Understanding Women

I heard something on the radio this morning about married women not liking to give their husbands hints. It seems kind of unladylike. On the other hand, I've heard comedians joke about how hints don't work. Women seem to think that being in love means never having to explain yourself--your partner always knows what you're thinking. Women always seem to think they know what their significant others are thinking. I think they'd be pretty surprised if they really knew what we were thinking--and, most of the time, we're not trying to keep it a secret!

Women seem to think that love grants one psychic abilities. It doesn't. We can't read your mind, and you can't read ours. You can generally get an idea about what we're thinking, because men are much less inclined to play games with it. Women will often create a pretense just to see if the man catches it. Even if we know that your behavior is a sham, we generally don't know what to about it. Dave Barry wrote a column in which he said, "A woman is someone who, when you ask her what is wrong, says, 'Nothing.' A man is a person who, when a woman tells him nothing is wrong, believes her." Obviously, that's not entirely true. At the very least, Mr. Barry has learned (from long, hard experience, no doubt) that when a woman says nothing is wrong, that usually means that something is very wrong, but she isn't willing to talk about it. Are we then to begin guessing as to what it wrong? Not really, because that simply leads to further denials about there being anything wrong. Sometimes, you can wear her down to the point where she will say, "If you loved me, you would know what was wrong." Again, there is a big difference between being in love, and being psychic. Frequently, men get frustrated and just quit worrying about it (or, at least, try not to worry about it); after all, eventually she will tell us what's bothering her, or get over it. In any case, without a clue as to what is going on, we can't really do much about it, except play dumb. I know there's something wrong, but she wants to pretend that nothing is wrong, so I'll play her game. This generally means that retribution will be much harsher, later, but she's not in the mood for a game of twenty questions, anyway. I'll go watch the game, or finish fixing the closet door, or whatever else I've got to do, and wait on her.

Another thing about women that I don't get: Why is it, that when a woman wants affirmation that she is still loved, that she can't wait for a commercial? Why does it always have to be when the score is tied, there's thirty seven seconds left on the clock, our team has the ball, and it's third and twelve; or the TV detective has just called all of the suspects together and is about to reveal who the killer is, or the guys in the black hats have got our hero pinned down and he only has one bullet left... And she wants to turn the TV off and discuss what color tile should go in the hall bathroom. Of course, we both know that this isn't about floor tile, this is about her making sure that she is more important than whatever it was we were doing. We know that, but it's still frustrating (less frustrating with TIVO, of course, but still).