u/MegaSmegmaSwagLord

How many men in your life do you trust without any doubt that they are genuinely good human beings?

He told me to come here.

I’ve been with my girlfriend for three years. She’s kind, loving, smart, the funniest person I’ve ever met. But we have problems.

We’ve had unresolved mega fights for as long as I can remember, they happen rarely, maybe once every couple months. Sometimes a few months in a row. They happen far and few in-between enough that that I tell myself that every couple has fights, right? It’s worth it because most of the time her and I are best friends who get along fantastically 90% of the time.

Until we don’t. Which is when she acts EXACTLY like how people here describe someone with PMDD. It’s like I’m Satan on earth hell-bent on making her feel like shit. We’re in the middle of one of those right now. Every fight starts somewhere and it evolves into the next thing usually because of the way I say something, a “but” where it shouldn’t be, a flick of the eyes that becomes an eye-roll, a breath that means I’m about to interrupt. She talks at me sometimes for hours and NO amount of acknowledging the apparent thing(s) I’ve done wrong or apology gets her to calm down or let it go. She refuses to see that her tone or the way she is speaking to me is any different than the way I talk to her, which is calm, understanding, and cool; she tells me she doesn’t sound loud, or angry, or rude, or if she is it’s because it’s warranted because I’ve hurt her. When these episodes happen she says things like she feels like “I don’t love her” or I hate her. I reassure her by saying I do, and that’s not how love works. I love her all the time, not just when we’re doing okay.

She cycles through the same grievances over and over restating what hurt her, flaying me for things we’ve already acknowledged or inventing new things to be angry about. Usually after two hours of what she sees as “arguing” I’m burnt out and I need to take a break which I verbally ask her for – but to her this is me “walking out on her” or “abandoning her.” Then when we reconvene it’s the same thing all over again but this time she’s mad because I need to step away. She seems completely unable to let. It. Go. She cannot move past these emotions.

In the past these episodes can sometimes end when she has a full blown panic attack, is crying, struggling to breathe, and I hold her as she comes down from it, where she then enters a completely brain fried state where she sleeps and we just don’t talk about it after the fact (horribly unhealthy). Of course next time an episode happens again it’s that we never resolved anything.

Our spat began yesterday and this time I almost panicked myself, after an hour of her telling me off I stood up abruptly and told her I need 5 minutes outside just to collect myself. I was at my wits end this time. I went outside and swallowed my pride and called my mother. After a brief text exchange with my mom I collected myself and finally resolved to do something I’ve always thought of doing but haven’t done. I set the recorder on my phone on. I recorded several sets of conversation that spanned around three hours and sent them to my mother because I’m starting to feel crazy. Finally, someone validated me, this was not normal. My mother commended me on how level headed I was throughout it all and confirmed to me that the way she was speaking to me was not normal. She was not rational, and even delusional with the things she was saying. Sometimes contradicting herself, or denying things that I KNOW have been said throughout the day.

It was my mother who first brought up PMDD. The more I poured over it all the more things started clicking into place in my brain. Holy. Fucking. Shit. Yesterday it all culminated when she told me I should break up with her, I told her I didn’t want that and that I loved her. She then started packing up and was telling me she was going to leave. I asked her where she would go and she refused to tell me. She has a history of self-harm and attempted suicide. I asked her if she can guarantee she won’t hurt herself, promise she won’t do anything rash. She said she couldn’t promise that. I stopped her by the door and dialed my mother on the phone, she deeply respects my mother and I know as a last resort she would at least talk to her. After their dialogue on the phone my mother got her to assure us that she wasn’t going to do anything impulsive. We let her go. For two hours I couldn’t get it out of my head that she might be dead. Finally she came back around midnight, I said hello to her, she said hey, then walked to our spare bedroom and is still there now. She’s sequestered herself the whole day with the door locked.

I’m going to approach her with getting a diagnosis as soon as she comes out.

Edit: She’s on oral hormonal birth control but she gives herself a week every now and then to have her period. It’s her choice, I’ve never questioned it, always respected her decisions. This was the week so to speak she was going to let herself have her period.

TLDR: Girlfriend probably has PMDD and I’m finally feeling like I’m not going crazy.