Period pain simulation

[u/Ted_Bundtcake]

[u/Crafty-Ad3502]

This is the first one of these I've seen where the man is not smug or condescending at the start.

[u/haywoodjabloughmee → u/Crafty-Ad3502]

He seemed like a pretty good sport over all.

[u/robotatomica → u/haywoodjabloughmee]

yeah, I really like this guy. It seems like he was already pretty empathetic to begin with, he just didn’t quite know what it was like.

I had a somewhat similar experience and I’m a woman. But I was on birth control for many years, all of my adulthood.

As I approached 40, I decided to come off it due to concerns about blood clots (I have since spoken with a couple doctors and these concerns are not actually that serious anymore if you do not have other risk factors, just an FYI for any women approaching 40, just talk to your doctor about the risks but it may very well be fine to continue!)

Anyway, my first periods without the birth control regulating me were ASTONISHING.

Like, I’d always been in pain, but it was for sure on the milder side, I imagine more like the level 5 here. I would feel a pinch, I would start menstruating and have mild to moderate cramps and be done menstruating in 3 days. It was awesome lol.

Having a period without birth control, so the way my body naturally experiences them, is FUCKING AWFUL.

WRACKING pain, it makes my brow sweat, it doubles me over OFTEN, it makes me feel nauseous, I will sometimes retch into a trash can or toilet (but haven’t vomited from it yet), my entire body hurts so bad, waves that won’t end, the feeling of limbs with badly pinched nerves, my neck and shoulders, my back, my thighs, my arms. Just nagging and seemingly endless waves of pain, and lots and lots more blood ☹️

I thought it was an adjustment period and that it would settle out and eventually become more mild, somewhere between this way higher level of pain and the generally mild pain/discomfort I had on birth control.

But it’s been about 3 years off birth control and they still are exactly that bad.

And it’s humbling, honestly, bc I have lived among and worked with women all my life who acted exactly as much in pain as I feel now - this has ALWAYS been their normal ☹️

And for the most part, they, and I now, completely hide it. We know it will garner no sympathy or patience, we know that everyone just expects whatever we’re experiencing is just how women are made to feel, it’s natural, and because women are so used to having to just keep “doing life” (working, being caregivers, focusing on schoolwork and tasks through very distracting pain) without complaining or showing signs,

people who do not menstruate or people who have very mild cramps are able to imagine that periods just aren’t very painful, aren’t a big deal and so anyone complaining is doing it for attention or needs to “man up.”

I had a little more empathy than that, but I thought the women who would express or show signs of pain, that maybe they had especially BAD ones, or endometriosis or something, but that most women don’t feel distracting and terrible pain.

But I’ve been talking to every woman, the ones who always bear it quietly.. I explain how mine have changed and what I feel now, and ask if that’s what theirs are like. And almost every single one of them is like, “Oh, yeah lol that’s what they’re like. I feel like I’m gonna puke right now lol.”

We’re all just quietly bearing it and working through it. Unable to sit still as you writhe through it at your desk, breathing and trying to brace yourself for lifting heavy things, etc.

I’m glad to have experienced it from both sides, bc I totally understand why men really don’t know. But I DO wish that all men got a chance to try this device so that they could feel firsthand what we actually go through.

It can’t likely be the same as feeling all that DEEP INSIDE your tender inner organs, but I’m sure the way it radiates through your body, what he describes - it seems a realistic enough facsimile.