Menopause, Marriage, and the Truth No One Wants to Say Out Loud

Some women say menopause saved their marriage.
Some say it ended it.
Some feel relieved.
Some feel ashamed.
Many feel both at the same time.

The contradiction of relief and grief living side by side is exactly why this conversation matters.

Menopause doesn’t arrive quietly. It arrives honestly. And for many women, that honesty ripples through the most intimate parts of their lives, including their marriages. That’s why Dr. Haver needed to have this unPAUSED conversation with Jennifer Hutt, family law attorney, divorce mediator, and longtime broadcaster. She sits at the crossroads of biology, emotion, and the law, and she’s seeing something many of us are living.

Coming Full Circle

Jenny was one of the very first people to ever give Dr. Haver a platform, years ago, before the books, before the podcast, before millions of women were openly talking about menopause. She interviewed her live on her SiriusXM call-in show, and although she was a nervous wreck, pacing back and forth in her bathroom, terrified she’d forget her own name, Jenny made her feel calm, seen, and legitimate when she was just starting out.

Now, years later, Jenny has returned to her roots as a family law attorney and divorce mediator after decades in broadcasting, and after living through loss, caregiving, marriage rupture, and reinvention herself. She brings not just legal expertise, but lived wisdom. And she’s witnessing a pattern that deserves far more nuance than it’s been given.

Here are the five biggest takeaways from their unPAUSED conversation.

1. Menopause Does Not Cause Divorce. It Removes the Numbing Agent.

This may be the most important point of all.

Menopause doesn’t suddenly make women irrational, selfish, or unstable. What it often does is remove the hormonal buffering that allowed women to tolerate being chronically unseen, undervalued, or emotionally unsupported.

As Jenny put it plainly: It’s not about sex. It’s not about a dry vagina. It’s about support.

When estrogen drops, people-pleasing softens and boundaries sharpen. The constant smoothing over of discomfort becomes exhausting. Women stop absorbing emotional labor silently and start asking questions they may have postponed for decades:

• Do I want to live like this for the rest of my life?
• Is this relationship still working for who I am now?
• Have I been shrinking myself to keep the peace?

For some couples, this clarity becomes an invitation to grow together. For others, it reveals cracks that were already there. Menopause may not have created those cracks, but it no longer allows them to be ignored.

2. The Backlash Around “Menopause Divorce” Proves How Uncomfortable This Truth Is

When Dr. Haver shared a story online about a divorce attorney noticing untreated menopause as a contributor to gray divorce, the backlash was immediate and telling. The comments focused obsessively on anatomy, as if reducing menopause to sex could dismiss the larger issue.

Jenny articulated what so many women feel but struggle to explain: when we reduce these conversations to libido, we completely miss the point.

This is not about bodies failing.
It’s about systems failing.
It’s about partners failing to adapt.

It’s about women who have spent years caregiving, managing households, supporting careers, raising children, and regulating everyone else’s emotions, while quietly ignoring their own.

The anger around this topic reveals how threatening it is to challenge the long-standing expectation that women should simply endure. That midlife should be about gratitude, not honesty. Silence, not change.

But menopause does not make women unreasonable. It makes them aware.

3. Financial Invisibility Is One of the Greatest Risks Women Face, Long Before Divorce

Jenny sees it every day. Women who don’t know how much money is in their bank accounts. Women who don’t know the mortgage balance. Women who don’t have access to retirement accounts, passwords, or financial documents. Women who trusted their marriages and were never told they needed to understand the numbers.

This is not about blame. In many long marriages, financial division of labor felt practical, efficient, or even loving. But it leaves women dangerously exposed if circumstances change through divorce, illness, or death.

The statistics are stark. After divorce, women’s household income drops significantly more than men’s. Many lose their homes. Many re-enter the workforce in midlife without a clear pathway or safety net.

Knowledge is not distrust. It is autonomy.

Even happily married women deserve full financial visibility. Not because they expect something to go wrong, but because they deserve agency in their own lives.

4. Shame Keeps Women Stuck Longer Than Any Legal Barrier Ever Could

Whether a divorce is chosen or unexpected, shame is often the heaviest burden women carry.

Shame convinces women to hide. To isolate. To believe they failed, not just at marriage, but at womanhood itself. Jenny shared how even saying the word separated out loud felt impossible for her at first.

She clearly named this truth: you cannot heal if you don’t let people help you.

Divorce is a loss. Even when it is the right decision, it is still the death of a future you imagined. The shared rituals. The assumptions. The sense of permanence.

Healing doesn’t happen in silence. It requires community, compassion, and permission to grieve without judgment or rushed positivity.

You are not weak for mourning something that no longer fits. You are human.

5. There Can Be Peace, Joy, and Freedom on the Other Side

This surprises people, but it shouldn’t.

After decades of living according to everyone else’s needs, many women discover something unexpected on the other side of divorce: peace. Not chaos or failure but peace.

Designing a life around your own rhythms, eating what you want, sleeping when you need to., moving your body without negotiation, reclaiming time, energy, and identity that had been fragmented for years is not a celebration of divorce, rather it’s an acknowledgment that women are allowed to rebuild without apology.

Some women will stay married and some will leave. Neither path is a moral failing.

Why This Conversation Matters

If you are questioning your marriage, supporting a friend who is, or simply trying to understand why midlife feels so destabilizing (and so honest) at the same time, this conversation matters.

Menopause doesn’t destroy marriages. It tells the truth about them.

And truth, while uncomfortable, is also the beginning of agency, clarity, and choice.

That is the heart of this moment: not fear, not failure, but permission.

You can watch or listen to the full episode with Jennifer Hutt here:

Listen to the full episode here, or watch it on YouTube here.