Why Are Women Unhappier Than Men? An Answer
September 21, 2009 / 10:27 am • By Dr. Melissa ClouthierIt’s statements like these that get my co-blogger John Hawkins in trouble:
It’s not choices that are causing problems for women, it’s expectations.
Women are no longer merely expect to act like women. Now, feminism, liberalism, and Hollywood says they’ve got to be able to do everything women used to do AND everything that men still do, and then some.
The old feminine ideal was the woman who got married to a good man, stayed home, took care of their house, took care of the kids, and took pride in making the whole family function.
Now, look at the messages women get from popular culture: Dress like a fashion model, cat around like the women from Sex in the City, get married, have a beatiful house, have 2.5 kids, have a career that’s every bit as successful and fulfilling as your husband’s, and still look like a professional actress, even when you’re 60 years old.
There are only so many hours in a day, days in a week, and weeks in a year and there just isn’t time for most women to do all that. Granted, there are a few who manage to pull it off — or at least seem to do it to the outside world.
But, the reality is that most people have skills, abilities, desires, and wants that they never fulfill — women, in part because of their emotional natures, are just made to feel worse about not living up to the hype of what modern feminism says a woman should be.
Oh boy.
Where I agree: Yes, women have more expectations now and that can make life difficult. That is, women both internally and societally are expected to do the whole female progenitor life-cycle thing within the male-defined work-cycle. A woman who doesn’t “work” is often viewed with suspicion both by modern men and women who work outside the home.
As a working, professional woman, I can tell you that the expectations grate. I’ve had women judge me for working (a female patient said to me once, as I was taking the practice for my husband who had sprained his ankle), “You’re not leaving your children at home, are you?” I’ve had women judge me when I took time to take care of my babies and then, home school my children one year. Men, too.
So the nearly impossible standards applied culturally–Oprah, Martha Stewart, Rachel Ray–can make a woman feel “less than” no matter what she decides to do.
Where I disagree: This statement rather breezily dismisses the untapped potential of women: ” the reality is that most people have skills, abilities, desires, and wants that they never fulfill”.
Really? Without the biological imperative, men have a freer time of fulfilling their skills, abilities, and desires. What are they denied? Gestating, birthing and nursing a baby is what they’re denied. That’s a huge trade-off, one, as a woman, I would never give away. Still, the reality is this: since I value myself and my children, and how I’m wired and made, I decided to focus on my children for a few years. That, by necessity, slowed my career roll during what would be considered peak professionally creative years. Ten years later, I’m jumping in with both feet while still balancing my child raising concerns–working around a school schedule and cutting hours to be with my pre-school age child. Childhood is fleeting, and I want to be there for it.
Still, I do not have the dichotomy that only a stay-at-home mother can be a good mother. That’s just patently false. Both fathers and mothers can parent a child, even a baby. There are wonderful care-givers who raise children even better than parents. For generations, children have had nannies, grand-parents and other care-givers and most survive just fine. I am not, however, a fan of huge day care centers, but there are even good versions of those.
This all being said, a woman with talents and gifts does NOT have to subsume them to motherhood in order to be a good woman, or a good Christian woman. That is just nonsense. It should be an affront to all men and women that a woman’s talents, gifts and desires can be dismissed as an acceptable trade for a housewife life.
Many women find a way to incorporate their gifts into their family life. Having stayed at home, I can testify to the challenge of managing a house and kids. It is no lie when people say it’s the most difficult job and so many elements of it are beyond a person’s control. That is, a child may cry inconsolably, the house is perpetually being “undone”, dirty laundry self-generates, and all of these things are out of a person’s control. And in today’s society, a woman is alone at home. She can be socially disconnected. The internet has been a huge gift to stay-at-home parents. It’s a connection.
Social isolation and lack of control contribute to unhappiness. Read up on psychologist Seligman’s work in this regard. That’s a stay-at-home parent’s whole lot in life. There is a good reason women at home might be unhappy and the unhappiness increases the more kids a woman has. More kids equals less control. Also, she may be frustrated at her unused talents.
Before the post-war generation, women often worked with men–in the fields, in the tavern, in the store, etc. A woman was not June Cleaver. The industrial age changed a woman’s role. Tasks became divided. A man changed the oil and mowed the lawn. A woman cooked and cleaned. Exclusively.
In this new generation, women are working and rearing kids and doing many things. They may be unhappier than men, but that in no indicates that a woman should be only in the kitchen. Now, if that role fulfills her (and I know that for many women, this is the case) she will contribute mightily to the household.
More women these days are like me. Moving in and out of the workforce around children and going back to work when the kids reach school age. Is it more challenging? Maybe. Not maybe. Absolutely, it is. But would women trade this? I can only speak for myself, but the answer is a resounding “no”.
I have the pleasure of writing, doctoring and being an online activist while also being a mother. I love it all. And many women embrace the freedom to choose these roles.
It should also be noted that with loosening societal strictures, men, too, are becoming more involved in the household tasks and child rearing. That’s all to the good. This too, is not a new phenomenon. In the pre-industrial world, kids knew what dad did because at a certain age, kids helped dad do the work. Kids bond with fathers just as surely as they bond with mothers. It has a different quality, of course, but it’s just as real and necessary.
This is a lot of words to say that I think it’s wrong to dismiss the loss to the individual woman and to society when a woman doesn’t use her gifts and talents just as I think it is a loss to the individual man and to society when a man doesn’t involve himself with his child’s life.
That men would discourage women from using their gifts is patently wrong. That women would discourage men from child-involvement is patently wrong.
If there is one gift the feminist movement gave to society, it’s this: women have the freedom to pursue developing their talents. This societal shift forced men to become more involved (or, it put more burdens on women who don’t hold a man’s feet to the fire). Both men and women have benefited.
11 Responses to “Why Are Women Unhappier Than Men? An Answer”
September 21 2009 / 11:28 am
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I remember when a friend had twins. She and her husband were living in Austin, he was making a lot of money, and she had extended her maternity leave to be home with the twins.
I saw her after a long interval, and asked “so what are you up to now?”
In response I got a long defensive speech about how importnt it was to be with the kids and how she’d chosen to spend time with them instead of pursuing her professional aspirations, ….
After what seemed like an awkward hour, I finally was able to stop her and say “Hey, if you’re doing what you want to do, that’s all I would hope for.” Clearly, she was feeling a lot of pressure about it.
She died, too young, a couple years ago of a progressive neurological degeneration. I can’t think that she was actually sorry not to have spent that time in the office.
September 21 2009 / 4:17 pm
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Alright, this is something I typically don’t have the balls to publish to the innerwebs but you’ve coaxed it out of me…
Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution have molded the sexes into two different behavioral norms. And the chisel upon our slabs, is the village lifestyle. Women are created or evolved to live within the walls, and men are created/evolved to spend their waking lives on the outside, like Jaguar’s Paw in Mel Gibson’s movie “Apocalypto.”
You women get these demanding expectations made on you by other women, and feel pressured by them. Why? Us guys, we don’t get it. We may pretend we get it when we’re around you, but the fact is we don’t understand. Some other dude tells us we’re wearing the wrong pair of sneakers, he gets a flattened nose. Period. But the gals are constantly handing judgment down on each other.
My theory also explains why men are perfectly happen whether it’s 40 degrees or 90 degrees, whereas women tend to start complaining if it’s anywhere below 72. On our side, when it gets north of the century-mark we just want a beer and we go back to being happy. That’s because we evolved outside the walls. We’re Jaguar’s Paw. And it’s hard to get us to pick up after ourselves. We’re not as comfortable inside. If you doubt me, toss out the television set for a month, along with the computer, and see how comfortable the man is indoors.
We’re fundamentally different. We pretend to be the same…just to make the feminists happy because we’re terrified they’ll end our careers with a single complaint. But we’re not the same. Men and women are different — and I really don’t get how women pass judgment on other women, and the other women feel pressured, why they are so accepting of it.
September 22 2009 / 8:12 pm
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> Really? Without the biological imperative, men have a freer time of fulfilling their skills, abilities, and desires. What are they denied?
Spoken like a true modern “female chauvinist pig”. You’ve bought into the feminist koolaid, even though you’ve spit some of it up.
Sorry, Doc. Women have it comparatively easy in our society as far as what they actually have to accomplish.
I’ll grant some truth to the notion that they get pulled in a dozen different directions (with the codicil that a large chunk of that is their own damnfool mutually exclusive inconsistencies with what they want, both as individuals and as a group).
What they DON’T have is a demand that they MUST do all these things to get ANY fulfillment in their lives.
There’s a reason males successfully commit suicide far more often than women do (women are less likely to be serious about it, and thus “fail” at it thus making a cry for help. Males just don’t want to play the game at all, given the sucky rules).
As a start, I recommend Dr. Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power.
That might help you begin to see the world as men see it.
September 22 2009 / 8:29 pm
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> My theory also explains why men are perfectly happen whether it’s 40 degrees or 90 degrees, whereas women tend to start complaining if it’s anywhere below 72.
While I agree with some of what you say, this one is actually simple physics and biology.
Let’s review some concepts:
First — The Cube-Square Law. Volume goes up by the cube, surface area goes up by the square. Someone 2x your size has 8x the volume, but only 4x the surface area.
Second — Females stop developing muscle tissue at ca. 14. Males continue to develop muscle tissue until they are 22 or so. Yes, there are exceptions, but a woman has to work to add muscle, males, partly due to testosterone, add it easily. (It’s also considered a masculine feature if it develops too far, which is why most women seeking to lose weight do so with diet and aerobics, while males can diet, build muscle AND increase aerobic fitness, and have an easier time controlling their weight, since even at rest muscle burns calories at about 50 cal/lb/day).
The chief point here of relevance is that males in almost all cases have substantially more muscle tissue than a woman, even were they at the same height and weight.
The relevance here of these two facts towards why women are uncomfortable in conditions where men are not is that
a) Muscle tissue is where most heat is generated. More muscle, more heat. So men are going to have less of a problem keeping warm, since they have “more coal in the furnace”.
b) Volume-vs-Surface-area. Two bodies with equal percentage of muscle tissue, the larger of the two is going to have less of a problem keeping warm — a body which is 2x the size of another is going to radiate from 4x the surface area, but they have 8x the volume of tissue to produce heat in, so they are creating 2x the heat for every unit of radiating surface. Since women are almost uniformly smaller than men, they are inevitably going to generally have a problem with staying warm enough in conditions which are totally satisfactory to the male.
Obviously exceptions to the above abound — there are female body builders with more muscle than most men, there are women who are bigger than some men. But the above is describes the typical conditions for men-vs-women, and thence the chief reasons why it is that a woman can be complaining about being too cold wearing a sweater while a guy is dancing around in his underwear and doing fine.
Now, as to WHY these two things are the case, THAT is where your theory may come into play. I shan’t comment further on that, though it is clear that the biological expense of the female reproductive system is clearly at odds with the biological expenses that males possess in terms of muscles and so on. So it may be more the cart driving the horse than the horse pulling the cart.
.
September 22 2009 / 8:49 pm
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> This societal shift forced men to become more involved (or, it put more burdens on women who don’t hold a man’s feet to the fire). Both men and women have benefited.
Doc, another example of presumably ungrasped sexism…
You presume, here (it’s an undercurrent, beyond a doubt), that men are/were slackers who didn’t want, or didn’t care, about said involvement.
In actual fact, men were often excluded by the sex roles which had developed. Not all were dragged in that direction kicking and screaming, I grant — but men were generally limited by their roles to performing functions outside that level of intimacy with their children. This does not mean that all, or even most, would have preferred it otherwise given the chance to have a greater level of emotional contact with their kids.
And we still live in a society where a woman believes, solely due to her role in bearing children, that she has every right to exclude a man from the knowledge of the very existence of a child.
If a man managed, somehow, to make a woman believe her child had died at birth, and to abscond with it and raise it without it ever knowing her, that would be Lifetime Movie of the Week material. Oprah’s book club would have a #1 NYT best seller.
I have no doubt, however, that there are many women out there who have had children by men and never seen fit to inform them that they were even pregnant (and sorry, even if it’s a one-night stand, and she doesn’t feel any need to demand financial assistance from him… it’s still his child, too).
I’m sorry — if you want men to take responsibility for the rearing of children, then you have to grant them the same right of authority over those children — and this is including the very knowledge of their existence — that you would grant women.
BTW — the most difficult intersections of these rights comes when one of them wants an abortion and the other does not. There is a nominal equal right on this decision (regardless of your religious feelings regarding the notion itself) that should not automatically place the woman’s right above the man’s. At the very least, once more — a man has the right to know she is pregnant, and to have some opportunity to discuss the options open to her — even if you argue, due to the biological mechanisms involved, that in the end it is her decision alone.
=================
We live in a very sexist society — men have had their consciousness raised for the most part about women’s issues to the point where many try and see that their values are not those of women.
But just try and get women to grasp the notion that men have issues, too. And it’s not the feminist version of them…
[Feminism has] focused on the fact that women as a group earned less — without focusing on any of the reasons why women earned less, [such as:] full-time working men work an average of 9 hours per week more than full-time working women; men are more willing to relocate to undesirable locations, to work the less desirable hours, and to work the more hazardous jobs.
– Warren Farrell -
Essentially, women’s liberation and men’s mid-life crises were the same search for personal fulfillment, common values, mutual respect, and love. But while women’s liberation was thought of as promoting identity, men’s mid-life crises were thought of as identity crises.
Women’s liberation was called insight, self-discovery, and self-improvement, akin to maturity. Men’s mid-life crises were discounted as irresponsibility, self-gratification, and selfishness, akin to immaturity. Women’s crises got sympathy, men’s crises got a bad rap.
– Warren Farrell -
What Feminism has contributed to women’s options must be supported. But when Feminists suggest that God might be a She without [ever considering] that the Devil might also be female, they must be opposed.
– Warren Farrell -
September 22 2009 / 8:53 pm
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a) Muscle tissue is where most heat is generated. More muscle, more heat. So men are going to have less of a problem keeping warm, since they have “more coal in the furnace”.
b) Volume-vs-Surface-area. Two bodies with equal percentage of muscle tissue, the larger of the two is going to have less of a problem keeping warm — a body which is 2x the size of another is going to radiate from 4x the surface area, but they have 8x the volume of tissue to produce heat in, so they are creating 2x the heat for every unit of radiating surface.
Both true. But here’s the problem: Just the anticipation of an icky wet cold feeling, has an intimidating effect on a woman that isn’t reflected on the male counterpart. When the subject anticipates cold, but is not yet cold, the rapidity of body heat loss doesn’t enter into it just yet.
Now, as to WHY these two things are the case, THAT is where your theory may come into play. I shan’t comment further on that, though it is clear that the biological expense of the female reproductive system is clearly at odds with the biological expenses that males possess in terms of muscles and so…
Bingo. Women are built to get pregnant. So it makes perfect sense that the mere prospect of a lowered inner core temperature would arouse a difference in reactions between male and female.
The point to all this though — I did a poor job connecting these thoughts together — is that women, refined and evolved for the express purpose of living within the walls of a “village,” are keenly sensitive to the social taboo, especially from other women. Here, as in other walks of life, they are sensitive to things that fail to capture the interest of men, and sometimes even the awareness of men.
Men understand law. The idea that we have to consent to a community code of decency, in order to live together. Beyond that, men aren’t aware of much, and don’t have much tolerance for additional rules.
Women are different. They hear they are expected to do something…it’s a typically female error to conflate that with something that is required (which is why, I think, you’re scolding Dr. M in your less than tactful way). They feel stressed because they’re “expected” to do something, and us men look at that and naturally wonder…well, what happens if you don’t do it? And whaddya mean you don’t know??
This is why, when you hear small children playing together and you hear some of the voices emerging from the mass of youngness to say “not s’poseda not s’poseda not s’poseda!”…they are invariably female voices. This is also why womens’ fashion magazines are much thicker than “mens’ fashion” magazines. Females are much more accepting of augmentative social rules than males. Males, by and large, think of social rules as a giant pain in the ass.
September 22 2009 / 10:56 pm
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> (which is why, I think, you’re scolding Dr. M in your less than tactful way)
Well, I’m not being “tactful” because it’s a set of thoughts which are really not shoved at women very much — they occupy a certain presumption of superiority which their social mileau has made them so integrated with that they really, really never even think about it — it’s much as men were before the 60s, I will openly grant. You really DO need to whack them politely upside the head with it before they really think about it… and many of them still won’t see it at all.
I think women are currently stuck where men were in the 1950s. They’ve been told that they’re more x,y,z than men are, and that those things are “better” — just because they’re the way women would have them be. And that’s just as bad as when things were solely the way they were because men would have them be that way.
I’m put in mind of a TV commercial from several years ago.
A man and a woman are sitting on their front porch, quietly reading. A new car drives past and the guy clearly notices. The woman sees him notice. A bit later, another new car drives by, and this time he’s a bit more obvious about it. A third new car, a sports car, goes past, and he’s off like a shot after the car. BAM!!! He’s smack to the ground as he reaches the end of his chain… She shakes her head with a condescending “they never learn”. “xxx Cars. The car you want to buy.” or something like that.
Now, let’s try that one again.
A guy and his wife are walking through the mall. They go past a shoe store, she drifts slightly away from him towards the store. He looks at her and says, “Dear…”. She moves back to walking next to him. They walk past a chocolate shop. Again, she drifts away… “Dear!” he says sharply. She comes back to walking next to him. They approach a jewelry store, she BOLTS, only to get stopped short by a leash he has her on. “They never learn!” he says. “yyyy Jewelry. The kind she really wants!”
Now, HOW LONG DO YOU THINK THAT second COMMERCIAL REMAINS ON THE AIR?
Right. It would be decried as demeaning and insulting to women, and probably would get pulled within hours of its first airing.
But men, hey, we can inflict any kind of demeaning treatment of them and it’s NO PROBLEM.
And here lies a concept — if you Invert the Gender — put a man where any woman is, a woman where any man is — is it insulting or demeaning? Is it suddenly objectionable? Does the situation seem unfair?
If it does, then that situation is probably sexist and potentially wrong (humor can be an excuse but one should be conscious of the sexism and have that be a clear part of the humor).
Women rarely look at anything this way — they never invert the gender and see if
a) that’s the way it is for men all the time
b) that would be unacceptable treatment for a female, so it should be unacceptable treatment for a male.
Men have mostly put up with it, so I’ll grant that both sexes tend to need some “consciousness raising” in this regard.
BTW, if you want to understand that the women’s movement started in the 1940s, not the 1960s, I recommend two movies:
That Way With Women (1947)
and
Mother Is a Freshman (1949)
Released only 28 months apart, they show the extreme difference, through their plots and characterizations, between women in/post WWII and women only a few years later. Look at the fashions and behaviors of the female lead in TWWW vs. the fashions and behavior of the female lead in MIAF.
I happened to see them back to back on AMC or something about 20-odd years ago, and noticed the extreme shift in social behaviors immediately. The sixties were a rebellion against the role women were being cast in in the 50s, not against the role women had had all along.
September 22 2009 / 11:23 pm
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P.S., All the above is not intended as any kind of mean stroke of ire against anyone, male or female, particularly the Doc.
It’s just an effort to get her, and other women reading, to perhaps consider the inaccurate gender myths they have swallowed, even as they grasp the level of BS in the overall feminist cause.
I’m not angry, I just think it’s time there was a dialogue opening about this sort of stuff. There was a small nudge towards a “men’s movement” in the early-mid 90s, but the timing still wasn’t right, and it was pawned off as “immaturity” once again.
September 23 2009 / 3:46 pm
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O Bloody Hell,
While I pretty much agree with your remarks, I’m not really sure if trying to get a dialogue going is necessarily going to work. That’s kind of the touchy-feely crap that I’d like most guys to avoid (whether they’ll actually do so is another story).
I think the best way for guys to deal with it is to just not play the game that feminist women have pushed out there today. But guys continue the play the game in order to “get some action.”
Therefore, who’s fault is it really? Are guys so into thinking with their dicks that they’re oblivious to what’s going on around them? If so, then they will get their wish and become nothing more than personal playthings for the modern woman (and hence the gender reversal that most feminists so desire).
I think the best thing guys can do is just back off and let women figure things out themselves. Women aren’t stupid, but I think they’re so full of themselves from all of the feminist rhetoric that they need time to do some serious soul-searching. I’m not saying we should hate them or anything, but just make it clear in no uncertain terms that we’re not going to put up with the post-modern bullcrap. If enough guys do that, then you’ll see true equality develop and not this PC faux pas nonsense we have now.
September 26 2009 / 3:11 am
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The trouble is that the feminist movement did NOT give women the freedom to pursue our talents. It took that freedom away.
The fact is that that any woman who wants to make home and motherhood her career is roundly belittled even by those who have spent time in that position (present company a case in point, my dear). Calling my career “the hardest job there is” does not honor me. It casts me in the false role of a brainless drudge. And what about the term “stay-at-home-mother”? I go to more places and speak to more people as a so-called “stay-at-home” than I ever did trapped in an office all day. But women who choose home and motherhood as a career are constantly put down, at best painted as people who are sacrificing ourselves. That’s truly insulting. When you choose to take an outside job, you are sacrificing just as many desires and talents. Every career is a tradeoff. But being a housewife is the one career women are absolutely not allowed to have if we are still to be considered capable and intelligent. Feminists have even gone so far to claim that women who choose to be housewives are betraying all women.
I don’t “incorporate” my gifts into homemaking. I use my talents in my chosen career. I’m sorry, Doc, but your friend John is a far greater respecter of women than you are.
September 30 2009 / 11:22 am
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> I think the best thing guys can do is just back off and let women figure things out themselves. Women aren’t stupid, but I think they’re so full of themselves from all of the feminist rhetoric that they need time to do some serious soul-searching.
I think there are some women with whom that may work, but most of them won’t get a clue.
As a group, women don’t approach problems with the goal of figuring them out the way men do (yes, it’s a generic statement, it may not apply to you in the least, but it does correctly describe a very wide range of women… DEAL with it).
They tend to want to “feel” their way through to an answer, and that is going to be particularly ineffective for solving this problem.
Women need metaphorical whacks upside the head sometimes to get their brains working right. Other women, GFs and Mothers, are usually the ones to do this, but when most women don’t even understand the nature of the problem, that whack ain’t happening.
Example — Women have taken control of their interpersonal relationships — One of the key factors that they supposedly want from men is a low propensity for philandering… so, what do they do? Put the main workload of forming a relationship on the guy. In any relationship formation, there are over a hundred substantial go/no-go decisions, the vastly larger percentage of which devolve onto the female — so a guy pretty much has to learn to play the game.
Now, what sort of guy is going to become good at “playing the game”?
DUH. The kind of guy who enjoys playing the game.
And, as a woman, are you SO spectacularly special, so all-fired wonderfully unique, that this guy who’s literally spent years getting to be GOOD at this game is going to suddenly magically STOP playing this game?
Ah, NO…?
So, as a woman — when you meet a guy who does it all correctly, says JUST the right things, NEVER lets an akward moment sit there, does everything smooth and suave and charming… No matter how “nongreasy” the feeling he achieves is?
RUN YOU STUPID BIMBO.
Drop the drink in your hand, leave your high heels behind.
RUUUUUUN.
This guy WILL screw around on you.
He WILL turn you in for a younger model.
This is a GUARAN-F’IN-TEE.
Now, if you’re nothing but a mercenary, then fine — you’re selling, he’s buying, and you’re going to take steps to make sure that you’re getting good value for what you’re selling.
But if you actually want a decent guy, one who has any chance of actually being faithful and devoted and attentive — it’s the one who fumbles a lot, who doesn’t know how to get into a relationship — hopefully because he’s the type who wants to BE in a relationship and doesn’t enjoy the process of getting there more than the end result.
But have women as a group ever, ever shown a widespread propensity for figuring this out?
Yeah, right.
I grant, I’m not around to hear the girl-talk in women-only groups when the subject of philandering exes comes around, but my bet is that there’s a lot more “all men suck” comments than “you know, you were asking for it, dear”s.
Because God alone knows, it can’t possibly be anything the Woman is doing wrong that is the reason why all her exes screwed around on her, can it?
It can’t be some decision the woman is making all along, which throws all the “good guys” into the “not interested” pool while placing the “scum” into the “yowza!” pool, can it?
NAWWWWWwwwwww…..
Now, ladies — if you actually WANT a good way to tell, the trick is to get some trustworthy guy on your side to sniff out a very specific detail for you, that I will state categorically is a great sign:
How does he REALLY feel about his mother?
You need a trustworthy guy to do this, because he’s never going to be honest early on about her to a woman. He will let down his guard if he’s hanging with your homeboy, though, because it’s subtle enough that most women are ignorant of it and would never get another guy to find out for them.
You want a guy who LIKES his mother a good deal — who respects her, appreciates her, thinks well of her.
You DON’T want a guy who is either too attached to her, or, most particularly, a guy who hates her (you would be surprised how many of those suave guys actually think very little of the women they’re chasing).
Because I will almost guarantee you, unless the guy’s gone through years and years of therapy, that latter attitude is at the heart of the way he sees ALL women. And the problems with the former are sort of obvious — you will always come second in that case.
So that’s what you want — a guy who likes his mother, but isn’t incredibly attached to her. Ideally, she probably lives in a different city, and probably sees him not more often than twice a month or so.