What Women Really Want In a Man
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Lance asked me to contribute my thoughts to his topic about how to make yourself more attractive to the opposite sex, because he was inspired by my post, here. Lance is a pretty funny guy, and his website is pretty entertaining, and I had trouble resisting his charm.
So here is a lighthearted post about three things I think young women want from men; or maybe these are just things I want :). Please feel free to add your own thoughts about this topic in the comments section; and at the bottom of the post you can read some of the other participants’ posts, which I’m sure will be more racy than mine!
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A man who makes her feel special. Buy me flowers and I’ll ask for a vase. Buy me chocolates and I’ll gain two pounds. But write me a letter telling me how you feel about me? I would probably frame it. Making a woman feel special takes effort, but it goes much further than a corny, meaningless, hallmark-packaged “gesture” would.
A man who challenges her. Nice guys finish last, right? The truth is women are too independent for overly “nice guys” these days. I dated guys who treated me like a princess - very agreeable, always attentive. Then I met a guy who wasn’t afraid to tell me I was wrong and didn’t give me whatever I wanted - my husband. This isn’t to say be a jerk, but don’t fall over backwards either.
A man who knows how to “man up.” The term is confusing, because women still want guys who share their emotions and groom themselves properly. But women don’t think it’s manly to act overly macho anymore; they would prefer you have goals and learn responsibility. I could care less if you choose a career or a family to man up - the important thing is you actually choose to do so!
Further Reading:
- What Women Are Looking For - Hell, Men Too
- Why Don’t You Date Yourself?
- 5 Ways To Be More Attractive, Stop Sucking, and Dominate Your Life
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Monica O'Brien is the founder of Twenty Set, a website about personal and professional growth and development for the Millennial generation. She has been a blogger since 1998 when blogging was still in its “Dear Diary” form and in May 2007 began blogging for personal branding and profit.
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Lots of women can’t resist my charm, sister. Thanks for participating and providing the source material. All three of those points are spot-on, so I don’t have anything racy to add, although any raciness would probably fall under the umbrella of being more masculine. I’ll send you all the other links when they’re done. Salud!
Nice post! And I couldn’t agree more. Regarding number one…my boyfriend and I have saved every e-mail we’ve sent each other. He still has a funny text message I sent him over a year and a half ago saved on his phone.
And there are a ton of poor guys out there who have no idea that assertiveness is NOT synonymous with jerkiness. Le sigh…
Please stick to career topics. Even women don’t know what they want in a man, they can’t articulate it, and if they do, they end up doing a piss-por job of it (as you have done here). What you say you want and what you truly want are two different things. Stay on topic.
Honey and Lance, you guys are great! I think it’s funny that we all wrote basically the same stuff, even though both of you elaborated much more and came up with other things I didn’t think about. Fun stuff.
Casanova, 2/3 of the articles on Twenty Set have nothing to do with careers. It’s a personal development website.
Thanks for the comments!
@Casanova. Women generally DO know what they want in a man; they’re way better at that type of thing than us dudes. You, sir, need to read honeyandlance.com more often and stop being a chode. And clearly you need to choose a new name.
@Monica: I’m glad you enjoy us! We enjoy us a great deal, too
@Casanova: Just because women don’t want you, doesn’t mean they don’t know what they want. Self-improvement is arguably more important than career improvement, anyway. You’ll notice that none of our posts about attractiveness emphasize “awesome career” over interpersonal savvy. Check us out! Lance is great at advice for dudes.
Hehe…it’s funny that you mention the word chode. Do you have any material of your own?
We need more than “ten funky tips” to being a man that women love. And every single time a women has opened her mouth to try to explain attraction, she fails.
If I wanted “Lance’s” “expert” advice, I would subscribe to HIS blog. But I am subscribed to Brazen Careerist, so stay on topic! Did you offer any personal development here? Did you offer any methods for people to actually implement these tips? Or rather, did you offer ways in which men can attract YOU??
You did offer a caveat, it being a light-hearted post. But really, we would all be better served if you didn’t generalize like this or make base assertions of what women need. Men have been listening to women for years now, and look at the sorry state of affairs.
Here is another legitimate question: does the agreement with Brazen Careerist allow you to post whatever you want as well? Do all of your posts appear under the BC umbrella?
@Casanova: I did, indeed, get the word “chode” from Lance. I find it hilarious and it’s begun to find its way into my everyday speech since we’ve been friends for many years. And Lance and I blog TOGETHER, on the same website, with the same goal, so it’s not surprising that we share some views. I offer much more specific, implement-ready advice on our site, most of which is derived from my own successful LTR.
However, I understand that you’re a little one-track about your reasons for visiting this site and may have viewed Monica’s post as a distraction. I do feel compelled to observe that if you use similar interpersonal strategies in your career as you do on this site, that might be something to look closely at.
Here’s another (sadly, not original) piece of advice: “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” –Robert Frost
Sorry it got all disagreeable up in here, Monica
It’s all in good fun Honey. Your blog will have its own detractors as well. It’s healthy to have people challenge your views, if not, you will never grow.
And I appreciate Monica’s efforts.
I just know that the word chode was coined by the dating industry, from which you get a lot of content.
And what I’m saying is this: if you want to give your advice, go ahead and do it.
But don’t expect your readers to not ask for the specifics, or challenge the views. You guys are hardly experts in this topic, so I’m wondering with what kind of authority do you attack others on behalf of Monica? Simply because she did a little bit of promotion for your page doesn’t make you right.
My main issue was that I subscribed to Brazen Careerist “the company” that marketed information on career related stuff. Instead I get well-intentioned - but ultimately weak - advice on how to court women. I don’t want that. I want to know how Monica built her site and career.
I will leave the how to court women stuff to the experts - clearly not you.
Nicely done Monica. It’s awesome to read all of the posts and see everyone’s take on pretty much the same topic. All different yet all dead on and full of wonderful advice!
Casanova, you are right. I didn’t offer any tips to implement what I said. Instead, I linked to other people who have entire blogs dedicated to this (ie: The Art of Manliness). It’s your choice to visit them.
I understand if you subscribed to Brazen Careerist and got this post - but I want to encourage you to discuss this with Brazen Careerist. Judging from my experience working with them, I think they will be very open to your criticism and suggestions.
To answer your question, I do choose what I publish on this website. As I said before, this is a personal development website, and in my view, relationships fall under that umbrella. You may disagree. I’m glad you picked up on the “lighthearted” disclaimer though - I added that in because I foresaw this situation.
If you’d really like to know how I built my site and career, stick around. Or read ProBlogger (for the site questions) as I told everyone exactly how I’m trying to build my blog in a post this week. For the career stuff, I write openly about my entire life, which I think my archives will demonstrate. Thanks again.
Monica:
Thanks for the response. I will mention this to Penelope, and I will stick around.
Even though I may have been bothered, I still think you should be commended for posting about this. Personally, I don’t want to be receiving this stuff in my feed, but it’s good that you are able to have all sorts of readers and delve into all sorts of topics. There will always be disagreements, and that’s what’s so good about the Internet. It is an ongoing conversation.
But there’s also a dark side to the Internet. People who have been in a few relationships, people who purchase a few dating products, think they now have the authority to lecture people over the Internet. They consider themselves “experts.” And people actually start believing them.
And God forbid you should question them!
My advice to you is to post links to sites that are genuinely effective, and not have the “experts” from said site come over to attack YOUR readers. Brazen Careerist readers.
Your thoughtful and graceful response is a testament that you can defend yourself against comments on your own. I don’t need to publicly mention my “status” as a lady man or that women can’t resist me. I don’t need to create an online identity and a whole blog to get validation.
Why did I get attacked in this thread? Because when Lance finds someone that doesn’t feed back to him that false self-image that he has carefully built up as a pimp, he calls them chodes. Because when Honey thinks she knows it all because she’s had one succesful relationship, she will try to diminish anybody with a different opinion.
Nice.
Just think twice about who you choose as “experts” and who you introduce to your larger BC readership. It reflects badly on the company as a whole.
So my advice: Don’t become an expert. Always have that beginner’s mind, and try to learn from others. Run away from those who have claimed to find the truth. And if you really want to know where to truly get quality dating advice, I can point you in the right direction. But so could Honey and Lance, who seem to rehash materials from other sources.
Thanks for the post.
- Casanova
Casanova, glad to hear you’re sticking around. I understand you consider yourself a Brazen Careerist reader, but I hope eventually you’ll consider yourself a Twenty Set reader too.
Just to touch on a few of your comments:
I stand by everything in this post and all others, because that’s what blogging is all about. One person starts a topic and everyone else adds their own opinions and experiences. I don’t expect my readers to like everything I write or link to - that’s just the way blogging goes.
On the subject of expertise, I wrote about it - the post before this one actually. I hope it will shed some light on my views towards my own expertise.
Thanks again for visiting, and I definitely appreciate you taking the time to give me feedback.
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With that said, I’m closing the comments section on this post. Please email me at m at twentyset dot com if you’d like to continue the discussion. I’d be happy to talk more via email.
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