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1 - Don’t break bad news by circling the issue with fluffy small talk beforehand that doesn’t involve said bad news. AT THE VERY LEAST, make the offer of, “Good news or bad news first?” If bad news is forthcoming, deliver it straight and up front. That way we can react to it without growing all cold and nauseous while we wait for you to get around tosaying what it is that’s going to be bad.

2 - After you’ve broken said bad news, don’t start getting defensive about our reaction. It puts us on the defensive, and nothing ends up getting accomplished. Your best bet is to assume that there is going to be at least disappointment, if not outright anger (depending on the message delivered), and it’s only fair that we be given time to get our feelings dealt with before we try to communicate with you in a way that doesn’t sound psychotic.

Remember that ‘man has to go into his cave’ bullshit that Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus blithers on about? With some of us, it’s more like going into our own private arsenal/danger room to work through our frustrations.

Just let us process it the way we process it. When we’ve figured out where our heads is at, then we can talk reasonably without mostly negative blowback.

3 - DO NOT ACT ALOOF OR CAVALIER. This is the WORST possible thing you could do. Acting like you don’t care indicates to us that our reaction doesn’t matter to you. That we’re incidental to you. Think of it like laying meat down for a dog that’s pulling tight at the end of a fragile chain that could snap. Treat the delivery with that much respect and you’ll walk away with two hands and a great deal of our respect.

4 - Don’t get wishy washy about it. Personally, I’d rather be slapped across the face with shitty news than to have somebody become all, “Well…you know that thing…where we were going to…yeah, that? Well…funny story…”

For me, this is in essence like stamping down on the giant red button inside my neural network that screams, “DESTROY!!! REND!!! TEAR!!!” Come strong and deliver. Again, this earns respect. I would imagine that others have somewhat similar feelings about this.

5 - If there’s been a mild sense of discomfort between us, DO NOT talk about other girls/boys and how swell they are - and how very much like us they are. If we’re already sensing an emotional gap, this is like applying dynamite to it and blowing it into a gaping, septic chasm.

6 - If you’re upset about something at least LET US KNOW. You don’t have to go into gruesome detail, but for fuck sakes just let us know that we’re not the source of your frustration/ire/depression/etc. Once we’ve been assured that we aren’t what’s causing you to be upset, we’ll back off and let you go through what you need to in order to process it.

7 - LISTEN. Don’t just wait for your turn to talk. If we say something to you and you come back with something completely unrelated when we’re being TRULY serious about communication, there will be ISSUES. (See ‘acting as if we’re incidental to you’)

8 - If you honestly have NO CLUE as to what we’re saying, TELL US. Ask us if we mean what you think we mean.

HELPFUL EXAMPLE: “Ok, here’s what I’m *hearing* from what you just said. Does that bear any resemblance to what you were actually talking about?”

9 - TELL US THE TRUTH. If you’re having doubts about something, TELL US. DO NOT avoid telling us the truth with an excuse. We will ALWAYS dig and pick at excuses and wonder what you’re really trying to say. It’s like a conversational scab - we just can’t leave it alone. Predictably, this leads to ALL SORTS of UNNECESSARY drama.

If there really is nothing ‘between the lines’ then don’t give us anything that would make us suspect that.

10 - Honestly, most of the time we just need to know that we’re in your thoughts in order to be reassured of our place in your world. It doesn’t always have to be, “I love you” or flowers or showy bullshit like that. It really is the little things that count. Sometimes a quiet spontaneous touch or a gesture can be more overwhelming and wonderful than any spoken words or given gifts.

11 - FOLLOW THROUGH on promises. If you know you’re not going to be able to follow through with something that you dearly WANT to promise us, DON’T FUCKING PROMISE TO DO IT. Disappointment is a real mood killer. Although some of us sometimes go for the dangerous types, we truly do dig on dependability and reliability. Anything less in a partner makes us irritable - especially when it’s unreliability on a consistent basis.

Consistency in unreliability is VERY annoying and will just make us want to stab you in the neck with a number 2 pencil. Graphite poisoning ain’t pretty. (But, then again, you’d probably have to go through a fair number of pencils before it kicked in.)

12 - DO NOT TEASE UNLESS YOU PLAN ON COMING ACROSS - This is HUGE. Think of teasing a pit bull with ANYTHING and see what it gets you. You’ll be lucky if the neighbors can pull the dog off what’s left of your corpse before the paramedics show up to pronounce you clinically dead. This is pretty much most people’s reaction to being teased sexually, and then denied outright.

People have killed for less.

Seriously.