Decoding Men's Oddball Love Signals

His gifts are terrible. He talks when you want him to listen. His idea of a date is take-out pizza on the couch. Is this your guy's notion of affection and romance? Well, actually, yes.

Fifteen years ago, I found myself in a romantic pickle: Cheryl, a woman I had been dating for about three months, was nearing her 25th birthday. The birthday gift in any three-month-old relationship is a dicey one, and I deliberated over it for weeks. Too big too soon and it could look like I was trying too hard. Too little and I might appear indifferent. Too romantic and I'd run the risk of setting the bar too high.
And so it was with great enthusiasm that I finally unveiled the gift. It was heavy — about 8 pounds. And big — the size of a bowling ball. In fact, as Cheryl discovered after excitedly tearing off the wrapping paper, it was a bowling ball. And not just any bowling ball, but a blue, personalized bowling ball ("The Spanker," the twin to the 12-pounder I had bought myself: "The Wanker"). And the pièce de résistance: Both balls came in matching brown leather bags.




Hoisting the ball onto her lap, Cheryl turned to me. I saw several emotions pass across her face: shock, confusion, profound disappointment, then her dawning realization that how she responded to this present — this idiotic present — might well determine the fate of our relationship. She looked down, collected her thoughts, and raised her eyes to mine. "I love it!" she lied. "Let's go bowling tonight!"
Four years later, despite the bowling ball, Cheryl consented to marry me — and we have lived happily ever after. (And, yes, we still have the balls, and the leather bags, and we bowl about as much as we did in the first three months of our relationship, which was almost never.) In fact, it could be argued that the success of our marriage owes, in part, to that very moment. Because on that day (and many, many days thereafter) my wife made a conscious choice: to see my hapless effort at romance not as a personal affront but as a love note written by a man in his own foreign language.


"Men do affection in ways that are not easily recognizable to women," explains couples coach Warren Farrell, Ph.D., author of Why Men Are the Way They Are. "The fundamental difference is that men tend to do, and women tend to talk — and much gets lost in translation. He feels frustrated, misunderstood; she feels like he just doesn't care. If you can learn to read the signals he's trying to send, however, he's going to feel like his method of loving is being appreciated. He'll probably feel like a good person. And then he'll be more open to hearing something else — like how he could be even better." The point is, once you recognize your guy's less-than-smooth gestures as the clumsy signs of affection they are, you'll probably realize that he is grateful for you in more ways than you ever knew.


So how, exactly, do we big dunderheads express our love for you? Let us count the ways.
This action-oriented impulse also leads to the all-time most exasperating expression of male affection: Let's call it the quicker fixer-upper. You know how every time you start telling your man about your problems, he keeps jumping in with advice... solutions... surefire fixes? And you know how it makes you feel like the solution to your problem might actually come from shoving his helpful little head through a plate-glass window? Well, take a deep, cleansing breath and consider taking it easy on him.

"Women express affection by listening, but men express affection by giving advice," Farrell notes. "And women need to know that when a man loves her and she's hurting, not helping her directly is, for him, like letting someone he loves bleed to death and just sitting there watching. Giving advice is his way of getting her to the hospital, getting bandages on her, and stopping the bleeding. It's his way of saying, 'I'm going to do absolutely everything I can to save you.'"

Dramatic? Perhaps, but not to Don, a 55-year-old CFO in Portland, OR. "When a man asks a question like, for instance, 'What was the problem at work?' there is a legitimate desire for an outcome that will lead to some sort of action," he says. "But — and this has taken me a lifetime to figure out — when women begin ruminating about something, such as, 'My boss is really mean to me' or, 'I just don't have anything to wear,' there is, apparently, a fine line between actually wanting our input and simply wanting us to look interested. This runs counter to my every male instinct; right or wrong, I feel that I must find a solution."
In other words, when we say to you, "Hey, I'm just trying to help," we really are just trying to help.


HIS TAKE:

"I always want to be able to provide for my wife, and actions are a lot easier than words for me. When I try to put my love into words, it often comes off as cheesy and awkward, whereas when I do things for her, it feels better to me." —Rob Myers, 36 Marion, MS REDBOOK's 2009 America's Hottest Husband winner

And Yes, Sex Does Equal Love

A friend of mine, a 41-year-old restaurant owner in Rehoboth Beach, DE, is the father of two and the husband of a nurse. "I honestly believe she is the most beautiful woman in the world, and I frequently let her know that," he says. "The problem is, sometimes she gets home after a 14-hour hospital shift and an hour commute in each direction — you know, just your typical 16-hour day of death, drama, and trauma. So when she walks in the door and I greet her with a, 'Honey, you're beautiful,' it's often met with a growl. The problem, if you asked her, is that no guy ever says or does anything nice for any woman unless they're trying to get laid — and she's probably right about that. But I still don't see why that renders the compliment moot."
Actually, a compliment can simply be a compliment; we're not always just trying to get you into bed. And even if we are just trying to get you into bed, in case you hadn't noticed, we guys... well, we sure do like our sex. One survey found that 70 percent of men think about sex every day (versus 34 percent of women), while 83 percent of men say they enjoy sex "a great deal" (compared with 59 percent of women). So the idea that we might want to share our favorite pastime with you is very much a good thing.

As Pat, a 36-year-old artist in Philadelphia, says, "Yeah, I've fielded the suggestion from my wife that, 'It might be nice to just cuddle for a long time.' And while my mouth said, 'Sure,' my head, my heart, and my other parts never receive that particular memo. No guy ever gets enough sex; until they install another 24 hours in each day and fill it entirely with sex, it just isn't possible.'"

Look, we men are perfectly willing to accept that women are content to express affection by cooing, hugging, and all that gooey stuff. But the fact that we ourselves want none of these things does not mean that we don't love you. The honest truth is that by having sex with you, we are expressing our love. You can blame countless millennia of evolution, which have encoded us as such: I like her; I will have sex with her.

(Reproduce, rinse, repeat.) That impulse is the driving force of life, so mock it all you want, but it's not going anywhere. Besides, as we guys are deep in the throes of passion — all sweaty and grunty and making our silly man-sex faces — we do really love you. (Or at least it sure feels like love. Or maybe we just love how you're making us feel.) Whatever, somewhere between all that and the mumbly postcoitus before we drop off to sleep, we do feel an undeniable closeness, an intimacy the likes of which men never otherwise experience.
Except, of course, if we're bowling.