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What men want - now that's an interesting question
The question of what women really want is obviously important, and possibly rather mysterious, but we have all heard a great deal too much about it for years and years.
Vast mountains of books, acres of newsprint and cacophonies of airwaves have been devoted to the supposedly dark continent of women's desires. You might have thought the public was beginning to get a little bored, but it seems not. Hollywood is betting a lot of money on the lasting power of this obsession, with a new, much-hyped film starring Mel Gibson, called What Women Want. Apparently an electric shock gives him the power to read women's minds, and discover what they really want, which is, of course, Mel Gibson. How unbelievably tedious it all is.
What I want rather more than Mel Gibson, and I am after all a woman, is to know What Men Want. I don't suppose there would be any mileage at all for a film of that name, at least not in the respectable market. But if one likes men, or is married to one, or is trying to bring up sons, it would be useful, as well as interesting, to understand more about what they want. It is certainly rather mysterious at times, to anyone who refuses to take the conventional view that men are simple creatures of crude and largely regrettable desires. Unfortunately, this view has prevailed for a very long time.
I remember with sadness the day my young daughter angrily told my baby son that it is men and boys who do all the bad things in the world and hurt people; out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, and out of the playground, come the received ideas of the day. I have seen with disbelief the Schadenfreude expressed by women now that boys seem to do less well in exams and in school. It is hardly surprising that so many young women find it difficult to find partners and fathers for their children, preoccupied as they are with their own requirements and with men's shortcomings. In the interests of "gender-peace", as the right-minded put it, I think women would do well to give a lot more thought, at last, to how men feel, and what men get out of relationships. For too long the emphasis has been too much the other way.
A wild over-reaction in the opposite direction has long been overdue. Sure enough, it has come, and, sure enough, from the United States, the land of wild extremes. An enterprising young American woman, Laura Doyle, has just reinvented herself as what she calls The Surrendered Wife, complete with eponymous how-to book, and turned herself into an industry to promote the idea, with websites and seminars and thousands of gratefully surrendered wives across the land. I had been busily ignoring her, thinking that she was no more remarkable than the dotty American celebrity who taught that the secret to marriage lies in greeting the homecoming salary man in nothing but a tiny frilly apron. But I was wrong. Laura Doyle appears to be having a surprisingly big success; her book is a bestseller and will be published here in March.
The subtitle of her book is A Practical Guide to Finding Intimacy, Passion and Peace with a Man. That sounds all right, but The Surrendered Wife is in fact a terrifying creature. What she must surrender is everything: she must never criticise, correct or argue with her husband; she must always be sexually available and enthusiastic, or at least once a week anyway, no matter how she feels; she must always flatter, indulge and praise; she must never complain or nag or try to control him, and she must apologise if she does; she must let him drive for miles in the wrong direction without uttering a syllable other than "you know best, dear"; above all, she must surrender the household finances to him, even if she knows he's not very good with money. The miraculous result will be an Ideal Husband - caring, sharing and competent.
Why do Americans have this extraordinary urge to throw themselves over the top, guns blazing? And to believe such preposterous things? The wild exaggeration of American feminists - remember the Society for Cutting Up Men and the female separatists? - is merely the obverse of loony overstatement like this. It conceals the rather irritating fact that there is a certain something in it. I don't want to sound like a surrendered wife, but I have been married for more years than I like to admit, and I have slowly learnt that there is a lot to be said for tact, flattery and giving in whenever remotely possible. It is known as compromise. And as my husband has repeatedly and wearily asked, why not try charm? Men (and women) blossom when they are encouraged; they wither in the face of criticism and angry demands. Frankness in marriage is overestimated. So is complete honesty; many truths are unconstructive, just as many victories are hollow.
Having to give in so much seems very unfair, especially if it is very one sided, but the question a woman needs to ask herself is whether she wants justice or whether she wants a man about the house, for one reason or another. The same applies, incidentally to men. There are lots of reluctantly surrendered husbands around, pussy-whipped to kingdom come, who have clearly decided that peace is worth a high price. There is always one who takes, and one who gives in, one who insists and one who surrenders; in good relationships it is not always the same one. This has nothing to do with being male or female. It has to do with power. What all men and women want in relationships is power; we ought not to need an American how-to book to explain that in order to gain one kind of power, it might be wise to surrender another.
The Daily Telegraph | Saturday, February 03, 2001
