What Men and Women Want From the Opposite Sex
Throughout the 80's and 90's, author and sexual yoga teacher, David Deida, toured the United States interviewing hundreds of men and women to find out:
What do men and women want from the opposite sex?
From New York to Hawaii, he separated the groups, putting all the men in one room and all the women in another, then asked each group, "List the six most important qualities you want in an ideal intimate partner." The groups were then given more specific instructions:
"This list is only of those qualities desired specifically from their intimate partners or lovers—not those gifts they would also want from their friends, parents or co-workers. For instance, a woman may want her intimate partner to be loving, but she also wants her friends, her children and her cat to be loving, so 'loving' is not included on the list.
I remind them that although their ideal partner will have many more qualities than these six, these are the six qualities they would insist on in the creation of their ideal intimate partner. Finally, and this is critical, the whole group must agree on the same qualities. Any qualities that only a few people want are not included. All the women must come to a unanimously determined list in their room, and all the men must do the same in their room.
After asking hundreds of educated and successful women and men to make these lists at workshops across the United States, I have found that the results are amazingly consistent from city to city. What emerges are lists of qualities that describe the ideal man or woman, the intimate partner of our fantasies. ...
What exactly were the qualities that people most wanted in their intimate partners?
Virtually every woman agreed that foremost among the qualities they wanted in their man were:
Presence
Intelligence
Strength
Passion
Direction
Humor
The qualities that men across the country wanted most in their women were:
Beauty
Sexual openness
Trust of their (man's) direction
Support of their (man's) vision
Intelligence
Healthy radiance"
- excerpt from Intimate Communion by David Deida