The 4 Seasons of your PMDD Relationship-The Winter Phase

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The urge to pull away, start a fight, or end the relationship can hit like a wave during the luteal phase and feel absolutely certain. We name that pattern for what it often is in PMDD relationships: the winter season, when emotional numbness, overwhelm, and disconnection make you feel like roommates instead of partners.

We walk through the classic winter cycle: blame, defensiveness, and shutdown. When PMDD symptoms spike, it’s easy to believe your partner is the problem, and it’s just as easy for your partner to feel blamed until they stop trying and go quiet. We also talk about what rarely gets said out loud: partners can suffer deeply during those two weeks too, with anxiety, depression, and a constant nervous system stress response that isn’t sustainable. That’s why “we just won’t talk during luteal” can backfire and create even more distance, even when the intention is to protect the relationship.

Then we teach the practical tools that help break the cycle. You’ll hear how to use the mantra “I’m in winter right now” to reduce shame while staying honest about your feelings, and how to do the PMDD reality check pause when offense or rejection sensitivity shows up. We explain how a 20-minute delay can prevent regretful reactions, and we use two grounding questions, “What do I feel?” and “What did they actually do?” to separate distorted PMDD stories from what’s actually happening so you can repair and move toward spring.

If this hits home, share it with your partner and talk about what season you’re in right now. Subscribe, share the show with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so more people in PMDD relationships can find real, actionable support.

Transcript

Welcome And The Seasons Idea

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Welcome to the In Love with PMDD podcast. Dr. Rose here, your PMDD relationship psychotraumatologist. I hope you stop the monthly PMD breakups. And today I'm going to be starting a brand new series on the four seasons of your relationship. Now, the first thing I want to preface and say is you can actually go through all four seasons of your relationship in the same month. This typically happens in the luteal phase. You'll go through winter. Today we're going to be talking about the winter phase, and I really want to break down some tools that have really been helping not just me but also my private clients with understanding what season you are actually in so that you could act accordingly and stop those PDD monthly breakups. So what the winter season is, is if you've been going back and forth and you feel this emotional numbness, meaning you're not feeling connected to your partner. You're feeling like you're just going through the motions, you're almost feeling like roommates, and you're going through this phase of you're just feeling overwhelmed by having to deal with your relationships. You're almost in that place where you're distancing yourself because it feels so overwhelming to deal with the issues that you have in your relationships. That's a sign that you're in the winter phase of your relationship, which a lot of times happens in the Ludeo phase. The next thing is the blame. Okay, the blame, defensiveness, and shutdown. This is the part of your relationship where you're arguing. One of you is blaming the other person for the conflict that's going on in your relationship or the stress in your relationship, but most importantly, or the PMDD symptoms that you're having. You are blaming your PMDD partner for the symptoms that you're having. You're saying maybe you would be better off single, maybe you shouldn't be together. You feel like your symptoms would be so much less if you didn't have a partner because they're causing so much stress in your relationship, which is activating a lot of your PMDD symptoms. So you're blaming your PMDD partner. And then what happens with your partner is they become defensive. They start talking about all the things that you're doing that's causing them stress in the relationship, how it's impacting them, how it's impacting their work, how it's impacting their finances, because it's impacting their ability to work. So the partner has a lot of place in this defensiveness. So a lot of times when they feel like they're being blamed for your PMDD symptoms again and again and again, even when the intention is not there, even when they're trying their best, then they start the loop of shutting down. They stop doing a lot of the things, and then all of a sudden they're considered not the supportive PMD partner. And what I always think for the PMDD sufferers, they come to me and they say, My partner is not supportive. I always say, What are you doing to meet their needs during the luteal phase? A lot of times the PMDD partners are not supportive because their needs are not being met during that two weeks. You're saying, I don't want to talk to you during these two weeks, I can't do anything for you for these two weeks. You want to completely isolate yourself from your partner because they're bringing you stress during those two weeks. And you're expecting them to just sit there. You're expecting them to just sit there for two weeks, keep all of their feelings bottled up until you're ready to talk about it when you're out of the alluvial phase. And then you're getting confused about the disconnection that happens because when you go through menstruation and you don't feel your PMDD symptoms anymore, you're ready to connect with them and you're saying, okay, let's talk about this. Let's talk about that. Well, they've spent two weeks of holding in everything that's been bothering them and having to operate, which I call leaving them alone with their thoughts, leaving them alone with their feelings. And they don't have anything to do with those thoughts or those feelings if they're in a place where they're not having sessions with me, they're not communicating with someone that knows what PMDD is and how it's affecting them. They're just holding it all in while they're waiting for you to connect with them again. And so a lot of times you're not feeling connected to that version of you when you were in PMDD and you're you're feeling lighter, you're feeling ready to talk about things. And now you go through this time loop of saying, okay, you're feeling the rush of we need to hurry up and talk about this before I get back into my luteal phase. You are officially in winter. This is when everything feels dark, everything feels rushed, and you're feeling like you don't know how to make your way out of it. And this can cause you to get into the loop of breaking up because you're not seeing your way out. You're feeling like you're ready to connect with your partner and they're not ready to connect with you back. So you're feeling unsafe, you're feeling unseen, and you're feeling alone. You're feeling like I'm the one going through the PMDD symptoms, I'm the one having these ebbs and flows. I didn't ask for premenstrual dysphoric disorder. I didn't ask to go through this every single month. So why am I being punished, quote unquote, by my partner because of what I'm having to experience? You may be even getting into the realm of thinking they're not even suffering with the symptoms. I am. But a lot of times what we're misunderstanding is the partners actually go through a lot of the ebbs and flows that we go through in our luteal phase, not with the exact symptoms, but there's a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of depression. There are suicidal ideations that I've dealt with with clients because they're so stuck for those two weeks of what to do that it's overwhelming. When you're stressed and your nervous system is activated, which is your stress response, it's not meant to be activated for as long as the luteal phase lasts. This is two weeks we're talking about. This is not a day of you shutting down or disconnecting from them. This is two actual weeks. This is up to two weeks, right? Seven to 10 days. I know right now my cycles are about 10 days that I have, I'm in my luteal phase. And again, it may start off strong and then taper off, or it may start off weak and then and then increase as I get closer and closer to my luteal phase. No month is the same. And so when you have your partner sitting in a corner waiting to be connected to, waiting for their needs to be met, there's a lot of things mentally that go on with them that cause them a lot of suffering where they can begin to question the relationship, whether they're telling you that outright or whether they're internally just thinking about it. Because a lot of times when the partners are coming on the sessions, they're saying things that they may not be directly saying to you. But I want you to understand that when you recognize that you are in winter or your partner may be in winter, you need to be able to use the PMDD trauma transformational tools to get them out of that head space because it's not sustainable every single month for you to stay in winter and not have tools that you can do about it. So again, the signs that you are in the winter season of your relationship during the month is you feel like giving up or you feel like pulling away. You feel like it's not worth it. You feel like you don't know if you can do this, you feel like it's not sustainable. Your conversations that you have, every single conversation, or most of the conversations that you have, start to escalate into conflict. So you almost feel like you need to stop talking because every single time that you talk, it turns to an argument. So maybe your solution is okay, we're not going to talk during the luteo phase. I remember I did this in a relationship and I thought it was a great thing. This is before I developed the tools. I was like, okay, I was literally living with my partner and we were only texting during the luteo phase. We were not even communicating at all. It was almost like we were roommates, and I felt like it was a win. Well, what happened is my partner began to shut down and disconnect from me. And then when I was ready to talk and I was like, okay, I'm, you know, I'm out. I would like text and say, hey, I'm no longer in my Luteal phase. Let's talk about all the things that, you know, you've been holding in, basically. Like that was a rule. And a couple months he did it. But then I remember he just, I remember that one month where I said, Oh my gosh, this tool is not working. He said, That's okay. He started to brush off the intention of working through the problem because he had waited for so long that he was just like, you know what, it's not even worth it. It's not even worth it. So he started to isolate from talking about the issues that we actually had. So that's the thing. When you're in your winter season, it's not that the issues that you were having are all brought up from PMDD, but PMDD is causing you to operate around your actual problems differently. So you may have problems in your finances, you may have problems with the parenting, you may have problems with intimacy. Those are actual problems. Do not gaslight yourself into saying that, oh, they're only a problem because of PMDD. No, these are actual problems that every couple may have within their relationship, but P and DD will make you navigate your problems differently when you're in your winter season, when you're in your luteal phase. And so you start to question everything about the relationship. If you are starting to question whether you should be with your partner, whether this is the person for you, whether this is the relationship for you, you're in your winter season. You're in the luteal phase, right? And then you don't feel emotionally safe. This is one of the biggest ways that you can tell, you know what? I don't even want to open up to my partner because I feel like the things that I may say, they're going to use them against me. That means you do not feel emotionally safe. And so now I want to give you the PMDD trauma transformational tool that has worked with my clients and with myself. I've literally had to do this. When I notice this is a mantra that you can use. I'm in winter right now. A lot of times you don't want to say that you're in PMDD. You don't want to say that you're in your luteal phase. There's such a connotation, there's such a shame around it. And I get it because no one wants to be told that the feelings that they're having are not valid, or no one wants to feel like they shouldn't feel the way that they actually feel. So one of the ways that you can do this is use this mantra and just tell yourself, I'm in winter right now. I'm in my winter season right now. It really helps you cognitively accept the place that you're at a lot better than saying that I'm in PMDD. Because a lot of times you don't want to say that you're in PMDD because it discredits the feelings that you actually have. So you actually have these feelings, you actually have these thoughts, you actually have these emotions. But what's happening is when you say that you're in PMDD, you think your partner is just going to brush it all off and say, Oh, I knew it. And maybe they'll start to blame you and say, Yeah, exactly. We wouldn't be in this situation if you weren't in PMDD. Then all of a sudden you feel shame around being in a phase of your cycle that you didn't ask for. You didn't ask to be in your luteal phase. You didn't ask to be in PMDD, but you are. And I think what that's one of the hardest things to really come to terms with is being self-aware enough to know I'm in winter. I'm in my luteal phase. I'm in PMDD. And when I'm in PMDD, my thoughts are distorted. What is going on in my relationship is distorted. Not that it's not happening, but the way that I'm experiencing the events in my relationship, the way that I'm experiencing the tone of my partner in the relationship is different because I'm in my winter season, because I'm in PMDD. This is the biggest thing that I have had to do in all of my relationships. Every single time that I'm in my luteal phase and I'm in PMDD, I experience a level of tone and intention that are completely different. Meaning, if a if my partner raises his voice because we're in a conflict or because he's passionate about something or whatever the case is, I automatically go to a threat response. I automatically think this doesn't feel emotionally safe. They're yelling at me, they're attacking me. And all of a sudden, I distort the intention that they have. So they may be saying something that's actually valid. Like, for example, they may be saying, hey, babe, you need to work better on, you know, your time management or something. And all of a sudden I'll feel like they're judging me. Like, oh my gosh, they think I'm a piece of crap. They think I'm so horrible. You know, I'm trying the best that I can, and they don't think I'm good enough. If they don't think I'm good enough, then maybe we shouldn't be together. And then all of a sudden there's a story being told when all my partner may have been doing was saying, hey, this is something that you need to work on. Your partner should be able to speak on things that you need to work on without you feeling like it's a personal attack. But when you are in your luteal phase, you may feel personally attacked. That's my thing. I get stuck in the loop of offense. Maybe your thing is rejection sensitivity. If your partner doesn't text you in a certain time, if they don't call you, you know, throughout the day like you feel like they should or they did before, then all of a sudden you feel rejected. You don't take it into account of maybe my partner is busy or maybe they had a lot going on or maybe they had a stressful day. You take it as that my partner doesn't want to be with me. Then all of a sudden there's this emotional disconnection that happens because you are feeling rejected by your partner. And rejection sensitivity is a very big symptom in premenstrual dysphoric disorder. A lot of times your partner may be doing the same things that they've been doing all month, but you're in your winter season, you're in your luteal phase, and then all of a sudden you have this level of rejection sensitivity. Maybe you reach out to your partner because you want to be intimate, because you haven't been intimate in a while, and you finally get up the courage to intimately connect with them and they roll over and go to sleep. And instead of you thinking, oh, you know, maybe my partner's just sleepy, or maybe they had a bad day, or maybe they weren't interpreting, you know, me reaching out to them as it is like, hey, I'm trying to be intimate with you, you're feeling rejected. And so the tool that I want to, I want to really give you today that's really worked for me and a lot of my private clients is the PMDD reality check pause. So what I want you to do is ask yourself when you're feeling rejected, when you're feeling offended, that is the first step of what is your go-to emotion that you feel during your winter season, during your luteal phase. I know for me it's offense. Number one, I have to take responsibility. I have to take accountability. I get offended when I'm in my luteal phase. I get offended when I'm in my winter season. I get offended when I'm in PMDD. I have to let myself know that. I can't blame it on my partner. I can't blame it on anything else. I get offended. That is my Achilles heel. That is my go-to. And PMDD has the same trick every single month. It doesn't matter what is going on, I'm gonna get offended. So it's not about me trying not to get offended. It's about me having a tool that I can use when I get offended. Because if I literally try to force myself not to get offended, I'm gonna be gaslighting myself and distorting my own reality even more. I just have to recognize it. Hey, I wave the white flag. When I get into P and D D, I get offended. You may say, when I, a lot of my private clients, they have rejection sensitivity. When I get into my winter season, I feel rejected by my partner. Recognize that. Own it. There's nothing that you may be able to do about it. It's not about making it go away. That's not the goal. The goal is to say, okay, now that I say when I get in my luteal phase, when I get in my winter season, I get offended, what is the tool that I can use? I have to use the PMDD reality check pause. And basically, when I notice that I'm getting offended, that's that's a sign for me that I need to pause. If my partner says something and I feel this little twinge, and you may feel this too, where they say something and it kind of hits you a little different, or they do something and it you experience it a little different, I say, is this actually happening or is this my luteal phase? Is this my winter season? Is my partner actually trying to offend me? Or is this hurting me or offending me because I'm in my winter season? Because I'm in my luteal phase. When you ask yourself that question cognitively in your brain, it slows the story down that your PMDD brain is telling you. It slows down that, oh, I shouldn't be with somebody that would talk to me like that, or oh, I shouldn't be with somebody that would do this or not do this, or they should be doing more. It causes your brain to pause from the story that's telling you that you should break up with your partner. So when you say and you give yourself the PMDD reality check pause, I want you to delay your response by at least 20 minutes. For me, I have to go on a walk. I have to move my body, I have to get outside of my body because I literally feel like I'm gonna say something that I'm 100% gonna regret later on. I am gonna 100% regret it later on because when I get out of my luteal phase and when I get out of my winter season and my partner tells me things that I've said during that time because I was feeling offended, I'm like, oh man, I I don't really feel that way or I didn't really feel that way. But in the moment, the feelings are real. And you, if you know, you know. When you're in the moment, the feelings are real. So you have to ask yourself this question. What do I feel? For mine, it's offense. For yours, it may be rejection. For yours, it may be um for some of my private clients, it's that um they feel like their partner's taking advantage of them or they feel like their partner is not supported. That is literally their feeling that they have. So recognize your feeling. What do I feel? And what did they actually do? And what I want you to do after this 20 minutes, if you're not already my private client and you don't already get those sessions, this is why we have monthly sessions at a minimum. At a minimum, we have monthly sessions because guess what? We're going through winter every single month. Remember, winter is your luteal phase. What happens when we have our private sessions is we sit down and we talk about everything that came up or that has come up in your winter season, in your luteal phase. I don't just do this for the partner that has PMDD, I do this for the partner that does not have PMDD. My most popular package that really works during the winter season is I have one session with the partner that has PMDD, one session for the partner that doesn't have PMDD, and then we have one together. And I'm able to customize those tools for you. So if you know that you are struggling in your luteal phase, you're struggling with every single month when you go through PMDD, where maybe you're the partner that has to hold everything in, or maybe you're the partner that's feeling rejected, that's feeling offended, that's feeling like you're not supported. You need to have time to use the second part of the tool. What did I feel? And what did they actually do? Because this is when we get to the root of the intention. When we get to the true root of the intention of did my partner initially or maliciously try to hurt me, then it causes your PMDD brain to come out of that cycle of feeling like you're not emotionally safe, like you need to break up, like you need to get the heck up out of there. And it causes you to get into the solution mode. One of the biggest things that partners say and the individuals that are suffering with PMDD says is we feel like we're losing hope in the relationship because there's no change. There's no actionable tools. We're going through the same thing cyclically every single month, again and again and again. We're going through winter every single month. And the winter season can be broken. And we can go into the next phase, which is spring, when we start to use the actionable tools, when we start to peel away all of these things that we're feeling. If you're feeling cold, if you're feeling disconnected, you're in winter. So I want you to really ask your partner today do you feel like you're in the winter season? Have them listen to this episode. Send this to your partner, send it to your other friends that have PMDD and say, what phase are we in right now? Because when you recognize the phase that you're in, you're able to use the tools that are for that specific phase of your season of your PMDD relationship. If this is something you know that you need help with, go to inlove with pmd.com, go to the link down there and really get those sessions to understand what you can specifically do, customize to the things that are coming up for you, the way that it's coming up for you in your PMDD relationship. So until next time, we got this. I love you.