Best selling author Dr. Warren Farrell’s Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say is filled with lot’s of valuable insights for both men and women. It’s given me much to ponder.
One line of thought that I would like to share with you stems from his thesis that men seek women for sex while women seek men for success. Put even more bluntly, men seek “sex objects” and women seek “success objects.”
Farrell’s would agree that this maxim describes just a “tendency” that does not sufficiently reflect all of the more complex and noble aspects of human relationships.
Clearly, men want more than sex and women want more than financial freedom. On the other hand, it is sometimes useful to boil down even the most complex systems to the most base generalities.
Acknowledging that caveat–and with your promise of tolerating the following over generalizations–let’s follow the lead of a few of these stereotypes to see what insights they might give us.
First, it it noteworthy that Farrell’s formula can apply to both people who are avoiding marriage and people seeking marriage.
For example, men avoiding marriage are attracted to beautiful women who offer sex without commitment. Women avoiding marriage are attracted to wealthy men who offer gifts, meals, housing, travel, and excitement without commitment.
For those seeking marriage, men marry seeking sexual security and women marry seeking financial security.
Marriage as A Promise of Security
Again, if we temporarily ignore all the many beautiful and important nuances to look at the differences in focus on sex and success, this is difference between what a bride and groom hear when they make their marriage vows:
- a groom hears his bride promising to do her best to always be available to him for sexual intimacy, and
- a bride hears the groom promising to do his best to always provide the necessities of life which will allow her to form their household, raise their children, and pursue all of her dreams for a happy productive life.
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2 thoughts on “Sex, Success, and Security”
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When a woman can bolt, file false accusations and clean out a man for life, while he pays for her kidnapping his children in the process….well, all bets are off.
There are still subintelligent submissive men out there, though, don’t worry. Men are still marrying like cattle strolling into the slaughterhouse and up the kill chute.
That’s totally true The same need but difference expression