By Ogova Ondego
Published April 13, 2024
One morning Jane Oire yelled at her son and snapped at her husband. Always composed, loving and sympathetic, this was not characteristic of her; and she had been irritable for a week.
Oire’s children found refuge in their rooms while her husband hid in forced silence. They dreaded facing Oire who seemed to have developed a hair-trigger temper and would hit the roof at the slightest provocation.
But the withdrawal buy Oire’s family made her all the more angry. She accused them of not caring about her and, consequently, sought refuge in extra-marital affairs with men the age of her adolescent children.
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Though a woman of high moral standing in her community, Betty Makungu found herself locked in a an extra-marital affair which drove a wedge between her, her faith and her family. Everyone who knew her well took her to be suffering from a mental illness that required psychiatric help.
Makungu, 50, said she fell into the trap because she was ‘frustrated, fearful, depressed, anxious, fatigued and confused’ as no one seemed to care what she was going through.
“My husband is wrapped in business while the children are grown up and have left home. Don’t I deserve to be loved and listened to just like any other normal woman?” Makungu posed, confessing to the counsellor from whom she sought advice that sexual desire burned in her much more intensely than it ever had.
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Experts on family and relationships say women like Oire and Makungu are starting to experience the signs of biological change called menopause and midlife crisis as the levels of oestrogen hormone decrease. They say a woman’s lifestyle determines when a woman has her midlife blues. for a married woman with children, midlife is often determined more by her family responsibilities than by hormonal imbalance.
Though a woman may use Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) to restore her declining levels of oestrogen and alleviate menopausal effects, such women could at higher risk of endometrial cancer unless a progestin is also included in the HRT.
A middle-aged man with grown up children files for divorce saying his menopausal wife has neglected him for younger men. But the woman argues that it is her husband who has abandoned her for 12-year-old girls.
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Arguing that both women and men in midlife are likely to engage in extra-marital affairs with younger partners in an attempt to recreate their youth, experts contend that it is wrong for any one to think that older people are no longer interested in sex or that they are unable to enjoy sex.
Cases of women stopping to share a bed, or even the bedroom, with their husbands as soon as they stop bearing children are on the increase. However sexual feelings and interests are always with people from the time they enter reproductive age to the time they die. Usually the sexual feelings of older people are no longer exclusively focused on attractiveness. Men, in particular, enjoy sex till they cease living.
Mary Wanzini says women should not be scared about reaching menopause although it is wrapped up in mysteries.
“No one wants to discuss it,” says the 70-year-old Wanzini. “”Menopause is not dependent on any particular age. It could start at 35 or past 50 depending on the woman. I’d like to dismiss fears that one cannot enjoy sex after menopause as, at my age, I am still sexually active. Menopause doesn’t scare me as I still go about my life normally.”
Wanzini says many younger women fear menopause as they think their husbands will leave them for younger women. Her children, she says, helped her a great deal in getting her any helpful information they could lay their hands on from books, magazines and newspapers before the age of the internet that came to Kenya some 24 years ago.
“Reading about the subject prepares one well for this inevitable phase that one need not be afraid of,” she says. “I have had the number of children I wanted and In am healthy and still active. So how does menopause become a dreaded disease?”
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Gillian Ford, a PMS and menopause counsellor and author of What’s Wrong With My Hormones? writes that she started experiencing hormonal problems in her teens. Like her mother and sister, she says she experienced Pre-Menstrual syndrome (PMS) and went on the pill in marriage.
Suffering horrible premenstrual depression for three weeks every month, Ford says she contemplated suicide after doctors failed to cure her of the problem. However, at the age of 29, Ford finally found a cure when a doctor prescribed oestrogen.
Writing in The Plain Truth magazine, Sheila Graham argues that there is no tailor-made treatment for every woman.
“Women are so different that what works for one may not work for another,” she writes.
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Research at USA’s Harvard University indicates that women who use HRT after menopause stand a 32 per cent higher risk of developing breast cancer.
Susan M Lark, writing in The Menopause Self-Help Book, advises women to develop their own treatment plan which includes a healthy diet, exercise, stress reduction, vitamins, minerals, herbs and only go for HRT if necessary.
“A well chosen diet for women at midlife includes fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, seeds and nuts, vegetable oils and small amounts of lean meat, poultry and fish,” she writes.
Stiffness, fatigue, depression, poor circulation and shortness of breath are signs of lack of physical exercise, not age, she contends.
“Though it is not easy to sympathise with a cranky depressed spouse,” Graham contends, “what she needs most is loving reinforcement that her family still cares for her.”
She notes that hormonal problems are real physical problems and not imaginary excuses for bizzare behaviour of some strange woman as claimed in some quarters.
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Experts like Sally Conway say there is no way to prevent menopause from setting in. All one requires to cope is a positive attitude. She, however, notes that the symptoms can be lessened through a lessening of caffeine and sugar and the amount of these make a difference in how irritable one gets or how many hot flashes she gets. Walking 20 to 30 minutes, she says, helps.
Conway says menopausal women tend to have memory loss and uncontrollable emotions.
“It’s like PMS all year long,” she stresses.
Gillian Ford says about 20 per cent of women have serious hormonal problems and that women with PMS feel out of control.
“They can’t control their appetites, they can’t control their violent feelings … Sometimes they are just angry in their speech.”
Some women suffer panic attacks, become fearful and feel they are going to die. Many women start drinking to dull the pain.
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“These women feel as if they are on another planet and nobody understands. They feel hopeless and they feel angry with God,” Ford says. “Society fails women when fellow women become judgmental and medicine fails.”
She says doctors usually fail to recognise the hormonal link to the plight of menopausal women.
The church, too, has failed menopausal women as it spiritualises physical; problems and does not discuss menopause, which is still considered a taboo. Some churches blame people for falling sick and talk of depression as a sin, Ford says, suggesting that churches foster and encourage support from women.
“It’s so important to teach the love of God, and that Christ loves us whatever we’re like, whether we’ve got PMS or not,” she writes, challenging churches to have good books on menopause in their libraries.
