Living with Menopause

Read This If Your Hair Is Thinning After 40 👆

He changed his phone password in March. I've known him since I was 22. In 31 years, he has never had a password. By October I was sure there was someone else. I was even sure I knew why. I was wrong about everything except one thing. He was hiding something from me. And when I finally got into that phone at 3am, I sat on the bathroom floor and cried until it was light. I'm 53. Pete and I have been married 29 years. He's not a secretive man. He's the kind of man who reads the gas bill out loud. Who tells you what he had for lunch at work. Whose phone sat face-up on the kitchen counter for three decades because he couldn't see the point of hiding it. Then one evening in March I picked it up to check the weather, and it asked me for a code. "Oh, that," he said, not looking up from the telly. "Work made everyone do it." Pete retired two years ago. I didn't say anything. I put the phone down and made us both a cup of tea and I didn't say anything at all. It's funny, the things you notice once you start looking. He'd take the phone up to bed. He never used to. I'd roll over at night and see the glow of it under the duvet. He'd turn the screen away, quickly, the way you'd hide a Christmas present. Some nights I'd hear him typing at half eleven. Then at one. At the pub quiz in April, I caught him looking at the woman on the next table. Forties, maybe. Long, thick, dark hair, all down her back, the kind you can't stop yourself touching while you talk. He looked at her hair for a long time. Then he looked at me. And then he looked away. I knew that look. I'd been giving it to myself in the mirror for two years. Because here's what I hadn't told anyone. Not Pete. Not my sister. Not the girls at work. My hair was going. Not all at once. That would almost have been easier. Just slowly, quietly, every single day. The plughole every morning. I'd step out of the shower and there it was, a dark wet nest of it. I learnt to clear it with a bit of loo roll before Pete went in, so he'd never see. The brush. The pillow. The shoulders of my navy jumper. My parting, under the bathroom light, looking wider every month. I started moving it. Left, then right, then back again, anywhere the light didn't catch the scalp. My hair bobble. Same one for years. It used to go round twice. Then three times. Some mornings I'd stand there wrapping it round and round, feeling how little was left in my hand, and I'd have to stop and hold onto the sink. I hadn't let Pete see me with wet hair in over a year. I'd started wearing it up for bed. It used to be my thing, my hair. Thick, dark, a bit wild. At our wedding the hairdresser said she'd never had to use so many pins. Now I was 53 and I didn't recognise the woman in the bathroom mirror. I'd told myself it was just the menopause. That's what my GP said, more or less, between the hot flushes and the HRT conversation. “It's very common. It's part of it.” I'd bought a thickening shampoo from Boots and some biotin from Holland & Barrett, and when neither did anything I just… stopped trying. That's what you do, isn't it? You accept it. It's just what happens. So when my husband changed his password and started looking at women with long hair, I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I didn't throw anything. I just understood. Why wouldn't he? I started preparing myself. I know how that sounds. But I did. I'd lie awake at 2am working out what I'd say to the kids. Whether I'd keep the house. Whether I'd be one of those women you see in Sainsbury's on a Saturday, buying a meal for one. I stopped asking him what was wrong. I stopped asking him anything. We'd sit on the sofa on a Sunday with Strictly on and a foot of cushion between us, and I'd think: this is it now. This is the rest of my life. He'd reach over sometimes, to touch my hair the way he used to. I'd lean away before his hand got there. I couldn't bear him feeling how thin it was. He stopped reaching. I told myself that proved it. The night it ended was a Tuesday in October. I woke up at ten to three, boiling, with a hot flush. Pete was fast asleep with his mouth open, one arm thrown over his face the way he's slept for thirty years. His phone was on his bedside table, charging. I lay there for a long time looking at it. Then I got up, took it into the bathroom, locked the door and sat on the edge of the bath in the dark. I tried his birthday. No. The kids' birthdays. No. Our wedding anniversary. No. My hands were shaking so much I nearly dropped it in the bath. And then, I don't know why, I tried the date we met. The fourteenth of April, 1995. A disco at a rugby club in Wakefield. He'd spilt a pint of lager down my dress and spent the rest of the night apologising. One-four-zero-four-nine-five. It opened. I went to his messages first. Of course I did. Nothing. Me. The kids. His brother. A group chat about football. His emails. Nothing. His photos. And I stopped breathing. There was a folder. One folder. No name on it, just a little heart. I opened it. It was me. Hundreds of photos of me. Old ones, scanned from the albums in the loft. Me at 30 on the beach at Filey with my hair all over the place. Me at our Claire's christening, hair down to my shoulder blades. Me laughing at something in the garden, head thrown back, hair everywhere. He'd been sitting up at night looking at photos of me. I didn't understand. And then I opened his internet. The searches went back to February: menopause hair loss wife how to tell your wife she's still beautiful wife won't let me touch her hair anymore why does my wife look so sad in the mirror is there anything that actually helps thinning hair after menopause how to bring up hair loss with your wife without upsetting her I put my hand over my mouth. He hadn't been looking at that woman at the pub. He'd been looking at her hair and thinking about mine. He'd seen it all. The plughole. The bobble. The way I flinched. The hair up for bed. He'd noticed every single thing I'd tried so hard to hide, and he'd spent eight months up at night trying to work out how to help me without breaking my heart. He hadn't gone anywhere. I had. I'd been disappearing for two years, and he'd been sitting next to me on the sofa watching me go. I sat on that bathroom floor and cried until the window went grey. Before I put the phone back, I saw one more thing. He'd left a tab open. An article he must have read a dozen times. Half of it was underlined in his notes app. I read it on the floor with my back against the bath. It said that when your hormones change, it isn't only your hair that changes. Your scalp does. It gets drier, tighter, and the follicles underneath slow right down. They go quiet. But quiet isn't gone. It said most of what women try after the menopause, the shampoos, the oils, the tablets, never actually reaches the scalp. It sits on the hair, or it gets rinsed down the plughole in a minute and a half, or it goes the long way round through your whole body, where hair is the very last thing that gets fed. I'd always thought that was the end of it. That menopause meant permanent. That this was just what my hair was now. I'd never once thought about the skin it was growing out of. And at the very bottom of his notes, in Pete's terrible spelling: “Korean one. Brush built in. Goes straight on the scalp not the hair. Ask her???” I put the phone back on charge and got into bed. He didn't wake up. In the morning I made him a tea and put it down in front of him, and I sat down opposite him at the kitchen table. "You changed your password in March," I said. He went completely white. "Al, I can explain…" "It's the fourteenth of April." He just looked at me. Then down at his tea. Then at me again, and his eyes were wet. "I didn't know how to say it," he said. "Every time I tried to touch your hair you'd pull away. I thought if I said anything it'd make it worse. I thought you'd think I didn't fancy you anymore." "I thought you were having an affair." "With who?" "The woman at the pub quiz. With the hair." He actually laughed. Then he stopped. "Al. I was looking at her hair because it reminded me of yours." I couldn't speak for a minute. "It's just the menopause, Pete," I said eventually. "It's what happens. The GP said." "That's what I thought. For months." He picked up his phone and turned it towards me. "Then I read that. It's not that it's gone. It's that nothing you've tried was ever getting to the right place." "I tried the Boots stuff." "I know. I found the bottle in the bin." Of course he had. "What if it doesn't work either?" I said. "I don't think I can get my hopes up again. I really don't." He reached across the table, slowly, the way you'd reach towards a nervous dog, and put his hand over mine. "Then you send it back. They give you sixty days. I checked. I've had it in the basket since June." "Since June?" "I couldn't work out how to give it to you." It was called Veyla. A Korean scalp serum, with a little brush built into the top of the bottle. You twist it, squeeze, and brush it straight along your parting. Onto the scalp, not the hair. It's light, like water, with caffeine, fenugreek and Korean botanicals, and it's done in under a minute. No rinsing. Pete ordered it while I was still sitting there. I let him. It came on the Friday. The first night I stood at the bathroom mirror and did exactly what it said, while Pete pretended to read in bed. Twist. Squeeze. Brush along the parting, then the crown. It was cool. A clean, fresh little tingle, right on the skin. I remember thinking it was the first time anything had actually touched my scalp in years. The next morning my roots were dry. Not greasy, not flat. I put it up like normal and nobody would ever have known. The first two weeks, honestly, nothing I could see. But it took less time than brushing my teeth, so I kept going. Every night. Pete never said a word about it, but I noticed he'd started leaving the bathroom light on for me. Around week five, the plughole. I'd been looking at it every morning for two years without meaning to. It was less. Not nothing. Less. I didn't tell anyone, because I didn't trust it. Around week nine, I was blow-drying my hair and I saw them. Tiny, soft little hairs along my parting and at my temples. Short and fluffy and sticking straight up like they'd somewhere to be. I called Pete in. He looked for a long time. He didn't say anything. He just put his hand on my shoulder. Month four, I was getting ready for my niece's engagement do. I pulled my hair back and wrapped the bobble. Once. Twice. And then it wouldn't go round again. I stood there holding my own ponytail and laughed, and then I cried, and then I had to redo my mascara. That night I wore it down. First time in two years. Halfway through the evening, Pete came up behind me at the bar and ran his fingers through the back of my hair, the way he used to at the rugby club in 1995. I didn't pull away. I leaned back into him. He changed his password again last month. I asked him what to. He said: "The day you wore it down." If you're reading this, I think you probably know. You know about the plughole. The bobble. The parting under the bathroom light. You've started wearing it up for bed. You've leant away when someone reached for your hair. Maybe you've started lying awake at 2am, convinced he's looking somewhere else. Maybe you've decided, quietly, that he'd be right to. I'm going to tell you what I wish someone had told me two years ago. It isn't just the menopause. The menopause started it, yes. But nothing you've been doing has been reaching the place where your hair actually grows. And the people who love you have probably noticed a lot more than you think. Not your hair. You. The way you've gone quiet. I'm not going to promise it'll go for you exactly the way it went for me. Hair is slow. Everyone's different. But if you want to try what I use, it's Veyla. Look for the little brush. They give you sixty days, so if your plughole doesn't change and your bobble doesn't change, you send it back and you've lost nothing. Pete had it in his basket for four months because he was too scared to hurt me. Don't wait for someone else to find the courage. https://tryveyla.com/products/veyla-scalp — Alison **P.S.** My honest timeline: a cool, clean feeling the very first night. Less in the plughole around week five. Baby hairs along my parting by week nine. The bobble went from three times round to two at month four. Yours might be quicker or slower. Count the wraps. That's how you'll know. **P.P.S.** If there's someone in your life who's gone a bit quiet lately, a bit careful around you, before you decide what it means, you might want to ask them. I nearly didn't. I'm so glad I did.