Women of the World: Never Ask Your Man if He is Joking

Men are performers.  We lead.  We wander.  We are always looking to conquer.  We also tend to place great value in being funny — especially if we can make our woman laugh.  We feel as if the eyes of the world are upon our funny bones when it comes to you.  We’re funny that way.

However, there’s always a problem when we say something intended as funny that either doesn’t come off as funny or the funny is a mask for a more serious issue that we are uncomfortable addressing.

This “lack of funny” is especially a problem when it comes to having an ongoing with a relationship with you.  Most men — when we add something to a conversation, or when we provide a response — try to be funny as a way of showing intelligence and good humor on the subject.

That funny attempt isn’t always appreciated, and when a woman asks her man –“Are you you being funny or serious? —  a major dividing spike has been cleaved into the relationship that may never heal to recover.

If the man responds with — “I was kidding!” — then he’s going to get blasted for not taking the matter seriously enough.

If the man responds with — “I’m serious!  Seriously!” — then he’s going to get blasted for making fun the the matter by making a joke.

If the man responds with — “It depends.” — he stands a slightly better chance at not getting blasted, for a moment anyway, as he tries to divine, by her response to his conditional reply, the next best thing to say.

Once the — “It Depends” — card has been successfully played once in a relationship, it can’t be played again, but that doesn’t stop men from always trying to test the waters of reaction to a joke that dies on the relationship vine.  A little laugh goes a long way in getting down to the meat of the matter.

Women of the World, please know this one thing about your man:  99.999% of the time when he responds to a question or a request, he is making a joke and trying to be funny.  Yes, we know we only find success 0.001% of the time — but we are genetically coded to try to get you to laugh first and then we’ll do the right thing by you.  A laugh vindicates our self-worth and confirms our lowly notion that we can, in fact, be entertaining — even when we are not.

Humor us.  Know we are joking even when we aren’t funny.  Never ask us if we’re joking because we always are — just accept this little flaw within us that compels us to continuously try to win you over with humor.  Yes, we know the joke is really on us, but please don’t make us confess that out loud.  It ruins the punch line.