After countless experiences like this one, after decades of working with men and women trying to help them understand one another, it was time for me to write What Women Want Men to Know. Actually, people have been asking me to write a book like this for over ten years. Ever since 1990, when I wrote my first bestseller, Secrets About Men Every Woman Should Know, women and men as well have begged me to create its counterpart – a book that would explain women to men. In my seminars, on my television and radio shows, through my fan mail, and whenever they would meet me on the street or in an airport, literally thousands of people have made the same kinds of comments:
“I’ve tried to explain why I am the way I am to my boyfriend, but he just doesn’t get it. I know if you explained it, he would listen!”
“Why can’t my husband understand that if he just did certain simple things, I would be so happy? Please write a book telling men what we want and why we want it!”
“My best girlfriend understands me PERFECTLY. If men could eavesdrop on what women say to each other, they would become experts on loving us!”
“Every time I try to talk to my husband about sex, he gets defensive. Could you please write the nitty-gritty stuff about women and sex for men to read like you did for women to read in your book Secrets About Men?”
“My wife complains that I’m not intimate enough, but whenever I ask her to explain what she means, her answers leave me confused, and I have no idea what she’s talking about. I really do want to make her happy, but I need help figuring her out.”
What Women Want Men to Know is my response to these requests for help from both sexes: It presents all the things women wish men knew about understanding us and loving us. Over the past twenty-five years, I have worked with tens of thousands of women, listening to what they wanted and needed from the men in their lives, and hearing their frustrations in not always being able to get these needs met. I’ve also worked with tens of thousands of men, discovering how they look at love, sex, and intimacy, and how mystified they often are about us as women. I’ve learned how to translate for women what men want and how they feel, as I did in Secrets About Men. And now, in this book, I’ve translated for men what women want, how we feel, and what we’ve been trying to tell them about loving us.
WHY MEN NEED THIS BOOK
Before we go on, there’s something very important that I need to share with you, something I reiterate to men in the next section: I love men! I have loved men my whole life, and despite a very substantial collection of heartaches and disappointments, I have never stopped loving them or given up on them or on relationships. So this book is not about what’s wrong with men; it is not designed to chastise or criticize them for not knowing how to love us properly. Rather, its intention is to invite men to see and understand women as they never have before. I have a reputation for knowing how to get through to my male readers, students, and seminar attendees, and I worked very hard in writing this book to express information in a way I hope men will really hear. You see, I understand how difficult it is for men to go where we want them to go emotionally, to open up to the kind of intimacy we crave, and to understand the heart and soul of women. And it is out of that love and compassion that I approach working with men, and it is out of that love and compassion that this book is written.
Recently, I bumped into an old friend in a health food store. I asked how she and her husband were doing, and we spent a few moments catching up on each other’s lives. “What are you working on these days?” she questioned. “A new book called What Women Want Men to Know,” I replied.
“Really? That’s fabulous!” she said excitedly. “I can’t wait to get it and give it to Donald. I mean, he’s a great guy, but, well, he’s still a man, right?”
A male customer happened to be standing next to us during this exchange, and when he heard my friend’s comments, he shot us a nasty look, as if to say, “You women just love putting men down.” As he walked by shaking his head, my girlfriend and I exchanged a smile, because we knew that his interpretation of what had occurred was totally incorrect – she hadn’t been putting her husband down at all. She adores her husband. Rather, she’d been describing a reality most women naturally understand – that even the best men are still MEN, not women, and for that reason alone, they can use a little help understanding the females in their lives.
The harsh truth is this: Just because men love us does not mean they can know us. They inhabit a very different world than we do, and as we will see throughout this book, our world often appears mysterious, confusing, and contradictory to them.
I think this is why often even the best-intentioned man who deeply loves his partner appears to simply not persist at trying to understand her. To put it bluntly, many men just give up, not because they don’t care, but because they feel they are certain to fail at gaining any glimmer of true cognition of our complex nature, and since men don’t like failing, they often opt for not trying at all.
I wrote What Women Want Men to Know to make it easier for men to try to succeed at understanding and loving us, to make them better boyfriends and better husbands, better companions and better lovers. And I wrote this book to make it easier for you to succeed at expressing your needs, explaining your nature, and sharing your heart with the man you love.
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK FOR YOURSELF
First and foremost, this book is for you as a woman to read. It wasn’t written just to help men understand you – it is an invitation for you to know and understand yourself more than you ever have before. After all, if you don’t quite understand why you feel the things you feel, do the things you do, and need the things you need, you will have a difficult time explaining these parts of your being to the men in your life. And if we are honest, we must confess that sometimes we wonder about ourselves as women: Are we “normal”? Is what we expect and hope for “too much”? Are our men right when they accuse us of being “too sensitive, too needy”? In truth, we don’t always know and fathom ourselves as deeply as we claim to, and this lack of knowledge results in the destructive habits of self-criticism, self-doubt, and low self-esteem.
What Women Want Men to Know will reveal to you and to the men who read it that there are intelligent, loving reasons behind all the things you do and feel. There is a reason we call a man five times until we get through; a reason we feel terrible when he shuts down when we try to find out what’s bothering him; a reason we love to plan time with our mate, and become anxious when he avoids committing to scheduling in advance. The reason is not that we are neurotic, or weak, or insecure. The reason, simply put, is that we are women, and what drives us and defines us is uniquely different from what drives and defines men. As you will see in the following chapters, our needs and behaviors as women only appear to be mysterious or confusing when we don’t understand our true nature.
This is one of my purposes in writing this book, so that as women we can understand ourselves more and judge ourselves less, so that we can honor and celebrate our unique capacity to feel deeply, to love with uninterrupted focus, and to cherish connection over separation. When you have this kind of confidence and deep comprehension of yourself as a woman, you will have a much better chance of being able to communicate your needs and emotions to the man in your life. Of course, this still isn’t a guarantee that you will always get the response you want, but at least you will have an advantage in that you will be able to give men something they appreciate and feel comfortable with when addressing a problem: a logical explanation.