10 Questions Women Have Always Wanted To Ask About Men — And What Guys Really Think

A few months ago, I sent out an email to my email list requesting that my female readers ask me absolutely anything they wanted to know about. Within 24 hours, I had received hundreds of responses.

The #1 most common topic among the questions women asked me to answer? Men.

More specifically, women wanted to know what guys really think. What do men think about women? How does sex feel for men? Do men really respect women, or do they just tolerate them so that they can have a regular drip-feed of sexual intimacy in their lives?

Honestly, I really appreciated the directness of the emails. I guess hiding behind a screen gives you a certain sense of anonymity, and so the women emailing me didn’t feel like they had to hold back at all.

RELATED: 20 Little Things Women Do That Guys Secretly Love

So, without further ado, I would like to share with you my responses to some of the most common (and some of the more entertaining) questions that I received in those hundreds of emails about what men want and what men think about a variety of issues.

10 Questions Women Have Always Wanted to Ask Men And What Guys Really Think

1. What do men want from women?

“I would love to know what men really want from women. In bed, in life, in everyday. Most importantly in bed.” — Tina

While men certainly aren’t all the same, and individual variation always needs to be taken into account, there are definitely some important themes I can touch on here. The vast majority of men (which, from now onwards in this article I will just refer to as men) really aren’t that hard to understand, once you understand a few core concepts about the reality of being male.

First, men crave freedom. And what freedom means to any one man changes from person to person. One man might crave the freedom of being a perpetual bachelor and travelling the world and never having a relationship last more than three months in his entire life.

Another man might crave the freedom to live out his life’s work, with as few disruptions as possible, from the time that he discovers his life’s work, to the day he dies. You don’t need to search for long to find many famous examples of men who toiled away on their magnum opus until the day they died.

But one thing that I have seen in my male clients, disproportionately so compared to my female clients, is that they burn with passion for their path, their mission, their purpose, their life’s work. As David Deida has written about extensively, the feminine in every person craves love and connection, whereas the masculine in everyone craves a sense of purpose above all else.

So, more often than not, men crave a woman who helps/adds to/is supportive of his purpose in the world. So make sure that you partner up/have partnered up with a man whose mission in the world is one that you believe in.

Next, you ask what men want from women in bed.

Predominantly, men want a woman who is enjoying herself.

Here’s a quick, immediately actionable tip. Want your man to perform better for you in bed? To bring you more of his energy? Make more noise. That’s right. Simply moaning more will inspire your man to step up for you in the bedroom.

Now, don’t fake it. Your lying energy won’t inspire him. But if you are experiencing real pleasure, let it be known by letting your voice be fully expressed.

It is my firm belief that pleasure being experienced through your body is more pleasurable to men than even the heights of pleasure in their own bodies. The feminine is a potent conduit for pleasure and expression.

Ever wonder why some men can be so obsessed with getting their partners to orgasm? Sure, part of it is ego. They want to make sure that she is having a great time so that they feel lovable and okay. But more importantly than that, is that they experience pleasure more fully when you are the one who is experiencing it fully.

To put this in another context, a man simply witnessing a feminine-associated woman dancing with abandon is more nourishing to his masculine heart than his own dancing could ever be for himself.

Don’t believe me? Ask any man who has done any amount of work (aka not just a basic, pump-and-dump loser who toils away at a desk job that he hates and doesn’t know up from down) and he will confirm what I am telling you.

(I will touch on more aspects of what men want in the following answers.)

2. What actions really annoy a woman's partner?

“What do women do that annoys their partner?” — Libby

The biggest thing: not trusting them. All men want to be with a woman who trusts them. And not being trusted by them hurts in a visceral way.

Trust matters so much to men because trust is an indicator that their partner has confidence in the core of their masculine essence. Their directionality. Their decision-making ability.

The hurt of not feeling trusted would be the equivalent to a man not responding (or explicitly shaming or speaking against) his female partner’s radiance. If a man commented on how ugly or smelly you were… or if he made fun of the way that you danced or the sounds you made when you orgasm, these things would hit deeply. So it is for men when they feel like their women doesn’t trust them.

So, trust them if they are trustable. Practice surrendering more deeply on a regular basis. And, if you really don’t trust them, and they have continually made decisions that you don’t agree with, then don’t be with them.

The other thing that I think is worthy of being mentioned here is that all men will resent the mirror of their partner, at least occasionally. No matter how much work a man has done on himself, there will still be times where he registers his partner’s care for him, at least 1 percent, as "nagging."

Because men crave silence, peace, stillness, freedom, there is something about being in relationship with a woman that is like voluntarily chaining yourself to the antithesis of stillness.

There is a part of your man that sometimes wishes he could just get drunk, let go of all responsibility, and hook up with an easier woman who doesn’t challenge him or call him to his greatness in the slightest. Any man who denies this is either disconnected from his more animalistic self, or is lying to your face.

And yet, his higher self craves the feminine mirror. Women make men self-conscious, in the most literal sense.

Men become more aware of themselves, and all of their short-comings, when they are around a woman. And so any man who complains of a woman who is nagging at him is simply a man who is afraid to step into his power and potential in life, nothing more.

3. What are men insecure about?

“What are some of men’s biggest insecurities?” — Anna

Men are people, and thus have the insecurities that any people would have. But there’s definitely a few that are more common for men.

The biggest ones that I hear from the mouths of men most often are the following: how competent they are as providers/earners, how competent they are as lovers (sexual stamina, satisfying their partners fully), and how competent they are at finding/attracting a mate (if they are single).

Obviously there is a huge factor of self-selection bias here. In other words, the types of men who I talk to most frequently are men who are proactively seeking out sex and relationship advice. But this data is also informed by the men in my men’s group and the men in my life in general.

But those are the core themes that I am most privy to. Insecurities surrounding "can I attract a partner that I feel aligned with?," "can I provide for my life/my family?," and "can I provide an amazing sexual experience for my partner?"

Anything past that (their beer gut, whether or not they can throw a football, etc.) matters less. But the core theme is competency. While women are raised and conditioned to be pleasant and attractive, men are primarily conditioned to be effective and useful.

4. How do men feel about successful women?

“Men say that they want a woman who is successful, has her own money... but I’m a career woman and I feel like no guys are interested in me. What gives!? I followed the whole third wave feminism ‘I don’t need no man’ script, amassed my own wealth, and I feel like it bit me on the ass. What would you recommend for someone like me?” — Angelica

This is a great question. And to answer it, I want to provide some context on it by swapping the genders and giving an alternative example.

Across an average population sample, there are many women that say they want a man who is in touch with his emotions. What this looks like in reality is that he would be able to express his emotional reality, cry at the occasional movie, and be sensitive enough to emotionality in general that he could always feel into what she was feeling.

And while this is a beautiful, well-intentioned concept, a certain percentage of women who claim they want this from men aren’t actually able to be with it because they have not done their own deep inner work. When men show up in their lives who are fully in touch with their emotions, they might feel repulsed or turned off by their emotional sensitivity.

And so it is with a certain percentage of men who say they want to be with a powerful woman.

The idea sounds nice. And it might sound progressive and of-the-times to say that you want this. But that doesn’t mean that every man who says he wants this will be in touch with his own internal sense of power enough to be able to be partnered up with someone who makes more than he does.

Ultimately, this all comes back to our relationship with ourselves.

A woman can be with a man who is deeply in touch with his emotions (and is in the habit of expressing them) when she has accepted the full range of her own emotions, and when she can source her own sense of stability inside of herself.

Just like a man can be with a woman who makes a lot of money and/or has a high-powered job position when he is in touch with his own internal power source and doesn’t need to feel worthy/powerful as a one-up-one-down covert competition with his partner. Such a man knows that a powerful partner doesn’t threaten his sense of power, but rather, if anything, helps to bolster it.

So, to directly answer this readers question, I would say that: 1) I would recommend doing some honest internal searching to see if there’s any part of you that feels wrong, guilty, or bad about wielding such power, 2) accepting/loving the fact that you hold the position that you do, and 3) going out into the dating field fully expecting that there are men who will absolutely adore this part of you, and accepting nothing less in a partner.

In short, you need to make friends with your power. That is the place from which you will start meeting men who also love and appreciate your power. Because those men absolutely exist. And any part of you that believes otherwise is simply a projection of you not being in love with this part of yourself.

Also, another factor that has been at play for the majority of career-minded women that I have worked with is that they have a difficult time dropping into their softness when they get home.

It isn’t that being rich, or powerful, or driven is a deterrent to sustaining a relationship with a man, it’s that the women in question might not be able to switch from work mode to relationship mode, and without being able to drop into her more surrendered feminine flow, she will continually struggle to meet someone who can hold space for the totality of who she is.

To any woman who struggles with dropping into her softer, feminine essence, I would recommend having a transitioning ritual like a bath, or dancing, or stretching/moving your body in some way that gets you out of work mode and into your body.

RELATED: What Men Really Think About Women Who Make More Money Than They Do

5. How do men deal with a partner who has a low sex drive?

“I absolutely adore my husband. I respect him so much. He is the perfect partner to me. But I feel guilty because my sex drive has taken a significant dip in the last few years. I recently launched two new businesses and a lot of my energy has been taken up by that, and I feel guilty for not giving him the sexual intimacy that I feel he deserves. Also, he is gorgeous, takes care of himself, etc. and is very attractive to me. It’s just an issue of my low desire. Any tips?” — Amelie

Men’s primary work, when it comes to sex, is cultivating stamina. And not in terms of being able to mindlessly pump away for hours, but rather, cultivating general bandwidth so that they can hold a strong container.

Yes, stamina relates to being able to influence when/if they ejaculate, but it also refers to how much emotional bandwidth they can hold for their partner to be her fully expressed self.

Women’s primary sexual work is cultivating their ongoing sense of sexual simmer. The Taoists often referred to men as fire and women as water, and it is up to women to keep their water’s ‘simmer’ level up. So, it simply sounds like you have been flooding your body with stress hormones for the last few years and your dip in libido makes a ton of sense.

If your honest-to-god truth is that you don’t want to be sexual right now and you would rather pour your energy into your businesses, then the move would be to let go of the guilt (which is just a sneaky way of making ourselves wrong) and let yourself be in business mode.

But if you would rather funnel some of that energy back into your relationship, then that’s going to take some reprioritization of your values.

The short answer: find ways to work less, and be in your body more.

Less 12 hour work days, more setting aside time to self-pleasure. Less going to bed absolutely exhausted, more time going to bed with some energy left in the tank to cuddle/be affectionate/be present with your partner. Less taking work calls at the dinner table, more bubble baths, long walks, and movement practices.

You get the idea. Less time in your head, more time in your body. That’s how you turn this trend around.

6. What does it take to have a relationship with a man?

“I’d love to know how to manifest and sustain a relationship with a healthy man.” — Kali

First, believe that these types of men exist. Feel it in your body. Know, without a shadow of a doubt, that these types of men are out there, even if you have never met one of them in your life thus far. Nothing I say past this point matters if you don’t engage this step honestly.

If you secretly believe that all men are simple Neanderthals and that there aren’t any men who can truly meet you in the depths, then you will find ways to sabotage or stop your search early by settling for someone who isn’t your equal.

Next, constantly be seeking out any places where you may still be carrying heavy elements of self-rejection. What parts of yourself do you routinely make wrong? Engage talk-based therapy. Note, own, and drop any beliefs you carry about yourself that do not serve you. Be kind to yourself in your daily life.

Then, cultivate your openness and receptivity. When a woman is open to relationship, it can be felt by men. Be easy to approach when you see a man that you feel drawn to, while maintaining your standards completely.

Be easy to get along with, but hard to impress. Similar to a queen.

The queen of a kingdom is approachable, accessible, and kind to the people of her land, but that does not mean that she would be best friends and close confidantes with just anyone. Cultivate your queen energy, while also being completely open and accessible to the right men.

As for how to sustain a relationship with a healthy man, be a healthy woman. Do your work. Take responsibility for your projections. Make generous assumptions about his thoughts, words, and actions. If you feel that he is a trustable man, trust him fully. If you respect and support his direction in life, then support it fully.

You sustain a relationship with a healthy person by doing everything anyone should do when they have met their match. You love them fully and let them love you in return.

7. How can women make men feel safe when labeling a relationship?

“I have been in a semi-relationship for the last year. We have been friends for longer, but we have been on and off lovers for the last twelve or so months. He has been divorced several times and is generally gun shy about naming that what we are in is a relationship. How can I help foster a safe relationship where he doesn’t feel so afraid of me? I am genuinely not trying to trap him. How do I help him go from this current pattern of hot/cold/hot/cold... to just being there for me consistently, and feeling comfortable enough to call me his partner?” — Maria

There’s two layers of feedback that I would give to this.

First, if he is truly dead-set on not being in a relationship, and you want a relationship, then I would recommend believing his words and moving on. He is telling you that he doesn’t want a deeper commitment, and has shown so consistently, so honor your standards and find someone who wants to be with you.

Second, I will address how to get a man to commit to you in general. I like to think of people as fairly simple, and fairly logical. In my world view, people do everything that they do for a reason that makes absolute sense to them, whether they are aware of their internal process or not.

The equation that men run through their minds when it comes to deciding to commit to a partner or not is simply: “Will the benefits that I glean from this relationship win out over the amount of headache that I will endure to be in said relationship?”

For example, if a man is deeply in love with his career, he will run a cost/benefit analysis on whether or not entering into a relationship with you will result in a net-positive win for his career. If you need constant hand-holding, and the emotional processing is incessant, and you take up so much of his time and energy that he can no longer engage in his life’s work, then you will not make the cut.

But if he sees all of the benefits that being in relationship with you would bring to his life, and the amount that those things would add to his career (and to his life in general) is greater than the energetic costs dating you would take, then he will happily be two-feet-in in your relationship.

Does this sound decidedly unromantic? Too heady or formulaic? Well, too bad. People can be calculating and cold. But I would encourage you not to see it as heady or transactional, but rather, a simple diagnostic tool that he uses to test for alignment in his life.

Men who are up to things in the world run this diagnostic tool on everything in their lives, not just their romantic partners.

Does eating this food serve or inhibit my ability to maximize my greatest potential? Does maintaining a friendship with this man serve me or limit me? Does waking up at this particular time serve me or limit me?

So why would there be any different assessment tool for his life partner? And so, the action step that you can take away from all of this is simple. Find a man whose life you believe in, see ways in which you could add to his life, and then communicate those benefits to him directly.

RELATED: 3 Sweet Ways To Make Sure A Guy Feels Safe With You

8. Do men really care about physical imperfections?

“Be honest with me. How much do men care about physical imperfections (wrinkles, cellulite, love handles, and all that)?” — Kim

It depends completely on the type of man that you are referring to.

If you are in a relationship with a man who is predominantly driven by the tangible, superficial world, then those things will matter very much. He will have his identity and his ego bolstered by the fact that he is with a smooth, conventionally attractive and acceptable partner.

If you are in relationship with someone who values more than just the superficial world, and who sees himself as more than just a body or a wallet, and who sees you as more than just a body or a sex toy, then those things won’t matter in the slightest.

Ultimately, a man who has done any amount of deep inner work recognizes that he is not in a relationship with a body. He is in relationship with a heart, a soul, an essence. So he fully expects that the body will fluctuate and change with time, because all anything ever does is change.

So, speaking personally for a moment, not only do wrinkles, cellulite, love handles, stretch marks not turn me off, I actually prefer them because they speak to a body that has lived and experienced life. I would rather a body that shows depth and experience than a smooth, new body that hasn’t yet lived a fuller spectrum of experiences.

Similar to how I feel a deeper sense of trust and comfort in conversation with people who have experienced great loss or grief, as opposed to someone who has yet to be put through the paces of those parts of life. As always, this stuff is all just a hall of mirrors.

If you carry self-rejection around certain parts of your body, then you will be more likely to meet and attract partners who share that same judgment about those parts of your body. Conversely, when you come into a place of love and acceptance of your body, you will be much more likely to call in romantic partners who love and accept your body in a similar manner.

9. What does it mean when he wants to be alone?

“Why does my partner seem to need so much more alone time than me? Is that a guy thing? I know that his work is really important to him, but it seems like sometimes when I am telling him about my day he can just hit this internal wall and his eyes start to glaze over and then he needs to decompress from our conversation. Might sound tangential but it’s related. Do guys simply need more alone time than women? Or is it more something to do with masculine/feminine energy dynamics?” — Rachelle

When women need to dig up deeply personal insights, it is often best for them to go deeper into their community to talk it out with close confidantes. whereas when men need to get in touch with deeply personal insights, it is often best for them to take a break from people and be completely by themselves.

Now, I am not advocating that men build a life of isolation (as this is one of the core things that leads to the high suicide rate among men), but it is one factor as to why men might need more alone time than most women.

Furthermore, men often have more steps that they need to take in order to get in touch with themselves.

I know 10x more women who can drop into a place of feeling connected to their bodies, or connected to something that they would consider spiritual and/or their higher selves, whereas men tend to need to work at this with a bit more intention and effort.

So if your partner seems to need a lot of time alone, he could be in a time of transition and simply needs to quietly be with his innermost thoughts (that come up as whispers instead of clear directions), or he could just be on the more introverted side of the spectrum and doesn’t need as much social stimulation.

10. How can you get a guy to be open about changes in the bedroom?

“How do I bring up things that I would like to change about my sex life with my man without hurting him or making him feel insecure? Is there a sexier way than just saying ‘I would like it better if you did X instead’? I have had negative experiences in the past where the guy just did not like being told what to do and so I feel nervous about bruising his ego, but I also want to be a stand for my pleasure, and, ultimately, our relationship.” — Marissa

As long as you dance around his feelings, you will be enabling his smallness, as well as your own.

As long as you avoid difficult conversations, you will be someone who avoids difficult conversations.

And as long as he is in a relationship with a partner who isn’t willing to ask for more, he will be (knowingly or unknowingly) delivering sub-par pleasure to said partner.

This question feels akin to when people ask me: “How do I ask someone out without being rejected?”

Stop trying to avoid the difficult emotions and just do the thing.

If he gets so hurt about the idea that he hasn’t been an 100 percent perfect lover for you without needing to be told what to do, and he hates getting feedback so much that he breaks up with you on the spot, well then, there’s your answer. And I am assuming you don’t want to be with a partner whose ego is that fragile (because otherwise you wouldn’t be asking such a question).

Sit him down at a time where you are both feeling calm, resourced, and connected to each other, give him the heads up that you would like to talk briefly about your sex life, tell him a few things that you do enjoy about your sex life, and then ask him for the changes that you would like going forward.

He can’t read your mind, but he wants to win when it comes to loving you well. So give him the tools and directions so that he can start winning more often than not. If he cares about you and your pleasure more than he cares about safeguarding his ego, he will be grateful that you brought these things to his attention.

Another thing to consider is how are you bringing this up to him.

Are you bringing it to him from a grounded and loving place, or is sideways/buried anger slipping out in the way that you are naming it? There is a huge difference between saying, “I really love when you do this thing” (even if they’ve only done it once) versus, “I need you to do X more!”

People, by and large, respond to positive reinforcement much more than to being told how they’re messing up or lacking. So speak to him in proactive, rewarding, complimentary ways, and you’ll get much faster results than if you’re telling him that he’s messing up and you’re pissed off at him.

RELATED: 8 Different Types Of Guys — And What Your Attraction To Them Says About You

Jordan Gray is a five-time Amazon best-selling author, public speaker, and relationship coach with more than a decade of practice behind him. His work has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, Forbes, The Huffington Post, Self, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Business Insider, Yahoo!, Entrepreneur, Women’s Health, YourTango, Thought Catalog, Elephant Journal, The Good Men Project, and countless other publications around the globe.

This article was originally published at Jordan Gray Consulting. Reprinted with permission from the author.