Men Hold Femininity in High Regard
One man in Lake Tahoe told me,
“If women fully realized their worth as feminine beings to men, it would completely change the way they see themselves. Their self-esteem would soar. Women would begin to value their natural femininity like never before.”
Contrary to popular stereotypes, men don’t see femininity as less valuable than masculinity. In fact, men are far more “feminine-friendly” than we are. Good men view women as different but equal to them—not inferior to them. Most men hold femininity in high regard as a strength. When we operate from our feminine energy, men adore us, honor us, and want to care for and protect us. They value and respect our femininity because nothing in the world can take its place.
A healthy man is not attracted to subservient doormats. A woman with low self-esteem has little to contribute to his life. She drains his energy while he tries to prop her up. Men don’t seek women who are mere decorations without opinions of their own. Only a highly insecure man would seek a woman with such low self-esteem, no matter her looks. Being soft and tender is not the same as being a doormat. When we offer our feminine tenderness to a man who loves us, he doesn’t think less of us—he adores us.
A masculine man wants a feminine woman who is his valued counterpart, not a bimbo or a pushover. Nor is he looking for his gender twin—a masculine woman. He wants a woman who will complement his masculinity with her femininity.
Although these qualities of softness and tenderness may seem insignificant to us because they are natural and effortless for us, they are precious to a man. Our feminine softness proves valuable because it soothes his soul and contributes to his sense of well-being. Our femininity makes a man feel masculine, and his masculinity restores his energy. Without a feminine woman in his life, a man often lacks inspiration and may settle for an unheroic life.
Think back to a time when you saw a feminine woman’s influence over a man. Perhaps it was a gentle, petite woman who calmed her gruff man (who was twice her size) simply with her soft tone and tender touch. It seems illogical, but the female’s tenderness works like magic on men … and they love it.
Men Love the Subtleties of Our Femininity
I was surprised to learn how much the simplest, most unassuming nuances can have the biggest effect in captivating men. Men take note of certain things we would never expect. While men don’t always observe or focus on our imperfections, they do notice small gestures and qualities that make us enchantingly feminine to them. Here are some examples:
The twinkle in our eye when we communicate our interest.
That certain look that speaks volumes.
The way our strands of hair frame our face and shoulders.
The delicate movements of our hands and wrists.
The carefree way our hair blows in the breeze.
The uninhibited giggles we let out when he says something humorous.
The back of our neck that’s exposed when our hair is pulled up.
The delicacy of our fingers holding a fork or wine glass.
The radiant smiles we flash him.
The soft whispers we breathe into his ear.
The dangling of a shoe when one leg is crossed over the other.
The strap of our dress or blouse slipping off our shoulder.
The mindless way we twirl our hair with our finger when we’re nervous.
The way we sing like a songbird from another part of the house.
The fresh smell we have after a bath.
The clean scent of our hair just after it’s washed.
The simple movements and gestures that men find endearing require little or no effort on our part. To men, femininity isn’t so much what we do, it’s who we are naturally, authentically.
A number of men told me about moments from the past with feminine women that they’ll never forget. One man remembered holding his girlfriend’s hand and twirling the ring on her finger as a way of connecting while they listened to a monotonous speaker. Another remembered seeing a redhead from behind in a grocery store and being in awe of her beautiful red curls. Another man remembered an Italian woman he encountered in Rome who gave him a warm and unforgettable smile as she walked by.
From the way men talk about these memories, I’ve been repeatedly awestruck by how these special little moments seem embedded in men’s minds forever. Even when we may not be aware of it, men notice us. When we realize that men appreciate the little things about us, it will give us greater confidence and make us feel more beautiful. And when we feel beautiful, we are beautiful!
Jim, an engineer from California, once remarked:
“I will never forget a waitress I observed at a restaurant in a shopping mall. She had a good body, looked like she was very active, not at all overweight, and not over-the-top sexy either, just genuinely healthy-looking. She was running around helping everyone she could. She was laughing, she was happy, and the customers seemed to love her. I noticed a couple of the male waiters watching her, as she was covering far more tables and customers than they were. They were grinning. I felt that this was a woman that I could like. Her attitude was extremely attractive to me, and she was wonderfully feminine in my eyes. What I didn’t tell you is that apart from her attitude, and an athletic, womanly body, she would be considered quite homely, perhaps a 3 on a 1-10 scale. But she didn’t know it! From her attitude you would have thought that she felt she was the most beautiful woman in the world!”
Why Men Stay Quiet
But why don’t we know more about what men find feminine? Why haven’t men shared their opinions with us? I’ve learned men do have definite thoughts and feelings regarding femininity, including what they do and don’t like, but because they’ve been ridiculed and put down for giving their opinions, they’ve grown cautious. Men know what they like, but they often don’t know how to articulate it. Many men believe women simply don’t care about what men think.
In today’s hypersensitive political climate around gender issues, men have become careful about what they say. They might try to verbalize their ideas in a politically correct way but still offend someone. Men fear being called “sexist” or other derogatory adjectives that result in their being alienated from women. Men love and need us, which they will freely admit. Therefore, being cut off from us is the last thing they want.
Men’s ideas, opinions, and attitudes regarding femininity have been buried for so long that they might deny having any opinions at all. They need to feel safe with us before they will open up. They need to know we won’t get defensive or verbally attack them. When we ask a man if he likes a certain outfit on us and he responds in a general way with “Sure honey, you look good in everything you wear,” we can be fairly sure he’s trying not to upset us by saying the wrong thing. But the truth is, men do have preferences.
Men Are Energized by Our Femininity
Mother Nature engineered men to desire us and to feel energetically charged around us. They say they can feel this charge just by thinking about us! Nothing makes a man feel more masculine than being with a feminine woman who recognizes and acknowledges his manly qualities and gives him her nurturing, loving, soft energy. Her femininity brings extra vibrancy and life to his masculinity. But a woman who forsakes her femininity reduces her ability to energize a man, weakening the bonding force between them. Like a trellis without a vine, a man can feel his existence becoming barren, gray, and harsh without the nurturing presence of a woman in his life. It’s been observed time and time again that married men are happier and live longer than unmarried men. We are the icing on their cake, the cherry on their plain vanilla ice cream.
Our Femininity Brings Out the Best in Men
Each man has both a toad and a prince residing within him. From his birth, every man has a seed of greatness planted in him, and our femininity is the water that nourishes those seeds. Nearly every man in history who has accomplished greatness had a loving and supportive woman standing by his side.
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p; We inspire men to accomplish more than they might otherwise do on their own. Long ago, men hunted for the sake of feeding their families and tribes, not just themselves. Do you ever see a bachelor living in a huge home alone? Sure, you might, but it’s rare. A man living on his own will often live a meager Spartan existence, but as soon as he falls in love and has a woman by his side, he will feel energized to be more, do more, and have more. When a man is with a woman who believes in him, he wants to provide the most he can to give her a better life.
A feminine woman can awaken a man’s tender, romantic side. Her femininity arouses the man’s honor and chivalry. Remember, his chivalrous acts are not done out of obligation but out of desire because he adores her and wants to put her on a pedestal. It’s important that we appreciate the little courtesies men show us.
Ken’s story:
“When I was seventeen, my parents divorced and I spent the summer with my father in another city where I met Sandy, who was sixteen and my first girlfriend. We spent many days and evenings together eating at restaurants, seeing movies at the drive-in, going to the beach or anywhere else to have fun. We spent countless hours in my father’s car, talking and kissing and hugging and expressing our love for each other until we had to go home. It was heaven. One day at a park, Sandy challenged me to a race. She said she was fast, but I knew I was faster. She took off, and I trailed behind out of her vision. She was pretty fast, I thought—for a girl. As we approached the end of the race, I shifted gears and blew past her, finishing several yards ahead at the finish line. Sandy threw up her hands in exasperation. “What was that?” she asked. I shrugged and laughed. She walked over to me, wrapped her arm around my waist, kissed my neck, and said, “You are super fast!”
At that moment, I was putty in the hands of her femininity. I had never felt such a surge of masculinity in my life. On our last date of the summer, when I had to return to my mother and school, we pulled up in front of Sandy’s house. I leaned over to kiss her, but she threw her arms around my neck and begged me not to leave. She was sobbing, and though I was startled, I enveloped her in my arms to soothe her emotions. I also wanted to cry but I didn’t because I had to protect her. I said I loved her and assured her I would return for Christmas vacation, but she continued to sob and I kissed the tears from her soft cheeks. That was more than half a century ago, yet I can still almost taste her tears. That was the summer I first felt the incredible allure of femininity, and with that, my masculinity emerged.”
Men Are Saddened by Women’s Unwarranted Insecurities
Because we females are relationship oriented, we have a natural desire to be liked and to belong. Madison Avenue is amply aware of this aspect of our biology and takes full advantage by feeding us endless ads of perfect airbrushed images. Consciously or subconsciously, we compare ourselves to these examples of beauty and come up short. Over time, these exaggerated images assault our self-esteem by contributing to our feelings of insecurity.
Then, to encourage us to buy more and more, the appearance industry cleverly sells our “confidence” back to us through endless fashion fads, beauty products, skin treatments, weight-loss pills, and plastic surgeries. Since these products don’t give us what we really need — our femininity, chasing the dream they promise never ends.
While many of us don’t realize how the beauty industry has shaped us over time, men are keenly aware of how much we have been exposed to and influenced by deceptive advertising and rampant materialism. Men say they feel saddened when they observe the powerful effects the media—especially women’s magazines—has on our self-worth. According to many quality men I talk with, we could do without most of these beauty products and services and still be genuinely attractive to them. The fastest way for us to opt out of this vicious cycle of insecurity is to realize that our most attractive asset is simply our radiant feminine nature.
As one man put it, “A woman’s smile is more valuable than millions of dollars’ worth of purchased beauty.”
Men Would Die for Us
Men instinctively consider a woman’s life more precious than their own, which is why men are naturally driven to protect us. When we are in need, in trouble, or in danger, men’s protective natures are triggered. Men don’t offer their protection out of obligation or niceness in order to lure something from us, but because they have a desire to protect us. A man feels fulfilled when his woman is safe and thriving.
When it comes to a life-and-death situation, a man will unhesitatingly put himself in harm’s way to protect his woman and his family. Good, masculine men don’t decide to be heroes; it’s just their nature. From an early age, they know it is their role to protect. Men fiercely protect women just as women fiercely protect their little ones. Mother Nature set it up this way for the survival of our species. Men protect the females because they give birth to, and nurture, the men’s offspring. Keeping the female alive and out of harm’s way is a male imperative and essential to our continued existence. This protection by men is one of the reasons we’ve survived.
Femininity Is Timeless
In the not-so-distant past, men and women revered femininity because they understood its worth in mutual attraction, courtship, love, and marriage. Femininity was the cornerstone of a successful, functioning society, but especially since the 1960s, we’ve dishonored it.
We have confused tradition with nature. While traditions change over time, nature stays consistent for millions of years. Although we may now view femininity and masculinity as traditional social constructs, these essences are aspects of our nature. Femininity is a timeless truth that won’t disappear. Men of all ages innately understand this. Unlike fashion fads, femininity won’t go out of style. We can try to shame it away, but Mother Nature will always bring us back to what’s real.
The diminishment of femininity in recent decades has hurt men and women alike. We often hear about how women today are less happy than their mothers and grandmothers. We women have paid a high price by abandoning our true selves. The cost has been immense, especially in our love relationships with men.
As feminine women at our core, we will never feel deeply happy unless we reawaken our feminine nature, because that is where our heart lies. As long as we hide behind a mask of masculinity, we will remain unfulfilled because that’s not who we are. Men are waiting for our return.
Recap
Men know what’s feminine, just as we know what is masculine.
Men are the beholders of femininity; it’s the basis of their attraction for us.
Good men respect our femininity; we have gifts they appreciate, value, and need.
Men see women as more precious than they see themselves.
Men are less critical of us than we are of ourselves.
Men who choose us aren’t looking to change us.
Men are starved for our femininity.
Men adore the little things we do.
Our femininity brings out the best in men.
Men are saddened by our media-induced insecurities.
Good men will protect us at any cost.
Explorations and Journaling
Have you ever considered femininity from a man’s viewpoint? If so, what did you discover? If not, why do you think you haven’t?
Ask multiple men what they find feminine and desirable in women.
Think of the men in your life and the ways they’ve adored you and protected you. Did you show your appreciation to them? If so, how? If not, why not?
Was there ever a time you refused a man’s chivalry? If so, why?
Have you ever tried to change a man? If so, how did it work out?
What beauty products or services have you felt compelled to buy from magazine or TV ads? Did those items/services raise your self-esteem? Did they help to bring you love?
Can you think of a man who died saving the life of a woman? Describe the story.
Chapter 3
Understanding the Nature of Men
“If there hadn’t been women we’d
still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.”
– Orson Welles
Learning the Foreign Language of Men
To fully understand femininity from a man’s perspective and learn how it complements masculinity, it is essential that we first understand the nature of men. Masculine men share certain common traits regardless of the culture or era in which they live. Knowing about these traits will give us a greater appreciation of our differences and enable us to have more satisfying and passionate relationships with the men in our lives.
Understanding the nature of men can help us avoid unnecessary misunderstandings that often bring trouble to our relationships. Men don’t see the world in the same way we do, nor would we find them attractive if they did. Nature designed men and women with two opposite strategies to handle life’s challenges. These differences serve to attract men and women to each other for mutual support, inspiration, and procreation. They also allow men and women to contribute a diversity of approaches to life’s problems, which gives us better results than if men and women had the same perspective. In short, men and women speak different languages. They are motivated by different criteria. Countless relationships could be dramatically improved with the awareness of this information.
Women often ask, “Why should we learn about men? Why don’t men learn about us?” It makes more sense for us to first learn about men because they are far less complex to understand than we are. Therefore, it’s easier for us to learn their language than it is for them to learn ours. Once we better understand how men are different, it’s natural for us to adopt a more appreciative attitude toward them. In turn, men will feel more loving and adoring toward us.
Simply Feminine � Surprising Insights from Men Page 3
