to hit. The law firm Stowe Family Law refers to the menopause as “a divorce danger zone”, given that divorce rates in the UK peak between 45 and 55 years of age.
Farhana Shahzady, a family lawyer at Beck Fitzgerald, has seen the role that menopause plays in some of her case: “If one sees the pillars of marriage as communication and intimacy, I have in my divorce cases seen a lot of women withdrawing from their spouses because of menopause-related communication issues of anger; feeling worried, anxious.
“A lot of husbands are very confused by this. A lot of women in that age range – who find that the menopause may have affected their sex life – find that their husbands are having affairs, and women are being fairly unforgiving about that, and realising that this means their marriage is over.”
Shahzady conducted research in 2022 with hormonal health clinic Newson Health, and menopause tracking app Balance, asking 1,000 women across the UK about the effect of menopause on their lives. She found that seven in 10 women (73 per cent) blamed the menopause for the breakdown of their marriage, with 67 per cent saying that it increased domestic abuse and arguments.
Of course, the arrival of the menopause does not automatically spell the end of a marriage – many of the women spoken to for this article said that HRT, or therapy, or other treatments, saved their relationships from the strain of the menopause and other mid-life pressures, while others came out from the experience feeling more together and committed than before.
Yet what is becoming clear is that the menopause, and massive effects it can have on women, can stretch a marriage to breaking point. Dr Judith Joseph, a psychiatrist and author of High Functioning, sees “an undeniable link” between menopause and the breakdown of relationships.
“It causes changes in the brain that impact mood, sleep, and thinking,” she says, “and then all of these things impact your identity. With menopause, you’re getting challenged on both fronts: emotionally, you may be more irritable or anxious, and then physically, it might be more challenging to connect with your partner.”
Family lawyer Farhana Shazhady says the law profession needs to take more account of menopauseDuring the menopause, Andrea’s sense of self was destroyed, and her work –management training, which meant she had previously been confident and happy to stand up and speak in front of crowds of people – took a hit.
“I thought, ‘Why can’t I do this? Why can’t I pull myself together?’ My GP was at a loss about what to do – HRT wasn’t so known about then – and I spent about six years in a state where I desperately needed help. My mood was all over the place, I was completely emotionally dysregulated. I was given higher and higher doses of antidepressants – they didn’t help at all.”
She feels her husband was unsympathetic, lacked understanding, and it only fuelled the already existing tension and difficulty between them.
Now that Andrea feels well again – after some trial and error, the right HRT dose is what pulled her out of despair – does she regret ending her marriage? If she had received the right help earlier and suffered less, might she and her husband have survived?
“I have no regrets about getting divorced,” she says. “But I do regret how I handled the breakdown and the divorce. I was not in my right mind to accept the settlement that I did, and I did it against the judge’s recommendation. The judge actually said to me, ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing? I need you to sign a disclaimer that confirms I’ve told you this is not what you should be accepting,’ but I just felt so unwell, I wanted it all gone, to be done with it, for it all to be over. I became suicidal, feeling worthless, and a waste of space. Now I look at that time and think, ‘How on Earth did I get to that point?’”
As part of her research, Shahzady also asked family lawyers and judges across the UK about their understanding of the menopause in the cases they handle. She found that 81 per cent were failing to understand or recognise the impact of menopause and perimenopause during divorce and separation. She also found 65 per cent agreed that women were potentially disadvantaged in terms of financial settlements, by a lack of understanding within family law about the effect menopause might be having.
“Women seeking divorce are often experiencing the menopause, and are therefore potentially on the back foot when it comes to legal proceedings,” says Shahzady. “Their physical and mental health is affected, and I see them not do terribly well out of the divorce. The financial aspect is the really worrying thing.
“Menopause can also affect women’s work, so it can be a perfect storm. If your marriage and your work fails, you may well be in financial straits. And lawyer fees are expensive. There’s a very strong financial aspect to the menopause, which we don’t talk about enough. The legal profession has been slow to recognise the effects because we’re a very traditional profession.”
Andrea Newton says: ‘It impacted my tolerance, my emotional capacity, and what I was willing to put up with’What’s clear, from talking to experts, is that it is a difficult area to research because there is a fine line between pathologising and over-medicalising the menopause, and giving it the attention it deserves. Yet 33 million women in the UK will experience it – and in vastly different ways, so surely it deserves some attention after centuries of being ignored.
For Anna*, 57, from London, divorce from her husband of 20 years became an appealing prospect once she began experiencing symptoms of perimenopause in her late 40s. Busy with two children and a catering business, she put her marriage issues down to her loss of libido, meaning that she felt increasing distance from her partner. “But I really don’t think it was down to the menopause itself,” she says, “and more about the way my husband showed minimal empathy and understanding towards the changes I was experiencing. I also started to question why, even though I was the main breadwinner, I was also doing so much around the house, while he barely did anything.
“He wasn’t a bad guy, he was a decent enough – if not a brilliant – dad, but I felt I wanted more out of the rest of my life. I felt like my rose-coloured glasses fell off, and the things that I’d found difficult about him already, just became extra clear. I came to the conclusion I’d be happier co-parenting than living with resentment towards him in my home. I had friends ask me whether I really wanted to be single again, that dating would be hell, and so on. But I had a serious, overwhelming desire to live on my own with my children, and no husband.
“Yes, divorce is no picnic, but four years on, and I’m glad I did it. I do feel a kind of liberation. We have a decent relationship now we aren’t married, and menopause helped highlight to me all the shitty things I swept under the rug.”
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For some people, divorce may be the best option, but medical experts and therapists tend to advise against making life-altering decisions at particularly fraught times of live. Alice Wilson, a BPAC-accredited therapist in Bristol, said: “With menopausal symptoms that are particularly intense, women can enter a fight-or-flight mode, and there is often an element of sleep deprivation, too. I advise women to talk through their symptoms with a professional, and push to get the help you need, before making life-changing decisions.
“I am not advocating staying in an unhappy marriage and I’m also not suggesting that the feelings brought on my menopause are not real, or are to be dismissed. Menopause coincides with a time when often children are leaving home, or the feeling of ageing becomes more prominent. It can be a time for people to make big changes and realise that they want something different now. But if you are struggling to cope with the menopause, the important thing might be to get yourself some rest, and proper support and help, before deciding whether something like divorce is a step you want to take.”
This is also the advice that Hayley*, a stay-at-home mother of three in Cardiff, would give, because although things reached a low point in her 19-year- marriage during the menopause, things are looking better now.
“I suggested a split to my husband when I was going through perimenopause – although I didn’t realise that this was what was happening – as I was feeling miserable with him,” she says. “I felt so low, the children were growing up fast, and I was feeling like I didn’t have much confidence left. Me saying that really spooked him, and it forced us to talk things through.
“He hadn’t realised I was struggling so much in general in our marriage, and that this was a tough time in life for me. I have now been on HRT for a year, and I’ve also had some therapy, and I can see the bigger picture. We’re not a dream marriage or anything – he drives me nuts, sometimes – but we made changes for the better and I do think that leaving would have been the wrong thing to do. I would have regretted it.
“I am just much more honest now about what I will and won’t put up with, and he doesn’t take me for granted the way he used to. I also try to harness my anger in different ways, and am taking it out in him much less, which helps, too.”
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A decade on from her divorce, Andrea – whose job involves going into workplaces to encourage conversations about difficult topics – recently ran a menopause session for men.
“Guys don’t tend to get an opportunity to ask the questions that they want,” she says, “because people will think they’re stupid, that they should know better. It was one of the liveliest sessions I’ve ever had, and what was really poignant for me was that at the end, a guy came to me and quietly said, ‘I think you just saved my marriage.’ He said he’d seen his friends’ marriages fail, and now his wife was just starting to behave differently.
“Menopause can impact every area of your life, but above all, it might make you see your relationship in a different light.”
*Names have been changed
Whatever you are coing through, you can contact Samaritans by calling 116 123 or emailing jo@samaritans.org
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