Carolyn Hax: Partner’s menopause symptoms taking a toll on family

Q: My partner of almost 25 years, “Mary,” started perimenopause around 10 years ago, and her menopause symptoms have gotten progressively worse. Our son, then 5, is now 15 and he sees only this version of his mother — not the positive, interested person she was for so many years.

Mary also devalues and damages her friendships, holding people to unrealistic standards, reading the worst possible interpretation of actions and comments, often believing her friends don’t like her or think she is stupid. Her work also suffers from negative self-talk.

After trying several prescription options, she used one that brought her back to the optimistic and positive person she was before. Unfortunately, there was a side effect of nausea, so she stopped taking the medication and her symptoms returned. She’s now refusing to try other options or return to the gynecologist, and when I try to encourage her, I’m told I don’t understand and have no empathy for her situation.

I know I’m not experiencing this personally, but nausea seems to me a small price to pay for all the mental upside. I don’t think she can see how bad her frame of mind has become and how it is impacting her relationships.

— The Change

A: It’s a “small price to pay” because you’re not the one wanting to puke 24-7.

So that’s a no go. And continuing to pitch that argument to her just hands her a win with her you-don’t-understand-and-lack-empathy point.

That’s too bad, because you’re actually the one with the bigger, more valid point to make here: Mary is within her rights to refuse treatment, of course — but it’s a shortsighted decision if she’s making it without full consideration of its cost to the in-house adolescent who is counting on her mightily right now.

And its cost to you, and her friends, and her career, yes, and of course to her own health, which may have more going on given the severity and duration (not that the current diagnosis must be wrong or isn’t sufficiently serious). But it’s her son who’s currently having his one shot at childhood, no do-overs — so that’s where you focus.

Start by apologizing for your breezy dismissal of unrelenting nausea as “small.” I am fixating on this, yes, but wow. It’s small if you choose it for yourself, not if you choose it for someone else.

Then, bring it back to your — her — son. As sympathetic as you are to her internal experience, the external symptoms make up a disproportionate amount of his relationship with her. And your role here as partner and parent is to think forest while she’s preoccupied with her tree — as you hope she would do for you if you were in the midst of a personal struggle.

Then bring it back, again!, to your full awareness and appreciation for the size of the ask. You know you are asking her to run chemical experiments with her body and moods. Then say you wouldn’t ask if it weren’t about the welfare of the one person you feel justifies asking it.

Just one thing before I go. The interactions between parents and mid-teens aren’t always exemplary even when parents are at their best. So before you ask for anything in your son’s name, be sure what you’re witnessing is really about her symptoms and what you’re asking for is really about his well-being. It never hurts to run a deep scan for self-interest before you go crusading in.

• Email Carolyn at tellme@washpost.com, or chat with her online at 11 a.m. Central time each Friday at washingtonpost.com.

© 2025 The Washington Post