Straight Talk, No Chaser: How to Find, Keep, and Understand a Man

hard to concentrate on what LeBron is about to do to Kobe, but your whole demeanor makes us sweat harder than a bottle of ice-cold Corona on a sweltering, hundred-degree summer’s day.

Clearly, we’ve done something wrong.

We have no idea what it is, mind you.

But we know we’re about to suffer greatly for whatever the wrong is.

“So what, you were just going to sit and watch the game while all those dirty dishes sat in the sink?” you ask, seething, tossing glasses and plates and knives around.

“Sorry, babe-I was just watching the game,” we say back. “I’ll get to them in a minute.”

“I don’t need them done in a minute-I need them done now. You saw they needed to be done; how you could watch the game all cozy and comfy and leave this sink full of dirty dishes for me to do…”

And just like that, you’re going from zero to sixty, talking all kinds of crazy at us. You know what’s flashing in our minds? Your transformation into a big, evil monster. It doesn’t matter how tiny you are or how cute you are; when you’re ticked off and blaming whatever you’re ticked off about on us and using that “I’m ticked off” tone, you become a six-feet-tall, 450-pound troll head with a Darth Vader voice.

You are no longer the woman we fell in love with or a woman we even like.

In fact, love isn’t even in this.

Whatever words come out of your mouth, the translation in our heads sounds a little like this: “So what you’re saying is you want me to leave and watch the game elsewhere. That’s cool-that’s what I’ll do. Maybe I’ll call one of the guys, we’ll meet down there at the sports bar. Or I could go have a beer at the park. Or sleep in the car. Or fix the lock on the basement door-yeah, lock myself down there, where there’s peace.”

When you’re going off-whether it’s with nasty words, aggressive actions, or the stone-cold silent treatment- we’re responding either by checking out, spacing out, or arguing back.

No matter our response, you’re likely not getting what you want.

So how, exactly, does going off on your man-the definition of nagging-help you?

Let me just go on ahead and tell you now: it doesn’t.

No matter how good it feels to get it off your chest, no matter if you think what you’re saying is justified, the fact of the matter is that when you talk sideways at a man, it makes it that much easier for him to dismiss you and your needs. He can justify his reaction based on your words and tone-you get loud, he can get louder; you throw out idle threats, here come a couple your way, with extra sauce on them; you give him the silent-but-angry treatment, he now can ignore you and whatever it is you’re fussing about until he feels like the lady he likes is back again.

Until the environment is ripe for him to go into fix-it mode.

I wrote in Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man how important it is for a man to simply fix stuff. We don’t want to talk about it and ponder it and mull it over in our minds or argue the merits of it; just as communicating, nurturing, and listening to problems to understand them without any obligation to fix them isn’t a man’s way, neither is standing around and getting hollered at and screamed at over things we don’t think deserve all of that energy, things that are not a priority to us.

Whatever the issue is, we simply want to fix it-without the ugliness and drama.

The key words here, ladies, are priority and fix it.

See, what is a priority to you may not necessarily be a priority to us. You may like the kitchen to be clean, or you may want the trash taken out as soon as the last paper towel makes the garbage reach the top of the bin, or you may want the lawn mowed on Friday evenings instead of Saturday mornings. But I can guarantee you that unless he’s some kind of maniacal neat freak, your man is probably not focused on any of the things that are a priority in your mind. He’s not holding out on washing the dishes or taking out the garbage or picking up his dirty clothes to spite you; he’s simply not paying attention to it. Call it insensitive, argue all you want to about how he should know, by now, how much you can’t stand these things, the truth is he didn’t make these things a priority because dirty dishes, a full trash can, dirty clothes on the floor, and all of the other things that women tend to be particular about don’t bother us. He might just have his mind on other things-things he considers bigger than a dirty glass or a full garbage can. Really, it has nothing to do with you.

So he left his dirty towel on the floor. Your man didn’t do that to spite you; he just dropped his towel on the floor and forgot to pick it up.

So he didn’t put the trash out on the curb the night before the garbage man came. He didn’t take it out just as he heard the garbage truck coming around the corner to spite you; he simply thought it didn’t need to be on the curb until just before the trash man came through.

So he sat down to watch the game instead of washing the dishes right after the family ate the dinner you cooked. He’s not waiting around, biding his time until you break down and wash them; he’s decided to watch the game first and get to the dishes later.

In each one of these instances, your man had priorities that didn’t coincide with yours right that minute. Or he may have done thirty-nine other things before you started yelling at him about the fortieth thing he didn’t get to yet. For sure, he’s going to get to the fix, just not on your schedule. How does that justify your turning into the 450-pound, six-feet-tall troll with a Darth Vader voice? In our minds, it doesn’t. And your tantrums about these things are really received as nothing more than bratty behavior. So when you’re finished swelling up and transforming and spinning and the argument is over and you’re back to the cute, normal, sweet woman we like, we can fix what was wrong-wash the dishes, take out the garbage, pick up the dirty towel-and go back to what was a priority to us.

Now, we men get that our women are particular people with particular needs, and we’re prepared to fulfill those needs. You just have to be more diplomatic about getting what you want from us. First, try to remember these five things before you go all in on a man about something you need done or don’t like.

1. Adjust your tone.

Your man is not your child. If you’re talking to us in that stern, accusatory, “I’m your mama” tone, like we’re little boys, then we’re going to square off like grown men. We have to stand up to that because you’re questioning our principles. You’re suggesting, in that motherly tone, that we’re nasty creatures who don’t care about clean houses, or that we’re lazy creatures who sit around waiting for everyone else to do stuff, or, the most hurtful, that we purposely hold out on helping you because we don’t care about or respect you. Of course, none of these things could be further from the truth. But as a result of your tone, now we’re really not going to give you what you need or want the second you need and want it.

2. Let your man get to what needs to be done in his own time.

Sure, you may want it done right this second, but really? Is the sun going to stop shining if he washes the dishes during halftime? Is the earth going to fall off its rotational axis because he chooses to put his towel on the rack when he goes back upstairs in an hour, rather than right this minute? Is your heart going to stop beating because he left the mail out on the counter and made plans to file it after he got back from a round of golf? I mean, gold star for insistence, but the fact of the matter is that most of us already know you want the dishes washed and the towel up off the floor and the mail filed and we fully intend on getting to it. Just not right now. So hold your horses-exercise a little patience. Leave the kitchen and stop looking in the sink. Stay out of the bathroom if that towel is driving you that crazy. Don’t worry about the mail. We’ll (eventually) get to it.

3. Choose your battles.

If you’re going from zero to sixty on every little thing, your man is going to automatically tune you out every time he sees the attitude coming. And I can assure you, when a man tunes out, he has a hard time figuring out when something’s a not-so-big deal to you versus something that’s a really big deal to you. For instance, if you’re giving him a hard time every time he wants to play basketball with his friends on a Saturday morning, even when you know good and well that if he stayed home, he’d likely be right up under you, he’ll be less likely to take you seriously on the one Saturday that you actually need him to stay home so that you can run to the office and put in extra time for a big meeting on Monday, or run an errand, or take some much-needed time with your girlfriends. All the fussing and nagging make him insensitive to the things that are really important to you. It’s like the boy crying wolf; after a while neither your idle threats nor your nastiness