Peri/menopause: The sexual awakening no one warned you about

What if peri/menopause can be a time of sexual awakening?

What if, despite what society might have you believe, it doesn’t have to be a decline, an ending, or a loss?

An invitation

Close your eyes for a moment, take some big deep breaths, and sit with that idea. What comes up in your mind, body, and spirit? Hope? Resistance? Lightness? Disbelief? Joy? Frustration?

Whatever arises is welcome.

Peri/menopause narratives

If feelings such as resistance or disbelief surfaced, I can certainly understand why! We’re constantly inundated with negative narratives about sexual wellbeing during peri/menopause.

We’re told our libidos disappear. We’re no longer sexually desirable. It’s selfish to prioritise pleasure at this stage of life. Hormones are the whole story. Menopause marks the end of your sexual life. We’ve absorbed these ideas for decades, often without realising it. Then we reach this phase and they come flooding in. But we can change the narrative. Midlife does not have to be a sexual decline. In fact, it can be a sexual awakening.

And not only can we change the narrative but it’s also imperative that we do. Not just for ourselves, but for the generations coming after us. They deserve to enter midlife feeling informed, powerful, and erotically alive, not disempowered and uneasy like many of us have been made to feel.

My experience with perimenopause

I write this from lived experience.

I’m 44 and in my early 40s, I unknowingly entered perimenopause and began experiencing symptoms that left me feeling confused and betrayed by my body - painful sex, decreased sensation, changes in my arousal response, negative body image, mood changes, fluctuating libido, reduced spontaneous desire (aka desire that seemingly comes out of nowhere vs responsive desire that kicks in after the action begins).

Even with years of professional knowledge in sexual wellbeing, I didn’t recognise what was happening. Why? Because there is so much that is not said out loud around peri/menopause, especially when it comes to sex. We’re layering three culturally stigmatised topics on top of one another: sex, ageing, and menopause. So of course there’s silence, although there shouldn't be because it leads to shame and disempowerment.

So, I suffered on in that cone of silence, trying to bumble my way through until eventually I realised what was going on, and started implementing changes into my life which led to one of the most profound sexual awakenings I’ve experienced. Perimenopause necessitated a shake-up which in turn led to me (and my husband) having to learn new practices, skills, knowledge, and ways of being that totally transformed our sexual wellbeing for the better. I'm not exaggerating when I say we're having better sexual experiences now than at any other time in our lives. But it took it took time, patience, and self-compassion to get here.

Shedding old sexual scripts

Peri/menopause challenges so many of the sexual scripts we’ve lived with all of our lives. All of those ideas about how sex should look, how often it should happen, and how our bodies should behave begin to resonate less with us, for good or bad.

That in-between space can feel unsettling because the old ways don’t quite fit anymore, but the new ways aren’t clear yet either. Very few of us have anyone around us to guide us through this sexual transition, and most of us were never taught how to meet this moment with curiosity and compassion. I certainly wasn’t! Instead, we’re encouraged to push past it, ‘boost’ libido with all manner of snake oils, override pain and discomfort, and perform desire on cue. But that can’t go on forever. Something has to give.

As those old stories loosen, a different way of being can emerge if we let it. Grieving what was is normal and healthy, but you don’t need to try and push yourself to go back to a younger version of yourself. Instead, we can learn to meet pleasure and desire in new ways.  

So how do we do that? There are many ways, but three places to start are:

1.     Choosing curiosity over self-judgement

2.     Listening to your body instead of overriding it

3.     Moving from performance to presence

1. Curiosity over self-judgement

Midlife is not the time to turn on yourself. When your libido shifts, when arousal feels different, when your body responds in unfamiliar ways, it can be so easy to spiral into self-criticism. Negative thoughts can creep in quickly. Some of the ones I experienced included:

• What’s wrong with me?

• Why can’t I just…?

• I used to be different!

• I’m broken

  
  

But what if, instead of judging, you began feeling into your experience with compassion? What if you became a gentle explorer of your own body? Let curiosity invite you to ask questions like:

• What’s happening here?

• What helps?

• What if instead I…?

• What does my body need today? (my personal favourite!)

When we judge ourselves, we shut down possibility. But if we’re curious, we can open up to new ways of being.

2. Listening to your body instead of overriding it

Many of us have spent years overriding our bodies and our own boundaries (and having others do the same), sometimes without even realising it. We’ve pushed through discomfort, rushed arousal, had duty sex, performed desire before it was genuinely there, ignored dryness, tension, or the quiet inner voice that says, no – I don’t want this. Peri/menopause has a way of making that strategy unsustainable. The body becomes louder and less willing to be dismissed.

Learning to listen to our bodies can mean many things. It might mean slowing down and allowing more time for warm-up. It might mean prioritising using lube, hormone replacement therapy, pelvic floor support, or nervous system regulation. It might mean learning new ways of communicating and learning to honour your yes, no, and maybe. It might mean prioritising self-care and learning somatic practices. If you’re not sure what somatic practices are, see my blog Overthinking during sex? Here's how to come back to your body.

If you have a partner, it should absolutely include them going on this journey with you to learn knowledge, skills, and tools to support you in this phase of your life, and vice versa as they go through midlife shifts.

3. Move from performance to presence

We live in a society where we were taught to ‘perform’ sex.

We often think we should look, sound, move, touch, and respond a certain way to be sexy and desirable. So often when we're being intimate we have those 'shoulds' on our minds. But people often discover that midlife pleasure thrives in conditions they once overlooked such as slowness, experimentation, co-regulation, novelty, nervous system regulation, presence, prioritising self-pleasure, and a focusing on the five somatic pillars – placing awareness, breath, touch, movement, and sound. Instead of focussing on chasing an outcome, learning to be present in the moment can be transformative.

One of the foundational skills we can learn to help us shift from performance to presence is embodied consent. This model takes enthusiastic consent to the next level. It’s about learning to tune into: the messages your body is giving you, what your emotions are telling you, and what you are verbally expressing. When all three are in alignment, we have true consent.

Say, for instance, you want to try a new sexual act that involves the vagina.

Your emotions are saying, I’d love to try this. I’m excited!

You are verbally saying, Yes, please! Let’s play.

But your body is quietly saying, But I’ve been experiencing vaginal pain and this might not feel good. 

That quite no matters. You need to stop, listen to it, and not override it in the name of being adventurous, desirable, or accommodating. Because when we override our bodies repeatedly, we erode trust in ourselves. Instead, we might need to adjust the act or stop and attend to healing first. If we don’t honour our nos, the nervous system learns that its signals will not be respected. Over time, that can show up as increased pain, decreased arousal, numbness, tension, or a withdrawal from intimacy altogether. We cannot cultivate presence when we are overriding our no.

Midlife is not an ending, it’s a shift  

Peri/menopause can be a time of sexual awakening when we let go of tired old narratives, stop trying to override our bodies, and learn new ways of being. I cannot emphasise enough that it's not about chasing an old idealised sexual version of yourself but instead about building a new relationship with your body, desire, and pleasure. We have these amazing bodies with an incredible capacity for pleasure, so why not learn ways to embrace that?

If you want structured, practical support in doing that, my upcoming workshop in Cairns - Reclaiming Desire and Pleasure in Midlife and one-to-one sessions can support you in this phase if your life. You don’t have to navigate this time alone.