I don't really do posts like this but I need to put it somewhere. I've been married for twenty-eight years. We're fine. We're good, actually. But for the past eighteen months or so something has shifted and I haven't been able to say it plainly to anyone, including my husband, including my GP. The dryness is bad. It's been bad for a while. Intimacy has become something I quietly dread rather than something I want, and I hate that. I hate that it crept up on me without any warning and I hate that I've just been silently accommodating it rather than saying anything. My husband knows something is off but I haven't given him the actual words and I don't know why. Probably because saying it out loud makes it real and also because I was raised in a generation where you just got on with things and didn't discuss your body in any detail with anyone. I finally have a GP appointment next week. I've written down what I want to say because I know myself and I know I'll walk in there and talk about something else entirely if I don't have it written. I've got a list. Symptoms, how long, how it's affecting things. I read about something called GSM which I'd never heard of before and I'm going to ask about that specifically because having a name for it made me feel slightly less like I was just falling apart. I'm also going to try to talk to my husband this weekend. Properly. I've been putting it off and it's not fair on either of us. I don't know why I'm posting this. I think I just needed someone to know before I walk into that room. Thanks for being here x