What Women Want

I realize that this may cause an uproar from all sides, but I thought I'd try my hand at answering this age-old question. What do women want?

Men complain that they are baffled by women and their emotional variety. From my vast twenty-two years of experience (sarcasm), I think I've come up with some basic guidelines that general enough to cover all of the bases, but not particular enough to be extremely helpful (sorry, guys). Each woman is different, so you still have to figure out what each of the below things means to each individual. What is the same, though, is that each woman does want the same things. Without further ado, the list.

~ She wants you to love her ~
My list starts with the most important one. This is at the basis of every human interaction a woman has: does this person love me or not? The importance of loving the women in your life cannot be overstated. She wants to be loved. Period.

~ She wants to be able to tell that you love her ~
Every woman not only needs love, but needs to know about it. The tricky part is that you have to figure out (most likely by trial and error) how it is that particular woman will feel loved. Some need verbal affirmation. Some need a hug. Some need you to put aside time for them. She wants to know she's loved.

~ She doesn't feel she deserves love ~
I know, I know. This seems to just outright contradict the last two. She needs to be loved, she needs to know you love her, but she'll probably fight accepting your love. Most (many?) women don't feel they deserve the enormous gift of your love. Because love is a gift. It isn't earned, it isn't bought. It's simply given and accepted. And women have a helluvatime accepting it. So never, never, never put a woman down - she does an excellent job doing that to herself.

~ She is scared ~
Another factor in her fight against accepting your love: she's scared. Because when a woman accepts your love, she opens herself up to being hurt by you. She has to make sure that you're worth it. Blame Adam and Eve if you will, but it is the reality of human interactions. People can be jerks. In our simple naivety, we think that if someone loves us, they will somehow become perfect toward us. It doesn't work that way (speaking from personal experience), but we desperately want it to work that way. So you'll have to push a bit. You'll have to try more than once. If you mess up, you'll have to try even harder. If you don't, you are simply reaffirming her notion that she isn't worth loving. Fair? No. True? Definitely.

~ If you don't love her, be considerate toward her ~
Love is an enormous gift. So if you can't love one or any of the women in your life, at least be considerate. Show her that you care about her feelings, her well-being, her opinions... take the time and energy to be considerate. This, after being loved, is probably the most important thing.

~ She wants to feel beautiful ~
Every woman wants to regain that feeling of regal beauty that they had as a little girl, standing in front of the mirror in a tutu and a plastic tiara. Every woman has something about her appearance that she cannot stand - something that she would change in a minute if she could. If someone were to tell her that she looks nice today, or that you like the way she did her hair, or that the dress is beautiful on her, she would appreciate it. She might be embarrassed or not know how to respond - after all, no gentleman has told her that she looked beautiful since her high school prom date - but she will feel more beautiful because of it. And guys... how hard is it to do that? A simple (sincere) compliment does a world of good. It will make her feel loved (see the first two items in this list).