Micah Stipech

The other day I was working on the computer in our graduate lounge when two female classmates turned to me with exacerbated looks. “What is the deal with guys?” they asked.

“What do they want? I mean, why do they act like they are all interested and then in an instant freak out and start avoiding you?”I hemmed and hawed through a couple minutes of chair swaggering ramblings about commitment and clingy women before I confirmed what my two friends suspected: I was a guy, and I had no clue. Oddly enough, I have thought more about love in the last few months than I have in my entire life, and I’m more confused than ever. As an aspiring psychologist I’ve decided to do what it seems every good psychologist does. I’m categorising what men want into three hierarchical levels. They form a triangle. The three levels are biological, significance and meaning. The hierarchy shows value (the higher the level the more value and the more human), and the triangle shape shows the empirical reality that most members of my gender including myself are more apt to hover towards its bottom.

The biological level is Sigmund Freud’s level. This is the most obvious level and also where most men function. Mainly instinctual, we don’t really need our brains to function here. We simply want to propagate our genes. Women wonder why we choose the bad girls over the nice ones. Here we are attracted to what our environment has taught us to desire. It seems that our current society has reevolved to functioning on this level. This level holds our strongest reinforcers. Our friends and idols pat us on the back and make us feel like men when we master this realm. Here men want their girl to look like the magazine cover girl, act like a James Bond girl and don’t want responsibility at all!

Alfred Adler’s level: Here men want prestige and security. They want a woman who gets them thumbs up from buddies when she leaves the table to use the washroom. Here men will gamble on a dangerous investment because she brings such winks and inquisitions from those who hold the approval that really matters to them, their comrades. Men get in trouble here when they shop for a woman like they shop for a car. On this level men want to feel like men, and nothing makes a guy feel more like a man than having the girl who all the guys are checking out come and sit on your lap. This is where things often take an ugly turn. A whole new world: Besides being a crass, egotistical, pizza eater. In this realm men enjoy giving more than receiving. They do things because they want to, not because they are supposed to. They find meaning in experiencing and encountering someone. Men in this realm just want to be with you, not to get something or to keep you from going out with your friends. Here their loved one’s best interests are paramount. In this realm we don’t love you because you are beautiful, but you are beautiful simply because we love you. This is where love songs are written, selfless acts are committed and men become truly human. We transcend all of what we have been conscripted to be, and become what we might and ought. Men like this come from a different plant altogether. Here they give selflessly, shares mutual purpose, sacrifice and are much more mature than the above two levels of men. Men really do desire to love at the highest level. The problem is that not enough of us realise it, nor are we challenged to find it.