Life & Wisdom Quote by Dave Barry

Dave Barry’s joke lands because it treats romance like a software feature men haven’t installed. The line isn’t really about male cluelessness so much as the mismatch between how people narrate intimacy: one person experiences a relationship as a lived, escalating story; the other treats it as a set of isolated events with no binding contract. Barry turns that gap into comedy by borrowing the language of certainty - "never assume" - as if dating were an OSHA manual for emotional safety.

The specific intent is cautionary, but in Barry’s hands it’s also a sly indictment of how thin our signals can be. He’s pointing at the absurdity of relying on implication when stakes are high: exclusivity, expectations, even basic courtesy. The subtext isn’t "men are dumb"; it’s "people cling to ambiguity because clarity is terrifying". If you name the relationship, you risk rejection or responsibility. If you don’t, you can pretend nothing changed.

Culturally, the joke comes out of late-20th-century American heterosexual scripts where commitment is often coded through hints, routines, and social proof rather than explicit agreement. Barry’s comic persona thrives in that terrain: the suburban battlefield of miscommunication, where adults with jobs and mortgages still behave like middle schoolers around feelings. The line works because it flatters the reader’s recognition - yes, I’ve seen this - while also revealing something darker: intimacy can exist without mutual consent to its meaning. That’s funny until it isn’t, which is exactly why it’s sticky.