“How do I look?”

What it really means: “Tell me I am attractive. Now.”

If there’s one thing human beings cannot stand, it’s the truth – and women are no exception. If your girlfriend walked out of the bathroom with her panties around her neck, mud rubbed in her hair and torn spandex pants, she’d still ask you how she looked and expect a complimentary response. In a way, she’s almost being generous – the boyfriend is given an easy excuse to earn brownie points by sycophantically praising his girlfriend’s physical attributes. Whether or not the boyfriend is lying through his teeth is irrelevant to the girlfriend.

How to deal with it:

Pretend to have your mind focused on something else for a second. Then look back at her, as if you just now realized she ask you something. The moment your eyes hit hers, suddenly act as if you have become overwhelmed with a wave of absolute astonishment – who is this beautiful woman, and how did she get here? Widen your eyes and try to look as childlike as possible, dumbfounded with amazement at her beauty.

These theatrics may seem unnecessary or silly, but one must realize that a simple “you look great” will result in nothing more than an argument and a likely denial of sex for the next 24 hours. If a woman deems it necessary to ask you how she looks, then she’s obviously spent some degree of effort on her appearance, and wants to be rewarded with an unusually positive reaction to it.

“Do you think she’s pretty?”

What it really means: “Prove to me you aren’t attracted to other women.”

Typically asked in reference to a female celebrity or supermodel, your woman is feeling insecure about the fact that many, many women on the planet are most likely more attractive than her. She needs you to show that “mainstream” attractive women hold no interest for you, because otherwise she cannot consider herself the most attractive woman in your life – if the whole of society agrees that they’d cut off four fingers if it meant they’d get to sleep with Angelina Jolie, then your stated lack of attraction toward her means that you find your girlfriend more doable than Lara Croft herself.

It’s complicated, but can be summarized like this:

-Everybody thinks Scarlett Johansson is gorgeous.

-If you think Scarlett Johansson is gorgeous, then that also means you think Scarlett Johansson is more attractive than your girlfriend, thus making your girlfriend feel less special than Scarlett Johansson.

-If your girlfriend thinks you don’t think Scarlett Johansson is gorgeous, then your girlfriend can continue to operate under the assumption that she is the most gorgeous woman in your life and that you are lucky to have her.

How to deal with it:

There are a dozen ways to handle this question, most of them pretty straightforward (“No” is the shortest and easier to remember), but this question presents a fantastic chance to subtly show your girlfriend how much you really care about her.

When she asks the question, only refer to the celebrity in question by drawing comparisons between her and your girlfriend. For example:

“Do you think Eva Mendes is pretty?”

“Well, she’s got sort of a nice body, but she doesn’t have your eyes.”

“I wasn’t asking whether or not she looks like me. I was asking whether you thought she’s pretty.”

“I don’t understand. I just told you she wasn’t pretty -- she doesn’t have your eyes.”

She’ll pause for a minute, and then come to the realization that you are essentially using your girlfriend as the standard of beauty to which all other girls will be judged: she’ll be so flattered that she might manage to have long, arduous sex with you without crying once.

“Where do you want to go tonight?”

What it really means: “Read my mind.”

In all relationships, the time comes when the passion is over and done with, and the couple is required to actually go somewhere in an effort to stave off boredom. When that time comes, the relationship basically becomes one big game of 20 questions. Your girlfriend wants to go somewhere interesting, but she (A) wants to have nothing to do at all with where you end up, (B) wants to enjoy herself, and (C) wants you to pay for everything.

The problem, of course, is in actually guessing a destination that your girlfriend will enjoy. If you ask her what she’s in the mood for, you’ll either get a bullshit answer (“I dunno”) or she’ll tell you and immediately get irritated that you didn’t know her well enough to predict what she wanted.

How to deal with it:

Get a calendar. Every four days, make sure you have a different activity planned, and follow through with each day’s activity.

Alternatively, if she asks the question too many times just fill a bag with oranges and swing it around menacingly. “If you ask me that one more time,” you can say, “then this is what we’re doing tonight.”

“What are you thinking?”

What it really means: “Give me an excuse to yell at you.”

No woman, in the history of humankind, has ever given two shits about a man’s thoughts unless it involves him buying her something. Ever. So when she asks you “what are you thinking,” recognize it for the goddamn trap that it is.

There is literally no right answer to this question. If you say you’re thinking about her, she’ll know you’re lying. If you say what you’re really thinking about – usually about what a particular celebrity looks like naked – she’ll get angry. If you say something shallow (“Uh, nothing”), she’ll get angry that you aren’t deep, and if you say something deep, then she’ll feel like you’re totally full of shit.

And just so nobody accuses me of being Carlos Mencia/Eric Bauman, I know that Rondell Sheridan basically did a variation of this complaint during his standup routines.

How to deal with it:

“How was your day?”

Kiss her on the mouth, really really hard. With any luck, the pain will be enough that she’ll forget what she asked you, and you can go about your business as if nothing happened.

What it really means: “Ask me how my day was.”

To be fair, this is not an exclusively female question: wanting to talk about oneself is just as big a part of human nature as wanting to seem like you don’t actually want to talk to yourself. Every person who asks you how your day was may nod and smile, may kindly pretend to listen as you recount the monotonous, depressing sequence of shit that was your day, but they’re really just waiting you to get finished with your goddamn speech so they can tell you about how interesting their day was.

With girlfriends, the stakes are simply higher. If you don’t listen to a friend who tells you about their day, it doesn’t really matter. If you don’t listen to your girlfriend, then you better get used to masturbating alone for the next week and a half. Or buy roses. But fuck that -- what’s a week and a half, anyway?

How to deal with it:

“Don’t our married friends seem happy?”

Make the summary of your day short and sweet so she can launch into her diatribe early and get it done quicker. You don’t really need to listen to the actualshe speaks so much as you need to watch her facial expressions. Women’s faces have a tendency to recreate the way they looked during specific parts of a story, and mimicking those facial expressions as she delivers them to you will make you seem like you are not only paying attention, but also extremely interested in her story.

What it really means: “I want to get married.”

Nine out of ten times the question won’t be phrased like this (or worse, it won’t be a question), but the basic idea remains: your girlfriend is ready for a commitment that no intelligent man should ever, ever want to engage in. The question might be somewhat forgivable if it was even halfway accurate: no, Diane, our married friends don’t seem happy. Rob’s wife definitely seems happy, considering she gets to turn nagging into a full-time job, but there’s a certain…deadness to Rob’s eyes that isn’t really indicative of jubilance.

How to deal with it:

RUN

“Do you love me?”

What it really means: “Lavish me with compliments or I’m leaving you.” OR “I am a clingy psychopath, please dump me.”

We’ve all dated that one chick who says “I love you” after two dates, and those are the chicks who most frequently ask this question. It’s tragic, really – psycho girls are so fun in short bursts, and yet all they want is a long-term commitment. They’re so cute and forgiving and nice and enthusiastic at the beginning of a relationship, but at the halfway point (which, with chicks like this, is usually about a week after you’ve met her) they just lose it. Dating and sex turns into love and marriage.

But still, at least those women are easy to diagnose and treat. It’s much more difficult to handle this question coming from someone you’ve been dating for a long time. Women in such a position usually ask this question because they have low self-esteem, or because their boyfriend is acting distant or selfish.

How to deal with it:

If we’re talking about the psycho chick, the answer is simple (albeit involved): dump her, cut off all contact with her, and change your locks.

If the question is coming from someone you’re in a serious relationship with, no amount of reassuring will make a difference: if words meant anything to her, she wouldn’t have bothered asking in the first place. The only real way to solve this problem is with money. Buy her something. It doesn’t matter what, so long as it’s more than 100 dollars. You can buy her a goddamn fishing rod made of peppermint, so long as you include the receipt to show her the exact dollar value you place on her love.

“Why?”

What it really means: I’m not sure, actually

I haven’t personally had a lot of experience with this question, but I’m told it pops up somewhat frequently. In the same way that toddlers refuse to accept a simple answer to a complex question by constantly asking “why,” women will do the same in an attempt to trick you into saying something that’ll make you look like a moron, so they have an excuse to verbally berate you.

How to deal with it:

“Do you want to try new things?”

As I said, I haven’t personally had any experience with this one, so I can’t be sure. Based on my limited knowledge, however, I would suggest simply leaving the room and doing something else: getting into a “why” conversation with a child only results in making the adult look like a moron, so who’s to say that the same isn’t true when applied to an adult female?

What it really means: “I want to know exactly how much of a pervert you are.”

The word “things” in that sentence refers to sexual experimentation.

While many women are, indeed, freaks in bed, they’re usually not the ones who ask this question. No, Superfreaks tend to be very up front with their sexual freedom, and will never even bother asking you if you’re into something. This question only comes from someone you’ve been dating for a while, who is curious to see exactly how much of your “I’m just a romantic guy who doesn’t just want to bone you” act is true, and how much is total bullshit (usually there’s more of the latter than the former).

Your lady will sound like she’s totally into any kinky sex act you’re into, right up until you actually tell her: once you reveal that your ultimate fantasy is to dress up like an Elizabethan merchant and have your fanny spanked with a wooden oar, your lady will most likely drop the act and yell at you for being the total perv you are.

How to deal with it:

“How come we don’t ________ anymore?”

Do NOT say threesomes. EVER. Say something quasi-naughty, but not depraved: suggest a schoolgirl outfit, or make reference to “role-playing” without specifically stating what roles you want each partner to play. Keep it vague, because it’s not like she’ll follow up on those desire anyway: after this question has been asked, your answer basically just serves as damage control.

What it really means: “You’re getting boring, and I am going to cheat on you next week if you don’t do something interesting soon.”

If you’ve managed to stay with a woman long enough to hear this question, congratulations: you have more patience and self-control than most men will ever know. This question (hopefully) doesn’t pop up until after a few years of dating, at which point every story has been told, every sexual position has been attempted, and you’ve gone to about a hundred different places on dates without managing to find anywhere interesting. You usually hear this after getting married, which means you haven’t listened to any of the above advice – in which case, we can’t really help you.

How to deal with it:

At this point, the relationship is pretty much dead. You can either do something drastic like plan a vacation in Venice, but the novelty of such a diversion will wear off shortly after returning home. Your only two options are to ride out the misery for years and years simply because you have nowhere else to go (like my grandparents did), or to find a really dramatic way of permanently ending your relationship. My personal suggestion: wait until you’re positive that your girlfriend is cheating on you (which, statistically, shecheating on you), and simply catch her in the act. You’ll finally get an excuse to yell all those obscenities at her you’ve been building up over the years. And the best part?

You’ll never have to answer one of these questions that aren’t really questions ever again.