What Men Want

On January 1, 2015 I made a firm new years resolution: I want to understand what men want. Fast forward, January 1, 2016. Abridged version. I made an even firmer new years resolution: I dont ever want to understand what men want.

Nine months later, I write an article for the Huffington Post Blog, with a rather pretentious title: What Women Want . Funny though, the dominant feedback I received was less related to the discussed topic, but rather to a complementary one. It was absolutely necessary that I came up with a follow-up on what men want.

How would I tackle this? I am not a psychologist, nor an anthropologist. In the past years, I have accumulated some decent knowledge in social behaviour. But for sure not enough to support such a delicate matter.

Yet, urged by my analytical desires I had to find a solution and come up with a reasonable answer.

I called upon friends. We had long chats, leading nowhere. The most complex answer I received was discouraging: men dont want anything in particular. I called upon revisiting my personal experience. Totally irrelevant. I called upon literature. Way too sophisticated. I remained stuck. Until my attention shifted to the political spectrum, nowadays dominated by a legitimate yet disquieting question: "Where are the initiated men of power?" Thank you, Mr. Trump, for once again leading by example in everything wrong.

In 2015, World Economic Forum published an in depth survey on the main issues believed to have the biggest impact on the world over the coming years. A startling 86% of respondents to the Survey on the Global Agenda agree that we have a leadership crisis in the world today. Not only is there no one to take the lead in the most alarming global issues. But worse, there is no one out there to inspire and give hope.

Mixing this evidence with the more ordinary realities of our daily life we reach a reasonable conclusion. What we face, in fact, is a crisis in masculine identity.

The masculine identity has been slowly eroded. Like in the case of the crisis of the feminine identity. The gradual cancelling of the rite de passage, disabling the function of the archetypes and perpetuating misunderstood patriarchal models, all had a part in this. And it happened due to the fact that patriarchy failed in expressing grounded mature potential, but rather what psychologists call Boy psychology. That is insecurity addressed with fear.

And to be fair by all means, the radical Feminist critique did not help too much either.

The drug dealer, the ducking and diving political leader, the wife beater, the chronically "crabby" boss, the "hot shot" junior executive, the unfaithful husband, the company "yes man," the indifferent graduate school adviser, the "holier than thou" minister, the gang member, the father who can never find the time to attend his daughter's school programs, the coach who ridicules his star athletes, the therapist who unconsciously attacks his clients' "shining" and seeks a kind of grey normalcy for them, the yuppie - all these men have something in common. They are all boys pretending to be men. (i.e. emphasis mine).

In an absolutely marvellous study on male psychology, entitled King, Warrior, Magician, Lover. Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette identify four archetypes for manhood. Each of these four has its traits and virtues. Accordingly, they all have their boyish immature correspondents.

So, the opposites of the King are the tyrant and the weakling. The Warrior in its fulness stays in opposition to the sadist and the masochist. The immature facets of the Magician are the detached manipulator and the denying innocent. Last but not least, the Lover in his fulness rivals the addicted lover and the impotent lover.

The authors argument is solid and definitely worth exploring. But briefly, the answer it gives to the daring question what men want is awfully straightforward: a man wants and thinks according to what he is.