Dear DSO: Uh Oh... Yet Another Question About Menopause | Relationship Advice for Men

All right folks, we have another Dear DSO entry on the website and you can submit your own story to dadstartingover.com/dear-dso. And if it's a good story, a good question, I will answer it here in video format. Before we get started with today's video, if you could please give me a like, give me a subscribe, give me a follow, however it works, wherever it is that you're watching this, man, I would greatly appreciate it. That would help me out a ton. Thank you so very much. Now, moving on to today's entry. This one comes from, they didn't give a name, blank. Says submitted by blank, so we'll call him Mr. Blank. The subject line is, uh, Old in Number Only, Wife's Life Stages. Interesting. He says, I met my wife in our early 40s, one kid each, both grown, we live alone. We have both been re-single for a while, or we had both been re-single for a while before getting together, but I knew she had a much higher body count than me. No big deal. We were both professionals. He is a PhD. They are financially independent, and she was and still is the easiest relationship. They married 3 years in, just after she started menopause. At age 43. Okay, first of all, let me time out here. Just started menopause. There is a process that's actually before full-blown menopause, and that's called perimenopause, which usually for most women starts in their early 40s, and it takes upwards of like 10 years, and then they start going through the full-blown menopause. So I don't know if you mean she's going through the full-blown menopause at age 43, or perimenopause starts at age 43. But I continue on. He says, we were extremely sexual, role-playing. She allowed me to lead, and then her menopause manifested as hot flashes only, and then zero libido. Fast forward as we approach our mid-50s, and my libido still feels like a teenager, and hers is dead. We hold hands, we kiss, we travel, I cook gourmet meals, we hit the gym, but we have sex 4 to 8 times a year and only when she's had alcohol. I tried, quote, The Talk a couple of years ago, and she admitted that maybe having so many varied sexual experiences, including one-night stands, friend with benefits, male-female-male, and female-male-female, etc. Oh, this girl's a goer. That she's just okay to be done with sex. We are open. So I knew about some of these, but I didn't expect that answer. She tells me to just do what I want, quote, when he puts parentheses starfish sex. Starfish sex, for those that don't know, it's a common internet thing I've seen where the woman just lays there like a starfish. You know, picture starfish just laying there dead and basically like, go on, get it over with, do what you want to do, dude. But I want to be desired like I once was. The marriage is phenomenal in every way possible, but I don't like my feelings of loneliness and resentment. I miss bonding achieved through sex. Well, Mr. Blank, if you don't know, if you've seen my stuff, pretty damn common. As I often say, there is a— you know, I've done videos on this. And it didn't go over well, meaning I got a lot of negative feedback, a lot of negative feedback, mostly from women. Okay, all negative feedback from women. Um, the menopause thing is a touchy subject, especially coming from a dude, a medically untrained dude. Uh, if it helps any of you out there, if you don't know, I am married again for the second time. My wife is in fact a medical doctor, she's a surgeon. She's pretty well versed on the world of hormones and hormonal treatments. I'm pretty well versed in the world of hormonal treatments for men. But with that being said, I'm not a medical professional in any way, shape, or form. Just happen to be married to one. That means absolutely nothing. So with that being said, menopause is relatively complex. You'll have one group of women, dare I say the majority of women that go through the act of menopause, that will say, that their libido was greatly diminished, if not completely wiped out, by the process of menopause. And if we, you know, look at it very pragmatically, it makes perfect sense. It's Mother Nature's way of saying, I'm going to put you through a process that will make sure that you don't make babies anymore. And much of the origin, the genesis of libido, is basically Mother Nature's way of saying, go make babies, for both men and women. You still have Mother Nature yelling at you, Mr. Blank, saying, dude, you can go still make some babies if you want. Well, Mother Nature to her says, you can just put your baby-making uterus up on the shelf. It's useless now. That's really crass of me to say, but you know where I'm getting at. In other words, it's not her fault, dude. This is how she's wired. She's gone through menopause. God bless her. That's— us men cannot relate to the horrors of that. For some women, it is awful. The hot flashes, the feelings, the depression and everything else. For some women, they're like, "I didn't even know I was going through it. Everything was fine except I kept— I had, you know, weird spotting or my periods were all goofy. And so I went to the doctor, I was worried, and it's like, 'Yeah, honey, you're going through menopause.' And like, 'Really? Otherwise I feel great.'" Their libido's still going and so forth. They're lucky in that way. I think that's a relatively small portion of women. So your plight is— I mean, if you ask any doctor or therapist or whatever, they will say, "Yeah, I've seen this several times just this week alone." which is man in his 50s, 60s, 70s sometimes, uh, will say, still got it going on, still feel it. Erectile dysfunction is not even a thing for a lot of these men. So physically they're able to, mentally they're able to, everything in their body is saying, go get them, tiger. And they, as you can see by your words here, you're obviously very much in love with your woman. And, uh, but she sounds like a great person. You guys have been really working well together as a team. But there's just that one crucial mismatch component that for us men is huge. I don't think women— a lot of women can properly appreciate just what a huge piece of the puzzle, you know, that makes up us as a human being, our sexuality is. And when we find a woman that we are emotionally, intellectually bonded with, also bonded in that way, All the puzzle pieces are together. Holy shit, this is amazing. And we're ready just to sign over everything to be with this person. And then via Mother Nature, via whatever it may be happen, life circumstances, that giant piece is taken away. Now everything's incomplete. And as I often say, society or social groups and everything have done a really good job of telling us as men, hey dude, suck it up, such is life, cool it with the horny pervert attitude. "Here's your pornography, here's all this other stuff to help appease you. Please don't go crazy and just start mowing people down in shopping centers or whatever. Cool it, dude, with your very dangerous libido." That's not very nice. Our sexuality as men, as healthy men, there's nothing, absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. But that doesn't help your situation, does it? Me patting you on the head saying, "Hey, you're normal, everything's good." You're like, cool, great, but what do I do about sex? I don't know, Mr. Blank, what you expect to get from me out of this other than, hey dude, welcome to the club. There's a lot of other men in your shoes. It's a very common plight. You are fundamentally mismatched. She is saying, her body is saying biologically the sexy machine is shut down. It doesn't sound like she is willing to bridge that gap in terms of, you know, hormone therapy, other kinds of therapy, um, try to see if there's some kind of responsive desire out of this, getting into the act and so forth. It seems like her resolution for all this is just lay there and say, get it done with, mister, and then we can move on with the rest of our awesome life, please. That's not good. You don't feel bonded to her. You don't have that sexy animalistic urge met, that need met. And there's nothing wrong with those needs. I'm here to tell you, high five, you're a dude and you're a healthy dude. Congrats to you. Unfortunately, you are mismatched with the woman you love. Sucks, buddy. I get it. Now, you go down this road and right off the bat you started with, she was way more sexually experienced than I was. And I was wondering where you're going with that. I'm like, well, you're kind of at an age where you're kind of past that. That's kind of like 20-something-year-old who's just now getting into the long-term relationship world. That's the kind of stuff I hear from them. But from a, you know, 50-some-odd-year-old who has a partner who's postmenopausal, to hear a lot of sexual partners I was like, what? But I can see where that comes back into play here in the story where you say, where you sat her down and said, hey, postmenopausal wife sure would like to have more sex. What are we going to do about this? And her response, unfortunately, you know, if I sat her down, I would have said, sweetheart, that's like the worst thing you could have possibly said. She said to you, I had a whole bunch of sexy fun in the past. It was all kinds of kinky stuff with all kinds of awesome people. I had a blast. Maybe I had all that fun and I got it out of my system. Maybe that's why I don't want it anymore. Oh God, I mean, the worst possible thing she could have said to a dude. Oof, ouch, that's gotta hurt. Hey, I had a whole bunch of fun, you weren't included, sorry buddy. Uh, but I don't think that's fair. I don't think she's telling the whole truth. I think— I don't know why she would say that, to be quite honest with you. She's a postmenopausal 50-some-odd-year-old woman. Of course her libido is going to be diminished, diminished, if she's like the majority of women in her shoes. No need to go into your, uh, history of your sexual escapades other than maybe to scare you away? Maybe to see just how faithful and true you are to the relationship? Can she in fact scare you away with these truth bombs she's dropping on you? I don't know what the purpose of that is other than to stick the knife in a little bit further and say, um, I mean, let's think about it. She's saying not only is my body shut down, I don't want to sex anymore, but hey, on your way out the door, buddy, let me stop you. I was really kinky and sexy in the past. All right, have fun. I mean, that's awful. So unfortunately, that's got your head spinning, right? Like, does this have something to do with why we're not doing her sexy pat? No, I don't think it has anything to do with it, be quite honest with you, because you had the honeymoon period that was, you know, in her early perimenopause years, I assume, uh, was really, really good. Now you have things working against you. You have, um, as you may or may not know from listening to my stuff and stuff by other content creators like Dr. Psych Mom, Esther Perel, and so forth that when the honeymoon stage ends and you're comfortable and you're secure and everything is smooth and you're living together and all that stuff, the libido in a lot of women just naturally starts going down. That excitement's gone. And men all over the world report, what the hell happened to my wife? Can I get the honeymoon stage gal back again? And so you have that, and then you have this blanket of menopause over everything. And then she's telling you, yeah, in addition to that, I kind of— I don't know if she's saying she misses the old sexy times. Whatever, we can just kind of set that aside as far as I'm concerned. One thing that kind of shows, um, maybe some of this is anxiety-based is the fact that she is able to do the act, uh, with the introduction of alcohol. That's really, really common. I hear that from a lot of guys, that my wife is really over-the-top sexy when we, you know, a couple times a year— New Year's, birthday, whatever it may be, anniversary We get liquored up and then we have a holy shit whiz-bang time in the bedroom. And I'm like, well, alcohol is a really potent and successful anti-anxiety drug. Some people take it and their social anxiety goes bye-bye after a couple drinks, and they're schmoozing with people and they're talking. They're a lot more, you know, active in a social setting. And people say like, I like this version of Bob. Um, and then he sobers up and he clams up again, and there goes the social anxiety back again. Uh, that anxiety may also prohibit it, like for a woman, for example, from feeling comfortable doing things and being vulnerable in the bedroom. Get her a couple of drinks in her and she loosens up and she's able to do the deed. So your postmenopausal woman is able to do the deed after having a few drinks. That's something to explore. Maybe that's something to sit down with a therapist about. Wifey over here, when the anxiety drops, she's able to get the job done, but when she's, you know, stone cold sober, forget it. Something to work with. Maybe that's an avenue to explore, but I certainly wouldn't further explore this she was hypersexual in the past thing. I don't know where that line of thinking will get you, quite honestly. If you're not comfortable with that, if you're not comfortable with a partner who was hypersexual in the past, then you can't rewrite the past. It is what it is. That's who she is. Do you like it or not? Is it a turn-on, a turn-off? That's up to you to decide, buddy, what your values are, and go with it. But, um, it sounds like you have a good thing. Other than the sex. How many times do we hear that? But as you know, that's a big component. And maybe you want to explore stuff outside of the relationship. I've heard that quite a few times, dude, where that's an understanding between the man and the woman. Woman's like, I know I closed up shop, I know you still have needs, I'll turn, you know, the other cheek, so to speak, or I won't look. I don't want to look, I don't want to hear about it. I know you go do your little thing on the side, you go out every Friday night, every now and then, whatever. I don't want to hear about it. You do your thing. And that is kind of something that a lot of women saw in their families. Grandpa had that arrangement, dad had an arrangement. It's, it's more common than what you think, especially in other cultures outside of the US. I'm presuming you're in the US. Um, France, Italy, for example, that's not unheard of. So a lot of ways to skin a cat here, brother. I wish you all the best. This libido disparity between the 50-something-year-old man and their postmenopausal wives, I You know, I've been talking about this till I've been blue in the face, how common it is, how much I hear about it. And it doesn't go over well with a lot of people to talk about that, but it doesn't— excuse me— but it doesn't change the fact that it's a pretty real big phenomenon and it's a problem. And, uh, I, uh, I'll throw this out again: hormonal replacement therapy, it's not for everybody. It's not the boogeyman that a lot of people think it is. For some people Godsend, changes everything. The women say, hallelujah, my health is better, my blood pressure is better, my osteoporosis risk is down, I feel active again, and holy crap, I want sex again. Men report a lot of the same thing with testosterone therapy and so forth. Something to look into. But for a lot of people, the— this notion that it gives you cancer and so forth, that really seeped into the consciousness or, or the the zeitgeist, if you will, that, that message got out there for some reason to the general public, and it just seeped in. And like, women all over the world, when they hear hormonal replacement therapy, go, cancer! And that is just not true for the vast majority of you. It's something to look into. Look into it with your healthcare provider. I say that and I grimace because a lot of them, like your, your general practitioner, your primary care physician, they won't know dick about hormonal replacement therapy, nor should they. They have to care for everything else. They should refer you to a specialist, endocrinologist, or there are clinics all over the world that specialize in this kind of thing, especially in the US. There are clinics— you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a hormonal replacement therapy clinic. Check it out, ladies and guys, for that matter. What can hurt? All right, thank you so much, Mr. Blank, for writing in. I greatly appreciate it. Uh, this was a good one, so, uh, wish you all the best, buddy. Thanks a bunch.