Okay, as this thread’s quintessential clueless male, I get to ask one stupid question of the women here.
Do your periods always hit you the same way?
If you get bloated and crampy, does that mean you get bloated and crampy every month? If you get moody, do you invariably get moody? If a good session of sex helped last month, will it help this month? Does chocolate always have some magical appeal, or does the very sight of it disgust you sometimes?
And can you predict any of this?
You said you’ve been dating this fellow for 3 months. That suggests to me that you’ve menstruated 3 times since you’ve been dating him. And I submit the first time around, you were someone mysterious as to what was happening to you. I think it’s a bit early in your relationship for you to expect him to know all your menstrual signals and such. There’s a learning curve.
Geeze. I feel like I should be wearing pastels and walking through a garden as I typed this.
Sounds like you’re going through the change.
See, now a menstruation-cunnilingus-tastes-like-pennies and menopause pun in one shot!
These jokes write themselves, really.
That’s absolutely not a stupid question. It’s a very good question.
For me, the answer is no. There isn’t a lot of consistency between periods. Sometimes, the attendant symptoms hit me hard, and sometimes not at all. Usually I get a little, but it’s no big deal. I haven’t noticed any particular causative factors. Aspects also change as a woman ages, and in response to things like pregnancy and various birth control methods.
I expect some other women experience more consistency and some less.
I wonder whether women who have more regular periods time-wise also experience more consistency in symptoms. A typical 21/7 birth control pill regimen means that the period timing is usually exact. Does it also make it more likely that things are pretty much the same every month?
Perfect prelude to marriage. This guy needs to learn that he must always let the woman initiate the sex. That way he can never make the wrong approach. He can have sex 2 or 3 times a month and that way he can relearn his relationship with rosey palm and her 5 sisters. 
Back when feminine hygiene products needed to be purchased at a store, rather than ordered off the Internet, I’d just take an empty box of said products, fold it up, and take it with me to be sure I was buying the exact product my wife preferred.
It’s not a stupid question.
The answer is “no, not always the same way”.
That said, there are trends. They tend to be similar if not identical. A woman will tend to have bad cramps or tend to have heavy flow or light flow and so forth. Once in awhile you’ll get one far worse than usual. Once in awhile you’ll get one better than usual. Sometimes, no matter what you do you’ll feel sick and miserable.
After a few years of cycling most women have some notion of what they’ll experience each month and what helps, but it’s not 100% predictable.
Now days I just take a picture of the box with my iPhone.
You mean the femhygiene box, verdad?
:D:D:D
No, I believe you are capable of experiencing that sensation first hand. You have gonads, which are just as delicate and sensitive as a man’s, they are just better protected. If you walk hard enough into the corner of a table or counter at he right level, or have a ridiculously well-hung partner who likes to get rough, you can learn about how it feels.
Man, this thread makes me even happier that my wife isn’t the least bit deterred by a little bloating & blood when it comes to getting busy. And that she doesn’t expect me to know her mental state about everything when she’s on her period, or to know that she’s on her period if she doesn’t tell me “I’m on my period”. And that even if she’s not interested in p-i-v intercourse for whatever reason, she’ll take care of me in other ways and not make an issue out of it. And that she doesn’t generalize about the entire male gender because of my own personal peccadilloes.
I don’t think its necessary to overreact to his gestures. I noticed that in general, people (women and men) can be quick to assume someone said/did something mean spirited when they might have meant it out of ignorance.
Perhaps you are so used to being with your meticulous ex that you aren’t used to a guy who doesn’t intuitively know this. That would make sense- you were with your ex for 4 years and have only been with this guy for 3.
I’m very, very regular, and not on the pill. Everything bad I’m feeling tends to get magnified when I’m on my period. If I have a cold then, it feels worse. Bad smells I might otherwise tolerate make we wretch. Minor money problems keep me up at night; it’s easier for my son to do things that get on my nerves. I get bad cramps the first two days, but Tylenol drives them away like magic, with one exception. If I have to take an antibiotic when I’m on my period, I get cramps from hell, and even narcotics don’t make them go away entirely. If I get a prescription on the first day of my period, I ask the doctor if it’s OK to wait a day to start taking them.
That’s about it. When I was in high school, my periods lasted eight days, and were miserable. Things got a little better as I got older. After I had a baby, my first couple of periods were irregular and very heavy (I breastfed, so it was about a year before my periods returned). Once they became regular, they were lighter than they had been before I had a baby-- but I was also 40 by then.
I am 47, and I am waiting for menopause, please. I feel a little ridiculous buying stuff from the feminine hygiene section. Maybe people think it’s for my daughter (that I don’t have).
Guy here. Ive never once, in all my life, been familiar with any of my girlfriends period schedules. No idea.
And since this is a “period related discussion,” I have a question that has always nagged at me, re: the statement that women’s cycles sync up over time.
Is it true, and if so, how long does it take? How much time do women have to spend together for this to happen? Being co-workers? Best friends? Roommates?
I don’t have a female sibling and I was never aware of my mom’s cycle. (Somehow, it just never came up over dinner conversation)
Guy here. My wife and I are both 56 years old. She is postmenopausal. YEAH!!!
Ya know, in a discussion I titled “Olympic Menstruation,” I got chastised by someone for assuming that menstruation was an unpleasant thing that compromised physical performance. And now you’re telling my my assumption was correct?
I wish all you women would get together and decide what periods do to you, then you could explain it to all of us men - and maybe all of us men might finally get it.
Not sure what your issue is. Perhaps “performance” is not the word you want to use. People who feel like crap often end up performing remarkably well.