What Do Women Want?

I have long pondered the question of what women want. One of my favorite bloggers, Sara Tungate, recently had a post called “Bad boys for the win.....er....or not so much”. Check it out. It was very insightful. She made a valid point that women want a good guy with a little bit of edge. That got me thinking. Do women want the nice guy? How about the good man? Maybe a bad boy? I asked several female friends and discovered that all of them said “yes”. They want the nice guy who is a good man and a bad boy. How hard can that possibly be?

Let’s look at each of these character traits. The nice guy is the one who stereotypically finishes last. At work, I have seen how being a nice guy comes back to bite me. Trusting others is not something that I do very well. But being a nice guy in a relationships is much simpler. It is being the one who listens when she needs to talk. I’m not talking about nodding and going “Yes, dear,” without paying attention to what she is really saying. Trust me. That doesn’t work. This guy will let her vent about work, about friends, about you, about whatever she wants to vent about. The nice guy is the one who will let her bitch without thinking she is one. Listening to her problems without – this is the hard part guys – offering a solution until she asks for one. Yeah, I know. It is tough being the nice guy. He is the one who will hold her when she needs to cry or make her laugh when she needs to lighten up. The nice guy is the one who cares more than he can sometimes say. He does it by just being there.

That leads to being the good man. He is the one who stands up to her when she needs someone to gently, but firmly, be a man. The good man is not a doormat who will cave-in in the hopes of keeping the piece to get a piece. He does the right thing for her even when it is not the easy thing. The good man loves her just as she is – flaws and failings included – but would be the first to stand up to any man, woman, child or barking dog (that is a kind way to say “her bitchy friend”) that points them out or makes her cry because of one of them. The good man is the lover in the truest sense of the word – he loves her with everything he has, everything he is, everything he wants to be. He is loyal and trustworthy. He is her golden retriever – always there, always loyal, always loving.

Speaking of loving, that brings up the bad boy. The nice guy and the good man are the ones who make her feel good about herself and give her security. Those are absolutely necessary, but they can also get a little boring. That is where the guy’s bad boy nature comes into play. This is the part that is fun-loving and funny; unpredictable and imaginative, sexy and sexual. This is part that wakes up on a Saturday morning and makes love like it was the last day on earth; then takes her hiking or biking or to roller derby without any plan or purpose. This is the spontaneous lover of the woman and lover of life who will find some kind of mischief for the couple to share. This is the part of him that finds the second sandbar at the beach and makes swimming in the ocean in the middle of the day something more erotic than anything a movie could conceive. This bad boy is the one who will hold her hand while they climb the fence to have a 3am picnic with oysters and Wild Turkey on the home team’s fifty-yard line. He is the wild card that keeps things interesting and slightly dangerous.

So ladies, what I have discovered is you want the nice guy who is there for you, the good man who will care for you, the bad boy who will dare for you. Sounds like fun to me. Guys, let’s try it and see what happens. I think we will have a lot less complaining, a lot more loving, and a hell of lot more happy women in our lives. I’m in. Guys, who’s with me? Ladies, make sure you tell the nice guys, good men and bad boys what you want.

See that comment section down there? Let me know what you think – especially you ladies – because if I’m wrong I want to know.