14 Jun
First post here! Okay so. I'm 49, Los Angeles, been in perimenopause for what feels like forever but apparently only about two years officially. Hot flashes, the sleep chaos, all of it. Fine. I could talk about that stuff. What I could not talk about, to literally anyone, was the other stuff. The dryness. The fact that intimacy started feeling uncomfortable and then kind of awful and then I just quietly started avoiding it. My husband is a good person and he has been patient and confused in equal measure and I have not been able to find the words to explain what was happening because I barely had the words for myself. I didn't even bring it up with my OBGYN for almost a year. A year! I kept going in for my annual and talking about the hot flashes and the sleep and then when she'd ask if there was anything else I'd say nope, all good, and walk out. I don't know why. Embarrassment, maybe. Or that thing where if you don't say it out loud it isn't quite real yet. I finally said something three months ago. I'd written it down beforehand because I knew I'd chicken out otherwise. Just a few words on a sticky note in my purse: "intimacy is painful, dryness, I want to ask about options." I read it to her basically verbatim because I could not have said it freehand. She was so matter of fact about it. Not weird about it at all. We talked about a few different things that might help and I left feeling like an idiot for waiting so long, but also just... relieved. Still figuring things out honestly. But I found this community last week and spent about two hours reading old threads and cried a little bit because it turns out a lot of us are in the same boat and just not saying it. Hi everyone. Glad to be here. ETA: sorry this got long, I clearly needed to say it somewhere 😊