Four Things Men Really Want Apart From Sex

I know you’re sick and tired of the “all men only want sex” argument.

Me too.

We all know that sex and sexuality are part of life. In fact, Pamela Rogers Turner in one of her works on Healthline even mentioned that “in relationships, orgasms play a significant part in bonding.”

However, I believe that there are other important things apart from sex. To some extent, I even think they are more important than sex.

Even though I know that a lot of men have been known to be willing to do anything to get laid. Of course, I’m not excluded from the list of guys, college young men, or even 50 years plus men who are often in search of how to get laid more often.

That’s mainly because of a few reasons.

It has always been believed by many that wanting sex is an act of manliness. Hence, if a man isn’t preoccupied with sex he might be considered less than a man.

For some men, it isn’t just because of the confidence, self-worth, and validation that comes with being laid but the feeling of being valued and needed by their partners.

And for others, it’s the emotional and intimate connection with their partners that means everything to them.

However, when I look into it critically, it occurred to me that one can’t be having sex non-stop all day long for as long as he’s with his partner.

This implies that other things intrigue and keep men wanting to be and even stay in a relationship with women.

I don’t know how this might sound to you but I have this belief that just as love isn’t enough to make a relationship work, sex isn’t enough reason for a man to want and stay in a relationship with a woman.

Over the past weeks, after having an intense with a female friend argument about men wanting only sex, I’ve done a lot of reflection on my relationships both past and the current one. I’ve also reflected on the past and current relationships of people around me.

And while doing so, I uncovered four things most men truly crave in women apart from sex, because a sex-filled relationship will likely crash without them.

I know these things are not the easiest for women to give, but I also know that they aren’t overly difficult or impossible to do.

And I know these little things can have an enormous impact on relationships, like making it less likely for men to walk away from good women.

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1. A woman who respects their freedom.

As a woman, would you be happy to have a man who behaves like a control freak?

Me neither. And I’m sure a lot of other men would cringe at the thought of having one.

We men, hate being robbed of our freedom simply because we are in a relationship. It can make a man’s life helplessly miserable.

It’s no secret that most women are overly caring and this has made them very prone to want to control every aspect of their men’s life which includes how they spend their day, who they hang out with, who they talk to on phone, how they spend their money, etc, with little or no respect for the men’s boundaries.

Yet, oftentimes most women are not aware that they’re complicating things by being overly cautious and protective in such a way.

But I don’t think anyone will appreciate having someone who constantly forces things down his or her throat for whatever reason.

Whether it’s jealousy driven at high speed by insecurity that nudges a woman to dictate: how her man spends his day, who he hangs out with, who he talks to on the phone, etc.

Or it’s the urge to be significant that often leads her to suggest how her man spends his money and other unsolicited advice or suggestions on how to be a better man, trying to control a man slowly builds resentment in him as it makes him feel less than a man or not good enough for you.

We all want to be significant. We all feel insecure at times. And it’s even justifiable to be insecure about your relationship If your man cheated on you multiple times, is coming home later than usual, or if your instinct tells you that something’s off. But you don’t have to be endlessly insecure to disregard a man’s boundaries just to feel safe or significant enough.

Because to a man, being in control of his life means the world to him, and having a woman who wants to kind of rule his life makes him look for an exit door out of such a relationship as soon as an opportunity presents itself.

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2. A woman who has a deep respect for them.

When it comes to relationships, on one hand, I’d admit that love is indeed important. While on the other hand, I know that respect is certainly more important. Because respect breeds real love.

Currently, many marriages and relationships breakups are attributed to the ignorance of this fact.

People just need to give up the hyperbolic assumption that love is the same as respect because the two aren’t the same.

The truth is, you can have respect for someone that you don’t have an ounce of love for and you can as well love someone but still have no respect for the person.

But the kind of respect I’m talking about here is the kind of respect you have for people for who they are instead of what they do. Because respect actually means accepting somebody for who they are, even when they’re different from you or you don’t agree with them.

The thing is, most women often out of familiarity lose respect for their men over time, as opposed to having deep and unconditional respect for their men like a few great women do.

And this often leaves most women wondering what they could have possibly done wrong that makes their relationships as messy as hell since they, you know, love their partners fiercely.

But it all boils down to this…

Like I hinted earlier, love isn’t a magical cure-all. Love isn’t always enough. Relationships aren’t just about feelings of love, affection, or attraction which mostly ends after the honeymoon period, or even sex.

Healthy relationships require trust, effective communication, support for one another, the presence of healthy boundaries, and respect. But out of all these respect seems to be the most important because respect molds feelings of trust, safety, and emotional wellbeing which are the core of them all.

A partner that has no respect for you, will hardly ever care to really listen to whatever you say let alone understand your perspective or standpoint. Your choices and opinions won’t matter to them. As they’ll always try to convince you to change your mind towards most of your choices and opinions. Worse, your privacy and boundaries will be always violated. Frustrating isn’t it?

That’s exactly why a man’s interest will gradually vanish if he gets such treatments even if he gets laid endlessly. Who wouldn’t lose interest? I’m sure you’ll also do the same.

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3. A woman who’s willing to be a teammate as opposed to a competitive opponent.

Investing a lot of energy and time in competing and rivalry between couples is one of the main reasons why some people end up being unhappy and cheerless in their relationships.

The surest way to be happy and cheerful in a relationship is by operating as a team with your partner to conquer the world together.

So instead of making a man feel inadequate because of an unending quest to compete and be on the winning side, try to be more of a teammate than a rival competing in an opposing team to him.

Because being overly competitive with your man simply displaces his masculinity and emasculates him.

This doesn’t mean you should be overly cautious and never do something fun like some playful competition, such as challenging your partner to a race or a board game. Neither does it mean you should let the man control the entire relationship.

However, It just means you should be careful about your relationships and about how you make others feel. And also strive and lookout for a relationship where there’s a kind of balance of power i.e each person surrenders control in certain areas.

To be more specific, it means you should avoid competing overly for control and power in the relationship with your man, argue with your partner about who’s right even in front of friends, use the fact that you make more money to emasculate your man, because all these behaviors, can simply make your partner feel like you’re against him instead of being for him.

And lastly, it means you should also strive and lookout for a relationship where there’s a kind of balance of power i.e each person surrenders control in certain areas.

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4. A woman who’ll love and accept them just the way they are.

If you had a friend who’s often with you telling you:

“You need to change this habit.”

“You need to adopt this habit.”

“You need to be better at this.”

“You are yet to be this.”

“Do this to be a better person.”

…you would eventually have it to the neck and tell them to go to hell right?

But why are some women who love to be “saviors” allowing their unending urge to fix men they perceive to be emotionally or otherwise screwed up to wreck their relationships?

What baffles me the most is that such women are so obsessed with playing the role of guidance counselors that they always convince themselves that a man needs saving even when he doesn’t.

Over the past years, I’ve come to realize that a relationship that’s based on one person consistently seeking to change the other is certainly doomed to fail.

That’s why no matter how great you pleasure a man in bed, projecting made-up fairytale ideals of the “perfect man” on him, will certainly push him farther away from you.

Hence, Instead of being so bent on fixing or changing a man which alienates him and even forces him to resent you, you should at least try to love and accept him just the way he is or let him go if you can’t.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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