I wasn\u2019t prepared for it. Not even close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One day, Jasmin and I were navigating our usual rhythm and enjoying a new city Dublin and the next, everything shifted. Her doctor explained that due to her treatment, she had become menopausal but the symptoms didn\u2019t show up right away. Her body was so focused on surviving the illness that menopause took a backseat. But once she started recovering and regaining her strength, that\u2019s when it hit. First it was the brain fog, the emotional swings and joint pain, it was like menopause had been waiting in the wings, and now it was ready for its grand entrance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve heard men joke about \u201cthe change,\u201d but there\u2019s nothing funny about watching someone you love suddenly wrestling with not knowing her own body. And I\u2019ll admit it at first, I didn\u2019t know how to help. I was trying to keep things light, crack a few jokes to lift her mood. But inside, I was scared. Confused. Powerless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No one tells guys what to do when their partner suddenly doesn\u2019t recognize herself or feels like you don\u2019t recognize her either. Research says around 63% of men feel like menopause negatively affects their lives, too, and I felt that. The emotional distance, the intimacy drop, the eggshell moments. I kept thinking: What did I do wrong?<\/em> Truth was, it wasn\u2019t about me. It was biology. It was pain. It was transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s when I started reading. Not random Google articles, but real research. Stuff that helped me understand this wasn\u2019t a phase it was a profound hormonal, emotional, and spiritual shift. And it wasn\u2019t just Jasmin\u2019s battle it was ours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I found out most men don\u2019t know much about menopause some haven\u2019t even heard of perimenopause. Only about 6% know about symptoms like vaginal dryness, and very few understand the deeper emotional toll. That explained a lot. We\u2019re not taught how to support, listen, or even ask<\/em> the right questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I started doing just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I asked Jasmin what she needed. Sometimes it was silence. Sometimes a hug. Sometimes just knowing I\u2019d made the bed and handled dinner. I stopped trying to fix things and just showed up<\/em>. And the more I learned, the more I could actually be there not as a rescuer, but as a partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And here\u2019s the wild thing our relationship got deeper. Realer. More human. We started bonding with exercise, this time about purpose, aging, healing. I began seeing menopause not as an ending but as a kind of rebirth. For her. For us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re a guy going through this with your partner whether it\u2019s gradual or instant like Jasmin\u2019s know this: You don\u2019t need all the answers. You just need to care enough to learn. You need to stay present. And maybe let go of what intimacy used<\/em> to look like and be open to what it could become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Menopause isn\u2019t the end of your connection. It might just be the beginning of something more powerful than you imagined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I wasn\u2019t prepared for it. Not even close. One day, Jasmin and I were navigating our usual rhythm…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":427,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[8],"class_list":{"0":"post-418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-menopause","8":"category-personal"},"authors":[{"term_id":8,"user_id":1,"is_guest":0,"slug":"admin_ss","display_name":"Carlos Vargas Gierke","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/4a.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/4a.jpg"},"author_category":"","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/carlos-vargas\/","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":419,"href":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.secondspringph.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}