All a girl really wants is for one guy to prove to her that they’re not all the same.
― Marilyn Monroe, American actress
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Well, I cannot speak for all women but I do know that what I want in a man has evolved with my growing up. At different stages in my life, at different versions of me, the more enlightened I become as a woman, I look for different things in a life partner.
That constant evolution of self is perhaps why relationships and marriages don’t last – people change, and discover who they really are the longer they live.
They stop getting sucked into the hype of ‘what should be done’ and ‘what must I contribute to society” and start looking at ‘who am I and what am I doing for myself’ and ‘I don’t care what society expects of me, I care to be happy’.
That is why the older we get, advertisement hype does not sell anymore. We don’t care to wear branded products, we don’t care what car we drive as long as it gets us from A to B.
We don’t care what people think about us and don’t feel peer pressure anymore. We start caring about living life as it should be, and with that comes the choice of who we want to spend the rest of our lives with.
We realise that too often we compromise being with who we really want to be with because of social constructs.
If we strip away all the layers of conditioning on how we are supposed to look or behave to society as a whole, and just focus on what’s inside – the soul, the essence, the spirit within the body – we would all understand better and know without reservation who is it that we connect best with.
However, when we are young, women are told that we should marry fast and produce babies. Why exactly this urgency, no one really questions.
It is just something we are supposed to do, according to the elders. Start a family quickly.
Then quickly become a slave to the bank your whole life, paying off that loan you take for your fancy wedding, mortgages on properties and cars bought, paying of your credit card bills, paying off exorbitantly high university fees for your kids, paying multitudes of bills, and then planning for your retirement and after life.
So when we are young we look for a man who can save us – women are inherently conditioned to look for rich partners, because money seems, at this point, to be the crux of all life.
We are told to snag rich guys, older men if need be, or those who come from rich families or a guy who is financially superior on his own.
Some women, like me, will look for a man who can build a future together with her. There are those who fall for ‘love’ – someone who will give them the attention and care they were starved off as a child, or gives them the validation they want to hear.
Then at some point in the middle of having children and playing house, being the nurturer and building a career, some women realise that what they really want is a man who gets them, who hears them, who protects them, who can be that partner-in-crime to laugh with and cry with, someone with emotional intelligence, who can make love to their minds as much as to their body and they understand that intimacy is actually a sharing of minds, fears, ambitions and feelings.
At about this time, the man realises this too. But life has made them run on a treadmill of just ‘doing’ and the relationship becomes more of a commitment and responsibility than love and appreciation of one another.
And thus marriages either fail or go on a superficial automode to keep up appearances.
And later on in life, one realises that it was never about the other person. It was all about finding happiness in yourself and doing ‘you’.
Take a step back and look at whether you are compromising yourself for someone else, if you are, you are inwardly unhappy , and that is slow poison in a relationship.
So when a woman is finally wiser and smarter, what she really wants in a man is someone who shares her passion, and can communicate in a similar wavelength at all levels.
Someone who knows exactly what he wants and is in awe with her essence, everything she is and represents. She wants a partner-in-crime to go on adventures together with her, perfectly aligned and putting her above everything else.
As she will, him. It does not matter then if he is rich or poor, old or young, handsome or ugly – for she sees beyond the physical social construct and connects with his soul.
Women are, contrary to partriarchal public opinion, quite simple actually and easy to understand.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune. Feedback can reach the writer at beatrice@ibrasiagroup.com
