Dear Men: It’s Not Just PMS!

Women of the world have it hard. Women of the Middle East have it REALLY hard. Struggling between a career, a house of 3 or more kids, trying to prove a point to every middle-eastern man who told her she can’t and won’t be able to handle all that, cooking and cleaning because she rarely gets help around the house, trying to maintain a social life for when her husband is away for work leaving her behind, and finally putting up with all the non-sense the middle-eastern society inflicts upon us that’s the so-called “culture” and “rules”.

All of these things pressure her day in day out; slowly re-configuring who she is into who she HAS to be. She wakes up with 100 things on her to-do list but that doesn’t stop her from getting out of bed and heading to work anyway. She probably doesn’t need to work (well, according to most of you guys at least) but she wants to. She probably imagined a more glamorous life for herself, one with less burping cloths and stinky diapers, but she chose this one instead to meet her expectations and reality halfway. She probably thought she’d keep her high-school friends throughout life, but as she grew older she began to realize that that only happened in the movies. She’s a man-eater by day and a baby-feeder by night.

The last thing she needs when she goes home to her loving husband is a man calling her a PMS monster. C’Mon guys, what do you know about PMS? What other than the fact that it’s called Pre-Menstrual Syndrome? Have you ever constantly bled for 5 days without complaining about it? Have you ever had a 1 year old latching on to a body organ that’s already in pain and feeding off of it? Have you ever been harassed on the streets, called names, and possibly touched in one way or another while on your way to the market? Have you ever been looked down on at work feeling inferior every time you opened your mouth to speak? I’m sure you just answered No to all these questions.

Women are not PMS monsters; it would be insane to plainly accuse us of that. It would be insane to blame PMS for all our problems and frustrations. PMS does make us a bit edgy at “that time of the month” but that’s only a small fraction of what we’re going through. The struggles we face every day turn us into monsters; it has nothing to do with shedding placenta during our periods.
Look guys, all we’re asking is for you to cut us some slack. For you to understand that we are not like you even though we try our best to be slightly equal; for you to not call us PMS monsters when you can’t relate to what we’re going through, and lastly for you to tame that monster and help her fight through her daily challenges because at the end of the day you’re our kryptonite.