Original  List:  (AGE 20)

1. Handsome
2. Charming
3. Financially successful
4. A caring listener
5. Witty
6. In good shape
7. Dresses with style
8. Appreciates finer thing
9. Full of thoughtful surprises
10. An imaginative, romantic lover

What  I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 32)

1. Nice looking
2. Opens car doors, holds chairs
3. Has enough money for a nice dinner
4. Listens more than talks
5. Laughs at my jokes
6. Carries bags of groceries with ease
7. Owns at least one tie
8. Appreciates a good home-cooked meal (pizza, chinese)
9. Remembers birthdays and anniversaries
10. Seeks romance at least once a week

What  I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 42)

1.  Not too ugly
2.  Doesn’t drive off until I’m in the car
3.  Works steady – splurges on dinner out occasionally
4.  Nods head when I’m talking
5.  Usually remembers punch lines of jokes
6.  Is in good enough  shape to rearrange the furniture
7.  Wears a shirt that covers his stomach
8.  Knows not to buy champagne with screw-top lids
9.  Remembers to  put the toilet seat down
10. Shaves most weekends

What  I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 52)

.  Keeps hair in nose and ears trimmed
2.  Doesn’t belch or scratch in public
3.  Doesn’t borrow money too often
4.  Doesn’t nod off to sleep when  I’m venting
5.  Doesn’t re-tell the same joke too many times
6.  Is in good enough shape to get off the couch on weekends
7.  Usually wears matching socks and fresh underwear
8.  Appreciates a good TV dinner
9.  Remembers your name on occasion
10. Shaves some weekends

What  I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 62)

1.  Doesn’t scare small children
2.  Remembers where bathroom is
3.  Doesn’t require much money for upkeep
4.  Only snores lightly when asleep
5.  Remembers why he’s laughing
6.  Is in good enough shape to stand up by himself
7.  Usually wears some clothes
8.  Likes soft foods
9.  Remembers  where he left his teeth
10. Remembers that it’s the weekend

What  I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 72)

1. Breathing
2.  Doesn’t miss the toilet.

However, relatively little research has been conducted on friendships between women and men. Although some studies have examined the effects of masculine and feminine personality traits on both platonic with romantic attraction, none to date have examined the effect of financial success on platonic attraction. Finally, no study to date has shown that socially desirable personality traits are necessarily more romantically or platonically attractive than socially undesirable traits. By presenting participants with males of contrasting levels of income, occupational status, social desirability and gender role congruence, the present study examined the effects of financial success and gender-role-related personality traits on women’s platonic and romantic attraction ratings of males.

Conflicting evidence of the attractiveness of masculine and feminine traits in men has been reported in the gender role literature. Some studies have found that women prefer stereotypically masculine men as potential mates; others have found that women are more attracted to androgynous or even feminine personality men. Despite this conflicting evidence, it still seems popular to believe that women in contemporary American society prefer men who are “sensitive,” or have feminine personality traits.

However, many sensitive men may not share this belief because of their personal experience. According to Ickes, “the gentle, compassionate man who reads magazine surveys indicating that his qualities are the very ones that most women prefer in a mate may be the same man who is repeatedly turned down by women who seek the company of more atavistic males.” Similarly, Farrell has stated that women “go for heroes while saying they want vulnerability” and later try to persuade their partners to become more sensitive and vulnerable, rather than initially pursuing sensitive and vulnerable men.

Ickes has proposed that such paradoxical behavior (he also gave examples of men’s paradoxical behavior) occurs because of an inner conflict in heterosexual men and women between genetic and past cultural influences and the influence of gender equality ideals in contemporary American culture. Feminine women may be inherently physically and sexually attracted to masculine men, yet the hierarchical nature of such traditional gender role dyads conflicts with gender equality ideals, leading to interactions that are less satisfying than those of non-traditional dyads.

If gender equality ideals are initially overwhelmed by the sexual attractiveness of a gender role congruent partner, then the influence of these ideals may be best seen in relationships in which sexuality is not an issue, such as friendships. Thus, the gentle, compassionate man Ickes describes may be more desirable as a friend to the same women who reject him as a date, while the more atavistic males Ickes describes may be less desirable as a friend.

Findings in a study by McCutcheon suggest some support for this interpretation of Ickes’ “fundamental paradox” proposition. He found that women were more attracted to feminine males than masculine males as potential friends but found no difference in their attractiveness as potential dates. Thus, women’s attraction to gender role congruent men may have competed with their attraction to feminine men in the case of dating, but not in friendship. The present study examined whether college women would prefer feminine trait or masculine trait men as potential friends versus potential romantic partners and whether feminine or masculine men would be preferred as potential friends versus potential romantic partners.

Ickes’ fundamental paradox proposition also suggests that a man’s financial success is important to women. Success and success-related characteristics such as ambition, earning potential, and earning capacity have been shown to be more important criteria for women than for men in their heterosexual dating patterns.

However, Sprecher’s findings suggests that these gender differences in relationship criteria do not reflect the actual importance of success-related characteristics, but only their attributed importance to men and women. Gender was not related to participant romantic attraction ratings of an opposite-gender stimulus person, but women attributed their attraction to earning potential more than did men. These findings seem to conflict with Ickes’ fundamental paradox proposition, which would have predicted gender differences in attraction ratings because of genetic influences, yet similar attraction attributions because of gender equality ideals.

Nevertheless, Townsend has suggested that unlike men, women with higher earning potential have a smaller pool of acceptable sexual and marital partners than other women because they seek men of equal or higher earning potential. Findings in a later study by Townsend and Levy suggest that the importance of a man’s success level is not limited to his desirability as a potential marriage partner. They found that while a man’s success level became more important to women as marital potential and sexual involvement increased, a partner’s financial success level was a more important consideration for women than for men in their willingness to engage in all measured levels of relationships. Despite the differences in their findings, the converging evidence of these studies suggests that financially successful men are more romantically attractive to women than financially unsuccessful men.

In conclusion, these results suggest that in a controlled setting where confounding variables are less likely to be present, women prefer feminine men over masculine men and that income is important only when choosing among men who all have desirable masculine or feminine personality traits. Although these findings have limitations of external validity, they do lend support to the notion that women are not primarily materialistic, but are more concerned with the relationship-relevant qualities of expressiveness in their choices of romantic partners and friends.

So who says being a “bitch” is a bad thing? Not these guys! Here’s what they had to say:

1. “The worst thing a woman can do is see a guy every night of the week. That’s how she becomes his good-time girl on his ‘reserve list.’ What will happen is, the guy will start coming over at nine o’clock and then he’ll leave by ten-thirty. If he gets access or what he wants from her anytime he wants it, he won’t have to lift a finger to keep it going.”
2. “Men are competitive. When he buys a car that is a limited-edition model, he feels like he has something special. Guys in the street who race cars usually race for pink slips, because they want to win, conquer and take the other vehicle. That carries over to women. A woman who is easy won’t scratch his competitive itch. When she stops expressing her opinion and starts agreeing with everything he says, that’s usually when a man starts to feel bored.”
3. “A woman should never go looking for him or chase him down at three different places where he said he might be having a drink. If he says, ‘Either I’ll be at the Cheesecake Factory or some bar on 26th,’ don’t try to track him down. If you want to be his ‘steady,’ let him come track you down.”
4. “My fiancée was the first woman to put me in my place. She constantly reminds me, ‘Hey, nobody’s forcing you to stay.’ If I tried to BS my way out of a situation, she’d say, ‘Let me save you the time and energy. Don’t give me that s**t, because I ain’t buying it.’ I know if she caught me cheating she’d smack me over the head with a frying pan. And I respect her more than any woman I’ve ever known.”
5. “If he can sum you up in one sentence, he’ll be bored.”
6. “Confidence is when you don’t try to interpret or overly process everything that you are observing out loud. It prevents the relationship from progressing on a normal course. For example, every time I gave this woman flowers, she would remind me that her ex stopped bringing her flowers. What she really wanted to ask was whether I’d keep doing it in the future. That made me feel like she didn’t really enjoy the flowers or appreciate the present moment with me.”
7. “A woman shouldn’t say, ‘You don’t call me enough,’ or, ‘You never tell me you love me.’ As a woman, your best asset is to be unpredictable. He should never be able to figure you out. When he can always predict what you are going to do next, you’ve lost him as a long-term partner. He’ll look for someone else whom he can’t understand or control.”
8. “If she feels strongly about something, she’ll have a backbone. This woman is the woman he respects. Not a ‘melba toast’ cracker that crumbles with very little pressure.”
9. “You have to seem like you aren’t giving yourself fully. ‘Here I am. Take me.’ Men want to be kept guessing. Think about it. When a guy picks out a movie, he wants to be on the edge of his seat from the very beginning. If someone doesn’t lose a limb or get shot and buildings aren’t blown up all within the first 20 minutes, he’ll think he got cheated out of 20 bucks.”
10. “A woman shouldn’t even crack a joke about marriage. I was on a second date with a girl, and we are both from Ireland. Back home we have a saying, ‘If you kiss me you are going to have to marry me.’ If you have the desire to get married, never let a man know that up front. If you do, it’s the same as handing him a manual and telling him exactly how to dangle a carrot and play on your weaknesses.”

From WHY MEN MARRY BITCHES by Sherry Argov. Copyright © 2006 by Sherry Argov. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.