Menopause madness

I am not proud of this story and it has taken me years to come to terms with it. I’m telling it now in the hope that women can become aware that this sort of thing can happen. Having said that I’m not making excuses. My behaviour was bad and it hurt people and I am still deeply sorry for that.

When all this happened, we lived in a very small village in Norfolk and I worked in a local cafe. My husband was running his own small business and our daughter lived with her husband nearby. I knew that I was probably approaching the menopause because my monthly cycle was all over the place. But at the time (25 years ago now), I had never heard of perimenopause and I had no idea there could be so many symptoms. I know now that my aching joints and headaches were probably both symptoms too. I never had depression, anxiety, mood sings, or hot flushes though, and certainly no vaginal dryness.

Anyway, I’m delaying getting to the main point. To put it frankly I became utterly obsessed with sex. I had never had a particularly high sex drive in the past so it should have struck me as a bit out of character but it didn’t. I started to think about having sex more and more until it became a constant loop in my mind. I was distracted at work by my fantasising and found excuses to disappear into the bathroom at home to masturbate. I’m blushing remembering it now. My husband and I had what could be described as a vanilla sex life and although I tried to entice him into bed more often he didn’t seem particularly interested in having any more sex than we already were. So, I went elsewhere. Only as far as next door though. 

The man that we had lived next door to in our little cul-de-sac for 11 years and who I had never been even remotely interested in before suddenly became the object of my desire. I couldn’t get him out of my mind, and one day I went round to ‘borrow’ something and literally threw myself at him. It became a regular thing and went on for 4 months until the inevitable happened. The woman that lived opposite us generally took great delight in causing trouble, but one day I bumped into her walking home from work and she stopped me. All she said was ‘You seem to have a lot in common with **** these days?’. I felt the colour drain from my face and my knees went a bit weak but I didn’t say anything. She raised her eyebrows, smirked and she walked away. You’d think I would have ended it wouldn’t you? I didn’t. I started climbing over the fence in the back garden so that no one could see me and just carried on. I truly feel sick writing this now and I honestly can’t justify or explain why I did what I did. It was like some sort of madness and I couldn’t help myself.

Of course, our neighbour had dropped a hint to my husband and he came home early one evening and saw me climbing over the fence to get back into our garden. When I saw him I knew instantly that there was no way I was going to be able to come up with an excuse. He packed a bag and left. I didn’t see him for 2 weeks. He answered the phone at work but wouldn’t talk to me. I did at least see sense at that point and ended the affair. My husband came home eventually and we had the most appalling few days trying to put things back together. In the meantime, our daughter had worked out that I had done something totally mad and refused to talk to me. To say I was ashamed doesn’t even begin to describe what I felt. My husband is a good man and our daughter is a lovely girl. Neither of them deserved what I did to them.

Eventually, we decided that the only way we could save our marriage was to move away from the village which we did within 6 months. My daughter stayed in the area but she heard the gossip and was dreadfully hurt by it. My husband and I slowly managed to patch things up and, although we are now in a good place, I can never undo what I did. About a year after we moved, it occurred to me that I hadn’t had a period since we moved and I hadn’t felt any mad sexual urges for ages either. It was like my old personality had reappeared and when I looked back I didn’t recognise or understand the person I had been.

Our daughter didn’t really forgive me for many years. It wasn’t until she became perimenopausal and did exactly the same thing that she realised what had happened to me. Because I had been so ashamed of my behaviour, I had never discussed it with my daughter so the changes that overwhelmed her were a total shock. Fortunately, she realised very quickly that she had made a terrible mistake and nipped it in the bud. When she confessed it to me, we had the first really honest discussion for years and it was cathartic in one way but made me feel even worse in another.

I wish I had discussed all of it with my daughter. Had I done so maybe she could have sought help before she made the same mistake as me.

I recommend honesty. Speak to your partner, your children, your friends, your colleagues. Obviously there are limits to what you say and to whom but if I had told my husband what I was feeling I’m sure we could have worked something out and saved ourselves so much heartache and humiliation.