Andrea McLean On Making The Same Marriage Mistakes Twice “Red Flags Are Not Bunting"

0:00Coming up, Andrea McLean. Thank you so much. So when you get divorced, you lose a lot of friends. Do you? Oh, yes. And in terms of the mums at the school gate, there was a lot of side eye. There was a lot of can I? No one knows what goes on behind closed doors. And if people will choose their narrative about you, whether it's true or not. This is the truth about what my marriage is really like. And this is the truth about everything. I was basically told, you cannot talk about this. It's career suicide.

0:37Andrea McLean:Hi Louise. Good morning, Dani. We're sat with our brew, ready to put the world to rights. I know, I hope it's going to wake me up. I want to say my week's been really exciting, but I've just been parenting, taking Annabelle to gymnastics. Yours has been a little bit different to my week, hasn't it? Don't be modest, don't be modest, because you're so like humble and don't want to ever brag about anything. But I want you to brag. I want you to brag in what you've done this week. You've got like three amazing things that have happened. It's been, I've got to say, it's been the busiest week I think of my life.

1:11Like genuinely. Well, yesterday I was at Buckingham Palace. Unbelievable. As you do. For the King's Trust 50th anniversary. I'm an ambassador. So it was amazing to be there in the palace grounds. And you looked incredible. Saw Craig David. Craig David. Oh, he was amazing.

1:26Andrea McLean:Is he what you have never seen? I've always wanted to go to a beaver and see him. He's so good. Like exactly how he sounds. Like he's rapping and he's brilliant. And it just took me right back to like being 20 and like Raven. Bit of nostalgia. Yeah, bit of nostalgia. Yeah. Yeah. And I hit a million followers. Just casually drop that in there. Yeah. When I'm like, oh my God, you've got to be amazing. Like a million followers. Like you started your Instagram account, what, 10 years ago? 10 years. Yeah, it's taken 10 years. And think of how many women, parents, mums particularly, that have followed like that journey with you and like grown with you.

2:04I know.

2:04Andrea McLean:And I bet you are still, obviously I didn't know you 10 years ago, but I imagine you are still the same person as you were. A lot tireder. A lot tireder, yeah. Anyway, tell me about your fail. Do you have a fail this week? I do. I do have a fail and it happened yesterday. Oh, God. Right. so I was telling you this I don't know if anyone else does this but I have an alarm in my phone for the second week in September and I hire a skip every year and the reason I hire a skip is to get rid of all the shit that I've got in my house so whatever I don't donate as I donate clothes obviously to charity and my dad runs a homeless shelter up north so I give a lot of toys a lot of bits to my dad but we seem to accumulate so much stuff in our house that nobody's ever going to take or want and now it's like we I used to put like furniture and stuff at the bottom of my drive yeah decent stuff and then people would take it and I'd put a note like free to a good home um but obviously you can't do that now because that is fly tipping so you can get fined for it so um yeah basically I I hired a skip because we're moving in a few weeks because we've been refurbing our house for a year and a half um and I found a box and it had artwork in it kids artwork yeah and Amazon boxes so I was like right I'm gonna spend an afternoon the other day I'm gonna chuck everything into this skip now it's not a big skip so my elder two kids can see in it oh god so they came home from school and Logan was like and I was like oh my god Logan what's happened I thought he trapped his fingers in the door again or something and um he was like somebody's put my rocket and my spaceship and my solar system and my aunt's nest and my football boot it's all in there and i was like i was like oh my god now we've had a heavy downpour of rain louise and there was quite a puddle at the bottom of this fucking skip so i had to like the skip rat that I am oh I had to climb into the skip of course you did and pick out all the shit that I just thrown in the day before but he had real tears coming down his face and then my two-year-old is like my see because she wanted to see like my see so Bradley's picking her up and she's like my dolly and I was like oh they probably haven't played with for like forever I had to climb into the skip you have to do a sketch on this skip gunge juice oh god you're so good and i was like uh and i'm obviously worried that annabelle's going to run towards the road because we have got a driveway but i was like bradley hold your sister but i shouted it like really aggressively and the guy next door was like looked over and he could see me in the skip pulling everything out please tell me you've got like a ring doorbell or something to see i actually do should i get should i get the you have to that is absolutely brilliant i mean that's a sketch in itself just like a mum jumping in a skip my own skip retrieving the artwork that i'd thrown out the day before and i was and so they were like it's all wet and all the tissue paper is everywhere so then i've had to dry it out in the utility room next to all my laundry and stuff that's just piled that's hilarious i honestly that is that's really made my morning i actually felt like such a shit mum though louise no that no it's brilliant so anybody else on youtube just write in the comment section yeah any any parent what do you do with artwork I need to know what parents do because yeah I throw it like honestly I'll go through their bag on a Friday and I chuck it straight in the bin yeah like I do I've done the classic thing though of um in my office in the filing cabinet on the bottom filing cabinet drawer is just dedicated to children yeah and I've kept certain bits of artwork for certain children I love that my first child I've kept nearly every single thing he's done.

6:01Andrea McLean:Second child? Little bit. Third? Nothing. Nothing. So this week, my fail. I kind of had to, it's actually not really my fail. I think it's more Jesse's fail, my husband. Okay, Louise. Actually, do you know what? It's actually not even his fault. So the other morning, Jesse was taking a shower and I was in the bedroom just getting ready for the day ahead. and I saw Inca kind of like picking up Jessie's phone and then putting it down again and I didn't think anything of it. And then later on in the day, we were with my brother and luckily it was my brother and nobody else and we're all around Jessie's phone because he wanted to show us a picture of something and he gets his phone out and he starts scrolling through his pictures and then we come across...

6:56we come across a picture that ink has taken and it's zoomed in of jesse's penis

7:07in the shower and the water's like trickling off the end of his shaft so it looks like it's

7:12Andrea McLean:and it was just so large and none of us were expecting it jesse was like what the hell is that and then i remembered oh god that was inca this morning and then we confronted her and we were like inca you can't you can't just like jesse was like you've just violated you know my privacy and i was like i don't think i don't think she'll understand that we're like just don't do it just don't take pictures of people's privates in the show and she's taking loads on she just literally stood there zoomed in loads it's like and also you know what Inga's like with with like whatsapp and my phone she's got terrified that she could do something you know she knows how to send it to people did you check through scent items like did you go through in whatsapp to check that she hadn't sent it yeah it's all fine can you imagine to like the year four oh my god whatsapp group apparently that did happen did you tell me yeah there was a dad yeah a dad down south sent a picture of him in the bath pleasuring himself into the whatsapp group for the year pleasuring himself yeah in the bath was having your tummy tank in the bath with a little tickle just to make it you know perk up a bit fuck yeah i know and somebody messaged me that on instagram uh obviously that's the kind of thing i find hilarious oh my god and then he deleted it but by that point three or four mums had already seen it of course of course and screen grab that sent it to another whatsapp chat imagine if someone could see your screen grabs like I mean me and my brother we are awful people we screenshot everything and send it to each other and we find it hilarious yeah um but once uh luckily on Instagram you can delete a message uh because I I accidentally you know when you see an Instagram story instead of forwarding it to my brother yeah and commenting after I actually sent a message directly to the person that I was taking the mickey out of and my brother was like whoa whoa whoa whoa when I had sent it to my brother yeah and I screenshot and I was oh my god oh my god so yeah I very quickly deleted that but that taught me a valuable lesson oh absolutely actually people watching please comment if you have done something similar you've whatsapped somebody about someone and you've sent it to the wrong person and got found out or managed to get out of it I'd love to know got We've all done it.

9:35We've all done it.

9:38Andrea McLean:Today we have an incredible journalist with us. She's been a familiar face in our living rooms for over two decades. From the GMTV sofa to the Loose Women panel, she's interviewed everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Beyonce. But behind the polished TV career, she's navigated IVF, a very public divorce and a recent near-death experience. She's here to talk motherhood, mistakes and starting over. Please welcome the incredibly honest Andrea McLean. Andrea McLean. Thank you so much. Welcome to our show. It's so hard to know where to look. When you're hearing your life kind of summed up in a paragraph, it gets you kind of sweaty palms.

10:17You think, where do I look? What do I do? Gosh, thank you so much. Everyone seems to love being pros. Yeah, wow. I've interviewed Beyonce. yeah and you know when interviewing beyonce it was a junket uh which is where you you literally only get like four minutes or something and this is no exaggeration she was so beautiful in real life yeah that it was like you walked in and you could hear like what you thought when you walked

10:43Andrea McLean:in and saw me yeah is that what you mean it was so similar it was so similar it wasn't quite the tune but yeah i love that it's more like a heart noise when you saw me you know that audio that you get with the titanic theme tune on a recorder it's like that when you saw me as if you've interviewed beyonce though that's like that's very cool that's very cool well thank you for being here we're so thrilled to have you on the show you're looking gorgeous thank you have you flown in from spain because you're in spain now aren't you i've flown in Spain yeah we are so important yeah I have actually yeah I live in Spain how is life in Spain it's really nice is it really nice it's um it was exactly what I needed at the time of my life when I needed it to happen so it's a lot it's slower um it's more chilled I suppose I was ready for that yeah it's good wasn't quite as sunny as I thought it would be oh no they've just had the worst winter for apparently 100 years so and has that stopped your partner from playing golf I hear he's an avid golfer he's an avid golfer yeah he is a very avid golfer he he actually said to me that I need to set up an only fan account and you notice the word fan not fans only fan account for golf and because when he comes home I am his only fan and I have to listen to him telling me about birdies and eagles and cars.

12:10Oh, does he do the debrief? Oh, full debrief. Of every hole. Every hole. But what he said was, if you set up an OnlyFan account, basically, mainly men, would log on or whatever they do. I don't quite understand OnlyFans. And you would just go, oh, that sounds amazing. How far was your drive? Oh, my God. How many chips did you take? Did you end up in the bunker? I think I could make some money out of this. I think you might try to do something.

12:36Andrea McLean:And then at the end of it, it'll be like, now touch the shaft. Yeah. Oh, no, I wouldn't care about that. It would just be, you know, well done. That sounds like a great round. Or whatever they do. I don't know anything about golf. I might listen to you guys talk about golf and like the holes and like the 19th hole, which is what, the bar? Yeah. Wow. Oh, she went the 19th hole. And it's like, oh, God. A bogey is bad and an eagle is good or something. Yeah. It's like a whole nother world. I'm actually really pleased that I'm not a golf widow just yet. How old are your kids now? So my kids are a lot older, so they've all left home.

13:10Yeah. So we're a blended family, so we have four between us, age ranging from 19 to 24. Wow. And my youngest is 19. And so I have the youngest and the eldest, and he has the two in the middle. So I have the 19-year-old who is at uni in Spain, which is what prompted the move. Because I thought when she got in, we kind of looked at each other and thought, we could do this. because we've wanted to move to the sun for a long time, but work and timing and everything, it didn't really work. And then I thought, well, there's no mum guilt now about leaving her. We'll just follow her. And she was horrified.

13:46What's she? Are you literally coming to the same place as me?

13:50Andrea McLean:So we went, yeah, we thought we could all get a flat together. She's like, what? You can't? No, we're not. We're like as far away as, I don't know, Edinburgh to Portsmouth. It's really far, so it's fine. But yeah, that was what prompted the move. So she's there. my son is backpacking around the world um so he's actually in australia at the moment and then my two stepdaughters one is working in london and then the other one uh is working just down on the south coast so you don't actually live with your children at all at the moment no so what's that like like it's really weird is it yeah because you you you spend you know all these different stages of of mom life you know you have the not sleeping the toddler the school runs the craziness and all you want is a bit of peace and quiet yeah you know all you pray for is can i just have a wee on my own can i actually lay in a bath without someone banging on my door and this is an emergency and i need to show you this tiktok musically thing i've made um and then they're gone and it's the weirdest feeling like when you said that then it makes my because what you just said about having a wee in peace or being in the bath that is what we talk about and it's like we just went to have five minutes but actually the realization that that isn't going to be forever is quite scary because I thrive in the chaos how do you find it like being quiet at home when when my son first went away uh to uni so he was like you know like the first to go I literally I sat on his bed in his room that smelled of farm because boys do they don't know what it is they smell of ferrets it's really strange um and I sat in his room I was like oh he's gone and like 10 minutes later he turned up again I was like mom I forgot my duvet oh right okay and then off he went again it was a bit like sad music sad music and he's back oh oh okay and then I kind of carried on so that's actually quite smart to basically when your kids do leave the nest yeah go with them go with them you shouldn't say you shouldn't say that to me and Louise because we would take that literally where I'll be living in the accommodation next to the halls of residence wherever my children go.

15:59Andrea McLean:Do you need laundry doing? How's the sock situation? Actually anyone watching please comment below I'd love to know how have you dealt with it have you followed them? I love that just follow them. Or like any tips for potentials like us that would probably be those really weird mums following them being like have you had any breakfast today? Yeah it's like mum I'm 26 I'm married. My mum does that to me still she's just always says like well you know have you have you had enough water today I'm like mum I'm yeah I'm I'm fine yeah can we go back to like because we love talking about labor pregnancies love life can we go back to like your first marriage and and that that kind of the breakup and everything because you've you've gone through you've got I mean you've gone through so much in your life already haven't you which I mean well I've been divorced twice yeah so so your first let's start from the beginning then okay so my first husband we met at school yeah I sat behind him in geography childhood yeah he's got lovely hair oh wonder what you're gonna say then i was the 80s so he'd run his fingers through his hair and i'd sit behind him and think oh he's got lovely hair um yeah so we were together for 17 years so you got with him at how old when you got 17 so actually yeah we met at 17 and we were together for 17 years and that's who i had my son with um that divorce was horrific because you know you you come to realize that actually this kind of fairy tale thing that you've been sold for starters um and also maybe you've kind of built up in your own head is not what you're actually living yeah um so that was that was really tough and then my second marriage uh that i i had learned nothing at all from the first and I made all the same mistakes the second time around.

17:50In what way? What kind of mistakes would you say?

17:56It's a tricky one to pick around because there's a lot that I can't say. But I suppose it would be understanding that red flags are not bunting. Right. That's brilliant. Oh my God, that's brilliant. That should be a t-shirt. That's what the kids say now. The kids say now, oh my god mum you are so naive how did you not see that's a red flag not bunting so even now never heard if I because I'm quite a kind of cheery oh I just take some at face value and you know why would someone why would they lie because I don't lie so um yeah that's that was my because you have talked about um toxic relationships how do you explain that to your children are they aware of how toxic things were yes they are now um and but I waited until you know you can you can kind of it's like it's like feeding out a line isn't it so you give them what they're emotionally able to to handle and then also you for me anyway it was very important that both my kids had great relationships with their dads because yeah that's a whole separate thing and for me it was when I felt that maybe they were becoming more aware of things or we were able to have more slightly grown-up conversations then I could let them know things but again it's a difficult one because it's we talk really openly now and I've told them everything about everything and at least now they can make their own minds up as as adults yeah um and what i mean by that is for example like my my daughter uh and my my stepdaughters you know because we'll sit and chat around the table and this kind of thing is being able to to share with them some of my experiences but also say to them you you it's kind of like the no one owes you pretty if our biggest saying well we have two sayings at home one don't be a dick that's literally our number one saying at home don't be a dick and if someone is acting out you've broken house rule number one but that also applies outside the home so if someone is behaving in a way that really is is not on and you'll know in yourself it's not on have that in your head and number two is if someone shows you who they are believe them and what I mean by that is I was always making excuses oh there's this oh there's that if there's one thing that I hope I've passed on to the to the young women in our family it's as if someone shows you how but who they are believe them don't keep making excuses or let them keep making excuses or I was tired I was stressed I'm sorry it wasn't my fault all of that that's great advice exactly and we didn't know we didn't know so you all you can do is you know once you know better do better and and that's it

20:51Andrea McLean:and how did you find navigating like ex-partners and children and like the dynamics around that because you know obviously we've mentioned about blended families but as a single woman for example with an ex-partner and a child it's like how how did how was that a turning point for you in your life do you think was it did you find it hard at that point it's complicated because obviously I had two ex-partners yeah so there's there's um there's a dynamic there and listen I'm I was the person who my mum and dad had got met and married really young and are still together and they were teenagers too when they married and they still like each other and still get on so I thought that's what I would have so for me to you know find myself in my 40s and now I'm second time divorced with two kids by two different dads navigating all of that and in the public eye that's not what I thought I would end up with so how did I find it um it was complicated it was challenging but to be really honest actually being on my own with the kids was good because because my house was a loving, stable, consistent environment.

22:03And I, that was my main focus really was, uh, you know, I'm a very, I'm a very consistent person. And if I say I'm going to do something, I will do it. And also if I say no, I mean, no. So there was never any, you know, please mom, please mom, please mom, please mom, please mom, please mom until, oh my god yes I've never actually been that mum and when I was a single mum it was a lot easier because you couldn't play you off against someone of course which of course they will do but in that heat of the moment they couldn't then you know go to the other parent and my attitude towards it was I can settle into this go on ask me one more time oh ask me another time now let's see what's going to happen and they learned very quickly that yeah you know if you keep pushing this is going to be harder for you I got all day and I didn't rise to it it was it was okay right this is what you're doing because you're absolutely right my kids will come to me and ask me something I'll say no and they go okay and I'm like oh that's great and then they're going to my husband yeah he's going yeah sure yeah I'm like for god's sake I just said no so yeah I think that it was actually simpler and

23:16Andrea McLean:And what was it like at first? I'm thinking for anybody watching, like introducing the kids to each other. Were you quite nervous about that with your partner? So I'd been single or been divorced for a while. And to be honest, I wasn't interested in starting again. I thought, you know what, clearly this doesn't work for me. So I think I'm out. I'm out. So I wasn't looking when I met my now third husband. And we were set up on a blind date that neither of us wanted to go on by friends. Yeah. So we went on a double date with this other couple, neither of us wanting to go. And kind of turned out, I didn't have my contact lenses in, so I didn't even know what you looked like for the first bit.

23:58So anyway, yeah, we've been together ever since. I didn't introduce him. I was going to say, was it love at first sight? But clearly not because you couldn't see him.

24:04Andrea McLean:Yeah. Well, it was because he smelled nice. Sold. Sold, yeah. I didn't introduce him to my kids for nine months, maybe. I waited a good long while and then he was a friend who came round. Yeah. There was no pressure. I didn't meet his kids maybe 18 months. Right. Because he he hasn't been single as long as me. And I just thought there is no rush with this. And this is a big it's a big thing. And I don't I mean, do what you like. But I personally just thought you need to make sure that they're OK. So it's not a this is not a revolving door situation. and also you know I don't know if it's relevant to anything but like my numbers are seriously low I met someone at school and then I you know got married again then I've been married three times that's all I'm going to say about that it's really low so it wasn't like people that you've slept with yes so what I mean is she's like listen I'm not a slag right I've only slept with three people right well actually it was four but that doesn't make up I didn't have my glasses on I couldn't see in any way exactly exactly but what I mean is you know people kind of maybe have this idea that you know be married three times and oh my gosh I bet that was like a revolving door situation it couldn't be further from the truth and has that been written about you in the press oh yes oh yes and how did you find that having kids thinking oh what if other school mums read or hear or see any of that how did that make you feel at that time So when you get divorced, you lose a lot of friends.

25:42Andrea McLean:Do you? Oh, yes. I guess if you were childhood sweethearts with your first partner. Yeah, they're all gone. Actually, that's not true. Some are still there. But yeah. Oh, gosh, you don't just break up with your partner. You break up with the whole friendship group. Yes, you completely do. And people take sides, and that's understandable. So then when I got divorced again, I'd already been through it, so I understood it. but also the press at the time were writing a whole lot of nonsense about me. And I thought, you know what, I'm too tired to explain. Those who know me, love me and understand and know the full story about everything.

26:20And those who don't, you'll either, you find out who your friends are and you find out who your friends aren't. And in terms of the mums at the school gate, there was a lot of side eye. There was a lot of kind of, do you know what is really funny? and I can say this now, it was so long ago. I found out what the mums at the school gate were telling me, were saying about me from the nail shop. You said in? So I found out. It was quite, it was a few years later, as in sit and get your nails done. Yeah. And I was sitting at my nails done in the local little nail salon. Yeah. Shout out to lovely Jo.

26:56Hi, Jo. And the shop was empty this time. And I'd been going there for years. and she said to me you seem like a really nice lady and I just feel like I need to tell you what people are saying about you behind your back when because you you everyone's gossiping about you um and I can't say on here but basically I found out a lot of truths about my ex-husband and I found out a lot of truths about certain mums at the school and found out the the really the the lies that had been told about me and the misinformation and all of that. And I listened to it all and I thought, wow, okay. And then I said, right, I'm going to tell you the truth, do your magic.

27:42And I told the nail lady, this is the truth about what my marriage was really like and this is the truth about everything. All that stuff in the papers, it's a load of old nonsense something like this do your magic and I that was all I did I didn't go around telling because what's the point of stopping people and saying actually this actually that so oh but there I wonder there'd be like I wonder Hannah what do you think like there would be a part of me I think that I would want to kind of if I knew he was talking about me I'd want to like set the record straight and be like actually that's not what happened and this is what happened but I guess you're right after a while you're just like no no one yeah no one knows what goes on inside a marriage no one knows what goes on behind closed doors and if people will choose their narrative about you whether it's true or not how long was finley at the time how old yeah so finley would have been 10 and amy was five so yeah very much in the school gates and yeah because like yeah

28:40Andrea McLean:that'd be for me i i would find uh the thought of people saying stuff about me behind my back when you're saying about the side eye and stuff I'd find that really hard thinking oh I just put them in the after school club and then collect them when nobody can yeah be there because that that would take some serious balls to be going to the school when you know that they're saying stuff actually you're going do you know what I'm going to just remain dignified I'm not going to go up to them and say by the way like do you want to just have this out and talk about it because it's like it's none of their business it's none of them it's none of their business we're going to talk about your motherhood journey tell us everything because you also had endometriosis I did, yeah.

29:16And you had a journey to become a mother. Please tell us. So, yeah, lifetime endometriosis. And I didn't know that was what it was because it wasn't really talked about. It's quite a recent thing that people sort of say the word really openly. And I just thought, take a paracetamol, it'll all be fine. And then when I was about 28, I think, 29, I eventually went and I had a laparoscopy where they, you know, they find, and they were like, and this doctor, and I remember thinking, that's a very ill-judged bow tie that he was wearing. And he was sitting in front of me and he said, well, my dear, you know, I've had your results in.

29:58And cysts on ovaries, only one working fallopian tube, and endometriosis on bladder bowel everywhere. Frankly, my dear, it'll take a miracle, you know, thinking of having children. Next, you know, it was a bit like that. and I went from being a young woman who you know you spend all your life trying not to get pregnant to suddenly oh hang on a minute um so my uh my first husband and I we I had to have fertility treatment so I was put on Clomid yeah and that helps you generate you know all the eggs and all this kind of thing and I was really lucky we had tried for think two years then I was put on clomid all the hormones you know you're a bit like whoosh all the things and I actually got pregnant naturally and then there was the worry of oh my god how many babies is it going to be it's going to be like 14.

30:51Andrea McLean:So do you have the clomid to release the eggs and it didn't work and then you stopped or you had the clomid and got pregnant? No I got pregnant I got pregnant within a few months of of that and so that was wonderful so I had my son Finley and then uh how many five years later four four years later um I got pregnant naturally right which can happen yeah it took me completely by surprise because I was not expecting to be able to have another child and so reassuring for people watching and listening yeah to know that you know you told these things where it's like oh it's gonna be a miracle it's gonna be really difficult for you but actually it can and it does happen and that's with one tube yeah um and then And many, many years later, obviously, the endometriosis got so bad that I then was advised to have a full hysterectomy.

31:40So I had a full hysterectomy when I was 46. And that's like everything is gone. The worst bit about that was I thought I'd lose a bit of weight. Do you think that's quite a lot of stuff? Shall I get a really flat stomach? No. Going to have abs like slabs after this. I know. Did that then kind of force you into like early menopause? Yes, surgical menopause, which is different to normal menopause. So how does that feel? What happened? So normal menopause is a bit like being, you know, on a roller coaster. It's like, oh, how am I feeling today? You know, it's like, oh, I think I'm all right. No, I'm really not.

32:16Surgical menopause is like you've gone to the top and then you are screaming, plummeting downwards because literally all your hormones or your hormone generating engine has completely gone because that's if you have your ovaries removed, which I did. And there was a little bit of a kerfuffle because the doctor had said, oh, are you on HRT? And I said, yes. He was like, okay, that tick. Because I didn't know the amount that I was on was so small compared to the amount that I would need clearly when you have everything. So I went through the sort of phase, eventually got that kind of sorted.

32:53Andrea McLean:And how long did that phase last for? I would say the adjustment takes I hate to break it to people but it takes a couple of years because you know the initial stabilizing that was only a few months but then then you're kind of trying to get your balance right of so I'm on now uh estrogen progesterone um and what's the one I taken yeah that's no estrogen and progesterone that's what i'm on and then also uh pessaries as well because vaginal atrophy is a thing kids and it's really not great so i have pessaries as well and i tell every and all my friends go and get yourself checked out don't do it just by blood test keep a symptom checker you know when i had my hysterectomy i think there were 39 symptoms now they've realized this roughly I'm there's about 104 um keep a diary when you say vaginal atrophy what do you what do you mean it's basically where your your vaginal walls get rigid they're supposed to be you know fluid and moist and be able to expand and contract when needed and they don't they go rigid which means then you end up if you have sex it tears oh christ so then it must be really painful it's really painful to have sex yeah and that is that that is part of menopause menopause that no one talks about because it's people you know oh vaginal dryness no it's not just that it's it's atrophy it's literally your yeah it's yeah that's so not only are you dealing with all of this outside stuff there's inside but there's inside stuff that's causing a pain and a problem and affecting your relationship.

34:42Andrea McLean:A hundred percent. I read somewhere the other day that I think 75 % of marriages break down during menopause. And you can totally see why. Like even sometimes just hearing my husband chew, I want to kill him. Yeah, that's a genuine reason to murder. If sex is painful and you're not having sex to have children, then why do it? Yeah, and if it really, really hurts. It's interesting because, so I ended up, I wrote a book about the menopause back then because I was on daytime telly and I'd had to give a reason as to why I was going to be off work for so long. And then within about 24 hours, around 10 ,000 women got in touch with the show, got in touch with me.

35:26And I thought this is back in 2017. No one was talking about it. It wasn't like it is now. So I thought this is crazy. How come there's no information out there for women? So I had a really nice doctor who I'd got through the NHS. I was really lucky. And so I approached her and said, look, can we put a book together where you'll give all the medical stuff that I don't know? And I can talk first person so that it's relatable. And so I pitched to put a menopause book together and was basically told, you cannot talk about this. It's career suicide. No one will want to hire you. You'll be seen as old and past it.