My name ain't Swammi

Every man has found himself in this position: Something's wrong with your woman, mother, sister, et al. Knowing her as well as you do, you sense this. The feeling, the tension, walks in the room before she does, and once she gets there, the air is thick as soup.

Then, the deadly, piercing silence of a woman's unspoken emotions. Struggling, you make small talk, looking for context clues. She responds with monosyllabic answers that provide you no indication. Is she angry, tepid, seething, frustrated, sad? Is it work, you, something she saw on TV, her friend on the way for his monthly visit? Having no clue, and knowing only that doing nothing, anything at all, ensures you a bigger problem than the one you've got at that moment, you conjure up the stones to ask the one question that's obvious to every man at this juncture:

"What's wrong?"

And in that instant, you lose all control of the situation -- as if you had it to begin with.

The problem, brothas, is that you're just NOT a mind reader. As a general rule, men are more pragmatic in thinking and action, which conversely means we're pretty emotionally stupid. That's why it's called "women's intuition", and not "men's"; a woman's intuition will give her a pretty damn good idea not only when something's wrong, but what that wrong is and how to fix it, even when you may not completely be able to articulate it. I've experienced this numerous times, having expressed frustration, anger or rage to no end, only to have my significant at the time look calmly at me and say something like "you need to go to sleep; go lay down and I'll be in there in a second." Much as I fought, it was just that simple: lay my cranky ass down and problem solved.

But do NOT be fooled by this, guys. You are simply not equipped to soothe so simply as is the fairer sex. This does not mean that you can't solve whatever your woman's problem is at the time, in fact, many of these situations arise because she wants YOU to do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, to make her feel better. The problem is you don't know what.

So in the interest of happier homes everywhere, I suggest the following: Guys, tell your woman, up front, kindly, that you may indeed possess the wizardry to make her feel better somehow. But you're not a genie who's gonna fly out of his lamp unless said lamp is rubbed, which is to say that ladies, knowing how emotionally stupid we males are, you're going to need to step up and speak up if you want us to help you out with emotions we simply don't have the aptitude to understand.

MANLAW: You're an emotional nincompoop. Embrace it, communicate it, and if you've got a good woman, you'll be rewarded.