3 Minute Read

Interview with Tanya Khan

Tanya, this book is bold, funny, and confronting, but I imagine it came from somewhere very real. What was the moment that made you think, “men need a guide for this”?

It began in a car with my partner, Brad. I was trying to explain what perimenopause was doing to my sleep, work, confidence and our relationship. I understood menopause professionally, yet in that moment I couldn’t find the language to convey what I needed from him.

I remember thinking, I wish I could hand him a manual.

Through the clinic and among friends, I kept seeing the same gap: men who cared, women exhausted by explaining, and couples misreading each other.

That car conversation became the seed of the book, and the manual I couldn’t find, I decided to just write.

You write from both professional knowledge and lived experience. How did perimenopause show up in your own relationship, and what did it teach you?

It showed up as friction neither of us could properly explain. Broken sleep, brain fog, anxiety, a short fuse on days that used to be easy. It changes how things landed between us.

Brad often reached for the tool that had served him before: solve the problem. Sometimes that helped. Other times it felt like one more task on my list, when what I actually needed was for him to understand before he acted.

We were both writing the wrong story about each other. I read his uncertainty as not seeing me. He read my withdrawal as rejection. Neither story was true. We didn’t need more love. We needed a new operating manual.

Many women feel they have to become the educator, translator, and emotional manager of menopause at home while also surviving the symptoms. What burden does that place on couples, and how does the book shift the load?

It becomes a second job on top of what her body is already asking her to carry. She may be managing broken sleep, brain fog, physical symptoms, work, family and the quiet fear that she’s losing herself. Then she’s expected to explain the whole transition to the person beside her, often while trying to understand it herself.

The book takes that job off her desk. He takes the quiz, gets the plain-English version of what’s actually happening to her, and walks away with real lines to use and small actions to take, no lecture required.

Support at home won’t remove menopause, but it can stop the relationship becoming another source of strain and/or collateral damage.

The book is written for men who may never pick up a traditional menopause resource. What do you think men most need to hear, without shame or blame, about supporting the woman they love?

They need to hear that they’re not the villain, and this isn’t a trial. Her hormones are the disruptor. How he responds to that is the actual variable.

The title’s provocative on purpose, but the book is careful to separate behaviour from character. A man can be getting this wrong constantly without being a bad partner.

This is learnable. He may be struggling because he’s running an old playbook nobody updated. The moves that worked for twenty years stopped landing, and nobody handed him new ones. The quiz score is not a verdict on who he is. It is a snapshot of how he may be showing up today, and it can shift.

Once men feel invited into the conversation rather than blamed for it, they are often far more open to listening, learning and doing things differently.

Since writing the book, what has changed in your own relationship, and what do you hope other couples will feel or do differently?

Brad gets it now. We have shared language. He listens longer, asks better questions, and doesn’t sprint for a fix before I’ve finished the sentence. I no longer feel the need to prepare a legal submission just to be believed.

Shared language has not made perimenopause easy, but it has made it less lonely and stopped every hard moment from becoming a referendum on the relationship.

I want men to close this book feeling relief, not blame. I want women to feel like they finally have backup. And I want couples to see this season for what it can be: not something to be endured, but a chance to come out the other side closer and more honest than they’ve been in years.

If a couple is quietly drifting apart during perimenopause, what is the one conversation you wish they’d have before assuming the relationship itself is the problem?

Menopause can expose old cracks, pile onto an already overloaded life, or create distance neither of you knows how to talk about.

Start with: “Could menopause be part of what’s happening between us?” That opens the door without pretending every relationship problem is hormonal.

Get curious about sleep, workload, health, intimacy and withdrawal before settling on a story about who’s changed or stopped caring.

Sometimes a couple needs professional support beyond that. But one honest conversation can interrupt the drift before it becomes the whole story.

Book can be ordered at DON’T BE A D*CK

About the Author: Tanya co-owns Body Balancing Nutrition, a midlife nutrition clinic, with her sister Maria. Through the clinic, she sees what the menopause transition actually looks like for women and for the relationships beside them. She is also navigating her own perimenopause, which means the gap she writes about is not theoretical. Tanya holds a law degree and an MBA. She is a Recognised Menopause Pro with the Menopause Experts Group (UK) and, through her work as The Midlife Strategist, advocates for, and supports organisations to implement, menopause inclusive/supportive workplace policies and practices.