“WHATEVER!” WTF is that supposed to mean?

Male opinion vs female opinion The winner is….

“Whatever”. That’s my answer. Now can anyone actually tell me who won? Nope, didn’t think so. Whatever is right up there with the blinking smiley face you receive after a text. It’s saying, I am pretending to hear what you but am really too busy for this right now so I am going to pat you on your head and shoo you away. Was that good for you? Annoying and condescending, right? It depends who you ask.

I have taught my sons to never say whatever to a woman. Don’t even say it to me. It just has nothing positive about it and leads to nowhere good. I would add that rule to men but most still have no idea why they shouldn’t say it. They repeatedly go in this circle where they say it, she gets annoyed, he asks why and she says something very hostile and stomps out of the room. I have been asking various men to give me their version of what this reaction means. “I have no idea”  “She left the room so she doesn’t want to talk”  “Maybe it’s that time of the month again”(again?)  “She’s being dramatic”
“Do you think she wants to talk about it?”  “Absolutely not! If she wants to talk about it she will let me know” (ya right!)
When I hear a man respond with “whatever”  I want to wring their neck. I want to force their attention away from whatever they are doing or watching and ask them to explain what that exactly what they meant by ‘Whatever’. They can’t come up with an answer…ever.
What about going after her when she leaves the room and trying to resolve it?  “That won’t work. Leaving the room means they don’t want to talk about it. They want you to leave them alone”.  Are you sure? Perhaps it was you asking them with an obvious short temper, what their problem was question. You definitely did something wrong and your approach at resolving it was… non-existent.  Oh.. and on top of that, you know nothing about women.
What is the best way to handle this situation? It really is a touch and go kind of resolution. Think of it as eye surgery. Very intricate, difficult, requiring 100% of your attention. You must be quick to see if something is going wrong and be prepared to try an alternative. Everybody’s’ eyes are different. No two are alike. One method doesn’t work for all of them. Does it seem like no matter what method you come up with to deal with it, it never works? Probably.  What do you do?

Okay genius, what happens is even when you think you know why, you don’t. When you think you know what to say, you don’t. Even when you think you know what to do, you don’t. This is why you need to  follow my advice. It is for both of you and your sanity. It may not make sense to you but you also think leaving the bathroom door open when you take a dump and talking about it’s color and/or consistency is okay and blowing your nose in the shower repeatedly within earshot of us is no big deal. It is. It’s gross and not something we want to enjoy as we get started on our day.

Never ever think you know women. You don’t. You never will. Even women don’t understand women. This is why I say the best thing to do is to just never say it and accept that you don’t know everything.
Pick your battles.  This problem can be easily avoided. Just eliminate it from your vocabulary. Focus your energy on the important problems you will have with women like what to say when they say, “How do I look?”  Trust me, that one is even harder to figure out.