A treatise on modern cognitive reasoning patterns, broken down by sex

Well not quite a treatise, but it sounds cool, no?

Essentially I have come to the following conclusions regarding male and female "logic" of the emotion behind displaying upset.

Before I get started, I'm making an observation here, I'm not a closet misogynist, I think women are great. I'm just putting forward my theory of how I think they work for the benefit of the more analytical male minds like my own. Essentially its an observation not a criticism.

As I have already mentioned, I am cold and logical, I think at their cores, men are essentially logical in this same way, just not to the same extent as myself.

In consequence a man's reasoning when he becomes upset with someone else, is as follows:

1. You did A.
2. The consequence of A was that B happened.
3. B upset me, I'm quite angry.
4. Since you are responsible for A and as a consequence B occurred, I am angry with you.

It is an obvious logical progression, and quite derivable as simple predicate logic.

However careful observation of various woman's reasoning seems to indicate the reverse:

1. You did A.
2. The consequence of A was that B happened.
3. B upset me, I'm quite angry.
4. I'm upset.

Sometimes stage 3.5 is present: I have put the logical progression together and understand that you did A which caused B causing me to be upset, as a result I am upset at you for A.

This results in a woman being upset and either not being certain of the reason for the upset (or in some cases I suspect she is unwilling to announce the reason for the upset). Invariably the end result is one of the following:

1. Random criticism: Acts of random sniping until you are upset too.
2. Historic retrospective: Something else (possibly dating back to 1977) which caused upset gets dealt with now, until you are upset too.
3. Frank Exchange of Views: A careful and reasoned analysis of events to determine the cause of the upset. (Rare)
4. Calm up: The silent treatment (for anything upto a decade). Thus giving you the opportunity to attempt to apologise for each and everything you have done since you left the womb, this being done of course on the off chance that that was the thing that caused upset.

Options are very limited at this point but analysis has indicated the following tactics in response work quite well:

1. The Sniping: Abjectly refuse to rise to the bait.
2. The Retrospectives: Very clearly and calmly state that everything prior to three months ago is off limits, she has had three months to deal with this, now is too late. I cannot stress enough, this is the only method that can possibly work in this situation, otherwise the historical truth will become so emotionally clouded and so extensively rewritten that at some point you will be accused of doing something so outrageous that you will have to conclude you have an evil twin brother your parents never told you about, and his favourite hobby is genocide.
3. The Exchange: Ask her if she is a transexual, if she is not, thank your luck stars, this never happens.
4. The Clam: Procedures are quite extensive:

Do not do any of the following:

• repeatedly ask, "What is wrong?". The answer is always, "Nothing" and the situation is exacerbated.
• Carefully think out the last few days in the hope you can determine what you did wrong, you will just drive yourself insane with self doubt and be no closer to resolution.
• Apologise. Do not apologise for anything, you have a 95% chance of apologising for the wrong thing, now she is going to be pissed of about three things. (Yes, three things, the original upset, the new thing you have admitted and finally keeping secrets from her about the new thing, even if it only happened five minutes ago!)

The only way to successfully deal with the clam, is to take the following approach (and it only works some times!):

1. Ask once, "What is wrong?".
2. When you are told "Nothing" or similar you must immediately say, "OK, well you seem upset, and I would like to know if I have upset you. But if you are telling me here is no problem, there is no problem, I'm glad.".
3. Now here is the tricky bit, you also have to explain you have both agreed that there is a problem, and this means that she cannot come back in a week's time and bring this moment up again. Essentially you have to explain that as far as you are concerned, when getting the silent treatment, the watch word is "Speak now of forever hold your peace". If you do not break the cycle, you are doomed to repeat it for ever.

Didn't plan on covering so much, especially the responses bit, I think more can be added to this entry, but I think I'll shut up for today.