The Bad Example

I have written before about the differences between my husband and myself but I want to touch on one more thing about us … the fact that I am going thru menopause and he isn’t. The fucker.

For those of you who are reading this and haven’t gone thru menopause either yourself or with your spouse, you need to understand what this does to you.  And I am not talking about how it affects you physically, I want to touch on how it changes each of you psychologically and sometimes even psychotically.

Let’s take hot flashes for a moment. In the dead of winter, I NEED the thermostat to be set no higher than 65 degrees and the fans NEED to be set on high.  If they aren’t, there is so much sweat that pours out of my body I scare my dogs. I don’t want to be this hot. I would much rather have my feet be ice cold and have the need to ask for fuzzy little slippers from my boys for Christmas and giggle when they choose the Olaf from Frozen ones as a joke.

And there is nothing that pisses me off more than when my husband comes in grabbing his elbows and saying how cold he is and asking if I really need to keep the thermostat that low.  He even mentions it, he says as a joke, when we get together with other people. I swear I am going to have the need to dispose of his body one day.

I think what causes so much hostility with me on this subject is his basic ignorance of what I am going thru. I tried to get him a book that would help him understand, and although I really don’t even think the book was 30 pages long, he hasn’t read it.  Or at least I hope he hasn’t read it. I say that because if I find out that this shithead has read that book and ignored the advice in it ….. my next post will be on the dangers and details of shaving one’s ball hairs with a straight razor.

But the kicker in all of this is, this same man, who can’t grasp the concept of putting on a sweatshirt when he gets too chilly, is the same man who needs constant attention and assistance when he gets sick. Nursing him back after a surgery last year almost pushed me past my limit. Almost. And I have been willing to see that since we have been together over 23 years I have contributed to his expectations; both what he expects me to do for him and the level of care I will accept from him without raising too much of a fuss.

But I just want the same treatment sometimes. Nothing more, nothing less. Compassion parity is what all women want.

Just understand that if we have the thermostat low, we are hot and uncomfortable and we need it to be that low.  We aren’t secretly trying to raise the electric stock that we don’t own, we need to be cooler. And we certainly don’t need to be the butt of a joke with the younger, obviously chillier women in the room. We already are self-conscious enough because we are wiping our foreheads with hankies while trying to avoid looking at their hard little nipples.

To me, having that understanding shouldn’t matter if you are a man or a woman, menopause is difficult enough to go through; we don’t need to be dealing with this shit too!