Your period can change your guy's speech patterns.
By Kait Smith — Last updated on Feb 29, 2012
It's a well-known fact that a woman's menstrual cycle can cause mood swings. But the power of a period lays in much more than a hormonal rage or two—it can completely changes a man's syntax.
We know what you're thinking; "How can my time of the month affect the way my boyfriend speaks?" We thought it, too, and it does sound far-fetched. However, a new study published in PLoS ONE found that men's linguistic patters are affected by a woman's fertility.
Previous research revealed that men and women who are attracted to each other tend to match their linguistic patterns—meaning, of course, that they speak in the same way. But this most recent study is the first to suggest that fertility can also influence speech.
For their study, researchers observed 123 male college students. They had each man speak with five young women who were at different points in their menstrual cycles. When conversing with the most fertile women, the young men were less likely to mimic the women's sentence structure. Rather, they more frequently matched speech patterns with the "less fertile" participants.
We're puzzled as to why this linguistic shift happens, but luckily researchers give some semblance of explanation. They bring it all down to creativity—mimicking the way a woman speaks shows a lack of creative thought, while "non-aligning sentence structure" is a display of intelligence and ingenuity. It makes them stand out, and when you're trying to get a lady knocked up, standing out can make all the difference.
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Tell us ladies, do you notice a shift in your man's speech patterns when you're having your period? Maybe next time you should take note...