If Kurt Schaer was completely honest, his first thought when his wife started having hot flashes and night sweats was that she could “just suck it up.”
It can’t be that bad, he thought to himself: “You’re having a bad day. You’re feeling sick, we get sick, too. Just maneuver through it.”
His father taught him that a husband provides, a wife takes care of children. Emotional equity wasn’t built in their home.
The couple had survived infidelity and rebuilt their lives as marriage coaches. They lived through the death of their teenage son in a car accident and became grief leaders. But when Schaer watched his wife Denette suffer from perimenopause symptoms that grew to sharp mood swings, forgetfulness and extreme fatigue – he couldn't bear losing the woman he’d known for three decades.
“I needed to find compassion and empathy,” Schaer, 49, says. “Nothing in life I would have my wife walk through by herself. I had to figure how to help.”
