Menopause, marriage and divorce: UAE filmmaker tackles taboo in new documentary

Just as you are approaching your 40s, you think you’ve got the hang of life. You know you are fill-in-the-blank intolerant, xyz conversations are rage-baiting you, and what’s going to be giving you a migraine even before you’ve entered a meeting room. Then comes Menopause. And suddenly, everything you knew about yourself is untrue. Favourite foods are making you bloat. The AC is either too hot or too cold, but never ever right. And your closest allies seem to have a four-pronged strategy to get you to pull your own nails out. It’s spoken about in matter-of-fact tones in most circles; a minor inconvenience women must deal with, forgetting the real fall-out: a relearning of what it means to be her.

It’s this turbulent socialisation – the incomprehension of someone behaving in an unfamiliar manner in a familiar setting – while rediscovering your own identity is what UAE-based movie-maker Punam Verma tackles in her upcoming documentary Men On Pause.

This is the TV host's second movie after the comedy We Need To Talk (winner of the Muhr Awards at 2012 The Dubai International Film Festival).

In the film, out on Nov 6 on YouTube, Verma interviews experts, men and women who’ve dealt with menopause – the biological process when a woman's menstrual periods stop permanently. The perimenopause period (the BM, if you will, when the first shift happens) can last up to 10 years and begins as you head into the 40s.

Origin story

The seed of the documentary – which uses humour to tackle a sensitive subject – was planted about two years ago. “I was sitting in a gathering and a lot of girlfriends kept complaining about how their husbands don't understand menopause, and they said you need to do something about menopause. And I thought, no, I'm not doing a documentary about this depressing thing. Then a few weeks later I was so bored I casually said to a young 25-year-old videographer, I might make a documentary about the menopause. He didn't even know what the menopause was. And he said, ‘I'm in’.”

And so, the pressure began to build. “Before I knew it, I'd made a film trailer… a year before I'd even written the script,” she laughs.

As she began to reach out to contacts, including menopause specialist Dr Louise Newson and therapist Marisa Peer, women and men, she started getting a deluge of stories, some funny, others tragic.

“We filmed everything in three days. One of the biggest things I did is I put men in it because people don't understand the link between menopause and divorce. It's a massive link. And even the name, Men On Pause, I don't know where it came from. It just came,” says Verma.

Tough talk

The movie begins simply enough, by talking about what menopause is and what the symptoms are. “We've got interviews with experts and everyday people, men and women, and we tackle various subjects,” she explains, adding that this is more a skim than a deep-dive into the complex topics.

Then, the film veers onto more unfamiliar ground such as the link between menopause and divorce, why it’s not studied all that much, how it affects a woman’s career and her financial situation.

“When I started making this film, I could not relate to any of these women,” says Verma. “Fast-forward two years, I have certain symptoms that they talked about.” Some of the symptoms are difficult to describe and can easily be mistaken for something more sinister. Such as “an itchy crawling thing in your skin”, she adds. “I know what it is. If I didn't, I would have gone to the GP and they probably would have given me steroids or creams. It makes you feel stronger to say, ‘I don't need to take extra medication when the doctor doesn't even know what's going on with my body. I know what's going on with my body, so I'll take care of it’.”

“I educated myself through this film,” she says.

She speaks of cases where women have found themselves suicidal or institutionalised because symptoms are so diverse and hormone levels and their effects so volatile. “When I was 23, I didn't know what perimenopause was, let alone menopause. And my mum wasn't feeling good. The doctor put her on antidepressants. She wrote a suicide letter in front of me, and I did not know what was going on,” she recalls. She was going through menopause.

The problem, says Verma, “is that people think of it as a transition not as a disease. I think it's really important for men to understand [menopause, too,] because a lot of women are the ones that initiate the divorce, and the men don't understand why. And the women don't know. They think it might be the marriage, but it's actually just the hormones.”

At a certain point in life, when you look in the mirror, you may see a stranger looking back at you. Welcome to menopause – it’s time to relearn everything about yourself.