I See... For Men Only: How to End an Argument With Your Wife

WARNING: THIS IS A LEXICALLY EXPLICIT EXPLANATION OF HOW TO END AN ARGUMENT THAT MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR YOUNG WIVES.

MEN, PLEASE TEST THIS AT HOME BEFORE YOU TRY IT IN PUBLIC.

Brethren,

I have discovered a foolproof method of quickly and safely ending any argument with your wife. It consists of judicious application of three simple words: “Because I’m Stupid.”

Here is how it works:

At sometime during your marriage relationship, possibly early on, you are going to do something stupid to really tick off your wife. It could be an act as simple as leaving dirty socks strewn across the living room, or as serious as totaling the minivan. Tensions will degenerate; harsh looks and words will fly recklessly between the both of you. Then your sweet mate, the wife of your eternities, will unleash the dreaded rhetorical question. This is a question that was never meant to be answered; its sole purpose is to trap you in a smelly pile of your own guilt, from which there is no escape. It usually comes out something like ‘Why do you NEVER pick up your smelly, filthy socks?” or, “What in the heck were you thinking when you ran into the back of that schoolbus?”

How do your wives expect you to respond to these questions? They are confident that you will vigorously try and defend yourself against their accusations, more often than not with a lame excuse like “the socks are same color as the living room carpet, so what’s the problem?” or “don’t worry- we have good car insurance and the bus was empty except for a few of those squirrely teenagers that have been causing problems in the neighborhood.”

The lame excuses don’t work; it’s a sign that your wives have won. If they are going to win anyway (and they will, because smelly socks do NOT belong on the living room floor, and there really is NO EXCUSE for rear-ending a schoolbus), we should at least be able conclude the loss with creativity and flair.

This is the point where, instead of the lame excuse, you respond with the three most disarming words in bilateral connubial dialogue: ‘because I’m stupid.”

First, your stunned wives will respond with shock. They will not believe that you have actually fessed up to your stupidity. The silence will be deafening. It is critical at this stage of the process that you quickly change the subject to a topic they care about before they recover. It won’t take long before you are romantically holding each other and tearfully apologizing for words that weren’t meant and shouldn’t have been said.

Now, I have never hit an innocent schoolbus from behind, but I have left dirty socks around the house, and I can promise you that this strategy really works. However, there are some careful corollaries that must be considered:

• Use it sparingly at first. It works so well that it is tempting to apply to almost any tight situation with your eternal partner, but frequent application leads to easy detection (our wives, unlike ourselves, are NOT stupid), which renders it meaningless. You’ll find yourself faced with responses like “stupidity is no excuse for ….”

• Tender ears, especially in homes with small children, may be offended by the s-word. If this is the case, select a less threatening label – the favorite replacement in our house is “fathead” (pronounced “fahhey”).
  

I’m not going to embarrass my wife here in the blogosphere by revealing how long it took her to figure out that she was the subject of a successful social experiment, but I will admit that “fahhey” has become a term of endearment in our family.