The Something Behind the Nothing

Allow me to set the scene…

Lady enters room obviously aggravated.  Her man asks, “What’s wrong, baby?”

She replies, “Nothing.”

He follows up with “Are you sure?”

She reaffirms by saying, “Yeah.”

Then she proceeds to slam doors, breathe heavily, and mumble under her breath in between shooting evil glances in her man’s direction.   But, she said nothing is wrong.  Well, something is clearly wrong.

After a lively conversation this weekend with some friends about relationships, we’ve concluded that this scenario happens frequently.  To men, it seems like a childish guessing game.  And well, the women agreed it was a guessing game but one in which the answer has been told at some prior time.

For instance, you politely ask your man to take out the trash whenever he gets a chance.  You have been out running around all day and return home. Your man is in the same place you left him and so is the trash.  Now you are pissed the house smells like trash, so you are slamming doors to take the trash out.  You walk back in and now nothing is wrong because you have done what you asked him to do.  But you are upset you had to do it.  Of course, this is just an example and the gravity of the situation varies.

I suppose it could be easier to answer whatever it was the first time versus replying “nothing.”  However, I believe the method behind the madness is to make it an ordeal so complete and undivided attention is given to the issue.  Often a woman’s rational, indoor voices falls on deaf ears.  So the next time, we take the more theatrical approach.

“Nothing” is always something, you just have to figure out what something that is.