The truth about most men

Inside every good man is a burning desire to be useful.

The Love Gap aims to explore overlooked truths between men and women to rebuild understanding and mutual respect.

One truth is that we men don’t explain ourselves very well. So here goes.

Freud may not have known what women want. But what most men want is to be useful, ideally to a woman. While there are plenty of male scumbags, they are a tiny minority that give all men a bad name. Forget them for now. We’ll deal with the scumbags in a later post. I’m talking here about the other 95% of ordinary, good men that most of us are lucky enough to have in our lives. Maybe for you, it’s your father, your brother, friends or sons. If you have a husband, hopefully he’s a good man.

Good men play for points. Points mean worth, value and the opportunity to be cherished. Even when men get it wrong, their intention is to provide and be of useful service.

In fact, the entire history of human civilization is one of ordinary men trying to be useful, directly or indirectly, to women. If it weren’t for women, men would still be living in caves. But in the male attempt to be useful to women, we now live in a world filled with hot water, electricity grids, scatter cushions and all the whatnot of modern convenience.

For the antithesis, consider a man who feels useless. Unemployed men. Men issued with divorce papers. Homeless men. Men in prison. Male drug addicts. Fathers denied access to their children. Lost louts hanging around causing mischief. Men who feel useless are taboo because they make everyone uncomfortable.

Why are men driven to be useful to women? To be chosen. Why do they need to be chosen? Because women are born useful and men are not. Aside from the many great things a woman can achieve, her simple existence offers the world a priceless gift that no man can match; the power to create new life.

In contrast, men bring nothing of innate use. Men strive to make something of themselves because they are less to begin with, either developing personal value or failing in life’s ultimate task. No woman wants a useless man, least of all to make a baby with. There has never been a shortage of human sperm, or eager donors. So men have to jostle hard on life’s tree to pass on their genes. Throughout time, the majority of men have failed in this. 60% of all men who ever lived had no children of their own. You have twice as many female ancestors as male. Women choose. Most men lose. This is why evolutionary biologists describe humanity as a multi-millennial breeding experiment run by women. As the old saying goes “I have the pussy, so I make the rules.”

As a result of this, the male drive towards useful purpose is not a choice; it is deeply coded into masculine endocrine systems and the cultural patterns that grew up around them. To become a useful man, every boy has to find some way of bringing forth his talents in ways that serve the world. Men who channel their energy in disciplined, creative ways are useful to the world and attractive to everyone.

Men who don’t find their groove, or lose it, fail far, fast and often fatally. Failing men eat themselves up from the inside. As their serotonin levels collapse, so too does their capacity to function at all, with male suicides doubling those of women. These evolutionary facts are not abstract. Men with nothing to offer get zeroed out all the time. It’s so brutal, society looks away.

This is why women are fundamentally the pre-eminent sex, with men the subjects of their choosing and submissive to their will. Don’t be fooled by appearances; the more tough and forceful the man, the more he needs the counterbalancing energy and depth of female power.

Good men give their entire existence over to the betterment of the women in their lives. Good men love hard and deeply, without hedging or fencing off their hearts. Good men know that their place is to serve the woman they love. Just because women aren’t here to serve men doesn’t mean the reverse can’t be true. The rules for men are different.

Men never get over the satisfaction of feeling like they’ve been a good boy. Remember that tingle in your tummy when you put your hand up in class and correctly answered a question? The spark for that tingle was the teacher’s recognition.

A man feels a sense of worth opening a stiff lid on a pickle jar for his wife or disposing of a spider for his shrieking daughter. These are all good moments for men. When a man stops his car to change a wheel for a woman with a flat tyre, it’s the best thing to happen to him all day. Men don’t do these things to keep women down, or because they think women can’t do them. It’s because they cherish women so very much, they want to be of service and recognized for making a woman’s life easier.

So if women want a #manhack, it’s this: Recognizing a man’s usefulness makes him glow inside. Recognition of a man’s useful service is the treasure beyond price. If a woman allows the men in her life to serve her, and recognizes their service, she gives them the greatest gift there is.

All good men want to be a good son, a good husband, a good lover, a good father – a good boy. Even if it’s a total pain in the butt and not something a man wants to do at all, if his duty is to his wife, girlfriend, mother or daughter, he will undertake almost any mission assigned to him.

Sadly, men often aren’t recognized for being useful, or at least trying. Having to ask for recognition stops the tingle happening, so we quietly double down, go harder, dig deeper, push through. At the inflection point of failure, we give up, act out and manifest unconscious resentments. But it doesn’t have to be like this.

So where’s the problem? It’s the pedestal thing.

A good man doesn’t want to put his partner on a pedestal; he actually wants to be the pedestal. In their heart of hearts, men are soppy, devoted, and romantic in ways that women leave behind in girlhood. For a grown woman to be as submissive-hearted as the man who loves her would be an insult to her own sense of self-respect. So she wrongly presumes the same of her partner. But his scowling face and nonchalant air are just a false front. All he wants is to know the mission, kill the baddy, win the points and get the girl.

The power differential is right there across our cultural narratives and behaviours, hiding in plain sight. Men kneel to propose to a woman. Men kneel to their queen before going off on their mad, heroic quests. These archetypal patterns run deep. Men never stopped kneeling before The Goddess. The women in a man’s life are physical manifestations of Nature herself, inspiring trembling awe and wonder.

Each sex thinks the other sees the world through the same eyes as their own, when nothing could be further from the truth. Women know this power they have over men, but its potential for harmony is disrespected, feared and dismissed. Men don’t even consciously recognize their humble state themselves, they just act it out without realising, while pretending to themselves and the world that they are immune. We have reached a state where feminine power over the masculine has become a taboo.

The upshot of this is that women have an emotional whip-hand that few recognize and exercise. Men are so helplessly dominated and enthralled by feminine energy, no one quite knows what to do about it. The only answers that the state, religions or feminism have come up with are different forms of shaming. At least women are waking up to the power that shame has held over them. Men are still asleep.

Shaming men for their unconscious eagerness is easily done, rather a cheap trick and especially devastating in the bedroom. Husbands want to help their wives have orgasms because it’s the most personal way they can be useful. It’s a towering feeling to facilitate female orgasm and a dismal thing to fail. The male ego is fragile because of its vulnerability to shame, which all comes down to a man’s sense of usefulness. This is why erectile dysfunction affects men so deeply.

Serving a woman’s needs is the greatest honour in a man’s life. Good men honour their mothers, wives and daughters because there is nothing more fulfilling than being useful to them. Ask a man to be useful, recognize his effort, and his world is a sweeter place. As is yours, if he’s been useful to you.

For women, this should be powerful information. Women who give men the chance to support them in meeting their needs are giving the gift of partnership. Partnership makes a man feel useful. Usefulness makes a man feel cherished. A cherished man can’t do enough in return.

But to be useful to her at all, a man needs to know what his partner actually wants and why. And perhaps here is where things so often break down between men and women. How well do women recognize their power over the man they love? How clearly do they communicate exactly what they want? How often do they expect their man to read their minds and hearts and deliver on expectations that aren’t clearly articulated?

This standoff isn’t the fault of individuals; it’s a collective freeze. Society is crystal clear about men misusing their physical strength. But the rules for how a woman should or shouldn’t use her female power are more complex, opaque and clumsily regulated, by both institutions and other women.

Long before a woman can express her needs to another, social expectations often suppress her from even knowing what she wants in the first place. And even if she does, a woman often feels uncomfortable sharing their needs, or projects her uncertainty onto men, with hinting instead of asking outright, or avoiding making requests at all. As a result, women often aren’t clear on stating their desires in ways men understand.

But to get what she wants, a woman must respect and identify her needs and invite her partner to provide for them. Unfortunately, what a woman may think obvious is often completely missed by a man, usually because he is focused on some other mission.

To complain that men should take the initiative is to miss the point. A man is always taking the initiative, just on some different mission to the ten other things driving his wife crazy. Once he understands a new mission is required, he will reprioritize the new objective. Men do one thing at a time.

All humans are target-focused, but male scope and attention is more singular, to the detriment of peripheral signals, while a woman’s focus is more diffuse. Men are always on a mission.

For men, vasopressin is the bonding hormone, while for women, it’s oxytocin. Vasopressin is the ‘teamwork’ hormone that bonds combat soldiers for life. Men have far more vasopressin receptors than women. Give a man a challenge to solve and he feels part of something that matters.

For this reason, men exist in a committed state of mind. Men are all about impact, making a difference, changing the future for the better. So if you want a man to do something for you, he needs to know how it would make a positive difference in your life. He cares less about the task than about who it benefits and how. The drive to earn recognition and appreciation is everything. It’s not about ego; it’s about earning personal worth.

This is why men place the highest value on truth. In needing to know the mission, they appreciate what’s real, however unsavoury that reality may be. Unfortunately, women, who want to avoid danger at all costs, place the highest value on harmony. This makes them seek to be attractive, gentle and charming, which can really get in the way of truth.

A woman who can’t express her sexual needs because she just wants to please her man is not giving him the opportunity to solve a challenge together with her. And this denies a man the chance to bond with her at an emotional level.

Our modern obsessions with intellectual power dynamics interfere with the deeper interplay of masculine and feminine energies. As a simple analogy, replace equity with the equine and consider the richness of the relationship between a rider and a horse. Men may be physically stronger than women, but so are horses. When a horse is broken in, even a young girl can ride and decide what they do, where they go and how she’d like to get there. Crucially, even though the horse is doing the physical work, it remains a willing and grateful participant in the relationship. Perhaps that’s why so many young women love riding, as a sort of practice for dealing with men. The thing that many women don’t seem to realise is that men positively like being steered and encouraged in ways that would offend many women. A large part of a man’s attention, focus and energy can be harnessed and directed in much the same way. Most of all, rather than feeling compromised, he’ll appreciate the clarity, feel useful and proud to be of service.

If men want to be a ‘good boy’, projecting female standards on to them just makes them into hairy, confused and unconvincing girls. Put your man to work for you. Clearly communicate how he can be a good boy for you, what his service will provide for you, how it will benefit you and the way you’ll feel as a result. And when your desires are met, recognise that. Feel the satisfaction of harmonious teamwork, look him in the eyes, tell him ‘good boy’ and watch him glow.