Halle Berry revealed her sex life suffered after going into perimenopause — which she originally believed to be a “really bad case of herpes.”
The “Catwoman” actress, 58, got candid about how the misdiagnosis impacted her sex life with boyfriend Van Hunt during a recent appearance on the “Drew Barrymore Show.”
“We struggled with finding a way to have sex again,” she admitted, “getting rid of the dryness, making it more enjoyable, because it got pretty rough for a minute.”
Berry, who began dating Hunt in September 2020, said there were “six or seven months” where having sex felt like “razor blades.”
The “Monster’s Ball” star said the sudden change was a drastic shift from the early days of their relationship — and it took her a long time to figure out the actual cause.
“When I was 54 years old, I had just met Van,” she recalled. “I manifested this man and we were having the best time. I finally met my person and it was amazing.”
However, one morning, Berry “tried to go to the bathroom” and felt excruciating pain.
“I couldn’t go. It was so painful … it took me almost 10 minutes to just empty my bladder because it was so painful,” she recalled. “And substances were down there that I had never seen before and I thought, ‘What is this?’”
The Oscar winner knew something was wrong and Hunt, 54, drove her “right to the doctor” because her nether region was “so swollen.”
“And he is doing the exam and looking up there and he said, ‘Yep, uh huh I think I know what this is,’ and I’m like, ‘What?!’ and he said, ‘It’s a really bad case of herpes.’”
Berry said she and Hunt “spent the next 72 hours doing the blame game,” unsure of which one of them somehow contracted the sexually transmitted disease.
However, in the middle of their back-and-forth, her doctor called to say he had been wrong — but still had no idea what was going on.
“He said, ‘You do not have herpes,’” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘OK then, what is it?’ And this was the defining moment for me, he said, ‘I don’t know, that’s what it looked like.’”
“And that sent me on my own reconnaissance and my own researching and that’s when I came up with Dry Vagina Syndrome, that women have when they are in perimenopause,” she explained. “And I had all the symptoms of what that felt like.”
Perimenopause is the “transitional time around menopause” and can include several symptoms that are “caused by the changing levels of hormones in the body” –– including mood changes, night sweats and vaginal dryness –– according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
While Berry eventually found ways to ease her discomfort, she now wants to share that knowledge with other middle-aged women.
The actress’ latest project, Respin, aims to help women suffering from menopause by providing reliable and comprehensive information about the aging process.
“It’s a community for women to talk to each other and learn from each other,” she told Time magazine of the new platform.
“But there is also a health component with health coaching, nutritionists, and experts to talk about exercise and learning how the lack of estrogen and changing hormones affect our heart, brain, bones, and entire body,” she continued. “I felt like there was something really missing in the market for women in midlife.”
Berry also testified in Congress on behalf of a bill that would increase research and clinical trials for studies regarding women’s midlife.
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