Men no longer believe a significant portion of what the women in their lives tell them. Nor can they assume peace in the kingdom when they hear nothing, either.

Women, by not speaking their minds, have made men dysfunctional:

“Nothing.”

We act upset—we want him to feel our hurt or anger—but he’d better figure out for himself the source of our tears or silence. So he scrambles and panders, trying to make up for who-knows-what, but he never learns how to avoid the problem in the future.

“I don’t care about Valentine’s Day.”

If you tell a man that the anniversary of your first date is “no big deal,” you have no right to get angry when he doesn’t buy you a gift or card or plan an activity to celebrate. If you don’t tell a man that you love St. Patrick’s Day and have high expectations for him to surprise you on your favorite day of the year, you can’t expect him to intuit it.

“You should just know.”

Sure, hit the roof if you’ve told him about an issue with something and he still does it. But you can’t get angry if you’ve never explained that you won’t tolerate something and it happens. Even less fair: Ignoring the action or inaction at one point—making it seem acceptable—and then blowing up when it happens again.

The Consequences

Almost every man I’ve dated has second-guessed everything I’ve said—or done the opposite of what I’ve requested—because someone in his life played head games.

I truly do not want flowers on Valentine’s Day, but I’ve received them. Once, I had a guy laugh when I calmly asked him not to do something again. Surely I jested—he’d never had a female peacefully state her mind like that before.

You’ll never have respect or mutually satisfying long-term relationships if you play games. You prevent others from having them, too. By playing games, you’ve created men who can’t take anything at face value. Therein dysfunction lies.

For everyone’s sake, women: Speak your minds.