Buckle The Fuck Up - Its Sex Week
- Jul 20
- 7 min read
Right. Buckle the fuck up.
This week at Moolife we are going there. All the way there. No detours, no softening, no carefully worded disclaimers designed to make anyone feel comfortable or protected from reality. This week we are talking about sex. Midlife sex. Menopausal sex. The kind of sex that nobody prepares you for, everybody desperately needs to talk about, and almost nobody does because apparently we would all rather sit in polite, dignified, utterly miserable silence than have an honest conversation about what is actually happening between our legs.
Not here.
Absolutely not here.
But before we get to the sex — and we are one hundred percent getting to the sex, I have stories, I have a specific story involving Nick, a living room carpet, a bag of frozen peas, and a diplomatic incident of considerable proportion — I need to set the scene. Because if you are going to understand the sheer, breathtaking, magnificent absurdity of attempting to have any kind of sex life in menopause, you first need to understand the full catastrophic shitshow in which this is all taking place.
So let me tell you what menopause has given me. Other than the defunct fanny. Which we will absolutely get to. Oh, we are getting to it.
First. The hot sweats. Because of course we start there.
Not warm. Not a gentle becoming flush of pink to the cheeks that makes you look interestingly vital and alive. We are talking hot. Boiling. Infernal. The kind of hot that descends at 2am without a single word of warning and makes you feel like your entire body has been personally set on fire from the inside by someone who really, genuinely means it and is not messing about.
You wake up drenched.
Not a little warm. Not slightly damp. Drenched. Absolutely soaked through. The sheets. The pillow. The pyjamas you were wearing. The pyjamas you've changed into. The mattress underneath you that has done absolutely nothing wrong and does not deserve this. All of it. Saturated. As though you have spent the night personally irrigating the bed, which is not the restorative sleep experience that anyone was hoping for and yet here we are.
And then — because menopause has a sense of humour that is frankly diabolical — fifteen minutes later you're freezing.
So you drag the covers back. Then you're boiling again. Then freezing. Then boiling. The entire night. Like the world's worst thermostat. While Nick sleeps peacefully beside you looking absolutely, completely, infuriatingly fine. Not a bead of sweat. Not a single disruption. Just a man sleeping like a man who is not on fire, which is its own specific category of fury and we do not have nearly enough time to get into it now.
Then. The beard.
Oh yes. Let's talk about the beard. The uninvited, unannounced, entirely unwelcome beard.
Because menopause — apparently not satisfied with taking your sleep, your skin's collagen, your ability to remember words, your emotional equilibrium, and your general sense of self — also decides to redistribute your hormones in ways that nobody asked for or consented to.
Specifically, it sends testosterone somewhere new.
Specifically, your chin.
One hair. Fine. Probably nothing. Two hairs. Slightly more concerning. And then one morning you are standing in the bathroom in decent lighting having a proper look at your face and you think — I'm sorry, what the actual hell is that? That is not a stray hair. That is a situation. That requires management. That requires tweezers and a good mirror and frankly a level of ongoing commitment that I did not sign up for when I agreed to get older.
Nobody mentioned the beard. It is not in any of the leaflets. Not one single leaflet says: by the way, you may develop facial hair that requires regular attention and a reliable source of adequate lighting. They put it nowhere. I would like words with whoever decided that was acceptable.
The beard just arrives. Sets up home. Expects to be dealt with on a regular basis. Absolutely no apology. Welcome to your fifties, enjoy the new maintenance schedule.
The brain fog. Which is not forgetfulness. This is something else entirely.
I forgot the word for chair.
I need you to actually sit with that for a moment because I want you to understand what I mean when I say brain fog. I am not talking about being a bit tired or slightly distracted or having a lot on. I am talking about standing in my own kitchen for four full minutes — I counted — trying to retrieve the word for the object you sit on. Four letters. One syllable. Taught to children aged four alongside cat and hat and other words that require absolutely no effort from a functioning adult brain.
Gone. Completely gone. As though it had never existed.
This is what menopause brain fog actually is. Not forgetfulness. Not a senior moment. An actual neurological event — oestrogen supports the neurotransmitters that help your brain access memory, language and concentration, and when it drops those pathways go completely to shit. Words disappear mid-sentence. You walk into rooms with absolutely no earthly idea why you're there. You lose your phone, your keys, your train of thought, the name of someone you've known for twenty years, and occasionally your entire grip on reality — all before 9am on a completely ordinary Tuesday.
You read the same paragraph four times and retain nothing. You go to type an email and forget what it was about before you've finished the subject line. You stand in the supermarket genuinely unable to remember what you came in for and end up leaving with seventeen things you didn't need and not the one thing you actually wanted.
It is not funny. Well. It is a little bit funny in retrospect. But while you are in it, while you are standing in your kitchen unable to name furniture, it is absolutely terrifying and I want to acknowledge that before I make any more jokes about it.
The irrationality. Or as I have decided to call it: finally running out of patience.
Here is the one that everyone tiptoes around. The one partners whisper about to each other with wide eyes and a slightly haunted expression. The rage. The completely disproportionate, apparently sourceless, arrives-at-7am-on-a-Wednesday-for-no-discernible-reason rage.
Nick once asked me if I had seen the television remote control.
The television remote control.
A completely reasonable question. A question I might have asked him myself any number of times over our years together. A question that deserved a perfectly normal answer along the lines of try behind the cushion.
I had to leave the room.
I went upstairs. Sat on the edge of the bath. Had a word with myself. Came back down. Gave him the answer. He was mildly bewildered. I was exhausted. We did not discuss it.
Here is what I have come to understand about the menopause rage, having had several years to examine it up close. Underneath the disproportionate response — underneath the fury at the remote control and the incandescence at the dishwasher and the 7am volcanic eruption at absolutely nothing — there is almost always a completely proportionate response that has been sitting quietly and patiently and with impeccable manners for a very long time indeed.
The rage at the remote control is also twenty years of being the person who knows where everything is and is expected to know where everything is and is never once thanked for knowing where everything is.
The rage at the question is the rage at always being asked.
Menopause removes the filter. And yes, this is alarming. And yes, it can be inconvenient for everyone in the general vicinity. But it is also — if you are paying attention, if you can hear it through the noise of it — information. About what you've been tolerating. About what has been quietly, politely, reasonably building for two decades.
The rage is not random. It is not irrational. It is extremely rational. It just needed oestrogen to leave before it finally felt safe enough to say so.
Listen to it.
And then. On top of all of that absolute bonanza of fun.
On top of the night sweats that have turned your bed into a swamp and stolen every decent night's sleep you've had in the last three years.
On top of the beard that has taken up permanent residence on your chin and has opinions about it.
On top of the brain fog that has made you a stranger to your own vocabulary and caused you to stand in the supermarket like a person who has never been in a supermarket before.
On top of the rage that arrives uninvited and overstays its welcome and has a point, actually, when you really listen to it.
On top of all of that.
You get a fanny that has gone completely, utterly, categorically defunct.
The libido has fucked off. Not gone quiet. Not reduced. Fucked off. Packed its bags, left no forwarding address, sent no note of explanation, just disappeared sometime around 2021 and has been largely absent ever since. The lubrication — gone. The cooperative, elastic, well-maintained situation that used to be entirely reliable — gone. What remains has apparently relocated to the Sahara Desert and is managing on minimal resources and absolutely no enthusiasm for visitors.
And this — THIS — is what nobody talks about. Not properly. Not honestly. Not in a way that is actually useful to the woman sitting at home wondering what the hell has happened to her and whether it is ever coming back and whether she is supposed to just accept this as her life now.
It is not. You are not. And that is what this week is for.
So here is what's happening this week.
All week at Moolife I am talking about sex. What menopause does to it. What you can actually do about it. What works. What doesn't. What the medical options are that nobody tells you about. And what happened when Nick came home from three weeks away and I finally, finally wanted him and we ended up on the living room carpet and it did not go the way either of us had planned.
Follow along on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok all week because there is more coming every single day. The midlife truth. The loud question. The whisper. Friday's brutal realisation. None of it is for the faint-hearted.
Good. You are not faint-hearted.
You are a Moo.
Women who refuse to suffer politely live here.
Love from Missy Moo x
SEOPage title: Buckle up — this week at Moolife is all about sex | MoolifeURL: moolife.me/blog/buckle-up-this-week-is-all-about-sex
Primary keyword: menopause and sex honestSecondary keywords: menopause sex life · menopause libido dry vagina · menopause symptoms honest · midlife sex women · menopause body changesMeta description: Hot sweats, a beard, brain fog, rage, and a fanny that has gone completely defunct. This week at Moolife we are talking about sex. All of it. Honestly. Buckle the fuck up.
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