I Told Her I Was Fine. She Heard the Whole Essay Hiding Behind It.

We were standing in the kitchen.
She asked, “You okay?”
I said, “Yeah, I’m fine.”
She paused… looked at me like I’d just mispronounced my own name… and then said, “No, you’re not.”

Which is wild, because I was fine.
Kind of.
Mostly.
Okay, no. Not even close.
But that’s not the point.

I wasn’t ready to talk.
I just wanted chips. Doritos dipped in Pace Picante sauce mixed with melted Velveeta!
But instead I got emotionally subpoenaed in front of the fridge.

Somehow, women — or at least the ones who date guys like me — have developed sonar for the word “fine.”
They hear it, and it triggers a full forensic investigation into tone, posture, blinking frequency, and what snacks you reach for at 8:45 PM.

I thought “fine” was the universal male smoke signal for “I’m handling it poorly, but quietly.”
Turns out, it’s a neon flare for “this man is internally tap-dancing on a landmine of repressed everything.”

And she read all of it.
Like she was trained in some CIA relationship lab.
A mind reader or a heart reader?
I say one word. She gets the whole saga.
Job stress. Body image stuff. That weird dream I had where my teeth fell out and I was back in gym class wearing khakis.

It’s not that I don’t want to share.
I just don’t know how to say it without sounding like I’m narrating a panic attack in PowerPoint.

So I say “I’m fine.”
And she hears: “I’m not okay, but I need you to ask twice so I don’t feel weak for opening up.”

She gets it.
She always gets it.
Which makes it worse, because now I have no excuse.
She’s emotionally literate, and I’m over here trying to decode my feelings like a guy who skimmed the manual and still put the shelf upside down.

We talked. Eventually.
I got there.
One “I don’t know, it’s dumb” at a time.

But damn…
sometimes I wish “fine” was enough.
Not because it’s honest.
But because it’s easier than explaining why it isn’t.