Marriage and Menopause

Menopause took the best part of our marriage, and for years, neither of us understood what was happening. We used to plan hotel weekends, cruises, and romantic getaways around our sex life. Physical intimacy, flirting, and sexual connection were a huge part of who we were as a couple. Then perimenopause changed everything. Judy began experiencing vaginal dryness, painful sex, and a dramatic loss o...

Why are some long-term couples still genuinely interested in each other after years together? In this episode of the Marriage and Menopause Podcast, Judy and David talk about what has actually kept their long marriage interesting. Not generic relationship advice. Not a list of rules. Just the things they really do that keep them connected, attracted to each other, and still excited about building...

What actually changed our bodies in our 50s? For Judy, it started with getting her hormones addressed so she could finally feel more like herself again. Then Judy and David started strength training together, lifting heavy three mornings a week, focusing on protein and macros, using GLP-1 medications with their clinicians, and paying much more attention to what their health numbers were actually t...

What happens when you spend your whole life raising your kids to leave…and then they actually don’t need you anymore? The empty nest is something you know is coming. You raise your children to become capable adults, build lives of their own, fall in love, raise families and need you less. That’s the whole point. Nobody really tells you what that feels like when it actually happens. In this episode...

What happens after menopause stops being the crisis and you finally start asking: What do we want the rest of our lives to look like? Judy is almost 56. David is 58. And neither of us is interested in quietly shrinking our lives because we’ve reached our 50s. Perimenopause and menopause changed Judy’s body, brain, libido and identity. They changed our marriage too. For years, David waited for his...

What happens to a marriage when menopause changes a woman’s sex drive, her body’s response to touch, and even whether she wants to be kissed, but her husband has no idea why? For more than 2 years, David sent Judy essentially the same email every Wednesday or Thursday: "The weekend is coming. Here’s what I thought we could do."  Why? Because asking his own wife if she wanted him had become miserab...

Sleep and menopause is the thing nobody warned us about. For two years Judy woke up at three in the morning. Not most nights. Every single night. And falling asleep got hard first, an hour or more of lying there waiting, before the 3am waking ever started. Ask any woman in perimenopause what time she wakes up and she'll tell you three. It's the same hour for all of us and nobody has ever explained...

Menopause brain fog took the one thing Judy never worried about losing. She taught for twenty two years and did math in her head faster than her students could do it on paper. Then she started standing in doorways trying to remember the sentence she walked down the hall to say. In this episode we talk about what brain fog actually is, and it isn't forgetting. The information is still in there. You...

Menopause joint pain took eight years of my life before a single doctor said the word hormones. I was forty four when my shoulder locked up so bad I couldn't lift my arm to put on my own bra. David had to dress me. The orthopedist called it frozen shoulder and said it was probably my diabetes, and then everyone stopped looking. Nobody checked my estrogen. Not once. Then the PAIN spread. Both shoul...

No morning wood. That's what Judy noticed first, weeks before David ever said a word. In this episode, Judy tells David's story: the signs of low testosterone in men that showed up quietly inside their marriage while she was starting her own HRT. Loss of morning erections, erectile dysfunction, and low libido together are what doctors call the sexual triad, the clearest signal something is wrong w...

Will Our Marriage Survive This? They both thought about leaving. Not each other. Themselves. David sat in his car in the driveway one night and didn't know if he had anything left. Judy thought about walking away from her own marriage to escape a version of herself she didn't recognize. Neither one told the other for years. In this episode, Judy and David pull the real divorce statistics for coupl...

She wasn't pulling away from him. Her body pulled away first. Judy spent two years thinking her body had just stopped working, that this was who she was now. David spent that same two years wondering if he was the reason. Neither one said a word. This is the episode where they finally do. Judy and David sit down with the part of perimenopause almost nobody talks about out loud: what happens to des...

Perimenopause communication breakdown built a wall between two people who still loved each other and didn't know how to get back to one another. Judy went quiet to protect herself. David went quiet because every time he tried to talk, it landed wrong. Months went by like that. This episode is the real story of how they broke that silence, and it wasn't a big conversation or a therapy session. It w...

Perimenopause rage nearly ended our marriage over a coffee cup. Not the fights you'd expect. A coffee cup left on the counter, and Judy screamed like it was the end of the world. She didn't know why. David didn't either. Neither one of them had ever heard the word amygdala until they were standing in the wreckage of a marriage that was falling apart over nothing. This episode is the real story of...

Does She Still Love Me? What Perimenopause Does to a Marriage Perimenopause marriage disconnection nearly convinced two people who loved each other that the marriage was over. Neither one said it out loud. Both were wrong. In this episode, Judy and David tell the truth about the year they both lay in the same bed wondering if the other one still loved them. He stopped reaching for her. She stopped...

How long does perimenopause last? It's the question every woman over 40 is asking and almost nobody answers honestly. In this episode, Judy and David break down the real perimenopause timeline, what it actually does to a marriage, and why the medical system failed women for decades by withholding information that was available the whole time. Judy shares what it felt like to think she was losing h...

Women in perimenopause are losing bone density, cardiovascular protection, and brain function right now. And most of them still don't know why. In this episode Judy and David tell the truth about what the medical system got wrong and never corrected. In 2002 one study scared an entire generation of doctors away from prescribing estrogen. That study has been largely debunked. Doctors are still lead...

Husbands, if you're trying to help and it's making everything worse, nobody told you the truth. You're not failing. You're just climbing the wrong mountain. In this episode, Judy and David speak directly to the men standing at the bottom of something they don't understand. You've read about perimenopause. You've tried to support your wife. And somehow every move you make seems to backfire. This is...

In 2020 Judy and David were emailing each other about their sex life. Trying to schedule intimacy. Tracking pain on a scale of 1 to 10. Writing drafts for weeks before hitting send. They were doing everything right. And the word perimenopause never appeared once. Because nobody gave it to them. This episode is built from those real emails. The ones they wrote to each other while perimenopause was...

Judy shared a reel about losing her desire during perimenopause. She said she missed it. She explained how she wanted it back in 2020. She discussed how HRT treatment helped. The response? So many comments, including men explaining menopause to a woman who was living through it. In Episode 14, Judy and David read real comments and take on five of the biggest myths about menopause, intimacy, hormon...

Perimenopause is ending marriages that should not end. In this episode, Judy and David sit down with Lisa Lounsbury, resilience and well-being expert and founder of New Day Wellness Inc., and she says the things most couples never hear until it is too late. This is a clips episode. Real conversations. Grey divorce. Hormone decline in both partners. Why men need time to catch up. Why listening is t...

She stopped wanting you. It was not the marriage. It was perimenopause. Episode 12 of the Marriage and Menopause Podcast goes into the one thing couples stop talking about: desire. Libido changes during perimenopause are not a choice. They are a hormonal imbalance. And when a husband does not understand that, he reads it as rejection. When a wife cannot explain it, she feels shame. Both of them pu...

Everyone tells you perimenopause will destroy your relationship. They are wrong. In this solo episode, David breaks down why perimenopause is not a crisis but a forced relationship reset that can build the strongest bond you have ever had. What you will learn in this episode: Why the crisis narrative is only half the story. How radical honesty changes everything for both of you. Why redefining int...

Ten episodes in and the questions have been piling up. Comments at 2am. DMs from husbands who do not know what to do. Messages from women who recognized themselves in something we said and needed to know what comes next. This episode is Judy and David reading through everything and answering the questions that kept showing up again and again across every platform.  What is the actual difference be...

If intimacy has become painful or has disappeared entirely, this episode is for you! Judy and David talk openly about what vaginal dryness actually is, why estrogen decline changes tissue and sensation, and why this is the conversation most couples avoid until the damage is done. David shares what it felt like from the husband side. Judy shares what it felt like to lose a part of herself she did n...