“The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a woman want?’” – Sigmund Freud Can our man help, maybe? Hmmm…

A shop. women go to these places. A lot.

Well, I think it’s safe to say that women don’t really want a coke fiend with a strange cigar obsession. Indeed, one can only feel pity for the object of his amour. In a letter to his fiancée, Martha Bernays, he outlined his seduction technique: “Woe to you, my Princess, when I come… you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle girl who doesn’t eat enough or a big wild man who has cocaine in his body.”

We’re going to have to look elsewhere for an answer. I gathered together some of my women friends and asked them what they really wanted. I now know this was a mistake. It was a bit like being in the eye of a hurricane as they went into a hyperdrive of gesticulating and frantic talking – I scrawled as fast as I could, but I was overwhelmed.

SEX, CHOCOLATE, SHOES

Once the storm died down, I looked at my notes. Sex, chocolate, shoes. This made some sort of sense. Sex is a universal drive, something pleasurable to do when there’s no football on TV. Chocolate is also straightforward, because eating it, apparently, releases the same chemical mixture in a woman’s brain as does a kiss.

Clearly, the answer to the great mystery lies in shoes. There was only one thing to do – visit Rue Neuve. On a Saturday afternoon.

I made my way through the river of bodies like a salmon swimming upstream. I examined several shops closely, noting that the more expensive a shoe was, the less there was of it, demonstrating the law of diminishing returns. However, it wasn’t what I was looking for. There was something missing. Feeling stressed and confused, I made my way to Media Markt and looked at gadgets until I felt better.

RETAIL THERAPY

Never ger between a woman and a shoe shop.

Refreshed, I went back into the fray and started looking at the people, not the shops. I noticed there were many groups of women going from shop to shop, but only occasionally buying. The penny dropped. It’s not shoes, they are only the object, the real answer is retail therapy. The dictionary definition is clear: ‘Retail therapy is shopping with the primary purpose of improving the buyer’s mood or disposition.’

Well, it has to be said that it didn’t seem to be noticeably improving the mood or disposition of many of the shoppers I saw. Perhaps it’s just something we men do better. It’s a scientific fact that men are more efficient shoppers, but when we go out for a bit of retail therapy our partners call it ‘going drinking with your mates’, as though that’s a bad thing.

Knowing I was on the verge of a breakthrough, I searched for somewhere quiet to think and, somehow, ended up in a bar where I found some of my male friends. Using the power of synchronicity, I asked them what they thought women really wanted.

Blank looks. Really blank looks. Looks that I’ve only ever seen before on Homer Simpson.

I called up a woman in her 40s for some advice, hoping life experience could enlighten. She explained that women wanted to be looked after, cared for, to be independent and so on. There was a clue in here somewhere, if only I could find it. Then she said: “I’m in my 40s and what I want now is different from what I wanted when I was twenty.”

Somehow all the pieces were there but, how could I complete this psychological jigsaw? More beer.

I’d learned that what women want changes, and more importantly, is contradictory in nature. Women expect men to know what they want, even if they don’t know themselves, yet also expect men not to know. Puzzling.

Then there was a flash of enlightenment, a moment of nirvana.

We’re using the wrong tools to try to discover what women really want. Psychology just doesn’t work when you approach a woman’s consciousness. We need a new psychology, a quantum psychology that can handle opposite states of mind and matter. With this exciting guide we can state that women really want more. More what? Whatever it is they really want.

Now, ain’t that the truth.

Published in Together Magazine