We Break It Down To The Men: The Real Reasons She Gets Mad About Small Things

A dirty dish

It’s just one dish. It’s a blip in the midst of your otherwise clean kitchen. But, she’s asked you twice now to clean it, and it’s still there. And now doors are slamming and you’re certainly not getting laid tonight.

You don’t try to make her life easier

It’s not about that dish, or the trash that needs to be taken out, or the rug that needs to be vacuumed. It’s about the fact that women constantly go out of their way to think of little things to make their man’s life easier. It’s second nature to us to keep an eye out for things that would take a load off of our men and make them happy. The fact that that one dish has been sitting there for a whole week, says to us that you have to be reminded to do something that would make our lives easier, and that it’s not just second nature for you as it is for us.

Criticizing where you are

You call her from a restaurant and she talks about how gross that restaurant is, you call from a sports game and she complains about all the noise in the background. No matter what you’re doing, she has a criticism about it. And she seems to be judging you for deciding to be at that place.

It’s just because you’re not with her

Typically, when a woman begins criticizing any place you go without her, it’s because she feels you don’t take her out enough. If a woman feels she isn’t treated to a good date night often enough, she begins to resent any place you go without her. Just a few thoughtful, planned out evenings a month with your woman could make her perfectly complacent about everywhere else you go.

You give her advice

Your girlfriend comes home unhappy with the way a job interview went, or a presentation at work. You give her solid, thought-out advice that you know would help her next time. She proceeds to either argue with you about why your advice wouldn’t work, or even worse point out a way that you failed in a similar manner.

She wants to prove herself

No woman will admit this (and I might get a figurative slap on the wrist for saying it) but, when in a relationship, many women become insecure about their careers, often comparing them to the careers of their boyfriend. Perhaps its decades of fighting for women’s rights in the workplace deeply ingrained in us, but many women feel the need to prove to their partner that they are respectable professionals who know what they are doing, just as much as any man does. And when you advise a woman on something regarding her career, that little insecurity kicks in and she thinks you don’t find her competent.

You drink too much

You’re not doing anything wrong. You haven’t gotten into a bar fight, or been kicked out of the club for being rowdy, or been arrested for indecent exposure. You’re perfectly harmless, but you’re drunk, and she doesn’t like it. She nags at you, disgusted by every word you say and every move you make while drunk. And you haven’t done a thing to offend or upset her.

She wants to be included in your fun

The issue behind this is similar to the one behind a woman criticizing every place you go without her; she feels left out. One of the times a person is having the most fun and completely letting loose is while drinking. If you often leave your girlfriend at home so you can have boys nights, or go away on guy’s weekends without inviting her, she’ll start to believe you take her for granted and you only want her there to comfort you throughout the challenging and often monotonous flow of “real life.” She’ll think you don’t find her enough fun to have along for the fun times. And seeing you completely relaxed and having fun—while drunk—will bring up all those insecurities.

You can’t read her mind

This is a constant question on the minds of men: “Why does she think I should be able to read her mind?” Your girlfriend is mad at you for something, and then she is even more upset because you can’t guess what that something is. And you think it’s unreasonable that she expects you to be a mind reader.

She wants to feel in sync

Remember when you first started dating? Each time you picked up your phone to text her “I miss you,” she’d already texted you that same thing. When you called her to invite her to a movie, she answered the phone by inviting you to that same one. You were always on the same page. And it made you feel so right for each other. As relationships go on and the hyper-excitement about a new person dies down, you start thinking more about the other parts of your life and you’re not as in sync as you used to be. Deep down, women miss that time period. And when you can’t read their minds, it makes them feel that you’re not as close as you used to be.

She criticizes your job

So your girlfriend criticizes your job. She criticizes the goal of the company, or the intelligence of the staff, or the morals of your boss. She is openly against your job, and you can’t understand how she thinks that is appropriate.

She thinks you’re not fulfilling your potential

Every woman communicates differently. While some will be open with you and tell you they don’t think you’re fulfilling your potential, others will hope you come to that realization on your own, and they use the strange and admittedly rude method of berating your current job.

She gets upset over a friend’s joke

One of your friends teases your girlfriend in a small way and suddenly you’re being pulled aside to “have a talk.” If not that, your girlfriend is full on verbally assaulting that friend now.

She thinks you’ve forgotten why you like her

All a woman cares about is what you think about her, not what your friends think. If a woman feels confident that you are conscious of all the things that are great about her, and that you feel grateful for her, a little comment from one of your friends won’t set her off. But, if you’ve failed to compliment her in a while, or just let her know how much she means to you, she’ll feel that that disrespect from your friend is a direct result of your disrespect for her. A woman knows that usually a boyfriend’s friends draw the line where he does. And if those friends knew their buddy had a lot of respect for his woman, they wouldn’t be teasing her.