Men often laugh that they don't understand women. Women revel in the fact that men don't understand them. Men don't understand women because they assume from the outset that women are generally good and honourable, and that women have good intentions ("hearts of gold"). They believe this because women, starting with their mothers, have told them so.
The sad truth is that women make a whole lot more sense once you assume that women are deceitful and scheming. Now, I'm a scientist, and I know an overgeneralization when I see one. I do not means that all women are deceitful and scheming, or that women are deceitful and scheming all of the time. What I'm saying is at those times when men just shake their heads in bewilderment and don't understand how they were just outmaneuvered by a woman, the problem is that they are assuming that they were just outplayed by a woman who was better at the game than they were. While this may be true in a few cases, in most cases what these men don't get is that women invented the game. They invented the rules, and so see nothing wrong with disregarding their own rules whenever it gives them an advantage. As I said, when you find yourself confused by what a woman is doing, stop and mentally erase the assumption that she is kind-hearted and honourable, and suddenly her behaviour becomes sensible and even predictable.
For example, when a woman wins an argument by breaking down and crying, a man assumes that this is because her feelings have been hurt and he has been too hard on her. He can't understand why he keeps losing arguments to her when he tries so hard to be gentle. While it may be wise to continue being gentle to save face and to help the relationship along, it makes more sense in terms of understanding to assume that she is crying not because her feelings are unduly hurt, but because she has learned that crying wins arguments with men. So, rather than trying to restrain herself and argue based on logic or explanation, she simply lets her feelings go and starts crying—and wins every time. So, this confusing "crying" thing is only secondarily an emotional reaction to relationship stress. Primarily it is a tactic. Men who see crying as an expression of pain are confused by this: how can she be so delicate in some situations and so tough in others? Men who see crying as a tactic may react in the same protective way as a tactic of their own, but they see crying for what it is: a way to win. She isn't "so delicate" in "some situations". She's tough all the time. She's just using tears as a way to get one over on him, and she enjoys doing it and continues doing it because it works well.
Men live with the illusion that their wives love them and that their wives would never do anything to intentionally hurt them. The truth is much more disappointing. In fact, your wife does love you, but she is also convinced that you are so tough and are born with so many free advantages as a man that she can do and say pretty-much anything she wants to you without feeling guilty. So, when your wife is consistently hurting your feelings, and you suspect that she's being mean but don't want to think it, it is your initial impression that is absolutely correct: she is being mean to you precisely because she thinks you're so insensitive and imperturbable that it doesn't matter. Even if she sees that it hurts you sometimes she may decide that as a man your life is so great anyway that what's a little bit of pain?
This is also why women are horrified on those odd occasions when men drop the tough façade and break down. Women absolutely don't want to see men in pain, and absolutely don't want to hear about how much they hurt their men's feelings. Men (and women) believe that this is because women care so much about men that they can't stand to see men suffer. The truth is that such openness and obvious pain shatter women's illusion that men are invulnerable to emotional attack, and the illusion therefore that emotional attacks on men are fair game because there are really no consequences. In short, a weeping man is telling his woman that she has to treat him as well as she treats her girlfriends, which runs contrary to everything that women "know" about men and is the last thing she wants. She wants him to continue the pretense that he doesn't feel the pain she dishes out so that she can continue to be nice to her girlfriends but then take the pent-up frustration home with her and dump it on him. She wants a punching bag, a dummy in more ways than one, and she wants to maintain the fiction that that dummy is her husband.
Of course, one could claim that this is negated by the recent (last 40 years') rage of men "expressing their feelings." However, if you take a close look you will see that women want men to express only certain, acceptable feelings in certain, acceptable ways. The unacceptable way that never comes up is expressing the pain men feel when women treat them like crap. Men are so good at hiding that expression of feelings that they often even deceive themselves, interpreting their pain as confusion, shaking their heads over how they don't understand women.
Guys, you don't understand your wife because you think she's trying to be nice to you and treat you fairly. If you find that your marriage makes your head hurt, the reason is probably that you're trying desperately to reconcile the treatment you receive from her with your fervently-held belief that she is the "fairer sex," kind and gentle and always looking out for your best interests. If you instead interpret her behaviour as if she were a man, if you take away your "sugar and spice" view of her, then the confusion goes away. Now her treating you badly isn't puzzling: she's just being a jerk.
