Between you and me, we both know we can understand each other at one glance even if we are total strangers. Men… that’s another story. Men don’t, not in a trillion years.

Writing about this in a Valentine’s supplement may seem a tat inadequate, but there you have it. It’s best to be forewarned. Being all starry-eyed and lovey-dovey is expected, but at the end of the day, it’s all about communication, isn’t it?

What women say or don’t say are aspects that are oceans apart. Let me set an example which you will all understand. You’ve got a special function to attend… whether it’s with your man or without him doesn’t really make much difference at this point of the argument.

Fact is that while he will toss the invite aside and forget it until you remind him… you are already sweating out of your ears with one big question hanging over your head – what will I wear?

Now no man on earth will ever, ever understand this question. We all have so much to wear don’t we? But the issues are several – that dress we’ve already been seen in by the crowd; the other dress is last year’s and while the colour is OK, we don’t have shoes to match it anymore; the other ensemble is too tight/too wide/too long/ just plain too.

So we take all our clothes out of the closet, try them on systematically and after despairing in front of the mirror, believe we just might have the right outfit, if only we could get a new bra with the right colour to wear under it.

Now if a female was present in the house and we asked her advice, all she’d have to do by way of remark would be to show thumbs-up for approval or silently grimace for disapproval. We’d just lift our skirts and go change.

No words spoken, wasted or sought. But as things happen, we emerge from the bedroom all decked out and confront him. “What do you think?” To him this sounds like a straightforward question. We are asking for his opinion. But we’re already on a potential warpath.

“Seems OK,” he replies candidly, but that is not the answer we want. We expect – “Wow!” We expect overjoy, brilliant eyes and wink-wink according to the outfit. But “Seems OK” is generally interpreted as… “I wouldn’t look at you twice” or, worse still, “Is that the best you can do?”

A far worse answer to get from him is “It does seem a bit over the top.” What does that mean exactly? He will start stuttering the minute we ask him to specify. He might say the colour is not quite right, or those tights are a bit weird; he might even dare say we look slightly ridiculous. And that is when all hell breaks loose.

Typical answers from us would be… silence, long silence… or… “You never like what I wear”… or… “This is the dress you bought me after all” (to which he will (silently, if he is wise enough) ask himself – “Did I really? When was that?” He will probably reiterate that he was only being honest; he had been asked for his opinion hadn’t he?

Alas, the one thing most men cannot understand is that a woman trying on her wardrobe is not to be meddled with, at all. Perhaps that’s why brides-to-be should never show their wedding gown to their groom before the day.

Forget all the bull about bad luck… It’s just to avoid the inevitable. Unless the groom is wise enough to keep mum and just let his eyes sparkle.

(The Sunday Times)