This is not another article about “what women want.” That subject has been more than sufficiently covered in decades of magazine articles and movies. To the real man, what women *need* is the more practical study.

If you fancy going deeper than the garden variety “remember anniversaries,” “tell her you love her” and “great sex” advice, …take a glance at yourself against the following 4 needs, and make sure your woman is covered:

1. A woman needs you to be decisive.
Want to irk a woman? Next time she asks you what restaurant you’re taking her to, say: “mmm… I dunno… where do you want to go?” …which of these dresses look the best for tonight? “mmm… I dunno… whichever one you like better.”

She may never tell you but, under the surface, you do your relationship a good bit of damage when you show yourself to be indecisive. As a man, you have the privilege of making decisions without all of the emotional cross-talk that goes on inside a woman’s head. That natural advantage of yours is one of the perks a woman receives when she has a man in her life. So, don’t cheat her out of it. Be a man with places to go, a definite opinion …a man with a plan.

If you’re dating or married to a relatively successful girl, this becomes even more important. Having a strong, decisive man to defer to on evenings and weekends is a huge relief to a professional woman who spends her days making weighty decisions. No matter how smart and capable she is, sometimes all a woman wants to be is a little girl. Let her. Be her “daddy” when she wants you to be. Decide for her. Make everything alright.

2. A woman needs to feel safe with you.
This doesn’t mean you have to right cross every dude in public who looks at your lady too long. While she does, indeed, need to feel physically protected, she needs to feel “safe” in an even more important way:

• she needs to feel that she can express her deepest thoughts and feelings to you in a totally open and honest way …without being argued down, rejected, or made to feel stupid.

As men, we tend to look for the hard logic in everything. As we listen to someone talk, we monitor every sentence for inconsistencies and nonsense. “Wait, that makes no sense,” we interrupt, followed by a cross-exam worthy of Supreme Court. This is most assuredly a valuable skill in the outside world, but when listening to your woman — it is a must that you silence your inner lawyer.

When a woman first meets you, and doesn’t really know you, she sorts her thoughts first, then she says them aloud (…just like you and I). One of the best signs that a woman is getting comfortable with you is when she says her thoughts first, then sorts them aloud . Provided you’re not dating a dunce, she usually already knows she’s not making sense — she’s not trying to. She simply wants to say her thoughts out, and play with the order of things–she wants to flip her ideas upside down and rearrange them like puzzle pieces in the air. Picture the movie Minority Report.

And here’s the key: the fact that she’s willing to do that with you in the room is one way a woman expresses her intimate feelings toward you. So, as painful to your logic-centric self as it may be, it can actually be a  good sign when a woman says something to you that makes no sense. Just listen with a sympathetic ear, let her sort things out …and make no judgments. Be assured, you will be thanked often, with more than words.

3. A woman needs you to be successful.
You can be worth $700 mil — if you have no goals, no projects, if you’re not accomplishing anything new …you, my good man, are not successful. Your woman will never tire of spending your money, but she will tire of you.

• Every emotionally healthy woman desires an ambitious man who aspires to something greater than he is.

A man who has chosen his list of mountains to climb — and is enthusiastically climbing  them, presents as a man with the potential to take a woman to new heights and exciting places she never thought she’d see (…or perhaps, always dreamed she would). You are a man who can greatly enhance her life’s journey.

Of course, we’re talking women, here — not girls. Some girls remain in the exploratory, “man-candy” stage till 25, or later. Once they figure things out, though, they come running for the bold, daring, ambitious, resourceful, imaginative, enterprising men. Successful men. If you’re a young man right now, you should be working on being one of these men. (…the money will naturally come. Money doesn’t make you a success — success makes you the money.)

4. A woman needs you to lead her, not follow her.
No woman, in a relationship with a man, wants to be the boss — no emotionally healthy woman, that is. High-quality women are turned off by domineering men …but turned on by confident, self-assured and capable men.

• Unfortunately, most men are afraid of their women.

Not in a physical sense, of course …but in the sense that most men get extremely uncomfortable anytime their wife or girlfriend is upset, or even slightly unhappy. This tendency puts your woman in the driver’s seat — and, contrary to how she may behave, she doesn’t really want to be there. What she really needs is to be able to lean on you, like a rock …but she’ll never feel comfortable doing so if she continually sees you compromise your own values to try and keep her happy. In his book Hold on to Your N.U.T.s (highly recommended), author Wayne M. Levine says it best:

• “Allow your woman to have her own problems and feel her own feelings without having to worry about how that makes you feel.” - Wayne M. Levine, Hold on to Your N.U.T.s

  

Contrary to popular belief, keeping your woman happy is not your mission in life. Your woman’s happiness is her job. She must decide to be happy, or not to be. Your job, as a man, is to chart the course and steer the ship. You do this by setting your most important values firmly, and never abandoning course.

Most men give up things they really value in an effort to align their lives with a woman’s wishes:

• a man who loves to ski — stops skiing because his girlfriend doesn’t like to ski…
• a man who loves to play basketball once a week with his friends — quits because his wife views it as childsh, or too dangerous for a married man.

“Why do you always have to go fishing?” she might ask. …”I don’t like you on that motorcycle,” she may say. One by one, the man gives up the things that bring him the most joy, satisfaction, outlet and renewal — all in the name of keeping his woman happy. The result? He becomes brooding, resentful, (out of shape…), and prone to loud or violent outbursts, that even he doesn’t understand. And, of course, his effort to keep her happy fails, after all.

It’s not the woman’s fault. She’s waiting for you to lead. What sound like complaints are really simple voicings of her fears, concerns and preferences. As a man, it’s your responsibility to take those preferences into serious consideration and accommodate her, where possible. However, when those preferences conflict with a value that you have determined to be important to your well-being, you must steer the ship accordingly. As the leader, if you’re not okay, nobody’s okay.

Most any emotionally healthy woman will respond favorably to confident, capable leadership. Allow her the responsibility for her own happiness, …steer the ship with confidence, …and