What Women Want Men To Know

INTRODUCTION

A MESSAGE TO WOMEN

I wrote this book for you, and for the man you love. I believe that it is a book every woman has always wished existed, a book she could give to her mate that would effectively explain all the things she wanted him to know about loving her. “Read this,” she would say, “and you will understand me.”

How many times have I myself wished for such a book: times when it was clear that, once again, I had failed to successfully convey my needs to my partner; times when, no matter how hard I tried, I could not convince him that if only he would make one small gesture or handle a situation a bit differently, things would be so much easier between us; times when my attempt to communicate what I wanted and why it was important to me resulted in him concluding that I was simply too needy rather than being motivated to do something that would make me happy. In these, and so many other moments, I would sigh, as all women have undoubtedly sighed for thousands of years, and wish there was some way I could get through to him, some way to make him understand.

If you are a woman reading this, you know this sigh well. It is the sigh that whispers, “I just want him to care enough to really see who I am.” It is the primal need to be known, to be valued, to be accepted just as you are. Of course, we all have tasted this experience of another soul truly knowing ours. Ironically, it is the bond we have with other women – our girlfriends, our sisters, our colleagues – where the very kind of deep comprehension of who we are and what we are trying to say happens effortlessly, and almost instantaneously.

Does the following story sound familiar?

You are sitting across from a girlfriend at lunch, and early on in the conversation you start to explain a problem you are having in your relationship, or something your mate did that upset you. Within moments of your initial remarks, your friend seems to understand exactly what you mean. She nods her head sympathetically, shows concern for all the right issues, and even finishes your sentences with the perfect words. And as you look at her gratefully, something inside you sighs with relief and exclaims: “YES! That’s exactly how it is … You know just how I am feeling!”

The conversation continues, and within ten minutes, you and your girlfriend have agreed on solutions to a whole list of issues that you and your husband have argued over, with no resolution, for ten years. You’re amazed at how effortless the discussion is, how completely she comprehends your emotions, your reactions, your needs. You shake your head in frustration, knowing that if you try to bring up these same topics with your mate, his response will be quite different: thinly veiled irritation; eye-rolling; sighs of weary exasperation; and numb, emotionless stares, as if you were not speaking English but Swahili, so therefore he has no idea what you are talking about!

As you finish your lunch, you thank your friend for being so supportive. And then you say the words that, at some point, we have all found ourselves saying to other women in our lives: “If only my husband could understand me like you do …! It’s too bad that you’re a woman – otherwise we’d be perfect for each other!” And your friend nods in agreement, for once again, she understands exactly what you mean …

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.

Here’s what I mean: Imagine that you’re trying to communicate to your husband why you would like him to commit to planning more specific activities in advance with you and your children on the weekends, rather than always waiting until the last minute. You feel his resistance to this idea, his rebellion against feeling pinned down, and he responds by saying, “I don’t get what the big deal is about. Why do you always want to have things planned out all the time? Why can’t you be more spontaneous?”

Think for a moment – what would your answer be? Do you actually know why planning things in advance is so important to you, not just logistically but emotionally? Would you know how to express this to him? Much of the time, we aren’t sure why we want and need the things we do, and we reply to a man’s reluctance with vague statements like: “I can’t explain it,” or “Isn’t it enough that I tell you it’s important to me?” or, when we are really frustrated, “Just forget it – you obviously don’t care about how I feel.”

Believe it or not, your man is listening, but he is probably listening from his head, and not from his emotions. Your lack of what he considers a logical explanation leaves him to conclude, consciously or unconsciously, that there is no logical explanation for these needs of yours, that they are just another example of the way women get needy or whiney, and are never satisfied. Without information that can satisfy his brain, your partner may have a difficult time opening his heart to doing what it takes to make you happy. Instead, he will often dismiss your needs or requests as whimsical, irrational, and not deserving of serious attention.

Throughout this book, I’ve not only detailed what women want regarding love, intimacy, communication, and sex but WHY we want it, WHY it is important to us, WHY, because of who we are as women, certain kinds of behaviors from our male partners fulfill our most profound and essential needs. These explanations are just as important for you to understand as they are for men, and the information you’ll gain will make it much easier for you to successfully communicate with the person you love. So before you give this book to the man you love, please read and understand it for yourself!

HOW TO SHARE THIS BOOK WITH MEN

Earlier, I said that I wrote this book for you as a woman. And of course I also wrote it for men: any man who wants to be more successful at loving, pleasing, and living harmoniously with a woman. If you are presently in a relationship with a man and are reading these words right now, I must warn you about a temptation that will be difficult to resist – the temptation to thrust this book under his nose when he comes home tonight, or the next time you see him, and say: “Here … READ THIS! It explains everything I’ve been trying to tell you for years. Better yet, MEMORIZE IT!”

As enticing as this scenario might sound, it probably won’t be particularly effective in getting your loved one to want to read this book, and will only serve to alienate him further from the possibility. How do I know this? Men who’ve been the “victims” of my enthusiastic female fans and ended up cringing at the very sound of my name have confessed it to me, sometimes years later, when they finally recover from the trauma of hearing “Barbara says…” every five minutes!

I met such a man only a few weeks ago. I was waiting in line at a coffee store when I was approached by a friendly-looking guy in his thirties. “You’re Barbara De Angelis, aren’t you?” he asked. I told him I was, and he began to smile.

“I just had to come up to you,” he replied, “because I used to really hate you.” Noticing the look of distress on my face, he quickly continued. “I was in a relationship for two years with a woman who worshiped you. You were like her guru. She had ordered every tape and video you’ve made, she owned every book you ever wrote, and all I heard day and night was ‘Barbara said this’ and ‘Barbara thinks this about that,’ most of which, by the way, was that I was screwed up. Whenever we’d have an argument, I felt like I was in a fight with two people – my girlfriend and you! By the time we broke up, I was furious at you, and blamed you for all of my problems.

“I went through a year of disappointing dating experiences. Then, several months ago, a male friend of mine told me he’d just read a fantastic book about how to choose the right partner called Are You the One for Me? He read me a few passages on the phone one night, and everything he said made perfect sense and explained some of the mistakes I’d been making. ‘This sounds terrific,’ I told him. ‘Can I borrow the book?’ He agreed to lend it to me, and the next evening at the gym, he handed me a well-worn copy of Are You the One for Me? – with your picture on the cover! You can imagine my surprise when I found out this great book was written by the woman who had ruined my relationship with my girlfriend.

“Well, in spite of my prejudice, I did go home and read it. And of course I loved the book, and had to admit that my ex-girlfriend had been right – your stuff is great. I even called her up that week to tell her she wouldn’t believe whose book I was reading, and we had a really good conversation. So when I saw you here, I just had to come over and tell you that I don’t hate you anymore, and that actually, I think you’re wonderful!”

I gave this man a big hug, and thanked him for his delightful story. Would you be surprised if I told you that I’ve heard this same tale in different versions many times? It seems my readers, usually the female ones, sometimes use my books as intellectual weapons, and I become an unwitting ally in their attack on their partner’s behavior. Of course this approach never works, and I always feel regretful when I hear about it.

So here’s my request to you: If you are going to share this book with the man in your life, PLEASE SHARE IT LOVINGLY. Don’t shove it at him along with a sarcastic comment; don’t give it to him in the middle of an argument; don’t leave it on his pillow with a note attached that says: “You need this!” Come from a positive, instead of a negative, place, as if you’ve discovered a great treasure and want him to know about it, and he will be much more open to hearing what I have to say.

Here are some suggestions for getting your partner to read What Women Want Men to Know:

Perhaps you’re already thinking: “My partner will NEVER read this.” My response is: Don’t be so sure. I worked hard to make this book user-friendly for men, to explain things in ways that will make it easy for them to want to read more. Men know I like them, and often they can accept feedback and suggestions from me that they can’t from their own wife or girlfriend. My hope is that receiving this information about you from me will help the man you love finally hear what you’ve been trying to tell him for a long time. One thing is certain – any man who reads this book will know that my intention in writing it is to make his love life easier, less intense and dramatic, and more hassle-free. And no man can argue with those results!

How else can you share this book with men?