The Real Man

My lands. Pretty Lady cannot believe the number of times she has answered the question, 'What do women want?' and been greeted by a chorus of head-nodding, only to have the question repeated. To be fair, it is rarely Pretty Lady's friends who are asking this question; it is the unenlightened Others who do so. However, it is so reliably guaranteed to pop up in the community on a regular basis, that Pretty Lady feels she can go on answering it ad nauseam, without any fear of boring her readers.

In brief: Women want a Real Man.

Definition of a Real Man:

One who 1) knows who he is; 2) knows what he wants; 3) engages with her; 4) consistently.

All of these elements, darlings, are crucial.

The vast majority of whining, carping, frustration, rage, and lack of empathy with women comes from wannabe Real Men who wish to cut corners on one or another of the above criteria. The Pathetic faction is heavy on the end of Allowing the Woman to Define him; he is the sort who will go off and drink a gallon of aloe vera juice because the lady demonstrates an interest in holistic health care, and come running back, expecting a pat on the head. The Boorish faction, on the other hand, hold no truck with this sort of thing, at all, at all; he goes after what he wants, attains it, and parks it. He is the sort who invented the immortal line, 'Of course I love you. I married you, didn't I? What else do you want?'

Gentlemen. Please.

A lady does not wish to be the prime motivating factor for all of your actions. This is too much pressure, and it makes her feel decidedly unsafe. It gives her the uncomfortable sensation that if she were to become engrossed in her own activities for half an hour or so, you might go off and commit hari-kari for lack of sufficient attention; she does not want your blood on her hands. When she tells you to 'get a life,' she is being literal and sincere about it.

However, it gives a lady a warm, fuzzy, proud feeling to know that on some level, she is a prevailing influence in her man's life. There is nothing sweeter than the sound of the words, 'I was thinking about what you said, and I've decided...'. These words make a lady feel as though she is more than a decorative possession, to be flaunted or stowed at will. They make her feel that she is an ongoing force to be addressed; a challenge, if you will. Certainly she is more than a combination brood mare and chambermaid.

Pretty Lady would like to point out, as a side note, that a man who pursues several different women simultaneously is NOT a man who knows what he wants. He may claim that what he wants is several simultaneous girlfriends, and a concomitant freedom from responsibility; he may, in fact, want precisely that. However, such a man is incapable of engaging on an intimate level with anyone, and is thus unable to fully know himself. He is constantly shuffling communication modes, is frequently trying to remember which story he told which lady, and is never fully present. How is it possible that this man is honestly cognizant of the contents of his own mind? Let alone that he could have space in there to understand anyone else's?

Pretty Lady notes that all the men she has known who were like that were initially fascinating, having perfected the art of the initial fascination through assiduous practice, but got exponentially more boring every time the tape repeated itself. In pursuing breadth of experience, depth is inevitably sacrificed.

By the same token, a man who does not consistently engage with the woman in his life becomes, inevitably, a tedious lump who ultimately is not worth the space he takes up on the sofa. His routine may be straight, narrow and reliable; he may thus be shocked when the woman who has loyally washed his sheets for thirty years precipitately files for divorce.

But the fact is, circularity serves no ultimate purpose. Whether it be the same circular argument, the same scurrilous betrayal, or the identical carping comment of a political nature repeated every evening for three decades, circularity is a characteristic of Hell. Life, to be ridiculously cliche'd about it, is a journey. What women want is a trusted and intimate companion in a landscape which is always, and intriguingly, new.