Why Are The Dads So Grumpy?
This week, I learned about "Irritable Male Syndrome."
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A few weeks ago in a group text chat, some of my lady friends bemoaned that their partners have become rather crabby. Their husbands walk around with their shoulders slumped, don’t have any patience with the kids, and are often complaining.
One friend turned to Google for answers and shared with considerable glee that there’s actually a term for this phenomenon: Irritable Male Syndrome (also known as Irritable Husband Syndrome). This piqued my interest, and I discovered there’s also a bit of research on the topic (more on that later).
Some additional Googling later, I reached out to Jed Diamond, a psychologist who has spent his career studying and addressing middle-age male grumpiness. He’s the author of quite a few books, including The Irritable Male Syndrome: Managing the Four Key Causes of Depression and Aggression and Mr. Mean: Saving Your Relationship From the Irritable Male Syndrome, and he was happy to chat with me over the phone about why men get so damned grumpy in midlife and what we can do about it.
Before we spoke, I admit I was a little apprehensive about Diamond’s perspective. Was he going to launch into an eyeroll-inducing sermon about how men these days have it so hard and that women just need to be supporting them more?
Thankfully, he did not.
What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation. I also encourage those of you with irascible men in your lives to vent about your experiences in the comments, share your ideas about potential causes and recommend remedies that have helped.