u/lovelily-88

I started a statin four years ago at age 34. Maybe it’s correlated and maybe it’s not, but I started experiencing low sex drive, bloating/constipation and gradually other symptoms related to perimenopause.

At 38 I def think I’m in throws of it but was told then and am behind told now that I’m too young.

I’ve done some reading and statins can cause a drop on sex hormone binding globulin (SHGB) and by lowering LDL can lower hormones like DHEA, a building block for sex hormones. Our ovaries apparently use cholesterol too.

It’s one of the “rare” side effects. Most studies are done on men. Women usually start statins after they lose the protective benefits of estrogen. I have FH so I need a med younger.

If there’s a chance the statin has been basically ruining my life, I’d like to find an alternative.

I want to be alone somewhere where I can scream and maybe break things and not be perceived for doing it.

I probably should have gone to the gym today 😅

Besides exercise, how do you deal with the rage?

My husband used an annoyed tone with me this morning and I’ve spent the rest of the day wishing I lived alone. Bets are I’m in the luteal phase.

I (38F) began experiencing symptoms of perimenopause as early as 33. Around the same time, I’d gotten Covid and fully weaned my daughter (did it gradually over a year), so I chalked it up to stress and delayed postpartum depression.

Then I blamed the SSRI when I gained 15lbs despite eating and exercising the exact same way.

At 34, my period became a massacre that required me to take a pill to stop the bleeding after I passed a clot the size of my palm. I developed fibroids and cervical ectropion (which was a journey to diagnose - had to do all this STI and UTI testing and a biopsy of my cervix to make sure it wasn’t cancer). Estrogen feeds fibroids and the ectropion a hormone change.

I also thought I had colon cancer because my digestive system changed overnight and my anxiety was getting worse. Constantly bloated, relying on magnesium to have a bowel movement. Did a colonoscopy and they thought I might be celiac but that biopsy came back negative.

I began getting migraine headaches once a month. One time I had an ocular migraine last two weeks, with numbness down my arm and I ended up going to the hospital because over the counter pain killers didn’t help.

I quit the SSRI.

I experienced histamine problems (can also be related to hormones, which is why some women take Allegra during their luteal phase). Twice my eyes were bright red like pink eye and the skin around them was also pink and puffy.

My eyes are so dry, it’s hard to wear contacts (which I desperately need because my prescription is so high that glasses are uncomfortable). I also have floaters now from Collegen breaking down in my eyes.

My ears are always itchy. So many q-tips wasted to scratch my ears.

For the last three years my cycle has been getting shorter. It’s 22-24 days now. During shorter cycles, my anxiety is worse. I’ll get insomnia. When I have a longer cycle, 25-29 days (less common), I have horrible PMDD over a week and it’s hard to get out of bed. I’ll want to divorce my husband, quit my job, buy a plane ticket and vanish from my life. I’ll get my period and feel better for a few days before the cycle starts over again.

The more I read about peri, the more I understand how doctors have looked at all of these systems in isolation, trying to treat them separately and missing the hormone connection.

My family doctor tested me for Lyme disease but won’t run a hormone panel! He tried to prescribe me mirtazipine when I cried in his office during a bout of PMDD.

I haven’t felt like myself for nearly five years. Five years my mental and physical health has been suffering as my progesterone tanks and my estrogen is all over the fucking place — dominant a few years and now seemingly low. I look like I’ve aged 10 years.

Doctors won’t care for another two years, when I’m 40.

I can’t keep feeling like a stranger to myself. I don’t enjoy life as much. I’m always irritated and the rage sometimes is hard to manage. I don’t want my husband to touch me because I hate the smell of his deodorant and I can tell when he has coffee. I don’t want to be breathed on. It’s hard to be present with my daughter.

I miss myself.

My husband (38) and his best friend went out. He doesn’t go often so I expected they’d be drunk.

Projectile vomiting in the shower when the toilet is right there is fucking disgusting. Refusing to acknowledge it is ridiculous at his age. They also left the front door unlocked.

Our daughter woke me up in the morning because she saw it and didn’t know what it was. The entire apartment stunk so I took her out for the morning.

My husband did not get out of bed until 1 p.m. and lounged on the couch in and out of sleep for the rest of the day. He cleaned it up but he hasn’t spoken to me.

He’s an avoidant and can tell I’m unimpressed, so he’d rather we never speak again and make things 1000x worse than say sorry or even have a neutral conversation about what me and our daughter got up to all day.

Before I get into the present, here’s a quick history of our 20 year relationship.

My husband (38M) and I (38M) started dating when we were 18. We were solid for two years — fell in love, always touching, each other’s firsts. It was sweet and perfect.

Then things were extremely rough — on and off, traumatic breakups— between 20 and 23. When we did get back together, it wasn’t the same for a long time. Eventually we recovered.

We got married at 27. With fully developed frontal lobes and real jobs, things were good. For a few years I was happy. We had a daughter at 31 and I think that first year was the happiest I’d ever been. We went back to having sex regularly after 4 months.

Covid was hard. My husband was laid off a few times. Daycare was expensive. This was really hard on him and he handled it so well.

THE DISTANCE

Things started to turn when we were both working from home. We’re always together but not in a meaningful way. He would stay up late into the night playing video games with his friend instead of coming to bed with me. I stopped wanting to kiss him, or maybe he stopped kissing me first.

We were trying to buy a house but eventually gave up. I started having panic attacks about moving out of the city. I wanted another baby. He never said he didn’t but he was never enthusiastic about it. I felt like he let me make all these plans and worry about how we’d achieve them without him.

He definitely carries the load with chores. The mental future-focused load was all on me.

I was briefly pregnant. When I found out I thought I’d be happy but ended up panicking. Maybe if he’d been excited and it was something we’d wanted together my reaction would’ve been different. The pregnancy ended and the first day or two he was present but soon after he would exercise in the bedroom at night while I lay on the couch binge eating and sad. He never brought it up. I tried to and didn’t get anything from him. Fine, he doesn’t ever think about it but I did, all the time, and he just let me go through it alone.

I couldn’t have sex without crying for a few months and was putting pressure on myself to “go back to normal.”

A year later, when we’ve slept together, which isn’t often, it has not been fulfilling experience. He isn’t paying attention to how my body reacts and does things he should know do nothing for me. Our sex has always been just okay but when we were more connected it made up for it.

I’m resentful now. I think I could be depressed because I don’t think about the future anymore — where we’ll live, if we will have more children, our finances. I’ve stopped thinking about any of it.

I miss the way our relationship used to be. Other times I think I romanticized it and this distance was always there, and I’ve just stopped closing my half of it.

When we got married we decided to write each other letters to be opened on milestone anniversaries. I put one in our box at year 6 to be opened at 10 that said “I don’t think there will be a letter on here for me.” And there wasn’t. But he’s really considerate with gift giving at Christmas and birthdays.

Either he’s incredibly avoidant or he hasn’t noticed. Neither bode well for our marriage.

Hormones and medication are def at play too. But it’s too easy to place all the blame there (although I think my husband does because then he doesn’t need to talk about it).

Doctors told me I was too young but I believe my hormones changed. I had obvious signs of estrogen dominance at 33. Now my cycles at like 22 days. I’ve tried an SSRI and now I’m on Vyvanse. Both cause emotional blunting.

Tl;dr

Summary: I miss feeling in love with my husband. The emotional distance has been building for years, and I don’t know what to do. Does my husband even notice or care.