How to Stay Out of the Doghouse

When your wife says “What?”,
it’s not because she didn’t hear you.
She’s giving you a chance to change what you said.
–Les Parrott

It never fails. We can be in a college classroom with a couple hundred students or an auditorium with a couple thousand couples. Whenever we show a brief video called Beware of the Doghouse (produced by JCPenneys in 2009), the audience erupts with laughter.

The bit features guys who’ve done something that offended their wives, buying them insulting gifts like a vacuum...