Books, schmooks. My ex-husband based all his expectations on what he’d seen on sitcoms his whole life. As the wife, I was expected to get passive-aggressive if he forgot what movie we saw on our first date. When it turned out I was the one who forgot what movie we saw, he was beside himself.
As the wife, I was supposed to harrass him endlessly that I wanted to go to the opera. He had quite a few expectations along these lines, all based on pop culture.
Worst of all, he was the one who was always pulling the “If you don’t know why I’m mad, I’m not going to tell you” trick. And answering “nothing” when I asked him what was wrong. sigh
My friend (to his wife): Billy’s having a bachelor party; the guys are going to a strip club.
Wife: Oh.
Friend: You don’t want me to go?
Wife: It’s not that I don’t want you to go, I just want you to not want to go.
Your story reminds me of an old Love, American Style episode in which a young executive woos his secretary with song and dance because everything he knows about pitching woo he learned from romantic musicals. She manages to convince him that life is not a romantic musical, but after they walk away, all the characters in the background start singing and dancing.
This may hinge on alternate definitions of wrong and nothing. Something is wrong if he can’t fix it. Maybe he had a bad day. Nothing wrong there, because the day is over. Nothing sometimes means nothing I want to talk about right now. Sometimes it means nothing for you to worry about.