I (29M) believe my girlfriend's (31F) hormone imbalance is the root cause of our relationship issues (and have seen proof of such), but she won't even entertain the notion. What can I do?

I've been together with my girlfriend for a little over a year now. And I love her very much. We get along well overall--about half the time. The other half is really rough, and I'm 99% sure it's because of some sort of hormonal imbalance or issue (hear me out before you write me off as a clueless male just blaming everything on female hormones). The only problem is, I don't think she's fully aware of the effect this has on our relationship.

I first started noticing this when I became aware of her cycle and what phase she was in at any given time. The day she reaches her luteal phase, it's like she plummets off a cliff. She becomes irritable, depressed, needy, angry, and all other sorts of unpredictable emotions on an extreme level. These emotions are typically aimed right at me, because I always happen to the be the one around. During these times, there is little to no rational thinking involved. I try to hang in there for dear life and support her as much as possible but it gets exhausting, as everything I say and do to try to helps seems to make it worse. She often ends up yelling and cursing at me, and saying this is all my fault for being so emotionally disconnected and that I'll never be able to understand her.

I found out that her ex-husband (who left her) had asked her to create a chart of her cycle for him, hang it on the fridge, and update it each day as to approximately where she is at. He also encouraged her often to seek counseling and help for processing the types of things she was experiencing. With him, she never did. At this point in my relationship with her, I was able to convince her to seek both couples counseling (with me) and individual counseling on her own (which sometimes she attends and sometimes she doesn't). The couples therapy is moving slow but has provided us with some semi-valuable strategies of how to handle these situations. However, I think the therapy is missing the underlying cause of our issues, which is an extreme hormone imbalance that takes away all logic and rational thinking from the situation, rendering any strategies we have learned useless.

One thing that assures me of my accuracy in this assessment is that several months ago, she started taking the supplement 5-HTP, which I've read increases serotonin levels and can help women with depression. For two months, while she was on this drug, everything was great. We got along well, had fun, and pretty much had a normal relationship overall. She even wanted to stop going to counseling because it seemed like we had figured everything out, and I suggested that maybe we should keep going for a little while and then attempt to ease out of it if we're still feeling good. However, about a week ago we found out that the 5-HTP could be messing up the timing of her hormonal cycle dramatically. She has always been very regular and routine, and now everything is completely thrown off. We are both guessing that is from regular dosing of 5-HTP. Because of this, she went off of the supplement about a week ago to try to get her cycle back to normal. The day after she went off the supplement, she reverted right back to her old self (the bad part of it I mean). Irritable, depressed, hopeless, angry at me, needy to a point I would never be able to fulfill.

It seems like there is a pretty obvious correlation there, if not causation, right? The only problem is, she refuses to acknowledge this, and the thought never even crosses her mind that her hormonal issues could be the root cause of the trouble in our relationship. She often blames me, saying that I'm not emotionally sensitive, or that I don't know how to handle situations where she's not 100% good. Or that if I just knew her well enough I would know how to help and not make things worse and we'd be totally fine. Sometimes during the rough times she says she has no idea why we're struggling so much, or just chalks it up to us being tired, or out of our rhythm, or other outside influences. Then when her period hits and she is clear-headed and feeling good again, she'll chalk THAT up to us (and sometimes me) being more intentional about her needs, or that I have been doing a really good job listening to her and validating her and other things like that. It never crosses her mind that these times when we're doing "good" or "bad" just so happen to correlate with the phases of her cycle and by extension, her hormones.

I've only ever tried to bring it up once, and it was like pouring gasoline on a fire (naturally). She exploded at the notion that her hormones are driving our struggles. Our couples counselor has suggested twice that she might have depression and that she should try a trial of an SSI such as Xanax or Prozac. The first time, she shrugged it off. The second time, she wondered out loud in the car afterward why he keeps suggesting that. She said she didn't feel the need to change who she is, and taking medicine would be her last resort because of the potential side effects and health risks.

What can I do about this? Is there a way I can bring this up to her, whether alone or in a counseling session? I'm afraid it will just go south quickly as it did the first time. But I feel incredibly confident this issue is what is affecting us. Help! Please!

TL;DR: Half the time, girlfriend and I are good. Other half, it's explosive and she treats me like crap. I figured out that these explosive times correlate *exactly* with her Luteal phase. A brief period of her taking supplements to help this solved everything and confirmed my suspicions, but then she went back off of them. She is in denial that her hormones have any correlation to the health of our relationship, and she blames us, and mostly me, for it.

Submitted May 05, 2019 at 01:51PM by GenericUserName1020 http://bit.ly/2JiAjcs