Prospective husbands are often less vocal about what qualities they would like to see in their wife. This silence leads to a lot of anguish and confusion about whether men truly know what they want. But men do know. They know their wife when they finally meet her. Anyone before that is given a subpar treatment.
I am going to try to break this silence in this article with some qualities that most men would agree are essential when considering a lifetime with their girlfriend. This discussion is based on years of mature conversations with my fellow (black) men. It might not reflect the whole spectrum of preferences among men especially of different races, but they are a good starting point for most cultures.
Intelligent
Most women are highly intelligent but have been socialized to play small.
Intelligence tops the chart. Most women are highly intelligent but have been socialized to play small. Let me put this in context.
A woman’s intelligence is evident in her love of complexity. For example, for a woman to decide what to wear, she applies the laws of combinatorics to determine in how many ways her tops of different colors can be matched with her plethora of jeans. In making this decision, she has to eliminate some color combinations that don’t work. Following this, she then ranks her top choices and then embeds these ranked choices in a Bayesian decision theoretic framework with a weakly informative prior to determine the posterior distribution of her final choice. She then decides whether her final choice would affect her relationship with her friends and whether it will help her stand out with little to no idea of what her friends are wearing. Woow, I’m really sorry. I went down a mathematical rabbit hole for a moment. Did it sound complicated? Yes, right? Well, that’s the kind of mental maths a woman does to choose an attire in the two hours that she’s late for her lunch date. This was only a simple example to illustrate my point. Now, back to serious matters.
The intelligent problem solving girlfriend easily transitions to wife. Believe it or not, most men are sapiosexuals. Don’t believe that you’d intimidate men with your intelligence and rather choose to play small. Trust me, the modern man wants to know that he can debate with you without arousing any tensions thereafter. He wants to be able to watch movies with you and decipher the plot together. He wants you to beat him at that board game. It’ll bruise his ego and he won’t sleep at night but he’ll be fine. Intelligence is subjective and encompasses a whole lot: your ability to control your emotions, the DIYs, judgement calls, etc. Your intelligence will lend him the confidence to run an idea by you. If you’re a girlfriend and your boyfriend never runs his ideas by you, it says a lot about how he sees you and the direction of the relationship.
Supportive and peaceable
Men love to sit back and wonder how on earth a woman like that is dating a guy like them. If you don’t make him feel that way, that’s a red flag.
Wives are supportive. It’s in their nature and they show that trait right from the girlfriend stage. Men love to be supported. They love to know that even if no one believes in them, their woman does. Men love to sit back and wonder how on earth a woman like that is dating a guy like them. If you don’t make him feel that way, that’s a red flag. Supportiveness is probably one of the top 3 wife qualities.
A peaceable nature captures several characteristics. It’s your kindness and empathy. It’s your calmness; your ability to turn chaos into stillness, not your ability to aggravate it. Very few men would want to marry a nagging woman. No man wants to come home to a nagging wife. He’d rather stay back at work and drink with his friends. You may survive the girlfriend role with nagging but that’ll be the end of it.
Managerial
A wife is empathetic when he tries to impress her with money. She makes him know her happiness goes beyond money.
Wives are managers. These days, that’s more of financial management. A woman with wife potentials will chastise her man for spending money that can’t be recouped. She’ll stop her man from spending unnecessarily. She’ll comment on his unwise spending habits. A wife is empathetic when he tries to impress her with money. She makes him know her happiness goes beyond money. A girlfriend who’ll stay one, on the other hand, will be happy to see her boyfriend spend his last penny with alacrity. She’ll even be happy for him to take a loan to celebrate her birthday, for example. Such a character is not managerial and inconsiderate.
Family oriented
A family oriented woman is at peace with seeing your future relationship as an extension of the two families..
A family oriented girlfriend will not stop talking about her family. Consequently, she cherishes her man’s family as well, and expresses genuine interest in them. She tries to know about his upbringing in order to understand how he was raised. She also tries to get close to his nuclear family at least. She is interested especially in the female characters on the other end, wanting to meet his mom to have those female conversations in the kitchen. She prays for his family, etc. A family oriented woman is at peace with seeing your future relationship as an extension of the two families. This is important to establish some form of permanency in the relationship.
Now, let’s discuss the controversial. A family oriented girlfriend does not grumble about housekeeping essentials like cooking, laundry, cleaning, etc. I am not yet describing her willingness to do it for her man but her willingness to do it for herself. Men observe that. These housekeeping duties are her expression of self care and self love. Anyone who loves themselves will ensure that their immediate environment is well kept. A self loving person minds what they eat and pampers themself in that regard. Knowing how to do these for yourself is what will help you have and raise your kids with little interference. Mind you, these days, most men know how to do these chores for themselves. So, it is not a matter of pitting the two genders against each other.
Adaptive
Adaptability and change are in our nature. Change is the only constant thing in nature. Don’t be scared to change.
Adaptability is the ability to join your interests with his. It’s learning about his favorite football, NBA, or rugby team and the names of some of his favorite players. Men love to know that their girlfriend shares their interests. This kind of change isn’t substantial or harmful enough to change your person. Don’t pretend to be someone else but don’t be rigid. Men change a lot for women. Women should be ready to do the same for us, but contemporary relationship advice will have you think the opposite. Pause for a moment and ponder on how much you’ve changed since you met that man you like. Adaptability and change are in our nature. Change is the only constant thing in nature. Don’t be scared to change.
Generous and giving
Girlfriends with wife potential always want to help their man. They are always dying to give. Most girlfriends are only takers. Men hate that! Men don’t like to feel that you’re taking advantage of them. Men don’t marry glaring opportunists. As a girlfriend, a man will still try to meet your daily unlimited demands to be served but it’ll be short lived.
“Beautiful”
Women don’t get to choose how they would like to look physically. But they definitely get to choose to be beautiful on the inside through growth – that constant learning and unlearning of life’s lessons.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Every man likes to date his definition of a beauty queen. The nice backside, the best bone structure, the nice eyes, the sexiness, etc, all form part of this nice-to-have definition of physical beauty. I can’t place exact ratings/weights on each one but they are nice to have.
But beauty is vain. Those nice breasts will start sagging around 50 years or so. Your face will wrinkle. Your nice backside won’t be as firm anymore. You might get a c-section and your abs won’t be attractive anymore. But what will make a man want to still wake up beside you upon all this? Have you ever wondered why even the trap/hip hop rappers who make music videos with the hottest strippers don’t go ahead to marry them? After all, that’s all they sing about. Most rappers’ wives are actually the total opposite of the women they portray and sing about in their music videos. Why is that?
Women don’t get to choose how they would like to look physically. But they definitely get to choose to be beautiful on the inside through growth – that constant learning and unlearning of life’s lessons. This is internal beauty. Internal beauty is where spirituality plays a part. It, however, depends on one’s beliefs. A Spiritual wife really does hold the family together and keeps it in check and lives this out clearly as a girlfriend. Spirituality is what teaches you good from bad. Spirituality teaches you values, principles, and gives you a conscience. Christian spirituality, for example, teaches you the definition of love in one of Paul’s letters (1 Corinthians 13). But this definition is for both parties involved, though. It is not to say the woman alone should know and practice this definition.
Conclusion
If a man is interested in a future with you, he’ll always be the one to bring it up.
I have listed and discussed the modern man’s preferences. But how would a woman know if she is her man’s type of wife? Well, an indirect way would be to try to planning your future with him. Talk about how your future kitchen would look like, etc. If he’s interested, then he’s thought about it. Most guys might not have thought about it yet. Some might be a bit resistant at first. Give it some time. If he’s completely uninterested, that’s definitely a red flag.
If a man is interested in a future with you, he’ll always be the one to bring it up. Trust me, you’d rather feel pressured to marry him. If he’s not interested in a future with you, he’ll never bring it up and he’ll always dodge your questions and change the topic.
What do you think? Are these listed qualities too much to handle? Is the modern man asking for too much? Did I leave anything out? Let me know what you think in the comment section below.
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James Azam 