What men want and need and what women want and need in a partner are not the same things…

Let’s see just how much of this post can be unfashionable.  If we are to get anywhere, eggs must be broken.

Not so long ago, Mistress said some words to me that resonated inside of me profoundly…the topic was love, and what men and women want.  I wished that I had written it down or recorded it (her voice is the most deliciously beautiful voice), but I did not, and neither she nor I remembered what she said after she said it.  That happens to me.

Ex-Mistress once tortured me with this (in a nice way)…as she asked me to repeat back to her things she just said, and I was totally and utterly unable to do it.  This is what happens to my brain when I am with a domme that is my domme.  It is what makes it beautiful.  There is a theme emerging here: jelly brain is the antidote to me.

We are told that men are largely visual creatures.  They care more about what a woman looks like, that she’s hot.  Some people might go further and say that there is a biological force in play, that her plump lips and sultry hips speak to her fecundity, ability to provide him with healthy children.  I’m not going there.  Why, because it is socially nonsensical…women are the ones who choose, whether they exercise that choice in a state of personal freedom or within the playbook of patriarchal privilege is down to the person and their circumstances.

Women like sexy too, but the emphasis is different.  Emotional availability is key.  Reliability.  Sense of humour.  Make her laugh and her heart will open to you.

I have been living this on a personal level, as the women in my life have multiplied.  A Harvard psychologist once posited a rather famous theory that attraction has many components to it…factors including income/financial stability, physical prowess, sense of humour, health, looks, all mattered, but just to different degrees to different people.  I can’t remember all the factors, but you get the idea.  Everyone places different emphasis on different things, but there are patterns across the sexes.

It is silly to reduce it to biology, as our social structure is much more complex.  I can draw parallels in my own life.  Yes, I still love really beautiful women.  I can’t deny that I find this attractive.  But it seems to be one of the by-products of taking oestrogen, that female brain cares about different things.  What I want is changing…and through those changes I can see what I think are differences between the sexes.

That someone is fun to be around and makes me laugh or interests me with their interests has firmly supplanted physical beauty as the first criterion.  That may in part explain the dissolution of my marriage, as this process seems to have started before formally beginning GAHT (gender-affirming-hormone-therapy)—my wife was becoming boring.  But this also explains the arrival of all these new people in my life, that they are just so darned fascinating.

But something else is changing too…and that is the nature of friendship for me.  It is applying to both new friends and old.  The emotional content and openness is going through the roof, and this applies to my male friends too.  Losing shame, being willing to talk about all the crazy shit that is happening to my body, the content of so many of these posts—waxing my privates, my face, and other more embarrassing topics, has opened doors to wonderfully open and sharing conversations with men and women alike. Being me is bringing those I should keep close, ever closer.

Do you know the song by Perruquois “Be Yourself”? I love the line in it which goes, “be yourself…everybody else is already taken.”

It’s beautiful.

What do I conclude?  Women value the tightness and nature of the connection much more than men do.  That the connection women want is to be fun, supportive, listening, caring, sharing…and every now and again, hot. And that being true to ourselves is the best way for this to happen.