When Your Partner Makes You Want to Scream: A Real Talk About Marriage

Have you ever had that moment when your partner does something slightly annoying and you feel completely justified in considering murder? You're not alone. In this candid and refreshingly honest episode, I share a real-time revelation about the intersection of hormones, stress, and marriage during the chaotic final week of summer break.

Today started with back-to-back conference calls while juggling kids at home, only to be topped off with my migraine-suffering husband giving me "the look" about dinner plans while I was still on an important call. That pressure point—where you're already maxed out and someone adds just one more expectation—is universal in relationships. But what happened next changed everything: I recognized my disproportionate irritation wasn't just about the moment, but connected to my approaching menstrual cycle. This awareness didn't invalidate my feelings but provided crucial context that helped me respond thoughtfully rather than reactively.

This episode goes beyond just venting about marriage. It explores how self-awareness becomes our superpower in relationships, how external factors influence both partners' behaviors, and why comparing your relationship to social media ideals is a losing game. I also share exciting updates about recent podcast guests, including Erica Hoke's inspiring fertility journey, Elizabeth Kipp's powerful spiritual cleansing practice, and Rebecca Lyons' groundbreaking app for women's health advocacy. The episode wraps with gratitude for listeners worldwide, especially those in Vietnam and Peru where the podcast is gaining tremendous momentum.

Whether you're navigating relationship tensions, hormonal fluctuations, or just trying to survive the end of summer with your sanity intact, this episode offers both solidarity and practical wisdom. Listen in, take a breath, and remember—we're all just doing our best in this beautiful mess of life.

Chapters

• 0:00 Summer Stress and Podcast Roulette
• 1:42 When Husbands Drive You Crazy
• 4:14 Recognizing Hormonal Triggers
• 6:07 Upcoming Guest Episodes Overview
• 9:14 Closing Shoutouts and Announcements

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

good grief. Happy Wednesday to everybody. Happy hump day. Oh my god, what happened? I have to have to tell you guys something. Sometimes when I do these um little mini episodes, um, like today, I'm playing kind of like podcast roulette and whatever is going to come out of my mouth is going to come out of my mouth, so I must be channeling somebody who needs to listen to this episode, because that's what's happening right now, like that's the vibe we're in is just going with the moment and the flow and feeling it.

Speaker 1: 0:30

This week it's the last week that my kids are home for the summer and it also sometimes seems to be the most stressful week, which probably is like a mind over matter situation, and it's not really that stressful. Thank god, the kids were in camp this year because I made it through the summer without a nervous breakdown, which, in my book, is a bonus. That might sound a little crazy to some of you, but, like reality is, it is what it is and I like to be transparent about that. Last summer it was rough, but this week in particular, the way that I had mapped out the weeks that the kids didn't have camp was I would take half days, two days a week while my husband was working, and then he would take the second half the week and be home, so it wouldn't be as much pressure on me. This week he had to work additional days and he has to travel one of the days and so it's all sitting with me and I didn't anticipate that. So I'm not as prepared and today, um, I had a solid block of six hours of calls and things that I needed to be on, so it was definitely a challenge to have to be mindful because, like they're children and they're humans and they need to eat, and so having to keep an eye on the time to pay attention to my team, you know, like that balance is very difficult. One thing I would like to complain about today and I haven't done this in a while when you're in married life, there's going to be things that pop up that are like this is irritating, like this is just, this is a problem. And today was one of those days where I was feeling really stressed, as I just said, I was already like kind of tangled up and my husband came home and wasn't feeling well, had a migraine. I get migraines, so I'm very sensitive to this kind of stuff and I like to be mindful because I'm like when I have my, when I have a migraine, I take medicine, I roll, but, like you know, I'm sensitive to others for it. So he came home bad mood, migraine, and it was about 504 and I was still on a conference call and the great thing started now.

Speaker 1: 2:22

Usually I always you guys have heard me before I always, always, always put my husband up on a pedestal because he is actually truly amazing. But like most husbands and I think all of our husbands of course, they're amazing. We married them. We know we love them, for whatever reason why we married them. That's a given, but it doesn't mean that there's not irritation. Same with him to me. I am certain I can see it on his face where I'm being annoying to him. So he comes home from work, kind of. You know he was holding it together, but I could just sense that he was feeling off and he wasn't doing well. And then you know I'm on this conference call and it's wrapping up, but it's not quite there yet and I start to get the look like what's happening? Are you going to make dinner? What do we need to do here? Do we need to order food? But I couldn't. I didn't have the capacity to be like hold on, hold on, you know, and and sort of deal with all that and that little like line of pressure where you kind of have somebody just like making little comments, like off to the side.

Speaker 1: 3:17

I think that those are the moments that most women are like if, if I was put before a judge today after murdering somebody, they would probably be cool with it. And I like to highlight this and also laugh about it, because this is everybody. There are moments for every single human out there with a partner where that partner fails to, you know, rise to the occasion, or that partner does something annoying, or the partner you know doesn doesn't, isn't helpful and actually adds more stress to the situation. This is a given, it just is. There is no perfection. Please, for god's sakes, don't go down the rabbit hole of well, so and so on, social media did x, y and z or so and so on. Social media has this beautiful life like why isn't my life like this and so and so's husband is always sending her flowers, or whatever the case is, I can guarantee you the grass is not greener on the other side in these moments where I feel like I might choke someone out.

Speaker 1: 4:14

I won't, but if I feel like it I also do take a breath, because I'm not usually that easily irritated. So I usually will take a breath and think to myself, like what's the deal? Like, jen, just calm down, like you're stressed today, yes, it's fine. And I start kind of like trying to get myself together so that I'm not sending off a bad vibe, because if I start to get worked up, then he's gonna get more worked up. You see where I'm going with this. Like we feed off each other, you feed off your partner and vice versa. This is how it works. And so I actually took a minute and was like hold on a minute, like why am I getting so irritated? Like why am I flipping out? Like I know I had a stressful day, but usually I can balance this really well like what the hell is going on. And then I made the aha moment. My cycle is gearing up again to to start and I'm due September 9th. I'm a week out. Boom. This is my week, where I'm usually enraged and I'm usually very tired and I usually eat a lot of carbs. This week it is what it is.

Speaker 1: 5:09

But my point with sharing all this is that, if you take a step back and look at the reality of the situation, I even said to my husband he's like I feel off. I feel off. We communicate a lot. And so he said and he's like I feel, I feel off. Today, and I was like you have some stress on your plate, you don't feel good, you had a migraine, your cholesterol went like way up because you forgot to take your medicine, we have visitors coming and you're preparing for that, so you're stressed about that. All these outside factors are going to feed into how you're feeling because it's pulling you in a few other, different directions. That's going to impact you. It's going to make you feel off and then it's going to make you respond differently to your family.

Speaker 1: 5:43

I flipped out on my kids not not flip out, flip out but I like yelled at them earlier because I'm like you guys are all asking me for something. I only have 15 minutes. I was like guys, I was like I'm trying really hard but I only have 15 minutes to get you x, y and z. Please just bear with me. It is what it is. You know you have to be able to communicate and pivot and like roll with it. So, while today was stressful and I still have things that I have to get to, I'm also really grateful that it's Wednesday, because that means we're halfway there. We're getting towards that end of the week, that golden end For everyone in the US. We have a holiday coming up on Monday, so we get to have a much needed day to relax. Maybe no, not for me, but for maybe somebody else um, I also wanted to um, give everyone a heads up.

Speaker 1: 6:27

This week airing were three guest episodes, so this past weekend was pretty heavy duty in terms of recording and I had three recordings two on saturday, one on sunday. So on the 25th we aired the episode, or I aired the episode navigating fertility challenges with Erica Hoke Really really inspiring story. This woman was told she only has a 1% chance to conceive and she moved on to have children and happy, healthy life and now she's helping other people do the same. So I do highly recommend her episode. She had some really decent information. I do want you guys to know I do fact check and I do look into people before their guests on the podcast because I want to be delivering the quality people that you need. This is one of those people. Elizabeth Kipp was my evening recording on Saturday and, for goodness sakes, hang for the whole episode or skip ahead, I don't care. The part that you need to hear that's most important to me that you hear is actually at the very end, because she does a cleansing right in the podcast. I didn't know she was going to do that and so there's a whole. There's a brief moment at the end where she does a full cleansing. You can see the video, too, on YouTube and I actually bow my head so I can take it in for real. I'm actually I'm going to book a session with her to do a full cleansing because this spiritual cleansing was so powerful. My whole aura lifted after the call. It was the wildest thing. So I want to strong recommend there Now in the next episode that's going to be released is on Friday, friday Gaslighting to Advocacy with Rebecca Lyons.

Speaker 1: 7:57

This is cool. So Rebecca is a really amazing individual. She was a corporate person and she's transitioned to entrepreneur. She's developing an app that basically helps share decision making. In a nutshell, it's going to help women pull together notes, pull together their information, pull together symptoms to inform their next doctor's appointment. This is a really big deal. Women's health has been. It's insufferable, really. In my opinion, this is going to be something that's really going to help a lot of us.

Speaker 1: 8:27

So tune in for the Friday episode. They're all long-ish they're all about 45 minutes, but try to get there. You can watch it on YouTube too, if you want to have that running in the background while you're like doing chores or whatever. But really good episodes for this week and then this coming weekend I do have two more lives, so I have here. I can get you the updated information, the lives you can watch on youtube and you can watch it on linkedin. Let's see here on saturday I'm meeting with karen diggs from 7 to 8 pm and sunday from 7 to 8 pm. And Sunday from 7 to 8 pm, I'm meeting with Mary Walter Tune in. You can listen to it live or you can catch the episodes when they air. The following week. Live feeds are always going to be on YouTube for you now so you can check out the videos if you want to watch the full interview.

Speaker 1: 9:14

I hope you all are having a wonderful week. I really, really do. We're getting there, getting there. Fall is almost upon us. I'm super excited. Thank you for tuning in this week. Thank you for hanging out with me here. Shout out to my listeners in vietnam thank you for showing up the way you've been doing totally awesome, I'm super excited about having you guys with me. And shout out to peru, because in peru still roses podcast is very close to nearing the top 200 podcast list in peru. So big, big, big shout out to everybody. Thank you all for so much, for all of your support. Thank you for being here with me today and I will catch you on the next one. Take care.