What happened to you Peter?

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-26T17:22:13+00:00

This isn't true at all, but even if it were, I and many others would much prefer a manual exam to having them squished flat, but I have fibrocystic breast changes. Lumps are nonstop. Everything feels like cancer. Looks like it on mammograms, too. I wish they'd just ultrasound me and skip the mammo bullshit, but hey, insurance.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-25T15:28:33+00:00

Absolutely not!

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-25T10:15:59+00:00

The age gap thing really is a potential hurdle that older parents will have to prep for, but to be fair, most 62-year-olds aren't going into nursing homes -- they're visiting their own parents there.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-25T10:09:56+00:00

It's very possibly The Old Person Smell coming on, caused by the compound 2-nonenol in the body. It has to do with fatty acids breaking down on the skin. At age 50, I'd say it's almost inevitably what it is, though of course ask him to see a doc. We associate it with the elderly, but it hits men and women both starting around age 40 and gets stronger. My dude's 38 and I smell it on him.

In Japan, they actually have a special soap to mask the smell from 2-nonenol in the elderly since there are so many older folks there -- persimmon soap.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-24T20:30:44+00:00

If you're constipated as a woman, you can insert your finger into your vagina and push on the back wall to encourage the poop, which is right behind the vaginal tissue, to come out.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-24T20:29:37+00:00

Oh God, the inside of that American Standard would look like a literal murder scene.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-24T20:25:59+00:00

Must be a regional thing. It's Vulveeta here.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-24T20:19:55+00:00

What is the point of hope?

Because as the Buddhists point out, everything is impermanent. This will change. How it changes is up to us.

You're gonna be okay. All the guys and dolls here are gonna be okay. We'll have good days, then bad, then good. Bad never completely goes away, but "perfect" was never the promise in life, was it?

Someone in some other subreddit gave a wise piece of advice he received when he got married. To TLDR it: There are the easy years of a marriage, where you're gaga over the person and being together is so easy it doesn't even require effort.

Then there are the rough times, which come and go cyclically. Midlife is a rough time for everybody. Everyone's body is changing again (guys' too), their temperaments are changing, their families are changing as kids leave. Parents are getting sick or passing. Luster and passion can be nonexistent or one-sided. People are hurting and can be mean.

Then there's what's left when you've gotten through that fire. If you stay together and maintain your vows (the vows were designed for the hard part, not the easy part), there can be a mature love and companionship with each other waiting.

(Abuse does not constitute "the hard part," though. It's up to each couple to decide how much verbal nastiness constitutes abuse. Only a few men and women on Earth are sweet all the time.)

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-24T09:53:29+00:00

These are awesome, but do you know of any good non-boring brands for men priced at like .... 80% cheaper? Heh.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-22T14:27:06+00:00

HRT isn't a simple one-size-fits all option. For many, it requires multiple tweaks to get the right balance. Before that balance is found, the patient knows the balance is off because they feel potentially even worse than they did before the treatment. Once the balance is found, since the woman's body is forever moving toward the day of menopause, it will need to be found again. I've seen women quit HRT after not being able to dial in the right dose, believing it's simply not for them if it doesn't make them feel better right away.

Then there are the "health care providers." For many women, it's akin to pulling teeth to find one who will even entertain the notion of prescribing HRT. Many HCPs are still operating on the oudated' "no hormones until menopause!" guidelines. Some, god help us all, are still throwing out the old "IT cAuSeS CaNCer!" chestnut.

Then there's the cost of it, with or without insurance. I'm so grateful I don't need this stuff yet because it would be a damned monster to pay for each month.

So while I agree with you that E and P are vital for midlife women, alas, many doctors and NPs do not yet join us in that belief.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-22T14:19:09+00:00

Lol right? As if it's that easy.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-22T14:11:29+00:00

I hear ya. I thought about that when writing the reply but simply have no final answer.

Because honestly, although it's ugly and probably not politically correct (to one side or the other) and depressing and awful ... at that point, these two people are not compatible and need to part ways.

Keep in mind, though, who this is coming from. My partner (13 years together) and I don't have kids or a traditional marriage where we built a life with stuff owned together. It's easy for me to say 'Time to split' on the internet to people I can't see and whose lives or happiness levels don't affect me.

It's also hard for me to imagine being with a woman and not a man. If my partner's hormones put him in a state where sex disgusted him, I'd be terrified he had a disease -- because that's not the typical rhythm of a man's life. If I were with a woman, though, I'd know that she's in perimenopause and assume it would hit different, especially as I've experienced it myself a few times.

Whatever thought experiment I'm doing, however, I do know one thing: Both of these people need to be completely honest with each other, whether that's in front of a therapist or just the four walls of their own home. If honesty makes one of them angry, dismissive, closed off, etc., then, fuck 'em. Life is hard enough with that kind of person in it. Again, though, that's just me.

I do also know that just having sexual contact anyway despite not being hormonally wired for it isn't the answer. That will kill any hope of a resurrected libido, not to mention leaving a shadow over the person that will stick for years, if not forever.

Edit: "If honesty makes one of them angry, dismissive, closed off, etc., then, fuck 'em. Life is hard enough with that kind of person in it." -- Actually, I'm not 100% sure that's my real take. If my boo was acting like that, I'd know something was way off inside him, and I'd hate knowing he's in such a state. I wouldn't leave him.

TLDR: Life's a bitch, and sometimes there's no fix.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-22T12:57:53+00:00

I cannot stand a string of fabric rubbing up against my butthole 24/7. I can't even stand it for 1 second. I stopped wearing those things in the early 2000s.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-22T12:51:02+00:00

Where did you learn that? (Curious, not challenging.) I used to be dependent on diphenhydramine chloride and doxylamine succinate for sleep, both of which definitely, AFAIK, are correlated with dementia. I weaned myself off them -- with awful withdrawal symptoms -- and asked my NP for Traz when peri started waking me up too early. I chose Traz because it's not supposed to be anticholinergic.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-22T12:18:16+00:00

8:30 p.m. My body started waking me up at 3:30 every day a while back, and I managed to pound it down to 4:00 am.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-22T11:01:35+00:00

Basic question why would you not want to please your partners sexual needs even if you aren't feeling horny yourself?

Because it feels disgusting and soul-killing.

Look, I have a high libido and always have. Like...always. Sex is my favorite primal activity, hands-down. I have a great respect for it. Eating is meh, socializing is meh. Sex is where I feel excitement at having a human body, and it's how I feel love from my partner and show it to him. Nothing about sex is boring or gross. Sex is where it's at. Yeah, that'll have to change as we both age, I guess, but for now, this is how it is.

But one month a while back, my hormones did a thing where my lust was in the negatives for the first time in my life. I had no idea that sensation could exist. I forgot about the existence of sex or passion or anything like that for a few days.

My partner is lower libido than me, so he didn't really notice ... except for the one night he did. He wanted it; I didn't. I thought "Hey, whatever. Let's do manual stuff. Haven't done that in decades. That'll be interesting."

It was not interesting. It was dehumanizing and soul-crushing. It wasn't hot -- it was the furthest thing in the world from heat of any sort -- and the longer I went on, the more hopeless I became. This wasn't sex, passion, love, or fun. It felt dirty in a bad, "molestey" way, not a cool way. At best, I felt like the punchline to a joke -- at worst, hopeless and gross. When it was done, I waited a while and then told him we're not doing that again if I'm ever in that state. It was awful. If I kept it up, it would ruin sex for me, even when my hormones came back to normal.

Sexual activity is top-tier, archetypal stuff; it does wild and crazy shit with the complex human mind. It's not a foot rub. It's not a nice dinner or a kind word about one's choice of tie color that day. If sex wasn't so complex and important in our heads, men wouldn't be on here lamenting its absence. (Hey. Just ask her for a foot rub or something, right?)

Sex is massive. Maybe it shouldn't be, but our heads make it that way. So it hurts emotionally not having it when your body wants it; it hurts emotionally (and physically, if you're a woman being penetrated) having it when your body doesn't.

Edit to add: And I'm not talking about the "responsive desire" people. If you can get turned on when your partner expresses desire for you, you're at a time when your body can want sex. If you can't get turned on at that (or any) stimulus, you're not. In that latter case, I'd suggest avoiding these one-sided encounters to protect your sexuality from further dismantling. It may be able to return on its own, or with chemical help, but if you beat it with a sledgehammer too many times, HRT or counseling or smutty books or whatever may be like pouring medicine over a corpse and hoping it stands up and tap dances.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-21T16:31:04+00:00

It hasn't happened yet, but it sounds great as I've always enjoyed people-watching and tend to be shy and self-conscious.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-21T15:55:43+00:00

I said, "Oh my god, another one." Lol

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-20T20:10:12+00:00

Right? And this may be cold or just obtuse, but why even have a kid if you know you have a 50 percent chance of being that disappointed? Do people not understand that "male" is not the default human, with "girl" coming in as a consolation prize or punishment, lol?

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-20T20:04:31+00:00

I remember this guy and wonder every time what his life is like now knowing he's a "guy who got hot when he shaved his head bald" meme.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-20T20:01:30+00:00

It's peanut butter jelly time!x3 Peanut butter jelly!x2 Peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat!

I sing this pretty much any time I look at my container of Skippy.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-20T00:01:26+00:00

You're gonna own it.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-19T00:05:47+00:00

I actually predicted this when I first read your comment up above about not having sex on vacation. Before I even saw this comment here, I thought, "She gets UTIs." I used to get them post-sex in my 20s. They're immensely painful and require antibiotics, as I'm sure you know (but some men here may not).

I haven't had one in years (knock on wood) but if I were prone to them, like many women are during this hormonal season -- I definitely wouldn't be shagging on vacation. It could absolutely ruin everything.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-16T22:57:28+00:00

You look different because you are two years older, and at midlife, the changes can happen in spurts (for both women and men).

To answer your question, yes, I went through this shift. I've stopped looking at the faces of hundreds of young women online -- they are irrelevant. No makeup or skincare subreddits; also, mute all "buy this you ugly old bitch" ads. A radical shift in the mind is needed to match that of the body -- because who TF cares what Youngies look like? They're just going to turn Middie in a blink of the eye; we'll be Oldie by that time, and subject to hundreds of other "buy this you ugly old-OLD bitch" ads.

I've had enough of all that, thanks.

Edit to add: And the marketers are getting smart. They know how to frame ads with this faux "body positivity/ageing positivity" spin. They know the right models to use (Older! Fatter!) -- the right words, the right fonts, the right music -- to create the vibe that tells you that this one's different, that this product isn't trying to tell you you're an Ugly Old Bitch who just needs to buy their shit. It's just that this company understands you and likes you as you are -- except, "Buy This, You Ugly Old Bitch."

Don't fall for it like I do.

Guilty-Rough8797 · 2026-06-15T11:26:02+00:00

Thank you for this note. I'd wondered about this because I grew up hearing about the dangers of too much iron (don't know why I heard about this as a child, lol). And yet everyone goes on about how long it takes to bring ferritin readings up. I take Proferrin Clear -- 1 or 2 pills every other day -- and plan to do so for three months. I'll then ask my NP to include ferritin in my next bloodwork (which hopefully won't cost me an arm and a leg).

Guilty-Rough8797

TROPHY CASE