“Sex And The Menopause? It's Time To Be Honest About It!”

In an extract from her new book, Andrea McLean shares her experience of post-menopause sex.

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TV presenter Andrea McLean, 48, lives with her husband, Nick Feeney, in London, and has two children, Finlay, 17, and Amy, 12. In September 2016, Andrea underwent a hysterectomy following a long battle with endometriosis, and the procedure brought on early menopause.

When I went back to work after my hysterectomy and talked about it on Loose Women, the papers picked up on the story and “Woman Has Menopause” seemed to be, if you’ll excuse the pun, pretty hot news. I didn’t set out to become the poster girl for all this. It happened by default because I realised that there wasn’t any point pretending that I hadn’t had a hysterectomy or wasn’t going through the menopause, and I could see by the response I was getting how much of a relief it was to other women that someone was talking about the subject.

I faced up to the fact that a big part of me was afraid to talk about what I was going through for the same reason other women in the public eye now confide in me: they don’t want to be seen as “old”. Originally, I wasn’t going to speak about it publicly because I didn’t want to be seen as old either. I still don’t! But I realised that this isn’t about age – the menopause can happen as early as your thirties and if you’re old then, what hope do any of us have?

Talking about “stuff” is what women do best. We share and offload, we laugh and we bond over the ridiculous and incredible things our bodies go through, and hearing other people’s experiences is what makes our own so much more bearable. So here goes…

The ‘s’ word