Originally posted by Bungo Pony
"Nothing"
She doesn't look at you, she may pause before answering, or not answer at all, her voice sounds much lower than it usually does and sounds almost monotone. She'll continue to sit there and stare off into space. This means you've pissed her off in some way. The best way to combat is to go along with her "Nothing" answer, or go do something else while she's in her pissy mood.
Agreed. Women who respond in this manner want
you to draw out of them the reason they are upset. Such behavior is a manifestation of a woman's desire for drama, and is a classic example of a woman's inability to express her feelings directly.
As Bungo put it, the intelligent response is to accept her statement "nothing is wrong" at face value and go do something that is important to
you, rather than waste your time playing "20 questions." She'll chase after you because you didn't take her bait. She'll interrupt what you're doing with needling questions until you give her the attention she wants. If you continue to refuse to take her bait, and ignore her questions, she'll throw up her hands in disgust, yell something along the lines of "that's exactly what I'm talking about...," and walk away.
After a few hours, or perhaps even a few days later, she'll come up to you and apologize. She'll blame her bad behavior on PMS, her family, work stress, etc... She'll then try to get you to give her a reciprocal apology, whereby you accept some of the blame for triggering her outburst.
If you give her an apology, when you next get into an argument, she'll bring up your apology as proof that the last argument you had was
your fault, and therefore the latest argument must be your fault as well.
On the other hand, if you don't give her an apology, she'll accept responsibility for her outburst internally (which she'll never admit to you), and thereafter pretend it never happened. This is because she believes you would use her admittedly bad behavior against her in a future argument (just as she would your apology).