<h3>Foundation</h3>

The principal emotion I encounter when some fellow asks me for advice about relationships is confusion. They don't understand what happened (or what didn't happen).

Part of this is due to some common misguided assumptions about What Women Want. The conventional wisdom is that what women want is commitment, security, and someone with "a good sense of humor". This is the same conventional wisdom that claims men only want sex from a relationship. If you've read this far, you know this is not true. And yet you believe the first part, that women are primarily driven to tie down a meal ticket.

The variations are legion; "Men give love to get sex; women give sex to get love", e.g. Simple, succinct, intuitive, and wrong.

Women have sex because they enjoy it. They don't give it, they get it. The vast overwhelming majority of men aren't trying to get laid; they're trying to find a real heart-to-heart connection with someone. They may not realize it, and may never admit it, but solitude is what man fears most. And the smell of that fear is pure pussy repellent.

It's men who typically fall off the cliff at the earliest stages of a courtship. Scares the living hell out of the women when they do it, too. They thought they were having some laughs, scratching an itch, and maybe even getting a friend out of the deal. All of a sudden, the guy is talking about The Future and how many kids they're going to have. Don't act like I'm talking about someone else; you know it's true.

Honesty, respect, courtesy; these are the minimum daily requirement for any relationship with any person. Saying these are what women want is like saying oxygen, nourishment, and shelter are what people want. These are must-haves. If you aren't prepared to furnish these, you don't need my advice; you need therapy. And probably medication.

What women want is validation. They can't get this from themselves, no matter how many affirmation prayers they recite, no matter how many feel-good self-help books they read, no matter how much Oprah they watch. They can only get it from us.

Why can't they get it from their girlfriends? To a certain extent, their girlfriends are part of the equation. The validation only counts if it registers in their personal social ambit. If a man validates in the forest and there are no girlfriends around to witness it, does it count? No.

Allow me to share a hard truth with you, fellows. The most any of you are ever going to mean to the woman in your life is as a fashion accessory. You must look good on her arm (or she isn't going to wear you). I don't mean this in the strictly aesthetic sense; you don't have to be handsome, or rich, or powerful (although it never hurts). But you must be enviable. You have to be a better man than her best friend's husband or boyfriend.

And here's the problem most men have with attracting and keeping quality female companionship; they give the validation away, right at the start. They are solicitous, deferential, accomodating, flattering, and obedient. They pursue. The object of all this adoration enjoys the attention, of course, and may even throw the ardent swain an affectionate bone from time to time. But mostly she will simply extract as much of the validation as he is willing to fork over for free, smiling shyly and batting those baby blues, while looking over his shoulder at some other fellow.

And what is that other fellow? Indifferent. He's not offering to buy her a drink, he's not trying to dazzle her with some clever line, he isn't making any sort of play at all. No, mostly he's carrying on a pleasant conversation with another woman. More than likely, he's listening to the other woman, which is what passes for pleasant conversation these days. If he's smart, he's actively listening, and like a chess player, is already thinking a couple of moves ahead.

What is he listening for? The joke answer is "for about twenty minutes", but the truth is he's qualifying her. The assumption is that since she's female and breathing he wants to get into her pants. And if he's 19 (or emotionally the same), yeah, that may be true. But if he's had a couple of girlfriends in his life by now, he knows that casual sex with someone he doesn't know very well inevitably leads to More Trouble Than It's Worth. So he's trying to find out if she's going to be worth the trouble.

In truth, every woman's favorite subject is....herself! (That's true for men, too, as it happens, but immaterial.) The best way to learn about a woman is to ask her about herself. She'll happily supply you with plenty of information. If she runs out of things to say, you can get her started again by simply asking another question. It's astonishingly simple.

The whole time she's talking, he's becoming more and more attractive to her. First off, her last boyfriend (and yes, he's going to hear all about him) wouldn't listen to her at all. Secondly, as long has he's not saying anything, he's not doing anything wrong.

And by that I mean that he's not validating her. The fact that she's telling him her life story is evidence that she wants him to ask her out, which means the answer is already yes. Asking for her number is the validation she's seeking, which is why so often the number is bogus. She's collecting scalps. Keep your hair.

"Waitaminit, Axon," I hear you thinking, "that's pretty cold. Surely not all women are that scheming, conniving, game-players!" I'm not saying she's doing it on purpose, deliberately, and with malice aforethought. That's just the way she's wired. A woman can be intelligent, kind, sexy, thoughtful, generous and emotionally stable, but she's still reflexively seeking validation. It's a primal urge, and is critical to the survival of the species. And the sooner you understand that, the sooner you will find happiness with your special someone.