Husbands trying to help their wives

I guess there are lots of husbands trying to help their wives like me. Myself and my wife have been together nearly 30 years. We know eachother inside and out. My wife recently began her perimenopause journey and I have watched her slowly transform into a different person. At the start I thought that perhaps she was reacting to our children were leaving for university – it’s been hard to see them go for both of us. However, throughout all our family life we agreed that our job was to ‘push’ them out of the nest to fly and enjoy the world. However, her approach has changed and she has become super clingy to our children making them feel bad for leaving. I know this is not her.

She has terrible hot flashes at night and I can see the impact on her during the day – she is exhausted. It’s embarrassing for me to say (and I’m grateful for the anonymous nature of the posts on this site), but she has also lost interest in sex with me.

She tried to ask her doctor, twice now, but the doctor has said this is just the normal process and she just needs to go through it. That cannot be, surely. I have been reading up and I know that maybe HRT would be good for her, she has no family history of breast cancer (but there of other is history of other cancers). I just want to help her so badly.

I wish there was more information for men, geared towards men, on the internet. Often it feels like there are quite sacred women’s spaces that, of course, as a man I do not want to encroach upon. But where can we get information as men? Some help there would be great – I’m sure there are many husbands trying to help their wives and trying to understand what is going on.

MW, United Kingdom