Are You the Driving Force in Your Marriage?

Louise Atkinson, married to Jonathan for 22 years, explains what happened to their relationship when a new book inspired her to secretly change her behaviour

Writer Louise, 52, and Jonathan, 53, live in Oxfordshire with their three teenage children.

When we met all those years ago I was very much attracted to Jon’s lovely soft, caring “beta” qualities and I’m pretty sure he thought my thrusting, go-getting “alpha” nature was exciting and possibly even sexy.

Now though, even he might say I’m far too often the one trying to wear the trousers. Like many of my girlfriends, I’m ambitious, organised, straight-talking and (usually) decisive, and the only way I can juggle full-time work with the slippery fish of family life is by extending some of the planning and decisionmaking I use at work at home.

But then I read a new book, The Alpha Female’s Guide to Men and Marriage by US relationship expert Suzanne Venker, and began to wonder… are the mood swings and short fuse of menopause starting to put a little too much alpha icing on my already alpha cake?