PMDD Wisdom for the Holidays and Beyond

I received two excellent comments from readers this week, both of them spot on, and rather than leave this straightforward wisdom buried in the comments section at the end of an older post, I thought I'd bring it front and center for your consideration.  Please keep these comments in mind as we move into the craziest and most emotion-filled time of the year, and may your next six weeks be filled with more peace and understanding because of it:

Here’s some advice for anybody who lives with a woman experiencing PMDD from somebody who has it herself: If you suddenly find that the woman you live with is irritable, seems distant, or has actually left to be by herself, leave her alone! She’s not mad at you, you didn’t do anything wrong. If you follow her around, touch her, stare at her, and ask her questions when all she needs is to be by herself for a bit, you’re going to piss her off. Look at the calendar. Is she premenstrual? Yes? Then that is your explanation for her behavior. She doesn’t need to explain it to you every month. She doesn’t want to talk about it. This is super predictable, guys. I know you may see her not feeling well and worry about her and your natural reaction is to touch and comfort and find out what’s wrong. For the love of all that is holy, just leave her alone. She can’t control how she feels and she doesn’t like it either. Don’t make it worse. She most likely already feels terrible you have to deal with her. :(  ~Anonymous comment on my post, Dealing with PMDD - Advice for Men

Guys. I’m a wife. I’m a mom. I have PMDD. I get how you would think that if your wife/girlfriend can keep it together at work that you would think you are not her top priority. But, consider this. What if she is a mess around you because you and your kids are everything to her? Think about it. Work is important, but it’s just a job. Friends are important, but they are just friends. Wanting to be a good wife and mom is everything to most women I know. Personally, I find it challenging, if not impossible, to be a good wife and a good mom at the same time. Both roles require completely different demands. This is stressful. So then, take into account that when your wife is premenstrual, she has lost her ability to cope. She’s so stressed out and so overwhelmed she cannot deal with anything. It’s upsetting when the toast is taking too long to pop up let alone the child who is screaming because she said he can’t play with the electrical cords. So, it’s hard. We care so much about being a good wife and mom, that when we can’t be, we feel incredible guilt. We are incapable of being loving, fun and efficient all time and feel so bad about it that we think you and the kids would be better off without us. These feelings can affect us physically to the point that we can’t fulfill any of our roles. If we didn’t care about being a good wife and mom, it wouldn’t stress us out. When we’re premenstrual, we can’t handle the stress.
If that’s not the case with your wife, there’s another explanation. If she’s at work all day and comes home to you and the kids at night, that means she has spent the whole day trying so hard to not be a monster. This is exhausting. There is so much she wants to do and say, but she can’t. She holds it in. Coming home to the demands of being a wife and mom put her over the top, she has nothing left. She just can’t deal with it anymore. It’s not that you aren’t her top priority, it’s that when she has time with you, she literally has nothing left to offer.
Another reason would be that work is validating for her. She's probably good at what she does, and she gets a paycheck for it. There's a reward and purpose and it feels good to be a good employee. There is not much that makes you feel good about being a wife and mom. If the house is messy, you don't know what to make for dinner, dinner sucks, laundry isn't done, etc., it's easy to feel like a subpar wife. If your 3 year old isn't potty trained, your 15 year old doesn't know how to load a dishwasher, your kids watch too much t.v., your kids eat nothing but junk, your kids fight, your kids don't obey, you forgot your tooth fairy duties, etc., it's easy to feel like a failure as a mom. It's not hard to feel inadequate at home. Maybe the "needed benefit" for her going to work is that she feels good about herself the 8 hours she's there, and that 8 hours is what gets her through the other 16 every day.
There you have three explanations. I hope this gives you insight on what you’re wife might be thinking. We’re all different, but it was sad for me to hear you think you’re not a priority or of less importance to your wife because for me, it’s the opposite. It’s the anger and frustration and questioning of our love for you that gets us stuck in depression. Try responding to her with love. If she comes home from work a crazy angry person, or if you come home from work and she’s clearly irritable, that would be a good time for you to say, “Kids, Mom doesn’t feel well. Come to me for everything you need. Let’s clean up your toys, I’ll help with homework, I’ll feed you dinner, I’ll give you baths, I’ll put you to bed.” Just try it. See how much sooner she feels better. She needs to know you love her even though she’s having a bad day. I know it’s a lot of work to do everything at home after you’ve worked so hard all day, but contemplate this: If you get divorced or she kills herself, which is something women with PMDD think of often, you’re going to be doing everything every day anyway for the rest of time. ~Anonymous comment on my post, Dealing with PMDD - Advice for Men