Why won't he ask for directions?

Why won't he ask for directions? Why does she always want to talk about the relationship? Why can't he see that something is bothering her? Perhaps the biggest questions Dr. Marianne Legato answers in "Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget" are "Why is it so hard for men and women to understand each other — and what can we do about it?" Read an excerpt.

The Anatomy of a Quarrel
Liz walks into the house to find her husband watching football in the den, while their toddler plays at his feet. She can tell that Ella has logged some serious playground hours from the sweaty smell that greets her as she leans over for a kiss. “Did you have a big day at the park, sweetheart? Did you have fun on the slide?”

The house is a disaster, and they’re expected at Tim’s parents’ house with as-yet unbaked cookies in an hour. Liz dials a colleague’s number as she takes ingredients out of the fridge. Phone cradled to her ear, she learns that an e-mail with important information for tomorrow’s meeting still hasn’t arrived. She relays a modification to their upcoming presentation as she adds chocolate chips to the batter.

Cookies in the oven, Liz heads toward the bedroom, stripping as she goes. She calls to Tim over her shoulder, “Will you get Ella ready to go? I’ve left her dress and shoes out.”

When Liz emerges, she finds Tim pacing impatiently by the door. Leaning over to adjust Ella’s dress, she sees a sticky patch in her daughter’s hair. “You cleaned her up, right?” she asks. “Yes,” Tim says, exasperated. “We’re late. Let’s go.”

But when Liz reaches over to take Ella out of her car seat at her in-laws’ house, she catches a whiff of that same coppery, sweaty “playground” smell. On inspection, Ella’s pudgy hands, filled with Cheerios, are gray with grime.

“Her hands are filthy, Tim!” Liz hisses.

“I’ll deal with it when we get inside,” he says, bewildered by her tone. Liz feels her growing irritation spill over into rage. “That’s not the point, Tim. Why didn’t you see how dirty she was when you were changing her? Look at her face! She needed a bath. This means that she’s been eating dirt the whole time, which is completely disgusting, not to mention unsafe. What’s wrong with you?”

Tim turns on his heel, jaw set, and stalks into the house. Kids eat dirt; she’ll survive. Liz follows him, but her torrent of reproaches prompts no reply from her stony-faced husband.

Once they’ve settled into the party, Tim recovers his equilibrium, but finds that his wife won’t respond to his attempts at conversation. More confounded than empathetic, he engages his uncle in a heated and detailed discussion of the day’s presidential press conference; within moments, the political discussion has completely eclipsed Liz’s distress in his mind.

Tim’s sister, on the other hand, takes one look at Liz’s flushed face and dilated pupils and pulls her into the kitchen for a hug and a chat. “I can’t believe him!” Liz fumes. “She looked like something out of Oliver Twist! What was he thinking, putting her in a party dress without even bothering to take a swipe at her face and hands with a washcloth?!”

The case against Tim builds. “Lead levels in the soil in our neighborhood are astronomical. As if we didn’t get enough of a scare after the renovation, when the first tests came back high for lead. Does he want her to have brain damage?”

And builds. “I asked him to put her in her dress. I asked if he’d cleaned her up. How much more specific do I have to be? When I leave her with him, do I have to remind him not to put her in the oven too?”

Liz is on a slow simmer for the rest of the night. She goes over and over the argument in her head on the drive home. Unable to sleep, she reviews the notes for the following day’s presentation, still analyzing the argument in the back of her mind.

The next morning, Liz rebuffs Tim’s invitation to make love and arrives at the breakfast table determined to find some kind of resolution. As usual, Tim resists any attempt to have a substantive discussion about the argument or what it means for their relationship. “He doesn’t care about me,” Liz thinks miserably. “He doesn’t care that I’m unhappy.”

In fact, Tim doesn’t even really know why she’s mad. “Why,” he wonders for the hundredth time, “does every little thing have to turn into a full-blown drama? Why does she have to make such a big deal out of everything? And why, when it’s over, can’t she just move on?”

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