Yeah, men are coming at it from all different angles.

Yeah, I, I think it's, it, that, that's absolutely the key.

You know, there's two reasons men might, might be an ostrich, I think, Kelly.

One is, is they, they just don't care about the relationship.

I think that's a, that's a very small number of men, and I think the other group will be it's, it's fear, fear of the unknown, fear of change.

If you're not sure what's going on, you hide away.

So what Rob and I have did in the book, and, you know, this comes from decades of experience of writing for men's health and men's fitness, is you've got to make the man the central part of the story sometimes, right? We've got to make it about them.

But I think it is like Joe says, it's not just having that kind of communication, but it's just actually genning up a little bit on, on, on what she's going through.

And

I did the research.

I was on Mumsnet reading those forums.

And Matt, I cannot repeat some of the stuff I saw that women were saying about, you know, wearing out vibrator batteries, their husband is just a husk of a man in the other room and he can't keep up.

So although it is predominantly known as the woman's sex drive dries up and the man is then frustrated, it does work both ways.

I think that's really important to know because your relationship, it could be one of those two things.

What I also think is a massive issue, and it relates to what I was saying earlier about The bandwidth and how you're communicating.

And that point smooths off these highs and lows that are going to happen for a while.

No, and it's the worst thing that men

can do.

And, you know...

Men do one of three things.

Again, not all men.

I want to make that perfectly clear.

But I spoke to a lot of couples and a lot of women about this.

get on guard and you can end up in this sort of suffering olympics can't you where you're like well you think it's hard for you i've been at work all day and it's would you say it's about just remove yourself from this scenario completely

And certainly not for the better when you lose the intimacy, you lose a connection, you lose a piece of maybe what was you as a couple, uh, How has that piece become such a challenge in this stage from a he said, she said standpoint, I guess, we're covering this?

Yeah, I talk about this a lot and I speak to a lot of men about this.

And I think it's really helpful initially to separate whether or not a woman is comfortable having it or the perimenopausal symptoms are really stopping it, not just from a libido point of view, but from a physical comfort point of view, right? Because that's a slightly different conversation to two couples just being on different wavelengths and getting it wrong.

I think on that latter case, yeah, Again, the men I speak to, and then when I spoke to their partners afterwards, it was the same thing as I was talking about before.

It was the good intention, but the wrong execution.

And what I was hearing time and again, Deborah, was maybe something that there hadn't been intimacy for a while.

So... 11 o'clock on a Friday night, the man makes a move, you know, nudges his partner and says, well now, and it's completely the wrong moment.

So from the men who've read this and maybe given you some feedback, are they telling you what is the most valuable part for them? Or are they just in overwhelm?

How long ago was it now?

I think we probably spoke about this time last year.

Yeah.

It goes to show how long the whole book research and publishing, it takes an awful long time.

And I wanted to write this book basically because I went out and tried to find it and it didn't exist.

And, you know, that spirit of if it doesn't exist, go out there and create it.

That's what I did.

Two for women and two for men.