Your man Questions, Manswered

 Socially awkward

Whenever I suggest we get together with some potential new couple friends, my husband doesn't want to go. What can I do?

Going out with new couple friends is the worst. The interactions just aren't as real as the ones we have with friends we made when we were young. Those are the friends who remember you barfing after the school talent show and who were there when your folks got divorced. You can talk about anything with them, as opposed to your fancy new couple friends who just think you're gross if you bring up puke. All that new couple friends want to talk about is your home or your kids, or maybe restaurants (yawn). If you want to make friends, don't look for couples. You're in a great couple already--enjoy that, and go have a girls' night.

Man toys

My husband and brother just spent two hours at a party talking about speaker systems. Why is this so interesting?

Guys like us grew up on high-tech toys. Since our first Transformer, we have been conditioned to talk about the many amazing things our toys can do. Now, the robots of our third-grade dreams have transformed (see what I did there?) into cars, gaming systems, and audio equipment. Normally, we just quietly putter away in silence, but if you put two guys in a room together who are into the same kind of toys, all bets are off. You were lucky the conversation only lasted two hours.

Half-making the bed

My husband makes the bed, but he doesn't put my throw pillows on. Why don't men like all the cute things that make a bed look nice?

This is odd. Why does the bed need to look nice? Do you have people touring your home during the day? Do you live in the White House? What's even stranger is that you're piling useless pillows on your bed. They serve no purpose other than an aesthetic one, so you have to relocate them all before you can get in and use the bed for the purpose for which it was intended. What happens to the pillows when you need to sleep? Do you throw them on the floor? Think about your pillow-moving compulsion for a second and ask yourself: Who, in your marriage, should be writing to an advice columnist asking about bizarre bed-making habits?

Cranky pants

My husband hates his job, and as a result he's a cranky jerk for about an hour every evening. How do I get him to quit taking it out on me? First of all, tell him to stop being rude to you. It's not cool to take your bad day out on your spouse. That said, this is very normal, so here's what you should also do: Get him to exercise, anything that allows him to jump, kick, and punch his bad mood out of his system before he comes home. Guys who work in offices sit on a lot of energy, often angry energy. Your husband needs to burn it off before he can come home and watch The Notebook with you, the way Nicholas Sparks intended.

His 'favorite' shirt

Why does my husband wear T-shirts with holes in them when he has plenty of nice ones in his drawer?

Holes represent a level of softness and relaxation that you just can't purchase new. They're priceless. Look, if he wants to wear a holey shirt to your cousin's bar mitzvah, okay, give him hell, but if he's napping on the couch? Pull on your sweatpants, curl up next to your guy, and enjoy the powerful bonding experience of a super-casual Saturday.

A force to be reckoned with

What's with the Star Wars obsession? My husband insisted on showing our 3-year-old the first movie, and even though I was mad about that, he "forgot" and showed him the second one.

Star Wars is like Dirty Dancing for dudes. Nobody puts Chewbacca in a corner, okay?