Phrases Feared by Men - Well If You Don’t Know??

September 21, 2005 by NML

Okay, let’s just get one thing straight, right from the off. We don’t know. We never know. And we will never know. Okay? If women would just accept that one simple fact, everything in life would be so much easier. You could tell us. We could apologise. Problems solved. Done and dusted.

We’ve all been in the situation. Our normally sane and well balanced partner is acting perfectly normally. But she is acting a little too perfectly normally. In fact she is acting in a way that makes it very obvious that the perfectly normal act is just that, an act. She is acting in such a way as to make it painfully obvious that whatever else is going on, things are not perfectly normal. Things are far from perfectly normal.

Once you have identified this situation, and it won’t be difficult, you will know two things for an absolute certainty. The first thing is that she is angry about something. The second thing is that you are the cause of it.

You know exactly what you have to do in this situation. You don’t want to, but you have no choice. It is a ritual that has to be played out. You approach with trepidation. “What’s wrong?” you ask. “Nothing’s wrong,” she will reply, but the glint of cold steel in her eye, the hard set of her jaw, will make the words fall like ashes to the ground before they have barely had time to pass through her lips.
“There is something wrong,” you continue, “come on, you can tell me.” Her voice will now take on a hard and soulless edge. “There is nothing wrong,” she will say, enunciating every word slowly and carefully. The game is now nearly over.
“Look, it’s obvious that something is wrong, so why don’t you just tell me what it is.” It’s part of the ritual. You have to say it. But you know, even as the words are forming on your tongue, that this is endgame. You know exactly what words will follow, and they fill your heart with terror. And here they come….

“Well if you don’t know…..”

And she’s got you. You stand there, feigning innocence, denying all knowledge. And this is not an act, you truly do not know what it is that has caused this. But in the back of your mind you are running through whole lists of things, vast reams of indiscretions, trying desperately to fix on the one among them all that might just have tipped her tolerance levels over the edge.

But the sad truth is, you will never get it. Because men’s brains are just not wired the same way as women’s brains. You can continue to scroll through your misdemeanours for a century and you will still never figure out which one was the right one. Because it was none of them. She already knows about all of them and she doesn’t care. In fact, the very fact that you consider these things to be misdemeanours is one of the primary reasons why she loves you so much. No, the thing that you are in trouble for is something else entirely, some little niggle that you would never in your wildest dreams have believed would annoy her.

And here is the crux of the matter. We will never get it. And you will eventually end up telling us. So if you would just tell us straight away, we can get on with the job of fixing it and avoid the inevitable unpleasantness which will always follow one of these exchanges as sure as night follows day.

Because if you don’t tell us, we will guess. And we will get it wrong. And then we will end up expending a vast amount of energy running around trying to fix something that was never broken in the first place, and will probably end up breaking it ourselves which will only serve to make you even more angry than you were about the original indiscretion.

Let me provide an analogy. One day you decide to eat a T-Bone steak for your dinner. When you have finished, you throw the bone on the floor, then call your dog in. The dog chews on the bone. The dog is a happy little dog. A week later you again eat a T-Bone steak. This time you throw the bone in the bin. Your dog smells the bone in the bin, and tips the bin over to get at the bone.

Now, you know the dog has done wrong. But the dog does not know. Nobody told the dog that a bone on the floor was okay, but a bone in the bin is off-limits. The dog does not see the distinction.

I’m not suggesting here that men are like dogs. In many respects we are of course, although we are far less likely to sniff each other’s bottoms. But that’s beside the point. The point is that in a “well if you don’t know….” situation, the transgression in question almost certainly resulted from a misunderstanding on our part due to not having the rules explained to us in a comprehensive enough form.

So you see, whatever it is, it’s all your fault really. But we will apologise for it anyway, obviously.
Alan 41, is a Scotsman with an English accent, who could never be accused of lacking variety as he has been a failed actor, a theatre director, is working as an IBM mainframe contractor, has had his book London Correspondence: Jack the Ripper and the Irish Press published, and also writes articles on true crime and mountaineering for a number of publications. He is father to 3 children, whom live with their mother and think that he’s pretty cool unorthodox dad, and he is obsessed with David Bowie. He struggles to relate to men his own age as he hasn’t developed a desire to become golf-obsessed, listen to bland music and watch motoring programmes.

Check out Alan’s blog