PMS is all in our heads.

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The mood swings can certainly exacerbate existing fears or cause paranoia, especially if she's not keen on the idea of pregnancy in the first place, and cause flip outs over it. The last 3 days before a period feel surprisingly close to what you do when you're pregnant, and perhaps some part of her subconscious recognises that fact, and it contributes to exacerbate those fears.

They do tend to vary quite a bit. Rather than the regular four weeks, they can be as close as three weeks, or almost as far as six weeks, apart. But I don't think it's just the lateness that brings on the worry because it always starts within a day or two at most of her bringing up the possibility of being pregnant.

Makes sense. A second question; is there a way I can reassure her and help her keep calm about it for those couple of days without sounding like I'm being dismissive about her concerns?

For me, being logically minded like I am, reminding her that that fear is always a precursor to her period seems like it would be enough. But that tends to upset her, is there a better way?

Edit: as for the original question; after being raised almost entirely by women, growing up with two sisters, and living with gf for years, I've seen enough to be confident that it's not just in your heads.

It upsets her because it's not only dismissive, but invalidating (probably one of the more insidious psychological tactics that almost everyone uses without realising it).

I know in your mind, you see your job as "fixing the problem". The issue with this is you are labelling her emotions as "the problem" and trying to fix them. In order to "fix" an emotion, you invalidate it - probably one of the worse-ish things you could do. It's logical, but it will not work. Your intentions are admirable though.

One cannot deal with emotions using logic, it does not work. To combat logic, you use logic. To deal with emotion, you are better off using emotion.

Your most powerful weapon in this situation, is the way you make her feel. So when she starts, it's probably best to stop what you're doing and pay attention. I'm not sure what her preferred method of communication is, but whatever it is, use it. If it's words, then use that, if it's physical affection, then use that, etc, etc (doing stuff for her, or spending time with her). You're better off using a mixture of her preferred types until she relaxes into you and starts going along with whatever you're doing.

I'm not sure if she gets physical symptoms, but addressing those as well will definitely help. Once you have her relaxed, arrange for painkillers, heat pads or food as necessary.
In the long term, taking a really high strength krill oil lessens the intensity of PMS for many women, physical, mental and otherwise.

Apart from that, I feel your pain, because I often used to have to deal with my girl friends while on PMS, as their men would vacate the premises until they learned to deal with it.

Yes. I certainly don't mean to do that but, even as bad as I am at communication, I realize that it can come across that way.



You're right. I do tend to see it as my job to fix her "problems."

But I know from my own experience that emotion trumps logic every time. It's just that emotions are so damn messy and confusing and overwhelming.



Thank you. Figuring out how to best communicate with her during this time is something that's just gonna take more time and effort (like I said, I'm terrible at that), but helping with the physical symptoms is something I can start right away.



Yeah, I want very badly to be supportive and be there for her, but I can understand why some guys would rather just take a few days vacation from the relationship.

Emotions are messy, confusing and overwhelming, especially other peoples, but you just have to grit your teeth and do it.

I used to suck at this for a long time but was forced to learn - originally I did the same thing you do. My mind works more like a guys most of the time, and not much like a girls, so I totally get how confused you are and why. I never claim that it makes sense!

I also had to train my girl friends boyfriends (who are now their husbands) - they no longer vacate now. Give them a solid solution they can implement that works and they stick around.

It's certainly biologically plausible for hormone fluctuations to affect your mood, but it's a big leap to go from that to saying they do.

I mean, unicorns are biologically plausible, too. There's no reason why we couldn't have horses with a single horn on their forehead. There are similar horns on the heads of other animals who live similar lifestyles to wild horses. Indeed, some close relatives of horses have horns. But none of that is proof that unicorns exist, just that they'd be possible.

Sooner or later, someone will genetically engineer them

Looking at this a little closer, there are actually two distinct points being presented there ... (1) that PMS is influenced by the culture you live in, and (2) it's not influenced by hormones.

The first would seem to be easy to prove or disprove. Do women all over the world get PMS? Do Kalihari Bushmen (or Bushwomen) get PMS no differently than Russian women or Navajo women or the waitress down at the diner? So why didn't the "researchers" look into this?

Regarding the second point, I'd want to know exactly what "research" has shown this. What was their methodology? How many women were "studied", and was the sample sufficiently random?

Ordinarily, I'm a great believer in science and the scientific method. But claims like this, that fly in the face of long-held knowledge, need to be much more rigorously demonstrated.