It’s history’s most famous question — one that has mystified men for generations.
*But Never Really Tell Them
Even the inventor of modern psychiatry, Sigmund Freud, concluded that it was the one psychological puzzle that he could not solve. In his frequently quoted remark, he expressed a fascination and frustration that many men have felt: “What do women want?”
Of course, there have always been some men who feel that they have an answer — and arrogantly offer to inform women of their presumed wants. As any woman knows, these self-styled experts are usually dead wrong. A typical example is Michael Korda’s essay in Cosmopolitan magazine, in which he asserts to female readers that their secret desires are actually quite simple: A woman, he says, “wants the same things a man does.” One wonders if Korda — or any other man — would take this position to its logical conclusion and argue that he personally shares every longing a woman might have.
It’s no wonder women feel so misunderstood by men — obviously, many men would rather theorize than listen. Women don’t consider their wants to be either incomprehensibly feminine, as Freud did, or understandably masculine, as Korda, believes. Instead, they wish someone would ask the real experts — women themselves.
In a series of in-depth, intimate interviews, Penthouse asked women to share secrets that they don’t usually tell the men they love. Here’s a surprising report on what women really want. Most of these women’s names, and other identifying details, have been changed to protect their privacy.
1. She wants you to tell her more.
“One of the things that really frustrates me about men is the way they absolutely hate to tell you anything,” complains 25-year-old Lisa Westley (who first suggested that Penthouse research and publish an article such as this in order to enlighten men about women’s real needs and desires). “If you ask a man a question about anything he considers remotely personal, he’ll look at you peculiarly and say, ‘Why would you want to know that?’ as if you are asking about his deep, dark secrets or something. Actually, I’m not trying to pry; I’d just like to get to know him a little better.”
Lisa’s not the only one who thinks that men are too secretive: The other women we spoke with agreed that the stereotypical strong, silent male has little allure for them. Instead, they are angered and puzzled by their mates’ reluctance to reveal what they view as routine information — such as how they spent their workday. “I have a private theory that he goes into suspended animation the moment he leaves the house and is reactivated five minutes before he arrives home,” jokes one 34-year-old woman. “That’s because, according to him, nothing at all ever happens at the office.”
What particularly upsets some of these women is that their men discuss their work and other daily events with others, but seem to exclude them. “My husband can spend two hours on the phone talking to one of his office buddies about work, but if I ask him what’s going on at the office, he seems to have total amnesia,” one remarks, while another says that she’s often embarrassed during social situations by her ignorance of her husband’s activities.
“Everybody realizes that he keeps me totally in the dark,” she explains, “so people will tactfully say things like, ‘I don’t know if Bill’s had a chance to mention XYZ to you yet, but… ’ Then they’ll clue me in on the hot news that everyone else in the room is talking about. Last Easter I shocked his entire family when I noticed that his brother-in-law seemed to be in pain and asked him what was wrong. He looked astonished and said, ‘Doesn’t your husband tell you anything?’ It turned out that he had developed some serious health problems that everyone in the family — including my husband — had been worrying about for months. I felt awkward and angry about not knowing.”
Another woman became so annoyed with her uncommunicative lover that she retaliated by copying his conversational habits. Instead of volunteering detailed descriptions on what had happened during the day, she waited for him to ask. Then she responded with his usual one-word description of his workday: “Uneventful.” When one of her friends phoned, she’d go in the other room, close the door and have a long conversation, then return silently to the living room with a smile of private amusement — just as he often did. After a week of this treatment, her laconic lover suddenly smashed the TV and burst into a furious diatribe, accusing her of acting like “a cold, distant bitch” and giving him “the silent treatment.” When she replied that she felt that the silent treatment was the story of his relationship with her, he vehemently denied it, but gradually grew more talkative in the weeks that followed.
Another surprisingly common feminine tactic for dealing with a secretive male is snooping — several women confessed that they have looked through a boyfriend’s wallet or briefcase, and some admitted to having searched his entire house. “It’s not that I think he’s having an affair or something,” explains Nancy. “I’d just like to know more about him.” Monica, on the other hand, admits that she snoops out of jealousy and suspicion — once she spent two hours going through her boyfriend’s address book for names of unfamiliar women.
“I’ve heard many women say that they snoop, but I’ve never had a male patient tell me that he looked through his wife’s pocketbook or bureau drawers,” says Bonnie Jacobson, director of the New York Institute for Psychological Change. “When a man thinks there is a reason to snoop, he’ll pay someone else, like a private detective, to do the snooping for him. It’s a curious difference between the sexes — women are much more fascinated with what is hidden than men are. It may be related to their anatomical differences from men — or perhaps it’s because women feel less powerful in relationships, and covertly steal information to even things up.”
Men may be merely stingy with facts, women say, but they’re decidedly miserly with their feelings, especially unpleasant ones like anger, depression, or insecurity. “What feelings?” says Noreen. “The guy I’m dating claims that the only things that put him in a foul mood are bad weather and subway delays.” Carla’s boyfriend never feels angry, upset, or dejected — instead, according to him, he’s “tired”; while Linda says that her ex-husband “had about as much emotion as a lizard — and was about as forthcoming.” Her current husband is a little more expressive, she feels: “He gives clues that there is a problem — such as compulsively rearranging pencils on his desk when he’s mad — but basically he expects me to read his mind, figure out something’s wrong, and fix it before he has to do something drastic like actually talk.”
“Women are dying to have men share their emotions with them in a relationship,” says Manhattan psychologist Mari Terzaghi. “Every woman patient I have considers this to be the key to the intimate, deep relationship she desires. There’s nothing a woman would love more than to have her partner talk to her about things he does not ordinarily discuss with others, such as his doubts, hurt feelings, unhappiness, and insecurity. Men hate to do this because they fear they might open themselves up to future criticism or seem weak and unmanly, but their partner would actually see them as a fuller man if they did share their feelings. Many women think men are either too psychologically stupid to notice such feelings or too paranoid about intimacy to reveal them — and both of these opinions diminish men in women’s eyes.”
When a man does express emotion, he often does it in ways that strike women as rather peculiar. Several women put it this way, in almost exactly the same words: “Why doesn’t he just admit he is angry instead of behaving like a total jerk for three days until I figure out he is pissed off about something?”
Another woman adds that her boyfriend reminds her of the Richard Pryor comedy routine where a husband wakes up his wife at 3 A.M. and angrily screams, “I want to talk about that shit you said last year!” Others cited various passive-aggressive ploys that their lovers use to obliquely express anger: Lucette’s boyfriend does not smash dishes during a quarrel, he “accidentally” breaks them afterward; Anita’s husband has the odd habit of going on housecleaning rampages where he inevitably “misplaces” such objects as her keys, wallet, or the book she’s avidly reading.
Men are most mysterious, women feel, when it comes to their emotions about sex. “He’s expressive enough in bed, but the second he’s done, he’s outta there, both physically and emotionally,” says one woman. “I mean, when he withdraws, he really withdraws.” Another woman voices the complaint of many when she says, “I wish he would take a few minutes to kiss and cuddle and talk afterward, but all he wants to do is roll over and go to sleep. I can’t tell you how frustrated I feel when I’m lying awake longing to talk and he is blissfully snoring away.”
‘There’s probably no phrase more alarming to men than a woman’s statement that she’d like to ‘have a little talk.’
Men and women often misunderstand each other sexually, remarks Mari Terzaghi, because they have different attitudes toward making love. “Women feel that sex is part of intimacy, while men tend to feel that sex is the intimacy. I once had a patient whose husband found it very arousing to have her describe all her feelings as he had sex with her. Even though she, too, was stimulated by this, she eventually stopped talking in bed because she felt he never talked intimately to her out of bed. What her husband didn’t realize — along with many others — is that talking in the living room can be a form of foreplay that allows women to be more uninhibited in the bedroom. The result is a closer, sexier relationship.”
2. She wants you to be curious about her.
Men don’t tell — and they don’t listen, either, according to women. “If I ever met a man who would ask me how my day went and was actually interested in the answer, I’d be in absolute ecstasy,” says Erica. “Most guys just don’t pay attention — if you try to tell them about something that’s important to you, they’ll act like they’re really taking it in, but as soon as you stop talking, they’ll turn to you and say something like, ‘Wanna order a pizza?’”
Feeling ignored by their mates is a common complaint of women. “I call it ‘the girl in the closet syndrome,’” comments Linda. “I feel that many men like having a warm body around, but do not want to actually interact with her, especially if they suspect that she has anything remotely unpleasant to say to them. Men seem to have a remarkable antenna to sense potential unpleasantness so they can tune you out before you even get started. If you’re calling them, they don’t answer; if you have a date, they either show up late or not at all; or if they’re in your apartment and can’t escape, they suddenly remember that there is a basketball game on. Guys have a million ways to shut you up, but they’re so sneaky that you can never prove they’re doing it on purpose.”
Other women say it’s not so much that men don’t listen as that they don’t respond well to criticism. “I think part of it is the fault of women,” Monica says. “A woman will store up all sorts of little slights and hurts, then make an issue out of something that strikes a man as trivial. To her, it’s a symbol of a larger problem that’s bothering her, but he’ll think, ‘Uh-oh, she’s acting crazy — must be getting her period or something. I guess I’d better humor her.’ Then he’ll say something totally obnoxious like, ‘Yeah, I’m so insensitive for not doing the laundry,’ disregarding everything else she’s saying.”
There’s probably no phrase more alarming to men than a woman’s statement that she’d like to “have a little talk,” Nancy believes. “As soon as you say that, they shudder, anticipating that you will then launch into a litany of complaints about them. Unfortunately, it does seem that the only way to get men’s attention is to either nag or get hysterical. If you try to tell them how you feel about things in a reasonable way, they can’t seem to hear you, or dismiss your feelings as ‘irrational’ or just plain wrong. Men just don’t seem to believe you when you say something is important unless you behave melo-dramatically about it.”
The stereotype of the logical man and the hysterical woman is gradually being shattered as women gain greater power and success in the workplace, remarks Bonnie Jacobson. “During arguments men used to kill women with logic. They’d coolly dissect every comment she made with an infuriatingly superior and unemotional tone until she totally lost it. Then they’d observe that she was hysterical and feel one up. Women discovered the power of logic in business, so now couples can have absolutely brilliant debates over nothing. It’s the 1990s style of arguing.”
For many couples, however, a man’s tendency to provide logical solutions to a woman’s emotional concerns is still a potent source of misunderstandings, reports Deborah Tannen, Ph.D., whose book You Just Don’t Understand: Talk Between the Sexes (published by William Morrow & Company) became a best-seller for obvious reasons. She found that men like to “fix” women’s problems by offering advice, which women see as a put-down. When a woman utters that quintessentially feminine lament “I feel so fat!” and her boyfriend suggests that she diet, the message she gets, according to Tannen, is “We’re not the same. You have problems; I have solutions.” This makes her feel that he doesn’t empathize with her feeling of insecurity, and therefore is not really listening.
What she really wants is what Tannen labels “rapport talk,” where he expresses a similar feeling of his own: A good reply might be “You look really sexy, but I know just how you feel. I’d like to lose a few pounds myself.”
Not only do women want men to pay more attention to what they say, but they passionately wish that their partners would display more curiosity about what they don’t say. “Men don’t ask,” Anne says. “If I told my former boyfriend that something earthshaking was going to happen to me the following day, he wasn’t interested enough to remember and mention it when I got home. Another thing that hurt me was that he never went to see any of the films I had made — even though I’d told him that my work was intensely personal. He could have learned so much about me by seeing those films, but he just didn’t care. Now he can’t understand why I broke up with him. I can sum it up in three words: He didn’t ask.”
Some men don’t ask the obvious questions; others don’t ask the special questions that thrill women. “I’d love to have a man ask me what I was thinking after we made love, but they don’t want to know. They want to explore you physically, but not emotionally. I guess it’s too intimate,” Arleen remarks.
Linda feels that men do ask women questions in bed — but unfortunately, they’re the wrong questions. “While you’re having sex, every five seconds they’re asking you, ‘Did you come?’ Then after they’ve come, they ask you, ‘Are you using birth control?’”
Not surprisingly, Linda and many other women feel that the men they have slept with were no more adept at understanding their body language during sex than they were at any other form of paying attention. “Some of the men I’ve been with,” says Linda, “seem to have this impersonal, one-size-fits-all sexual routine that they stick to no matter how I am responding. They act as if they happen to be doing it with me, but they’d do it exactly the same way with another woman — and probably will the next night. I consider these men to be the McDonald’s of lovers: They might as well wear a sign that says ‘Over ten billion served.’”
Since men seem so obsessively interested in her orgasms, does Linda consider this a sign that her partners do pay some attention to her sexual satisfaction? “I think men should realize that it’s not going to happen for me — or most women — every single time. Men should certainly make a reasonable effort, but if they persist in their performance far past the point of futility, I have to ask myself just who they are trying to please — me or themselves? I think they must be doing it for their own egos, because I know that after they’re through with me, I’m not going to be able to walk for three days.”
“Men really torture women about orgasms,” Dr. Terzaghi maintains. “Driving a woman to ecstasy makes a man feel so potent that he may go to extreme lengths to obtain what he sees as a favorable review of his performance. A man feels that there’s something wrong with his penis if his partner doesn’t climax — and that’s why he’ll keep on torturing her about it until she either feels she has to fake it or resents him for putting her through this agony. A woman really can feel satisfied without an orgasm — and she’d feel a lot happier in bed if a man would listen to her when she tells him the truth.”
3. She doesn’t want to be your mother.
A male writer described for the readers of a women’s magazine an experience that he considered proof of his devotion to his girlfriend. “You want to know how much I need her? The other day I woke up curled into a fetal position sucking on her tit,” he confided. Like former president Ronald Reagan, who is said to call his wife “Mommy,” this writer seems to think that women prefer men who act like little boys.
“He’s got it completely backwards,” observes Dr. Terzaghi. “Women don’t want to be men’s mothers; they want the men to mother them — which is why they demand so much listening, cuddling, and emotional support. However, it’s psychologically impossible for a man to be maternal — a large part of being masculine has to do with rejecting and rebelling against the feminine influences of the man’s mother. This is one of the central conflicts between the two sexes, because men and women both love being pampered and taken care of at times, but men find it much harder to give mothering than women do.” This conflict may explain why women frequently say that “men are like children,” especially when they feel ill.
“There is nothing more pathetic than a man with a minor illness,” says Anne. “My husband turns into a helpless baby who expects to be waited on hand and foot. He expects me to keep running up and down the hall bringing him books and pillows and soup and tea, but if I get sick I’m lucky if he glances in the bedroom once a day to make sure I’m not dead or something.”
Just as a man is never a little bit sick, he is never a little bit angry, women say. “My boyfriend rarely gets mad, but when he does, watch out!” Sylvia reports. “I know he wouldn’t hit me or anything, but he has punched the wall or broken things a few times. He acts so murderously enraged that I’m actually afraid of him. But when he’s not having one of these temper tantrums, he is a completely different person — very controlled and reasonable.”
It is precisely because men do normally repress their emotions that they behave in extreme ways when they are acting on feelings, says Sid Raphael, Ph.D., president of the New York Society of Clinical Psychologists. “For many men, it’s all or nothing — either they’re the soul of reason or they’re exploding with volcanic rage. It is the same with health — either they’re the picture of manly strength or they are on death’s door. Men have to feel that a situation is drastic before they feel justified in letting go. Women may think it’s childish to make such dramatic demands for attention, but men often hold so much in that they just have to erupt eventually.”
Other women find that their mates display helplessness at what one woman calls “basic life skills.” She’s convinced that without the civilizing influence of women, “most men would gladly keep all their possessions in their briefcases and sleep on subway gratings at night.” Marsha agrees: “It’s taken me ten years of training to get my husband to stop dressing like a homeless person and to wear a reasonably decent outfit to work each day. I’m still working on getting him to throw out threadbare socks and underwear without my telling him to do it.”
What women fail to realize, remarks Dr. Raphael, is that men don’t dress badly to spite their girlfriends — instead, until recently, a common male attitude was that a real man shouldn’t dress too well, or take an excessive interest in his grooming.
When it comes to housework and childcare, men display the most spectacular incompetence of all. Hariette’s husband, who can easily assemble a home computer or stereo tuner from a kit, is completely unable to master the art of changing his son’s diaper, while Joan feels that her boyfriend shows his resentment at being asked to do “women’s work” through subtle acts of sabotage. “He nearly always puts so much detergent in the dishwasher that it overflows. Other times he forgets to do his chores — the other day I was late to an important meeting because I was searching high and low for a clean pair of panties. When I criticized him for not doing the laundry, he said unapologetically, “Why didn’t you remind me?” I don’t want to be responsible for his work — or even have to think about it.”
A particular sore point with Virginia is her boyfriend’s habit of making promises he does not keep. “I’ve been waiting two years for the bookcase he said he’d build for me, while the back door is still falling off its hinges six months after he offered to repair it. In almost every room of my apartment, I can look around and be irritated by some problem he told me years ago that he’d fix ‘next week.’ I can’t tell if he’s hostile or just lazy.”
‘Size is men’s obsession, not ours,’ one woman said. A psychologist agrees: ‘I’ve never heard a female patient complain that her partner’s penis was too small.’
Gloria says that her husband actually does too much around the house: “Making furniture is his hobby — and our house is so full of what he’s made that it’s practically bulging at the seams. That’s not so bad — but what does drive me crazy is his habit of buying an item like a $2,000 band saw and claiming it’s a practical tool for ‘our’ use instead of a new toy for him. I’d love to see his face if I bought a $2,000 coat and said it was practical winter dress.”
Another woman says her boyfriend is strangely embarrassed when she notices his extravagances: “He will buy a fancy new sail for his Windsurfer and never mention it. Naturally, I notice the next time we’re at the beach, but when I mention it he looks just like a kid who’s been caught stealing cookies. He even lies about the price, which is odd because he is spending his own money. I just wish he were equally generous when he’s picking out a gift for me.”
Women’s scorn about “boys and their toys” is motivated more by jealousy over the time and attention that men lavish on mechanical objects than by purely financial concerns, points out Sid Raphael. “They know that if a man comes home with a really neat gadget, he’s going to devote all of his spare time to the fascinating challenge of mastering its proper use. They think he’s just indulging himself, but actually these so-called toys are trophies of power and success. That windsurfer enjoys his sail because it says, ‘Look, guys, I can sail with the best of you,’ while that $2,000 band saw expresses that man’s pride in doing things himself and being self-sufficient. Women don’t understand how seductive these things are to a man.”
Then there’s the question of what women really think about the ultimate male toy — the penis. “I wish someone would tell men that women don’t sit around with their girlfriends making millimeter-by-millimeter comparisons of the penises of all the men they’ve slept with,” says Marian. “Size is their obsession, not ours.” Bonnie Jacobson agrees: “In my entire practice, I’ve never heard a female patient complain that her partner’s penis was too small to satisfy her, though some women have said that they found sex uncomfortable because the man was too large. Other than that, if women say a man is a poor lover, it’s usually because he hurries through foreplay and doesn’t hold and cuddle them afterward.”
4. She wants to be treated with respect.
What many of these issues come down to, in women’s opinion, is a power struggle between the sexes — a contest that they often feel they’re losing. “My husband feels that there’re two ways of doing everything — his way and the wrong way — and he’ll go to any extreme to prove it,” comments one woman. “If I disagree with him, he gets that domineering, ‘I have spoken!’ tone or stomps out of the room in a huff.”
“If there’s one thing men hate, it’s admitting that they might actually be wrong about anything, no matter how trivial,” Sue adds. “Once my boyfriend started instructing me on how to use my camera, but what he said was totally wrong. He just wouldn’t believe that I knew better than he did-even though I’ve been using this camera for years — until I got out the instruction manual and proved it to him. Then he said in a pissed-off tone that I had a cheap camera. Clearly, in his view, there must be something wrong with my camera because it doesn’t work the way that he thought was right.”
Other women say that men often suggest that there is something wrong with a woman if they disagree with her thoughts or feelings. “He’s always telling me how to feel or saying, ‘You shouldn’t feel that way,’” one woman says, while another believes that her boyfriend expects her to react exactly as he does. “He sometimes takes me to see boys’ movies about guns, submarines, and male camaraderie — and gets ridiculously annoyed if I don’t feel the manly emotions these films seem to arouse in him. One time we had a major fight after seeing a western that he found profoundly touching, but I felt was silly and sentimental. He wants me to confirm that his feeling is right by sharing it — otherwise, he thinks I am telling him that he is wrong to feel that way.”
Fear of expressing the wrong sexual thoughts can inhibit women in bed, says Bonnie Jacobson. “Often women are too embarrassed to mention a secret sexual wish they have — which is usually the desire to receive more oral sex or to use a vibrator on themselves while making love. They’re afraid such ideas will make them sound too sexual and that their partner will ask them where they learned that, or that he will imply there’s something wrong with them for being dissatisfied with what he is doing.”
Men may also feel that there’s a right way for women to act in bed — their way, remarks Dr. Terzaghi. “Men often pressure women to do as they do by being a very active partner who comes on initially and vividly conveys excitement during sex. Men like to perform in bed, so they enjoy an aggressive role because it makes them feel so powerful. Women, on the other hand, like to give up power in bed, so they prefer a more passive role.” Bonnie Jacobson reports that her female patients “are willing to take initiative if the man asks them to, but really resent it. They find it so humiliating to ask for sex that they’ll keep score of how often their lover initiates and how often they do, to make sure that they don’t do it any more than they absolutely have to. If they want sex but feel it’s his turn, they’ll just wait.”
While men are willing to surrender sexual control, say women, they don’t display a similar desire in other areas of life. “Whenever I pick up my boyfriend in my car, the first thing he says is, ‘Scoot over, I’ll drive,’” Jill complains. “He does the exact same thing with the remote control if we watch TV together. We’ll sit there watching random scenes from ten different programs as he flicks from channel to channel. I’ll make the mistake of actually getting interested in a show; then without even asking me, he will zap my program into oblivion and continue his relentless search to see if something better is on. One time he came home and found me holding the remote and watching some TV news. He took the control out of my hand and said, ‘I’ll drive.’”
Changing the conversational channel with frequent interrupting is another male habit women criticize. “He cuts me off and changes the subject,” one woman says, while author Deborah Tannen believes that men often see conversation as a contest they can win by dictating the topics to be discussed. Other women feel that this trait reveals a lack of respect for women’s intellectual power: “He interrupts when I give him some advice, and starts telling me all the reasons that make my opinion wrong before I even finish explaining my thought,” one woman maintains.
Probably the single greatest compliment that a man can give a woman, says Dr. Terzaghi, is telling her that he thinks she’s smart. “Men think women want to hear that they are beautiful or sexy — and they do — but what thrills her even more is to feel that he admires her intelligence and wit. It makes her feel that she’s respected as his intellectual equal.”
Being respected as a financial equal would also thrill several women. “Men’s notion of treating you like a financial equal is to suggest splitting the dinner check when they make twice as much as you do,” says an unmarried woman. “The rest of the time they lord it over you because they out earn you.” Another woman, whose salary is considerably greater than her husband’s, finds that her earnings don’t buy her much say in financial decisions: “What we do is put his paycheck in the bank and spend mine, which makes him feel that what’s in the bank is ‘his’ and what we spend is ‘our’ money. The trouble is that he does not think that any of the money is mine to spend as I please.”
Do such complaints show that women are deeply dissatisfied with men? Not at all, maintains Mari Terzaghi. “Ultimately, a man can never totally satisfy a woman because her wants are contradictory: She wants him to be someone she can run to when she wants to be dependent, and she wants him not to control her when she feels like being independent. She wants a man to reveal himself emotionally, yet she is reluctant to reveal herself sexually. She wants him to listen to her, but she won’t respect him if he does everything she says he should do. She has conflicts because she wants different things at different times. But if you think about it, aren’t men just as contradictory in their own way?”
To add a little perspective, you could look four decades back at Female Sexuality or even what Average Sex meant back then.
