Joanna Schroeder has always been a Guy’s Girl, and that’s given her some important (and surprising!) insights about men.
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When I was younger, my deepest friendships were always with guys. Some of them were people I’d dated but remained friends with, others were guys who were just like brothers to me. To this day, some of my most important relationships are with guy friends, and this has given me a unique insight that my friends who are “girls’ girls” sometimes miss out on.
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1. Guys actually gossip about sex way, way less than women do.
Okay, one caveat: There definitely are guys who are your stereotypical locker-room bragging types and who will sell a woman out to be considered cool or popular. But in my experience, these guys are in the minority.
Most guys seem to know that this type of braggadocio is not only uncool, but disrespectful to women. They don’t want to be the dude who talks about the breasts of the woman he hooked up with last weekend. They want to be the guy who smiles politely and keeps his intimate moments to himself.
Women, on the other hand, often have deeply emotional bonds with one another and feel like sharing intimacies about our sex lives is a part of bonding. Because there isn’t a stereotype about women bragging about sexual conquests (the opposite, actually, we are often shamed for our sexual desires), my girlfriends and I have often felt like our friendships with other women are a sacred place to say anything we wanted.
This leads me to my second point…
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2. Guys often need a place to talk about their feelings, insecurities about sex, and what they’re going through.
One of the special things about being a trusted girl-friend of guys is the opportunity the friendship gives guys to really open up about what they’re going through.
My guy friends have often felt like they had no place to put their sadnesses, their feelings of being less-than, and their worries about sex – including their size or performance. But the ones who trusted me felt okay about talking to me.
I’ll never forget when one of my good guy friends, a total “guy’s-guy”, came to me distraught needing to talk about a sexual issue he was having with his partner, who is a woman. He told me he felt extraordinary relief to be able to get this problem off his chest, and I was happy to offer some insight.
After that, he and I bonded over all sorts of emotional issues – from the death of his father to trying to figure out if he should marry his partner or not (he ended up marrying someone else). In turn, I felt like I had someone who would give me the brutal truth, and be an awesome sounding board.
Guys’ friendships, for whatever reason, are often considered odd if they’re deeply emotional or intimate. That has to change. Men need to be able to bond emotionally with other men. But in the meantime (and hopefully even after we reach that goal), having a girl-friend can be a great opportunity for a truly intimate friendship. (As long as it’s truly reciprocal and neither of you are giving too much in the hopes of it someday becoming a romantic relationship.)
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My guy friend and me on a trip to England. We’ve been buds since we were born – one week apart.
3. Guys get their hearts broken, too.
In fact, they sometimes are totally and completely devastated by a break-up. I don’t care if the guy is straight or gay or bi or anything else, a hard break-up has the potential to destroy him the same way it would a woman.
Somewhere we got the idea that guys were the tough ones, immune to heartbreak and longing.
Well that’s BS. Anyone who has a close friendship with a guy can tell you that most men have experienced a break-up so profound, it changed the way they saw the world. Some may disappear into a depression, some may quest to make themselves better, some may write poetry or music about their loss. But no man I’ve ever known has been immune to having his heart broken.
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4. Guys care way, way less about whether your body is perfect than you think they do.
The thing I’ve heard my guy friends say most often about what makes a woman hot is her confidence with who she is, regardless of her body.
That’s a surprisingly tough thing to hear as a woman. It’s not like we can just snap our fingers and be happy with our bodies. Society tells us our entire lives that we need to look a certain way, and pretty much none of us can live up to that ideal. Then we’re told by guys that we are supposed to be confident about who we are, and that’ll make us sexy. Well guess what? It’s not that easy, and we can’t grow our confidence just to make you want us. That wouldn’t be a good outcome for any of us. So sometimes hearing that puts us into a doubly insecure situation!
But it really is true, from my experience, that the kinds of guys you’d actually want to date really don’t care if your thighs have dimples, if your belly has rolls or if your boobs don’t look like Kate Upton’s. That shouldn’t be a motivator to get happy with your body, that’s between you and yourself only, but I do believe most guys when they say that the “perfect” body is pretty irrelevant to real desire.
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5. Guys need affection more than they need sex.
I’m not joking!
Of course sex is important to guys. It’s important to women, too. But society has told us – both men and women – that guys only want one thing: Sex.
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When their partner loses an interest in sex,the suffering a guy experiences is less about orgasms, and more about the loss of a form of affection and reassurance that they felt comfortable accepting.
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But here’s the newsflash: Guys crave intimacy and affection as much as women. At least the guys I’ve known.
The issue with lack of sex is often tied to this need for affection. For many people, in particular guys, sex=love. Sex also equals acceptance and is a satisfying way to receive affection. So when their partner loses an interest in sex, the source of the suffering a guy experiences is less about orgasms, and more about the loss of a form of affection and reassurance that they felt comfortable accepting.
Any guy can satisfy his own direct sexual needs one way or another. But just like women, guys crave intimacy and the reassurance that they are attractive, loved, and cared for. In our society, however, we’ve told guys that their sexuality is the only way to gain that intimacy.
The lesson to be learned here, women, is that even when your libido is down, you can help your guy by reassuring him that you love him, that you think he’s hot and smart and sexy, and by giving him lots of physical love when you feel up for it. Massages (sensual or not) go a long way. Even -gasp!- cuddling. Because here’s the biggest secret of all: Guys like cuddling, too.
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6. Guys hate being trapped in the “Act Like a Man” Box.
Women often complain that guys only like a few things: beer, boobs, and football. I think we’ve debunked some of those myths above, but I want to dive a little deeper into this stereotype for a moment.
Those three things are stereotypes about guys that keep them firmly rooted in the Act Like a Man Box (or “ALMB” for short). You need to be heterosexual, have a high libido, enjoy watching sports, chugging beers, and you can’t have complicated emotions. To fit into the ALMB, you also need to hate figure skating, shopping, and quiche.
But most of the guys I know have one way in which they explode the ALMB just by being who they are. They hate sports, or they’re gay, or they’re straight but don’t quest after women as sport, or they really get emotional listening to classical music. Doesn’t matter what it is, a lot of guys are terrified of the world discovering that they don’t fit into the ALMB.
And who can blame them? Society is pretty attached to our caveman-like image of dudes. Including a lot of women.
So ladies, if you’re really looking for a loving, sensitive guy, you need to make sure you aren’t part of the system that enforces the ALMB. Whatever you do, don’t make fun of guys’ feelings. Oh, and sometimes offer to pick up the check.
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Also read: 7 Ways Guys Need Romantic Superheroes Too
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What’s your take on what you just read? Comment below or write a response and submit to us your own point of view or reaction here at the red box, below, which links to our submissions portal.
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If I had a genie, I would wish to have a lover and a friend like Joanna by my side.. Lots of love girl .. you know the depths of our hearts.. Love you girl 🙂
I’ve seen so many men dismissing women’s feelings and experiences so many times on this site. I guess men like that deserve to be sent into the ALMB and never come back out. They are no one to ever ask for their feeling to be acknowledged, they are unimportant and should remain silenced. “(…) a hard break-up has the potential to destroy him the same way it would a woman.” I guess men get even more destroyed than women, in general. Many times some get so destroyed that they will also knock out and torture the ex, or even kill… Read more »
yes it also happen in the Nordic countries.
And in Finland it is called extended suicide when a man kills his whole family and then himself.
Instead of killing just himself he take everybody with him.
It’s not so much men feeling entitlement to women, but more that there are more males than females with certain issues that increase violence risk considerably. The Y chromosome is quite unstable and can lead to more of the impulse-disorders that lead to violent outbursts.
Potentially you may have somewhat equal numbers of men n women who in the heat of the moment want to act on it, but I’d say there are more men with the poor impulse control who will act on it.
#2: So true…!
I joined a karate class to learn how to defend myself from strange men….then in the course of learning karate, I got to know some strange men…somehow in the midst of beating up on guys in class and sweating it out once or twice a week, I learned about some of their most guarded vulnerabilities and insecurities…Sensei says that everyone’s anatomy has basically the same weak points…if you need to defend yourself, you have to hit hard on those spots….Little did I know that I would learn some of their softest spots over a few years…
Boy did you spark a chord! Spot on Joanna!!! At least from a guys perspective and subsequent conversation. you can this and sell it to your sisters??? Cuz alot of them are not getting this at all. Especially 4,5 and 6. 4 because we really care about the person and the personality first and foremost boobs and the rest of it are a given. But try and convince your sisters of this because they do not believe it in the least. 5 because there’s nothing sexier to a guy when his chosen loves him back with just being who he… Read more »
Women KNOW that boobs (or any other part of the body a man likes) is right there with personality… but that without the boobs the personality won’t even be noticed. We know this!
Then you’re incorrect because i’ve dated lots of women over the years that weren’t well endowed and loved them for their personality first. Maybe you just ran into more than your fair share of shallow men.
Btw. I think the right description is women THINK boobs and other accessories are the predominantly intetesting parts of them to men, vs personality. In other words, women really do think they are sex objects to men. Not me and quite frankly, based on observervation of most people i know i think i’m correct in what most men really think. At least on the inside. I think media has caused a real mess of a lie. That we buy into it all the time is what’s amaxing to me.
Totally good. The only thing I would add is that men may not express their feelings with the same forms of communication that women do, but that doesn’t mean that men are not expressing their feelings. There are somewhat different languages involved. In some cases, a man may be talking about his feelings, but women don’t see it because they speak a different kind of language about their feelings. Not seeing something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. So, even with more and better space for men to talk about their feelings (and men definitely need more of that!), we shouldn’t… Read more »
And, you brought up something from a woman’s perspective that I had never even thought of before: It’s not immediately reassuring to tell women that men are attracted to confidence. Telling someone to be more confident may sound even more hopeless than saying she has to meet a physical ideal. Pursuing the “perfect” body may seem somehow more concrete and measurable (some size # or weight #), whereas there’s no diet or exercise or scale for measuring personality. You can sculpt a body up to a certain point, but how do you sculpt a personality? Dang it, I didn’t come… Read more »
Many women seem to purse men who have huge incomes even though there are men who have confidence although they don’t have an obsession to purse the almighty dollar.
Too bad there are not more women who think like you do, Ms.Schroeder because than it would be more easy for men to cry, laugh, display anger when it is appropriate.
There are TONS of women who think like me – I actually think the majority do. But I think sometimes we are attracted to people who are somehow the opposite of what we want. Like, some trait that goes along with that insensitivity to men’s feelings is attractive in another way. IE maybe she’s a total badass and takes no sit, and certain guys like that, but maybe that also means she’s not so sensitive or empathetic.
I mean, I’m a badass who takes no shit, so I’m not saying that’s it. I’m just guessing here.
From my own experience, there are TONS of women who don’t think like you. Read the book Men on Strike regarding how men are being treated from the last 35 years.
Also check out Katheleen Parkers “Save the Males”
LOL most women think mostly like Joanna.
A man has to show in some way that he is also aware about this reality, as even many men believe the lies about themselves. So a woman can meet him halfway, if he really deserves it.
Meet him halfway IF he deserves it?
This is not the language of an evolved woman or man.
The “deserving” men I know and work with would have zero interest in a woman who chooses to give only 50% and then ONLY when she deems him worthy.
A truly worthy man (and woman) gives 100% all the time and expects the same from his/her partners. Men and women who don’t understand this principle are the ones who claim all the good ones are taken.
(Did I just start a fight?) ;^)
YES wellokaythen!!!!
It’s a LOT of pressure to just feel confident in our bodies. Honestly. At least the pressure to be “perfect” is something we’re used to. Then we’re supposed to somehow have this confidence we almost never see modeled to us. It’s REALLY tough.
Very well said. I can’t even activate the pointless nitpicking part of my brain. So, instead, I’ll agree with you even more: A lot of what you said seems to reinforce what I’ve thought for a long time, which is that many people in our society prefer to think of men as simpler than women. Many people from many parts of the spectra (men, women, liberals, conservatives, feminists, anti-feminists) maintain that men are “simple creatures.” That assumption is at the heart of a lot of misunderstandings and frustrations between men and women. Of course not everyone thinks men are simpler,… Read more »
Great article! Every point you made was right on the money. Especially “Whatever you do , don’t make fun of guy’s feelings.” Nothing will send him back DEEP into the ALMB quicker! That’s a total betrayal.
This: 5. Guys need affection more than they need sex. Dead nuts, balls on accurate, Joanna. Most women tell me I’m crazy when I explain this to them. They believe a man’s urgency toward physical intimacy is simply unbridled libido – and it’s extremely insulting. Non-sexual touch and intimacy can overflow our love buckets like you can’t believe. It lowers our sense of emptiness, increases confidence, helps us tune in and connect and helps our performance/confidence in the bedroom. A strong, feminine and loving woman has the power to support and inspire her man in hundreds of ways. And vice-versa.… Read more »
Thanks, Steve!!
Joanna once again proves herself to be the most valuable of the GMP team. When she writes articles like this I want to kiss her right on the mouth. I think just wanting to do that is still legal right…haha…well I’ll leave the thanks for her husband to perform.
Hah! Thanks PursuitAce!
Well said Joanna. 🙂 I’d completely agree on every one of these points. Hugs, and keep up the great work!