some things I recently wrote to a friend about my experience having a menstrual cycle

+ some miscellaneous thoughts

[this is mostly a straight copy-paste of some messages I sent to a friend who was a bit disoriented by a new girlfriend’s emotional fluctuations; my suggestion was that men should not over-update on changes in sentiment from female partners who have any kind of monthly cycle until they have been with her for a few months and through a few rounds. none of this is authoritative, just arguing from personal experience. another friend suggested I make my thoughts public, so here they are, relatively unedited]

from chats elsewhere, part 1:

“not to be crude or sexist and this is definitely something that you shouldn't say to most women directly without a lot of established warmth and trust of a certain flavor but I wouldn't over-update about week-to-week fluctuations from a woman who has any kind of cycle? even on the IUD many women do 

IME the monthly ups and downs can be as dramatic as feeling like a very different person or as mild as to be barely noticeable but the common element is that the hormonal shifts are salience filters.

different kinds of information become salient depending on hormonal cocktail, certain sensitivities can be highlighted due to physical discomfort alone, some women feel really agitated or anxious or sensitive at some points not just bc of what's getting the spotlight but bc of cultural pressure to treat the fluctuations as an aberration to be corrected or an unfortunate inconvenience.

and this part sucks but even for women who are really "attuned" to their cycle, there can be a bit of amnesia that seems physiological. It can be weirdly hard to remember that this is a factor and I haven't figured out if that's a low-level cultural tangle or a spandrel/side effect of the "concealed ovulation strategy" or whatever.

this does not mean that it's your duty to, say, put up with three weeks of misery every month or that there is no responsibility on her part for her conduct.

but if it's doable I would say that you need about 3-6 months or cycles to really get a read on many women's "complete" disposition or personality or whatever.”

and the infodumpy thread about my experience, part 2:

1. “first disclaimer, I am not claiming anything specifically is going on with [girlfriend], every woman has a different relationship to this stuff and all kinds of things can affect it, and even two women who have very similar hormone levels and timing might have different things going on due to disposition, experiences, trauma, habits, environment.

2. I think a common disconnect between men and women on this topic is that yeah, it is very uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of this kind of variance, and for a lot of cultural and maybe biological reasons I don't think Modernity has a great handle on it. women can be really reluctant to treat their cycle as a causal factor, again for a lot of reasons. men sometimes seem to hear "women act differently at different times of the month” and infer that because she isn't mad/anxious/agitated/doesn't care about xyz most of the time, her perception when she's having feelings or thoughts that are unpleasant to engage with is inherently Distorted or Fake. you see an extreme example of this in red pill stuff that talks about women as capricious children.hence heuristics like "don't tell your gf that she's being hormonal even if it seems like she obviously is." feels really unfair, I know

3. a lot of stereotypes and social norms around men and women and hormones and whatnot are many people's best attempts to compensate for missing social supports, missing norms, the necessity of functioning stably at the day to day level while experiencing a lot of internal fluctuation, etc. our Current Cultural Deal around female biology and everything downstream is our heritage of centuries of industrialization, politics, media, feminism, reactions to all of the above, religion, the very raw and real consequences of sex and pregnancy and literally creating life via a process that usually isn't but definitely can be debilitating or deadly. everyone is trying so hard to be okay.

4. a description of me, specifically, when my hormone cycle feels "healthy":

   • follicular phase! increasingly energetic, independent, sense of self feels solid and dense, need less rest, strength training is easier, thinking clearly about crunchy complex abstract stuff is easier. less emotionally sensitive, less security-seeking behavior. this is the phase during which the body is preparing to push a freshly matured egg into one of the follicles and rebuilding the lining of the uterus. what was old and unneeded has been cleared away. things are fresh. testosterone and estrogen are increasing, along with leutenizing hormone, and follicular stimulating hormone. lasts about...two weeks, give or take a few days. stress, illness, and  can push ovulation out and can cause a kind of rocky "plateau" here but it's not so bad. if i'm healthy and functioning and solid, my body "decides" to ovulate. if there is a disruption, it can stall that process, often indefinitely. it is taking in cues from the environment.

   • ovulation, about 2-5 days for me: suddenly optimistically attuned to the social sphere. high libido. high sensual/sensory desire in general. great time to go to a party. a bit impulsive for me, sometimes I go "too far" outside of my comfort zone socially and sexually and then I kinda clam up and worry a lot about it in the following phase.

   • luteal. 10-14 days. testosterone PLUMMETS. estrogen PLUMMETS. i'm TIRED. when i'm in a good place, i'm cozy, comfortable, sleepier than usual but functional. I like warmth, both in terms of temp and emotional interactions. i like safety. i like and need to interact with women I basically trust. I like my mom more. I am less on the ball when it comes to performing like a guy intellectually and at work/school. this is the phase during which the body is figuring out 1) did I get pregnant? (it takes about 6 days for a fertilized egg to travel to the uterus, the egg can release some hormonal signals about its status during the trip but idk the details). when i'm healthy, I still feel solidly like myself at the core but my borders soften, I feel more diffuse as an individual. i am very very interested in and attuned to whether the people i'm around could support me in the first trimester of pregnancy (sleepy, uncomfortable, needy -- I suspect "would you love me if I were a worm?" is the sort of question the luteal phase brain might ask if it felt the need to be coy). this is the part of the cycle that is the least aligned with the expectations of the ideal sexless adult who can perform the same way at work everyday and girlboss and all that shit. i lean on people more just because it's nice to lean on something solid, it makes me feel like i'm safe which means I feel like I could get pregnant. afaict, if the environment is full of signals that I would be under major stress if I tried to carry a pregnancy, the body can make some decisions in a limited sense. drop progesterone levels early, flush the system, no conception for me. these menstrual periods are usually harder and more painful, if I had to guess I'd say it's a bit of an aggressive move on the body's part 

   • menstrual. for the purposes of tracking cycles, the first day of bleeding is Day One. either the full cycle played out, no baby happened, the uterine lining has aged and has no reason to stick around, the whole thing sloughs off the inside of the uterus like peeling a scab. this hurts sometimes, and sometimes it hurts quite a lot. constipation, cramps, physical discomfort, nerve sensitivity, in varying degrees. some women experience a leadup to this with mood swings and other symptoms. if some information about potential social problems was made salient during the luteal phase, the irritability caused by the raw-feeling and sensitivity sometimes makes me want to bring it up while i'm cranky which is a terrible idea. all hormone levels are at their lowest during this phase of 3-6 days; aside from the impulse to isolate myself, this is when I feel the closest to my "hardware" and my childhood personality. 

5. my unhealthy cycle, at its extremes:

   • follicular: oh thank FUCK I feel NORMAL again, I'm never going to let myself be the person I was for the last two weeks, I'm going to double down and get really aggressive about trying to seem normal because holy shit I cannot stand the way I feel and who I seem to be during the other phases. I am ignoring the low level knowledge that this can't last. I am overcommitting and suppressing self loathing and dread for what's coming.

   • ovulation: gah FUCK okay I have a libido now and I WANT WANT WANT but wanting is DANGEROUS and I am not clearing out my estrogen effectively or something so i'm INFLAMED in the most literal sense, my acne is bad my joints hurt I feel betrayed by my desire and I'm so ANGRY when I don't get the social attention I want from the relevant man/men in my life and my testosterone is so high that I might pick a fight, I feel entitled and also scared of my entitlement, I feel out of control and like I can't trust my decision-making, I make impulsive sexual and interpersonal decisions that I know I'll regret. things have to be a Specific Way for my desire to be okay and if they aren't, I'm MAD. for me this manifests as getting really really fixated on perceived fairness. "how dare you" etc

   • (if things are high stress enough, I can dip in and out of this preovulation state a lot while my body tries to figure out if it's even safe to release a fucking egg, let alone fertilize it. I suspect that if inflammation levels are high enough long enough this can cause a kind of adrenal collapse and lead to shitty chronic illness attractor states)

   • Luteal: fuck fuck fuck I feel like shit i'm gassy and bloated and have NO energy and everyone hates me and I don't know if i'm real and if anyone tries to criticize me I'm going to fall apart because I feel so starved for signals of safety and support. I'm depressed, i'm panicky, I hate myself, what the fuck is wrong with me, it's getting worse, I feel like SHIT. I'm dysphoric, I hate life, maybe I should transition.

   • menstrual: oh, right, I have a hormonal cycle. fuck. well now I just feel sick and irritated. ow.

   • in my unhealthy type of cycle, I feel like I am different people at different points and it's scary and my intertemporal relationship to all of the other Me's is hostile if I even manage to acknowledge that they exist. when i'm healthy, it's more like the same person is putting on a new uniform and if there's any sense of being a "different facet of myself," the "passing of the baton" is friendly and smooth and intertemporal behavior is cooperative and loving.

6. ime some women barely change at all across the cycle and only have mild fluctuations in default attunement, interests, capacity. the lucky bitches.

7. this blog series is related but I can't quite articulate what is so important about it. i've posted elsewhere. 1, 2

8. there is a tricky balance here where I think men in a relationship with women do have some duty of care to be attuned to variable needs and the way a woman might be stable on the order of months or years but not quite the same from day to day or week to week. but some women take this too far and put the burden of dealing with it all on the man, expecting him to be totally stoic and loving in the face of whatever emotional or behavioral outburst. some women try to pretend it isn't going on and it comes out sideways and builds resentment and they construct intellectual arguments for things that they perceive in one part of the cycle that mostly need to be noticed and held and heard. a lot of the second type are terrified at being treated as dishonest, insincere, capricious, untrustworthy, having their perceptions automatically filed away as distortions. a lot of them have been treated that way before or have picked the vibe up from media. this is another source of certain kinds of defensiveness imo.

9. all of the ways this can get tangled and layery can introduce genuine cognitive/perceptual distortions that track perfectly with her hormonal changes, which is scary for the woman bc “maybe I am actually crazy? maybe being a woman means I have to be crazy and treated like a child?” and for the guy on the receiving end, maybe he finds plenty of evidence that his partner just says crazy shit periodically and takes a stance of paternalism or stonewalling. which ofc makes the woman feel crazy, and the man can feel attacked out of nowhere, and the whole sad pattern entrenches itself further for another cycle.

10. I have a feeling like...in the ideal world, women owe the men in their lives a fair degree of self-awareness and acceptance that they may not actually bridge the inferential gap sometimes. straightforwardness about what they need in the moment, trust that the men they love are doing their best to be good to them while handling their own stuff, honesty about their feelings without cornering the men in their lives or mistreating them. a sense of humor about stuff like "I need to hear that these pants don't make me look fat and that you would love me if I were a worm." aspiring to behave maturely at every point even if they must behave differently or ask for different things. not being threatened by men having their own reactions to said fluctuations, needing things from the women they love in turn, or needing space. understanding and enjoying men as men in addition to enjoying them as people. this stance and the necessary environment can be hard to obtain.

11. in this ideal world, men "owe" the women in their lives a degree of resilience at the day-to-day level, of taking them seriously as equals, not being threatened by their feelings, of tuning in to their current state and being worthy of the trust implied when they need to lean on their men. treating women’s emotions as informative if not definitive. understanding and enjoying women as women in addition to enjoying them as people. this stance and the necessary environment can be hard to obtain.

12. it is weird and painful and beautiful that we are so similar to one another but also need different things from one another.

13. I am like 90% sure that a "good enough" interpersonal dynamic within a romantic partnership between a man and a woman is intrinsically, physiologically stabilizing and smoothly handles the worst excesses of both sexes.

14. none of this implies that you ought to feel or do any specific thing or that any of this specifically is going on for [girlfriend].”