I’ve always been inspired by women who are outgoing, very sure of themselves, and not afraid to be who they were, including their sex lives. Under their tutelage, I gradually shed my old self, hung out and socialized with them, and, over time, became the empowered, self-confident, and sexual woman I am today. Happy to share my insights with other women today!
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What Boys Want In A Relationship: Top 6 Things
Many ladies wonder what boys want or what men want in a relationship. This is quite understandable, given how reserved and emotionally unapproachable many boys and young men can be at first.
However, this doesn’t make it any less important for girls to understand their partners—it makes it even more crucial. So, below we’ll go over what are the key things a guy wants in a relationship. We’ll show how these have changed in recent decades, how different are relationship goals between boys and girls, and what are some of the key myths to watch out for.
6 Things Boys Want In a Relationship
What guys want in a relationship is quite simple and not too dissimilar to what girls want, at least not most of the time. Love, respect, acceptance, a good environment, a shared point-of-view and values, physical closeness, someone they can talk to, and someone they can grow with and have kids with.
Yes, pop culture and traditional gender roles can leave us to believe that a boy and a girl usually want different things from their lives together. However, it’s more accurate to say that guys and girls express the things they want in different ways and often define them differently, even when they technically define the same desires.
When it comes to universal things like respect and support, the main difference is between boys and other boys, not men and women.
So, whether you’re dating a boy in high school, young men in their 20s, or older guys, and you’re afraid you don’t know what they want from life and from you, here are the main things to keep in mind.
1. Feel Valued and Accepted
Every person wants to feel accepted and valued. Boys and girls, straight and gay people, lovers and friends—we all want someone who will stand beside us because they feel we are worth it.
Many men do often have trouble expressing this desire, however, as saying “I want to feel valued” often feels like the kind of stuff that would make them “less masculine” or “weak.” So, the woman in the relationship should know how to hear beyond the words he’ll often use. It’s important to understand that her partner is usually just hurt and needs to feel accepted then.
At the end of the day, both boys and girls alike want to feel valued in a relationship. So we all should know how to spot the signs of not being valued by your partner.
Related reading: 10 Signs You Are Not Valued in a Relationship
2. Nurturing Environment to Properly Live Out Their Emotional Lives
Men are often shamed for wanting partners who support them. This often leads to pejoratives, such as “he wants someone who looks like his mother” or who would “act like his parents.” And, it is indeed often observed and studied that boys mature slower than girls. However, this doesn’t mean that guys and girls alike don’t need a relationship that provides a nurturing environment when they can be emotionally open and feel loved.
In fact, there are many studies to also suggest that men are even more explicit than their female counterparts about their need for romantic fulfillment:
“It turns out that men typically outscore women on [romantic beliefs] measure. Men are also more likely than women to believe in the romantic notion of “love at first sight.”
Hatfield, E. & Sprecher, S. in Measuring passionate love in intimate relationships
This is to say, when a guy tells a girl he’s dating that he “needs to feel loved,” “he needs her support,” or “he wants their emotional lives together to be more intertwined,” it’s usually counterproductive to shame him that “he is too needy” or “he is his mother’s boy.”
3. Have Time for Their Male Friends and Hobbies
A relationship, even a good one, isn’t supposed to be all-consuming. It is quite normal for an adult man to want to have some free time to pursue his own dreams and hobbies, meet with a friend or two, have some fun, and so on.
This doesn’t mean that “boys will be “boys,” “he follows the bro code,” or some other cliche like that. It’s just normal for guys and gals to want to have their own ideas, goals, and lives beyond their relationships.
If anything, it’s sometimes girls who need to be more like boys in this regard. Society teaches almost every girl from an early age that she’s meant to be the home keeper, she’s expected to be take care of the family and the kid while the guy follows the course of his own life.
In reality, however, it’s simply healthy for people in any relationship to have their own personal hobbies and dreams too, and to want to spend a day out with a friend instead of at home. So, while this is something ladies should definitely remember about the boys they date, they should also take a moment to consider it about themselves too.
4. Security and Peace
A relationship is meant to bring a lot of benefits to our lives, and security and peace are at the very top of that list. Boys and girls alike need to feel secure from both physical, emotional, monetary, and other problems that might hurt them. This need takes many form and is often expressed in unhealthy ways.
If your high school boyfriend is jealous that you’re talking with other boys and hanging out with your friends instead of with him, then that does show that he doesn’t feel secure in your relationship. This doesn’t mean such a situation is the girl’s fault—this lack of security is often an internal problem of the one with feelings of jealousy—but it is a symptom of a security problem nonetheless.
Peace is another big issue. We often make the mistake of thinking guys want a partner who “won’t bother them much” and can’t wait to be left alone. This isn’t exactly the case, however. It’s more accurate to say that guys need to rest assured that most things around them are “fine” and don’t need fixing. If you were to bother them with something nice, cute, and fun, no guy would mind that.
5. Physical Intimacy
Passion and physical closeness is another big and obvious factor boys need from a relationship. They aren’t the only ones either – girls want that too, especially in recent years, now that ladies have been freed from at least some of the social constraints on their behavior.
However, it is fair to say that boys feel a stronger need for physical closeness – even if that’s only because society has given them the idea—fairly or not—to expect this from a relationship.
So, whether it’s simply “love play” things, such as sending pictures via e-mail or a dating app, or being physically passionate with each other the moment you fall in love, the fact that most men look for physical intimacy in their relationships should be the least surprising of all the relationship tips for the ladies we can list.
Related reading: Our Fav Dating Tips for Women
6. Respect
Respect often feels like a sort of dirty word when it comes from a man. It’s almost like a “boys talk” term for machismo. However, respect in a relationship is important for both partners.
We need to feel that our partner isn’t just attracted to us and loves us. We want to feel that they genuinely respect us and the skills, abilities, and things we bring to the relationship.
The gender discourse has improved in some ways in recent decades. But unfortunately, it has also become difficult to talk about certain things—such as the desire to feel respected. When a woman wants to feel respected, understanding is likely. But when boys talk about their need to feel respected, people may meet this with humor and disparagement.
React when your partner needs support. Make sure he feels respected. Be attentive when your male partner is feeling down, can be too shy to say what’s up, and indicates with his behavior what he needs.
3 Myths About What Boys Want In a Relationship
Modern culture is muddied with a lot of false notions about what boys want from their relationships. From high school teens to adult men, dudes of every age are bombarded by myths. They tell them about what they supposedly want and what feelings they should have.
And the vast majority of these things are rather silly myths. But every gal and dude would do well to get out of their head. This should be much of a surprise, given how many myths there are about relationships and dating, in general.
Related reading: 13 Relationship Myths: Your Checklist
1. They Want to Be With Young Women Only
There are men who are taught to only want to be with young girls and to ignore ladies over a certain age. This is true, and it’s a cultural problem rather than a biological one.
However, the fact remains that many other men out there know better than that and don’t ignore the ladies around them a few years after they leave school, as the myth goes.
2. Men Care About Women’s Physical Appearance More Than the Other Way Around
We can identify a grain of truth to this myth here too, which also stems from cultural factors. Today’s dating culture leaves many men feeling free to ogle the girls around them freely. In their turn, society usually expects girls to be more reserved.
Here are the two most popular myths in this regard:
- Men care about nothing beyond that once they are in a committed relationship
- Women don’t care about physical appearance either.
So, while contemporary dating culture does affect our behavior in often negative ways. But the men who “only care about your looks” are the exception rather than the rule.
3. They Want to Always Be in Control
As with the above, men are taught to be assertive and in control from an early age—way before school. This can and does lead to certain bad behaviors. But most adult men can relinquish control and live in a balanced and equal partnership with the woman they love.
Most men, especially from a latter couple of generations, are much easier to talk with, be friends with, and live within this regard. There are—and likely always will be—bad apples, but the times have changed quite a bit already.
Cherie Hamilton
