Published on July 23, 2025 7:10 PM GMT
Men and women frequently misunderstand each other's motivations. They generalize from their own experience and get confused when a person of the opposite sex is not like them. And while I, as a man, don't claim to perfectly understand what women want—or even why my fellow men want!—I've found I'm less confused when I think of women as wanting safety and men as wanting respect.
Of course men want safety and women want respect, so what I really mean to say is that women prioritize safety more than men do and men prioritize respect more than women do. That is, men are more willing than women to trade off safety to earn respect and women are more willing than men to trade off respect to increase safety. Thus, put pithily, women want safety and men want respect.
N.B. Throughout this essay, when I say "men" and "women", I mean modal men and modal women, which I would guess operationalizes to something like 80th percentile, leaving 20% space for exceptions and people who don't nearly fit within the sex binary.
I hope my claim is intuitive, but maybe it's not. In case it's not, here are some stylized facts about men and women that demonstrate the claim:
Men take risks for a chance at big wins. Women avoid risks and prefer stability.
Men play games that establish who's best. Women play games where everyone has fun.
Men brag about how hard they work. Women warn each other about burnout.
Men interrupt to make their point heard. Women interrupt to de-escalate tension.
Men give advice to demonstrate knowledge. Women give advice to prevent problems.
Men apologize by explaining why they were actually right. Women apologize for things that aren't even their fault.
Men fear being called weak. Women fear being called difficult.
Men's small talk is competitive storytelling. Women's small talk is checking if everyone's okay.
Men join clubs to rise in the ranks. Women join clubs to find their people.
Men lie about their accomplishments. Women lie to avoid standing out.
Men fight to be right. Women fight to keep the peace.
Parents worry about their sons being losers and their daughters being victims.
Men's midlife crisis: "Have I achieved enough?" Women's midlife crisis: "Is it finally safe to stop caring what others think?"
As I say, these are stylized facts. If they feel exaggerated, they should, and yet each contains a kernel of truth. There are of course exceptions to all of them, but together they point to a pattern, a pattern that seems to me to be explained well by women wanting safety and men wanting respect.
I'm also convinced because women prioritizing safety and men prioritizing respect makes evolutionary sense.
To wit, women can only reproduce if they are alive. The women who prioritized their and their children's safety went on to have more ancestors.
Men can only reproduce if they are alive and are respected, because if they aren't respected, women won't want to mate with them, because women want to mate with men who can keep them and their children safe, and respect is a measure of capability. This makes loss of respect an existential threat to men genetically on par with the loss of their lives. Consequently, men care as much or more about respect as they do about safety.
N.B. Men can alternatively turn to rape, but in the past, just as today, this option was looked down upon and kept in check by threat of violent reprisal.
So if women want safety and men want respect, how does this help us understand each other better?
For men, it helps to understand that women don't share their same strong drive for respect. This means women worry a lot more about safety, especially given that half the population is bigger and stronger than them and thus easily able to hurt them (seriously, the average man with no training can deadlift as much or more weight than most fit women who train regularly). Men need to understand that their behavior can easily scare women, even if that's not their intent, because women have to deal with the possible threat posed by every man.
For women, it helps to understand that men's desire for respect is a powerful psychological need and not mere fragility. A man who doesn't feel respected doesn't feel like a man, and many men who lose all hope of being respected commit suicide or start rebelions or turn to crime or take other drastic actions. Women need to understand that respect is not merely one of many things a man wants; it's the thing he most wants and that he needs to have a fulfilling life.
This framework for what men and women need to understand also allows me to offer some advice. Specifically, advice about those places where men and women fail to coordinate because they misunderstand each other. Specifically specifically, advice about dating.
Men, the most important thing you can do is make the women you want to date feel safe. If you ask women why they are with their male partner, they'll frequently include some version of "he makes me feel safe". But this means actually making women feel safe! Women can tell if you're faking or have ulterior motives. So don't. You have to be a man who's actually safe to be around.
Conversely, women, you must make the men you want to date and, importantly, stay with you, feel respected. A sure path to male unhappiness is for a man to stay in a relationship with a woman who puts him down. When men cheat, it's often because they don't feel respected in the relationship and seek that respect from somewhere else. If you find you can't make men stay, consider that it's because you're not showing him that you respect him (and if you don't respect him, don't be with him!).
I'll let you make up your own advice about work, school, and much else. But I will leave you with one more bit of advice.
Knowing that women want safety and men want respect won't magically fix anything. Nobody is going to change just because you know about their motivations. You have to take actions that demonstrate safety and honor respect. Men's need for respect and women's need for safety is ancient and hardwired. It's not going anywhere. And if you don't act like these needs are real, you're going to endlessly struggle to relate to and get what you want from the opposite sex.
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