YOUR MARITAL HEALTH/THE MOST OFTEN ASKED QUESTION: IT COULD BE PMS, COULDN’T IT?
”I have terrible cycles. There is a brief period of time when I
am turned on sexually, but other times I just hate it. It could
ANSWER: Premenstrual syndrome continues to be researched, and there is much left to learn. There is no doubt that some women, indeed some men, have strong and marked periods of emotional, physical, and intellectual changes related to neurohormonal patterns. There is also no doubt that sexual response is related to all life cycles. The best thing to do is to graph not just menstrual cycles, but any cycles you feel are taking place. At the same time, make a graph of your couple cycle, how the two of you are relating. See if there is any pattern or relationship. If there is, consider a medical checkup. There are dietary, exercise, and other tactics that can be tried that may help. Most often, though, there is a strong interaction between life stress and life cycles. There are usually good reasons why we feel sexual or do not feel sexual, and usually these relate more to how we are living than any innate predetermined pattern. Graphing the couple and spouse patterns, talking this over, and reducing general life stress are important steps. When sex problems are attributed to PMS, or to any one factor or partner, we fail to understand the systems nature of sexual intimacy, the MMS, meaningful marital system.
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