“Why are you punching me in the face?”

An absurd question, obviously. Punch back! Run away! But investigate why? Pretty crazy.

And yet the slightly-less-ridiculous equivalent of this question gets asked all the time:

Your partner gets home from work and is banging around in the kitchen and barking, “Where’s the damn pepper!”

“Honey, why are you so upset?”

Your daughter runs into your bedroom screaming, “I hate you! I f$%#ing hate you!”

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

A coworker throws a binder across the conference room after hearing that his budget is getting slashed in the next quarter.

“Roger, how come you’re so upset about this?”

I’m a huge fan of being curious. I think there’s not enough of it in the world. But when someone’s out of line, acting aggressive and ignoring basic rules of decency, there just isn’t an environment for it. The sane response? “[Partner/ Daughter’s Name/ Roger], knock it off! You can’t talk to me (us) that way! I know you’re upset, but this is out of line!”

Psychology is perhaps complicit here, in teaching us that why is the most helpful question. But when someone’s being nasty (and we all have our moments, don’t forget) it’s just not that important why they’re doing it. What matters is that they knock it off! By failing to express this clearly we send an implicit message: I’m willing to be curious about what’s going on for you emotionally regardless of whether or not you present your feelings to me in a decent way.

When does why come in?

Later, as in “Why did you punch me in the face?”

If there’s a relationship there that you care about, that you feel can survive the indiscretion, then once things have calmed down that becomes a great question to ask.