Lifeletter 102: What Men and Women Really Want

I did a research project a few summers ago, on what men and women really want. I had been working with couples for well over a decade, and I wanted more clarity. Both men and women would talk to me about what they wanted, and how their needs were not being met in their intimate relationship. It wasn’t quite ringing true for me. I felt we were missing something. I wanted to get to the heart of the matter.

I did this research project without looking at any other similar research first—I didn’t want to bias my capacity to inquire and to listen. What I did was very simple. I spoke to both men and women, in person, on the phone and on Skype. I asked them one question: If you were totally honest with yourself and with me, what do you really want to receive from your partner? Some people responded right away; some needed time to reflect on the question and get back to me. Underneath the different styles of language, the universality of what both the men and women said to me was astounding. After I finished my research, I checked with other results. Almost every other researcher that I respected received the same answers.

And here they are:

The women told me that what they want is the presence and attention of a man. They want him to show up, and to pay attention. Not just a superficial attention, but a finely tuned kind of attention. Almost every women I spoke to assured me that when she received that kind of energetic presence from her partner, it was a kind of medicine that fed her, nourished her, in the core of her feminine being.

The men told me that what they want is the juicy, loving, erotic embrace of their woman. They want to experience the living flame of that eros, which is not just about sexuality. It’s where love and sex come together—a flowing, dancing, deeply feminine energy. Every man I spoke with referred to this gift from the feminine with great longing.

And here is the rub, folks. Here is our current conundrum. Most of the women said their men were not that great at really showing up. They experienced them quite often as cut off, distracted, and checked out. And most of the men expressed the same kind of thing. They did not experience their partner as offering them an abundant flow of that divine feminine energy. A lot of the time she was unavailable, walled off, or shut down.

It seems to me, now that we know what this mysterious, primordial dance is about, we can practice, we can give our hearts and bodies, we can devote our energy to allowing this gift, this medicine, to flow through us to our partner. If a man knows he is being called to full presence, and he commits himself to that, what a beautiful thing that could be. And if a woman devotes herself to embodying the full aliveness and flow of eros, that could change her whole life. It’s not just for our partner that we do this—it’s for the possibility that exists, for something beyond what most men and women have known so far.

Is this easy? Of course not, or we would have done it by now. The lineage of men and women that stretches behind us is not a happy one. A lot of men and women, right now, are waking up out of thousands of years of bondage, brutality, resentment and manipulation.

And yet, there has been love. There has always been love. Maybe now, as we grow and evolve, love can find a place at our table.

Love Sonnet

LXXXIX

When I die, I want your hands on my eyes:

I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands

to pass their freshness over me once more:

I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.

 

I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.

I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you

To sniff the sea’s aroma that we loved together,

To continue to walk on the sand we walk on.

 

I want what I love to continue to live

and you whom I love and sang above everything else

to continue to flourish, full-flowered;

 

so that you can teach everything my love directs you to,

so that my shadow can travel along in your hair,

so that everything can learn the reason for my song.

 – Pablo Naruda

with love