What Do Men Want

I believe that God was intending for us to learn a little something about the sexes when he created them. As many already know, Eden was a paradise, a well-favored garden filled with the highest forms of vegetation and animal life. But even in all its impressiveness and splendor, there was still something missing. So God created man, Adam, and then Eve, woman (the pinnacle of His creative week) to beautify and tend His garden. In essence, to complete it.

I imagine that their change in living situation after being cast out was a tough adjustment and that Adam, like all of us, surely had days of stress, confusion and headache. After all, work is hard and back then he didn’t have things like power tools, Hemi engines, or football to get him through the day. But he did have someone with whom he could always find lasting sanctuary and peace - Eve.

Eve was peace for Adam in whose presence he found renewed purpose, meaning and focus. You see, a man really doesn’t want to be alone and feels manlier when he has at his side a woman to protect, provide for and find comfort in.

Men are all about proving worth and wanting to be the best at what they do. But for whom really? 

The bros can say good job but when a woman notices there’s a big difference for her image gets immediately tattooed on his mind bringing with it added perfection to everything else he touches.

Such projects and aims are what comprise the attention of many men today. They are very task-oriented and thrive in an environment of ‘things to do’. But they also desire peace and stillness at times from which they can think through their problems or, as is more often the case, to not think through them at all. Finding the right balance is key here because many men choose to live at either extreme rather than in the middle. And for a woman, this can be a very hard thing to deal with.

But, through her unwavering love, devotion and charity for her man’s efforts, whether they be great or small, can she feed his sense of worth and value with daily doses of praise and admiration.

More than anything else, a woman needs to recognize a man’s accomplishments and daily efforts as something he does for the good of the relationship, or family, and that to deride him for his objectives or overlook them completely is like having the princess tell the rescuing knight that his chase was for naught for she is just fine without him.

A man needs to feel like an everyday champion and warrior who, after surviving another battle of the day, finds at home the applause of his family who once more makes it all worthwhile. On a side note, women are also champions, especially mothers, and deserve the same level of adulation as a five-star general.

Again, a man, like a piece of iron in rain, begins to canker and rust when the heroics of his day have gone unnoticed or been dismissed as nothing of real value. When he comes home and sees his breath in the air due to the cold indifference of a spouse who no longer cares for his own labors and sacrifices, his resolve is weakened and he retreats inward.

A man needs a woman who will say to him, “I believe in you,” “I’m so proud of you,” “You’re the best.” Such words of confidence really bring out the best in him. If he is always greeted by an iceberg he does what anyone else would do in like situation, tighten up.

Men need and really want to express themselves, to reveal their ideas and plans with the hope of winning approval and even admiration. But when a man has been humiliated or had his feelings dismissed, questioned or ridiculed, he becomes more reclusive and reserved out of fear of further discredit, for in his mind his very manhood is on trial. Nothing but the absolute certainty that his ideas and feelings will be met with appreciation and real interest will induce him to come out of his shell and express himself.

He prefers peace and operates best when he, and his home, are not at war. Sometimes it is he who brings the very storm in but in any relationship a change in one’s own attitude and demeanor invariably influences change in the other. If one be the hurricane, let the other be the eye of it.

Men want favor and esteem and, as God first declared, can’t do it alone. They want to feel appreciated and valued but even more to have it expressed freely and affectionately by - YOU.