By R. CHASE
Bachelor Behavior
What do men want?
What surprises me is the fact that a woman is actually asking. It is a woman asking, isn’t it? Obviously a man doesn’t need to ask this question.
Or perhaps he does.
Perhaps a man, like Apple’s customer base, only knows what he wants when a woman gives it to him. Perhaps men are just waiting for a woman to shed the light of civilization into their prehistoric cave dwellings.
But I’m flattered you’ve asked and not just assumed what we all want is debasing, materialistic and shallow. I’m glad you haven’t decided that we’re one-dimensional brutes.
Men want a lot of things. We want faster, awesomer cars with no speed limits. We want to be superheroes. We want explosions. We want adoration from women and respect from peers. We want perpetually ripped abs. We want to win. We want solitude to contemplate the intricacies of the Universe. We want to be MMA fighters, great artists, celebrated lovers and cover spreads in GQ.
Wait a minute…
Were you asking “what do men want…from women?”
Don’t believe for a second that women are the only thing men think about. We have other priorities. We have work and success and finance and philosophy and a dozen other concerns. We only think about women part of the time. But that part makes up a pretty big segment of our stress. We can handle cars, MMA fighting, yard work and surprise Yakuza Ninja attacks. That’s what we’re built to do. We’re men. That’s our job.
Men aren’t always the shallow, ninja-killing sex-crazed morons that Maxim magazine might fool you into thinking. But when we want something shallow and superficial, we go with the simplest formula. Attractiveness vs. Willingness to Come Home With Us vs. Increasing Drunkenness is carefully calculated by our mathematical, logic-fueled brain, looking for those numbers to tip in a favorable way just like a day trader waits for his chance to make his daily nut. At that moment he will pounce, with a million years of finely honed hunter instincts. Any woman waking up at a man’s apartment in the morning wondering “how the hell did that happen?” will know what I’m talking about. HE knows how it happened.
Just like a woman knows whether you’re in the “friend zone” or not within about five minutes, a man knows whether a woman is “courtable”. It’s not that he won’t have sex with you if you aren’t – it’s just about how much effort he will put into it. Don’t forget about that hunter instinct. It controls more of him than you know. Successful women use it to their advantage.
In the long term, the answer changes based on culture and upbringing. Not every man wants the same thing in a woman for a long-term relationship. They seek out what they know and understand, which usually stems from their relationship with their mother. I don’t need Freud to point this out – either they move towards the motherly figure or away from it. It’s like a magnet. You either get the positive or negative.
I once had a conversation with a friend of mine about women. We were talking about a girl that, while extremely attractive, was a little vapid.
Me: “She’s pretty hot, but I want a girl I can talk to.”
Him (with incredulity): “Why?”
That moment truly illustrated the foundation of our fundamentally different perspectives. He had never thought of having a conversational relationship with a woman, and I had never thought about NOT having one.
So what do men want in a woman? It’s not really about what we want you to look like, or talk like, or what we want you to wear – THAT’S all subjective to the individual.
What we really want is some acceptance. While you don’t understand our need for violent sports or our inability to look away from the waitress’ heaving cleavage when she drops off the bread basket, give us a break. We’re men. We need to do those things, just like you need to cry over dog food commercials and yell at us for no reason we can understand.
Men want a lot of things from a woman.
We want you to cater to our ego. We want you to make us feel strong and powerful. We want you to let us be men. We want freedom (or at least the reasonable illusion). We want you to capture our attention with your charm as much as with your cleavage. We want you to perpetually seduce us with the mystique of your femininity, and if you can capture our attention like that you will have us forever.
We want mystery and familiarity and our own masculinity, all at the same time. We want to pursue you but know we can never possess you entirely – because that inability to possess you will keep our pursuit in continuance forever. And that is what we want.
Who knew we were so complicated?
Contact R. Chase at YourVoice@voice-tribune.com.