what we want

Yesterday, while reading a report on what makes a man attractive to a woman and vice versa in America, I began to think about how this would work in India. Do the laws of attraction differ from country to country? Or there are some common trends that are universal with the “Roving Eye”?

I thought the best way to find out would be to ask the men and women around… The exercise turned out to be most interesting and enlightening! I did find some commonalities among both genders such as a decrease in emphasis on looks and more attention on personality once the 2 people involved got talking. But the question still remained… Is the sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander as well? Do both men and women find similar things attractive in each other? Apparently not.

Everyone has his or her own list of priorities about what characteristics the other sex must have to be attractive to them. But statistics reveal ……….

What a man initially looks in women ranged from err… physical attributes, including eyes, hair even her voice. What is interesting is they may genuinely be interested only for a short span (sorry ladies) as their genetic nature (that’s the most genuine and convincing excuse I can come up with) inclines them to look around, unless looking for a stable partner.

On the other hand, women lay more emphasis on how a man dresses and even smells! Aftershave scored high on the attract meter. She may not be very particular about his looks, but prefers someone who is intelligent and well groomed. Even early on, women seek intrinsic qualities like courtesy and honesty.

If a relationship does manage to win the initial hurdle race, some views between genders still repell more than attract. One major differentiating factor turned out to be the discussion on the “girlfriend” and “wife” material. What I found most interesting was that men, in general, associate fun and good times more with girlfriends and stability more with wives (although deeper digging revealed that they wanted both, and their dream girlfriend is Preity Zinta while their dream wife is Rani Mukherjee!). Women, on the other hand, assume marriage to be the natural progession of a relationship and tend to look for similar qualities both before and after marriage.

Post marriage, the most common problems turned out to be that the husband and wife often became lax in their appearances and may lose out a little on the ‘fun’ part on account of stability. In the long term however as one of my male friend put it ‘Girlfriend is like a medicine with an expiry date, but as soon as she becomes my wife, she becomes like wine’.

There were ofcourse, some very fascinating exceptions that I came across. One woman I came across said she felt women stressed heavily on physical fidelity in a relationship, but did develop deep emotional bonds with men other than their partners, possibly without realizing it. The more I think about it, the more it seems true. Many women may not even conscious that they are getting to close to someone other than their partners on an emotional level. They may not consider it straying just because they are not physically intimate with the person.

Another interesting observation a male colleague shared while discussing the subject was that men may be finding it increasingly difficult to understand the modern, independent woman. This idea may have a lot of truth to it. Even The Week discussed the issue in a recent edition.

In the end, you may agree to disagree, but then I wish I could do the same….