My wife and I (both 38) have been married for about 12 years and have 2 kids in elementary school. She's the love of my life, and everything you read below should be rooted in the fact that I love her and I'm trying to be a good husband to her.
So basically I pulled an Abed from Community…I started becoming concerned that my wife was bipolar because she would sometimes be extremely energetic and fun and sexual and just kind was this force to be reckoned with. Other times, she would become so argumentative and standoffish and unstable but also withdrawn and depressed that I worried she might do something to hurt herself. She always chalked it up as depression symptoms.
I love her so much, and it was obviously not fun for me to become her figurative punching bag, but I always had hope because of the other person she could be. So in a moment of frustration after being told that what I was describing in a fight about her behavior wasn't even happening, I decided I was going to track some of her behaviors for a year to see if I could learn anything that might help and to make sure I wasn't making this up. I didn't want a "gotcha", I just wanted to see if I really was remembering things inaccurately because I felt like I knew what was going on but the gaslighting about my own memory was effective. As I've alluded to, I basically ended up tracking her cycle. From the time her period ends until maybe 10 days after, our average sex frequency is daily and hot. She gets a lot accomplished, and if anything she's too ambitious about the number of projects she takes on. House projects, volunteering stuff, visiting a friend who's lonely, organizing family outings or extended family events…it's like she has more energy than time to accomplish everything she wants to do. She's a wonderful wife and mother, showing lots of love and affection. I'd marry that woman twice. For the other 20 days a month, we have a sexless marriage. She's kind of just getting by emotionally, at best. She works out less and she is moodier. In the week leading up to her period, she's borderline abusive. I try to get the kids out of the house as much as possible so they have fewer hours with her and generally just stay away from her. If she was always that person, I'd divorce her, but I know that it's just cyclical now. Knowing about how she changes through a 30 day cycle has made me a better husband and better at anticipating her needs, although like Abed, I think it would be creepy to explain how I got so much more thoughtful.
So I'm not the first guy to notice that his girlfriend or wife is harder to be around at certain times of the month, and I'm trying not to be a neanderthal here. I've got some life experience, I've been in other serious relationships, and I'm a caring and loving husband: this isn't normal. Her swings through the month are a much, much wider variance than most people experience. Your average person seems to maintain who they are from week to week with just a little change up or down, but she's like 2 or 3 different human beings over the course of a cycle.
Should I be worried about her health? If I should, is there a way to make these worries known without sounding like a psycho who tracked his wife's cycle? I do think this has gotten worse as we aged and after she had our 2 kids. I wonder if becoming a mother led to some PPD and some knock-on effects, but I've never heard of "period onset biopolar disorder" which is what I feel like I'm experiencing.
How can I take this random information I know and be the most helpful / least off-putting about what i know?
TL;DR: My wife is a good person overall who demonstrates wild mood swings. I started tracking things to see if I was crazy…fights, times she initiated sex, times she snapped at the kids, times she did random acts of kindness, etc. and realized I was tracking her cycle and her actions line up perfectly. What do I do with this information to be the best husband?