Pay your moody dues
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday March 30, 2013

Apparently PMS doesn’t exist. Any woman claiming a monthly permit to grumpiness, gloominess and general wretchedness has had her licence revoked. Period.

So says a team of Canadian scientists who’ve decided Pre-Menstrual Syndrome is not a syndrome at all, but a convenient excuse for 80-percent of the world’s women to pay out on their partners once a month. Clearly those scientists haven’t met my husband – a man who consistently gets my goat one week in four.

Just because Canadians invented the foghorn and peanut paste doesn’t mean they understand women. I like to do the right thing and gift my man his independence during ‘that time of the month’: “Feel free to say and do as you please honey, because this weekend I’m going to bite your head off regardless.”

So how did the best Canadian minds determine that women are faking their Preposterous Mood Swings every month? And why was the research team all women? (Because no man was brave enough to volunteer?)

Based on a mere forty-one case studies, the scientists concluded that only six women could prove an emotional link between the end of their cycles and having more personalities than Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. The other 35 respondents must have shredded their questionnaires in a fit of rage after their husbands left yet another Kleenex in a trouser pocket on washing day.

Canadian husbands must be agreeable all the time because I never hear of Canadian wives doing their block about a load of washing ruined by a blizzard of man-tissue.

Ever since I became a maidservant, I have been socially conditioned to blame PMS for doing my lolly once a month. I am sweet and docile by nature, but around the 24th of each month my husband goes from being a calm, considerate friend and partner to a demanding, unreasonable oaf. I give him my raised eyebrow of doom and growl: “What did you say?” It’s not because I didn’t hear him, it’s because I’m giving him three seconds to improve on what he said.

Really, women wouldn’t need to manage their monthly anger if their partners could manage their stupidity. PMS was invented so women could have five days off from being nice to incompetents and idiots. Please don’t take that week away from us!

The research team at the University of Toronto kindly left womankind with one sliver of credibility. It found women weren’t imagining the physical symptoms of PMS: the cramps, the headaches, the bloating and the tiredness – they’re legitimate – we can enjoy those. But now we can’t blame hormones for any of the emotional baggage that piles up when our shop’s shut for maintenance.

I’m sorry, I’m different. Twelve times a year, I speak three languages – English, sarcasm and profanity. When my bloke asks: “What’s up Blossom?” he can measure the speed and gruffness of my: “Nothing!” to calculate just how much marital turbulence is heading his way.

My husband has the solution. He’s inventing a mobile phone app which will warn him when I am about to become all three witches of Eastwick. It will plot my cycle and give him a heads-up one week out from impending domestic catastrophe. That’s enough notice for him to plan a business trip out of town, or meetings to keep him working late in the office – any legitimate reason to be somewhere other than home. He’s going to call his invention the Grief-o-meter.

All men should consult their Grief-O-Meter before making plans with the wife for the week when pessimism is better than sex:  

‘Hey Blossom, let’s go see that Les Miserables flick?’

‘Nah, way too depressing.’

‘Why? The plot? Social injustice? An impoverished woman ruined by prejudice who dies emaciated and alone?  

‘No. I can’t stand a thin heroine.’

I say men are the missing ingredient in PMS – has anyone bothered to research whether the poor buggers actually deserve to be punished? My husband is not necessarily the innocent victim of a foul-tempered harridan who cries during cheesy Qantas ads.  

Having an unusually calm and rational temperament, I am pushed over the edge by floors decorated with dirty socks and a man who turns the pages of his newspaper so loudly I can’t hear Maggie Smith’s acidic one-liners in Downton Abbey. Those Canadians may claim women have lost the excuse of PMS, but they’ve have given us some much needed freedom. Now we can stop blaming our cycles and pinpoint the true cause of our anger – husbands.

I’m going to look on the bright side. If PMS no longer exists, then there’s no need to confine my grumpiness to the last five days of the month. I can spread the grief around any time I like. How exciting! Next time you see me, best you give way to my broomstick.