I've been reading about perimenopause the past few days. I'm 55, my wife is close to 50 and for a while I thought the mood swings might be mental instability. She can be quite volatile lately, breaking things, trashing the house, etc. It looks bad and scary. But after a couple of days, like a switch being turned off, she'll look at me and tell me she really loves and values me. So I'm thinking the problems have not very much to do with our marriage (no, I realize it's not perfect, I'm not perfect) but maybe has more to do with hormonal fluctuations. I don't know, but it could explain a heck of a lot.