Is It Me, or Is It Them?
"If my husband made any noise, I wanted to stab him because I couldn't fall back to sleep," recounted Brenda, a 49 year old middle school teacher, who spoke with a sense of surprise about the fury she felt.
For the better part of a year, Brenda slept in the guest room, “not because I blamed him, but because I desperately needed to get some real sleep and I didn’t want to keep getting angry at him.”
For her, it wasn’t really about her husband at all. He understood that, too. He didn’t take it personally, because by then they'd both figured out what was actually going on. Their marriage wasn’t in trouble. Instead, her nervous system was overwhelmed by the strain of perimenopause.
That’s one version of a question I often hear as a therapist who specializes in working with women navigating the perimenopause transition, particularly around the rage that can rise at this stage of life: is it me or is it them?
For Brenda, the answer was clear. It was her hormones.
But it isn’t always that straightforward. Sometimes the anger is revealing deeper concerns in the relationship. Take Priya, 46, a marketing director who was known for keeping her cool in stressful situations, describing a fight with her husband that started over almost nothing.
"I got so mad at my husband about how he loaded the cups in the dishwasher," she told me, and then caught herself. "It's not about that. There's something else I was missing in our marriage: I felt like he hadn't been paying attention to my conversations with him, and I need that emotional intimacy. But what do I blow up about? The cups in the dishwasher."
For Priya, the dishwasher wasn't really the issue, it was the trigger. Below the surface was something she'd been feeling for a while: worry that she and her husband had drifted apart. That concern didn't come from her hormones. It had been there, unaddressed, long before her rage made it impossible to ignore any longer.
Both women experienced a flash of fury over something small and both discovered completely different answers behind their reactions.
What changes at midlife
Estrogen isn't just a reproductive hormone. It acts like a buffer for your mood, helping soften your emotional reactions. During perimenopause, that buffer doesn't just decline, it swings, rising and falling unpredictably as your body produces less of it overall.
And because, as Dr. Sarah Berg, a board-certified OB-GYN and founder of Selfority, a menopause education platform, told me, "the receptors are everywhere," those swings don't stay confined to one area. They affect sleep, temperature, memory, and mood, sometimes all at once.
The dramatic changes happening in your body can create brand-new friction in a marriage that was otherwise fine, and it can also amplify underlying issues that were already there. This makes the rush of anger hard to make sense of, exactly when you need clarity the most.
It's hard to separate the threads between: “Am I outgrowing my husband? Is this what I want? Is my job fulfilling me? Is this because I haven’t been sleeping? Is it all my hormones?” It’s understandably confusing.
Deciding versus Reacting
There's a real difference between the feelings that flare up in the midst of overwhelm, and what you decide once you've had time to think it through.
Dr. Berg has watched this play out again and again with her patients. In the heat of the moment, she says, "You’re taken out of the equation... you're just along for the ride."
Some women make big decisions from that place. They may end a relationship, quit a job, even blow up their life, and later say, "this is the kaboom I needed."
Others, looking back two or three years later with regret, say the opposite: "Why did I do that?”
Her point has stayed with me. The rage is real and worth paying attention to. But the decision, about your marriage, your job, anything that matters, deserves to be made by you, consciously, after you've taken the time to process it.
Sometimes, once you've worked it through, what's left is a real, longstanding concern, like Priya's. Sometimes what's left is mostly relief that the storm passed, like Brenda's. Either way, you find out what’s true for you by recognizing that what you’re feeling is important, worth listening to and deserves time and space to be considered.
Three Steps to Clarity
Talk to a therapist who understands perimenopause and mental health: An expert who knows how hormonal shifts interact with mood and rage can offer a supportive space where all your feelings are welcome, along with an informed, outside perspective while you sort out the tangle.
Speak to yourself kindly. Remember, there's nothing wrong with you. The intensity of what you're feeling is normal. Your body is going through seismic changes that would rock anyone’s world. It’s a testament to women' s strength that we navigate through it all.
Learn about perimenopause, and encourage your partner to learn too. The more quality information we and our partners have, the better prepared we are for the shockwaves. Resources like Selfority are a good place to start.
Jen Gallagher is a licensed therapist and the owner of Jen Gallagher Counseling, LLC, a practice based in Michigan, centered in supporting women in midlife as they stop managing their anger and start listening to it. She offers in-person and statewide online therapy. Learn more atjengallaghercounseling.com.
