# Periods, menopause and what changes > How the menstrual cycle, contraception, perimenopause and menopause change pain, bruising, positions and mood, and what to adjust rather than abandon. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/periods-and-menopause/ - Section: Safety and practice - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. The cycle, contraception and the menopause all change how a spanking lands, and they are easy to leave out of a reference like this. None of it is a reason to stop. Most of it is a reason to move the dial down for a fortnight and say so out loud. --- ## In short - Pain and bruising vary across the cycle for many people and not at all for others. Track your own rather than trusting a general rule. - The same session can mark differently in different weeks, which catches people out when marks have to be hidden. - Cramps and backache make the folded positions the first to become unbearable. Change position rather than cancelling. - Menopause tends to mean thinner skin, easier bruising and slower healing. Lower force and broader implements, not retirement. Everything here concerns adults over 18. It is also written by a man, which I would rather say at the top than have you work out halfway down, so treat it as a collection of what people have told me over the years rather than as authority. > **I am not a doctor.** I have no medical training of any kind. What follows is what I have picked up from doing this and from talking to people who do it, and none of it is medical advice. > > > > If you have a condition, take any medication, or are unsure about anything on this page, ask a GP, a pharmacist or your specialist before you play rather than afterwards. Never stop or change prescribed medication because of anything you read on a website. > > > > Where there is any doubt at all, take the cautious option: better safe than sorry is the whole of the policy here, and you owe that much to yourself and to the person you are doing this with. ## Pain across the cycle People report this differently enough that I have stopped expecting a pattern. Some find the week before a period noticeably harder, everything sharper and their patience shorter, then find the week after unusually easy. Others notice nothing at all and are mildly irritated by the suggestion that they should. Which means the general rule is useless and your own record is not. If you play with any regularity, keep a rough note: date, roughly what happened, how it felt, how you were afterwards. Three or four months of that will tell you more about your own pattern than anything written by anybody else, and it turns a vague sense that some weeks are harder into something you can plan around. The practical use of it is not avoidance. It is knowing that a session which would be ordinary in one week might be a lot in another, so that neither of you concludes something has gone wrong with your tolerance or your commitment. ## Bruising and skin sensitivity Skin sensitivity shifts across the month for many people, and so does how readily they mark. The consequence is entirely practical: the same implement, at the same force, from the same person, can leave nothing one week and a solid two-week bruise the next. That matters most when marks have to be hidden. If you are going swimming, on holiday, to a physio appointment or anywhere else where somebody will see you, it is worth building in more margin than you think you need at the point in the month where you mark more. The timeline is on [marks and bruising](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/marks-and-bruising/), and the honest version is that day two is usually worse than the night itself. ## Cramps, backache and positions The first thing to go is the folded positions. Anything that bends you hard at the hips presses on a stomach that is already unhappy and loads a lower back that is already aching, and people persist with them out of a sense that changing position is admitting something. It is not. Move. [Lying across a bed](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/positions/lying-on-a-bed/) with a pillow under the hips is the kindest of the lot and can be held for as long as you like. [Over a sofa arm](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/positions/over-the-sofa-arm/) supports the pelvis and keeps the pressure off the abdomen. What I would avoid is [touching toes](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/positions/touching-toes/) and anything else that demands a deep hold, because a body that is already cramping is not the body to be asking for endurance from. Heat afterwards is worth more than usual. A hot water bottle during [aftercare](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/aftercare/) is not a concession, it is just sensible. ## Playing during a period An ordinary preference, and I would like it treated as one. Some people want this more at that point in the month, some want to be left entirely alone, and a good number simply want the same thing with slightly less of it. All of those are unremarkable and none of them need justifying. Practically, the only real requirement is that it is settled in advance rather than improvised. Say whether you want to play at all. Say whether being bared is a different question for you that week, because for plenty of people it is even when nothing else has changed, and that is exactly the sort of thing covered on [being bared, exposed and inspected](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/being-bared/). Put a towel down if you would rather not think about the sheets. Choose the position with comfort in mind rather than ceremony. A person who is squeamish about any of this in a partner is telling you something useful about how they will handle every other unglamorous part of being close to somebody. ## Contraception and coils Hormonal contraception affects mood, bleeding and bruising for some people and not for others, and the honest position is that the variation is wide and I have no way to predict yours. A coil settling in can make the first months uncomfortable in ways that interact with positions rather than with implements. Two things worth doing. Notice whether anything changed in the months after starting something new, because people frequently attribute a shift in how they respond to the arrangement rather than to the prescription. And ask a pharmacist or GP if bruising has changed noticeably, which is an ordinary question that needs no explanation attached. ## Perimenopause and menopause This deserves the most room, partly because a good proportion of the people reading this site are in that decade and partly because nobody writes about it in this context at all. The change that matters most physically is skin. As oestrogen falls, skin tends to get thinner, drier and less elastic. It marks more readily from less force, bruises come up faster and clear more slowly, and small tears and splits happen where they would not have before. The practical answer is not retirement. It is dropping the force by a good margin, favouring broad implements that spread their load over narrow ones that concentrate it, warming up for longer, and treating the first sessions after a noticeable change as if you were starting again with somebody new. Hot flushes interact badly with everything this activity involves. Adrenaline, exertion and a warm room already push body temperature up, and a flush arriving on top of that is genuinely unpleasant and occasionally frightening. Keep the room cooler than feels necessary, have water within reach, and treat a request to stop and cool down as an ordinary pause rather than an ending. Sleep and mood are the underrated part. Disrupted sleep and the mood swings that come with the hormonal shift both change how [drop](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/sub-drop/) lands, and people describe the comedown as heavier and longer during perimenopause than it used to be. Knowing that in advance stops it being read as evidence that something in the relationship has gone wrong. HRT is a question for a GP and not for me. What I will say is that if you are bruising in a way that surprises you, that is worth mentioning at an appointment you were having anyway, and you can raise it without any of the rest of the context. ## What this does not mean It does not mean stopping. People do this well into their sixties and seventies, and the ones who do it happily are the ones who adjusted the dial rather than waiting for their bodies to be what they were at thirty-five. Lower force, broader implements, kinder positions, longer warm-ups, more margin around marks. The experience is not diminished by any of that, and several people have told me the opposite: that the sessions got better once the arithmetic stopped being about how much could be taken. There is more on that at [what age is too old to start](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/what-age-is-too-old-to-start/). ## The part that is not physical A changing body is a live insecurity for a great many women, and this activity involves being looked at while undressed by somebody whose opinion you care about. That combination can go badly in a way that has nothing to do with bruising. So the rule from [being bared](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/being-bared/) applies with knobs on. Bodies are not on the list. Not weight, not skin, not ageing, not anything a person cannot change by Tuesday. Inspect the things that were chosen and say nothing whatsoever about the rest. A single remark in a scene about a body that is already a sore subject will outlast every mark you leave, and I have watched it end an arrangement that had been working for years. > ## Where to take the questions I cannot answer > > > > Your GP or a pharmacist for anything about bruising, bleeding, contraception or HRT, and NHS 111 free at any hour if something needs an answer sooner. If mood is the thing that has shifted rather than skin, [Mind](https://www.mind.org.uk) has practical information and the Samaritans are on **116 123**, free, day or night. ## Read next - [Health conditions and medication](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/health-and-medication/) - [Marks and bruising](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/marks-and-bruising/) - [Being bared, exposed and inspected](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/being-bared/) - [What age is too old to start?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/what-age-is-too-old-to-start/) - [Negotiation](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/negotiation/) ## Common questions ### Does pain tolerance change during your cycle? For a lot of people yes, and for a lot of people not noticeably. Some find the days before a period much harder going and the week after considerably easier, others notice nothing at all. Because it varies so much between individuals, the useful thing is to keep a rough note of your own sessions rather than trusting any general rule about when women can take more. ### Can you be spanked on your period? Yes, and whether you want to is an ordinary preference rather than a taboo. Some people want it more at that point in the month and some want nothing at all, and both are unremarkable. The only thing worth doing is settling it in advance so nobody is improvising, including whether being bared is different for you that week. ### Does menopause change how much you bruise? It commonly does. Skin tends to get thinner and drier with falling oestrogen, bruises come up more readily from less force and take longer to clear, and small tears happen more easily. It does not mean stopping. It means dropping the force, favouring broad implements over narrow ones, and expecting marks that would once have been nothing.