The press have printed many articles regarding women and their hormones. Some articles have said that when women feel hormonal they are more attractive, the majority say we suffer mood swings. I agree with the majority.

Women are infinitely strange creatures. We do strange things to our face and hair, we rave about being healthy and eating less, while at the same time, burning our protective layers in an attempt to look healthier. We can spend hours going shopping for some new shoes, only to come back with two bags, some mascara and a whole new outfit. This then of course will need new matching shoes…

We can have one thousand people declare that we’re gorgeous, but we’ll only listen to that one person hinting that we’re not. We think we need a man, when sometimes all we need is a manly hug. We believe we should feel guilty for indulging in comfort food, when we shouldn’t.

But mainly, due to hormones some of us females are slightly unpredictable in the mood stakes. This is my issue at the moment.

By unpredictable, I mean it’s not always certain it will happen, and by mood, I mean any mood that varies from the norm. This does not mean, as most men tend to judge, that all women instantly become angry, homicidal lunatics. There are those that have the ‘I’m not going to take no crap threshold’, but then there are also those that simply get a little more paranoid and just require reassurance. There are those that feel frumpy and bloated, needing only a compliment to help. And there are those that feel poop. I occasionally fall into that last category.

This means that a few times a year, if that, I’ll feel inexplicably sad. The kind of sad that gets you weeping at the Cancer Research adverts, even though you know the little girl is an actress since you clocked her in the Petit Filous adverts years ago. I remember once shedding an embarrassing amount of tears during an episode of Neighbours. The fact that it was the first time I had watched it in years, or that I had literally no emotional connection to the characters or storyline, did little to prevent the eye-socket-waterfall. I even lied to the mother about the reason for my tears (sneezed too many times…), as I was utterly ashamed that Neighbours had been my trigger.

Anyway, back to the point. I have a theory that the men out there honestly don’t have a clue about how to react when ‘The Mood’ surfaces. It appears most think that a swift “I’m so sorry for whatever I’ve done”, and then a quick departure, would do. They are mistaken. It’s actually terrifying how quickly men can disappear really. I just have to utter to one of my male friends that I’m feeling a little weepy, and suddenly all of my ovary-challenged chums have vanished. It’s like they put a bulletin out to warn their fellow man. Obviously I can’t talk for every woman out there, but personally, the ‘apology-scarper’ act does little to make me feel better. At the risk of completely generalising my ways of feeling better, this is what usually helps…

• If I’m on my own, I dance around my room like an idiot to utterly awful music, eat unhealthy amounts of bad-for-you-food.
• If I’m with a female, they usually get the response spot-on. A giant hug, then continuous bitching about the latest victim.
• If with a male, then the desired response is not for them to apologise, or give me space, or even for them to act like a woman. It is to make me laugh. Tell me a joke, remove all memory of the mood by replacing it with laughter.