What Perimenopause Finally Made Me Stop Tolerating
If you've noticed your patience thinning, your tolerance shifting, or certain dynamics suddenly feeling unbearable - I wrote this article for you.
Perimenopause changed more than my body. It changed what I was willing to carry. What I've come to understand is that shift isn't a problem. It's an invitation to your deeper truth.
As soon as I saw the name on my phone, I tensed.
It had been a while since we'd spoken, but I already knew how this call would go. Someone close to me had been cycling through the same problems for years - the same story, the same patterns, a different partner each time. Always blaming the other. They never quite see their own part in it. Wanting the other person to change, but not yet ready to look at what kept drawing in the same dynamic.
I took the call, because I felt bad not to.
After thirty minutes of listening, they asked, "So what are three things I should do?"
I felt my emotions rising in my body - frustrated and exhausted. I had already pointed them towards resources. I had already gone through this before. What they wanted wasn't insight, reflection, or suggestions for growth. They wanted the lifehack version. The shortcuts. None of which involved them doing any real inner work.
As soon as I hung up, I made a decision. I would no longer offer advice in these conversations with them. I won't expect anything to change. I would be less available, and when I did show up, I would listen - and not carry the load. That was a shift. I wasn't ending the friendship, but changing my relationship with it. Honouring what my body had been telling me for a long time.
I am in perimenopause. And my system is no longer willing to pretend certain dynamics are okay.
Perimenopause changes more than your hormones
We talk a lot about the physical symptoms. The disrupted sleep. The hot flushes. The brain fog that hits without warning. The cycles that no longer make sense.
We talk about perimenopause and tolerance too, but that conversation usually stops at anger outbursts — the snapping, the short fuse, the moments we're not proud of. What I want to take it further into is what happens before the outburst. The tightening in the stomach. The dread that arrives before you've even picked up the phone. The body that is quietly, consistently signalling something — long before it becomes a reaction.
Perimenopause gave me the invitation to respond to those signals rather than waiting until they exploded.
As hormones shift and energy becomes genuinely less available, the dynamics we used to push through quietly start costing us more than we can afford. The one-sided conversations. The relationships where we carry the emotional weight. The automatic yes that comes spilling out of our mouth before our body has had a chance to breathe.
These discomforts and signals become louder during perimenopause.
I want to be honest. When my tolerance started shifting, I didn't read it as a problem with me. I could feel that there was something in the dynamic that I no longer wished to put up with. And I know that's not every woman's experience. Many of the women I work with interpret these moments as a personal failing. They tell themselves they're becoming difficult, less patient, less loving. Less able to show up.
If this is you, I want to share this: your body tightening before a phone call is not a character flaw. The dread is not selfishness. Your reduced capacity to be with certain dynamics that were never nourishing is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It is your system, calling loudly, drawing a line that should have been drawn a long time ago.
What happened after I listened
What I felt after that call was a sense of resolution. It felt good to have given my honest response. And it felt great to have made the decision.
The dynamic shifted. Our calls became less frequent. And in that space - the space that opened up when I stopped filling it with what wasn't right - I felt something else move in. More aligned energy. More of the connections that I actually wanted.
This was confirmation for me. Confirmation that I had honoured what my system had been telling me all along.
The body knows before the mind does
Here's what I've come to understand about energy leaks - the relationships and dynamics that quietly drain us.
They very rarely come announcing themselves. They first show up in the body, in ways we've been trained to dismiss, ignore, or push through.
The tension that arrives before you've even answered the call. The quiet dread in the days leading up to a commitment made from obligation rather than desire. The heaviness that settles after certain conversations, the flatness that follows you into your day.
Before perimenopause, I had the energy to override these signals. I felt these discomforts, contractions, pains, frustrations. I would tell myself that I'd feel better once I was in it, that this is just what friendships and relationships require sometimes.
With perimenopause, that capacity shrank. The signs got louder. The cost became evident.
The tension before the call became information. Critical information.
The flatness in the aftermath was my nervous system telling me, clearly and consistently, that something in this dynamic was not nourishing me. The question was whether I was finally willing to listen.
The boundary we first cross
The first boundary crossed is usually ours. Ouch.
We say yes before we mean it. We stay in conversations when we've already left our bodies. We keep showing up because the alternative feels too confronting - the feeling of letting someone down, of admitting that something or a relationship may come to an end.
We override ourselves first. And then we feel resentful when others don't honour what we haven't yet honoured in ourselves.
Ouch.
I share this because I lived it for years, and because I see it often in the women I work with. It makes a lot of sense when you understand where it comes from - years of learning and conditioning - both subtle and direct, that love means being available. That to limit or withdraw is to be selfish. That being a good friend, a good woman, a good human, means saying yes even when everything in you is saying something else.
Perimenopause doesn't let that belief be something we hide behind anymore.
When energy is genuinely limited, self-betrayal has an immediate physical cost. You feel it in your body within moments - the drain, the meh, the sense of having given something you couldn't really give. And slowly, sometimes painfully, you start making different choices.
You've started giving yourself the level of care and love you've given to others freely.
What discernment feels like
I want to share a note of nuance here. This is not about becoming closed off or deciding certain people are not worth your time.
It is the shift from unconscious giving to bringing intention and presence. From being automatically available to making a conscious choice. From performance to offering and sharing from a genuine space of love and want.
In practice, for me, it has looked like this.
Learning to pause before I respond. A simple breath, a hand on my thigh, or even briefly closing my eyes. Just long enough to check in with my body before the word leaves my mouth. Is there a sense of openness, a warmth, a real yes? Or is there that familiar contraction - the tension, the heaviness in the stomach, the sense of dread of something that hasn't started yet?
Noticing that my most nourishing relationships have a different quality to them. There is a sense of mutual care. A sense that both people are present, both people are giving, both people are being nourished by the connection. I leave those conversations feeling more full than when I arrived.
And accepting. Slowly, over time the relationships that consistently drain me are not bad people or bad situations. They are simply not the right alignment for where I am and what I genuinely have to offer right now.
And that is enough
The unexpected gift
To be honest, perimenopause has not felt like a gift a lot of the time.
I have felt disoriented, confused, and tired. I have gone through depression dips and grief. There have been versions of myself I've had to let go of - ways of showing up for people, ways of measuring my self-worth, ways of being in relationships that I held for decades and that no longer align.
That is a loss. Even though it feels right.
But inside the discomfort, inside the reduced capacity and the shifting hormones, my entire system is now insistently speaking up - something has clarified that I didn't expect.
The relationships that are truly nourishing have deepened. New relationships and connections feel expansive and exciting. The things that genuinely matter have become more visible. The energy I used to spend maintaining dynamics that were not aligned for me is now available for the parts of my life that are.
I show up with more love and presence because I'm not constantly leaking in the background. Ironically, I have more capacity and space for the areas of life that deeply matter to me. I give more honestly because I'm no longer giving from empty. I say yes far less often - and I mean it so much more when I do.
A practice: the pause before the yes
If this is landing for you, here's something you can try today.
Before your next yes - before you take the call, agree to the plan, commit to the obligation - take one breath first.
Before your mind kicks in with all its very reasonable and convincing justifications, ask your body: what is actually here right now?
Notice what's happening in your stomach, your chest, your shoulders. Before the voice that says "it's fine", "I should", "I have to" - what is the very first sensation?
A softness, an openness, a warmth. That could be a yes.
A contraction, a tension, a sense of already bracing. That's information.
Whatever sensations you feel, I encourage you to tune into your body. If this is challenging, start with the physical sensations as your entry point - is there tightness or pain? Is there excitement in the belly?
You don't have to act on it immediately. There’s no pressure to change everything at once or have a confronting conversation today. But begin to notice. Begin to build the relationship with your own body's signals that perimenopause - whether you asked for it or not - is inviting you into.
Your body has been speaking all along. We are simply learning, finally, to listen.
You are not becoming difficult
To every woman who has felt her tolerance shifting, her patience running thin, her body drawing lines she can no longer step over:
You are not becoming difficult. You are becoming honest.
The exhaustion, the dread, the frustration, the sense that certain dynamics are no longer bearable - these aren't signs that something is wrong. They are signs that your system is asking for something different. Something more aligned. Something that nourishes the woman you are becoming, not just the woman you were conditioned to be.
You are allowed to change what you give, and to whom, and how much. You are allowed to let certain relationships quietly change without a formal announcement. You are allowed to be less available and more genuinely present at the same time.
This is not selfishness. This is how we come home to ourselves.
If this stage of life is bringing unexpected shifts in your energy, your relationships, or what you are (and aren't) willing to carry anymore, you are not navigating this alone.
I offer 1:1 sessions for women moving through transitions and changes. The invitation is open whenever you feel ready.
Explore more in the perimenopause series, or reach out to work together.
