The Book

How did we get into the business of writing a book about men for women?

This book was not our idea.

Never in the course of our business and marketing research careers did we ever conceive of writing a book—about men, no less. We’re men. What do we know about the male-female dynamic outside of fooling our once-girlfriends into becoming our wives? Not much, so a book about men geared for women was not on our radar.

For us, research is not simply data collection; it’s a revelation about people and their behaviors. But because we know how to find answers, the premise of this book and its data make perfect sense, in that it was all born from a research mentality and not an author mentality. In a sense, we are the perfect guys to compile this data.

The project started out simply enough. All we were doing was meeting with a very old client of marketing research services, but we hadn’t seen her in a while. We were looking forward to seeing her again, catching up over coffee, and finding out what was on her mind and what she wanted to discuss.

We remembered her as being the picture-perfect, modern executive. She was always well put together, with her Louis Vuitton briefcase, fresh-from-the-salon hair, Christian Louboutin power pumps on her feet, and Chanel in the air.

But on this day, she walked in and was a shell of the person we knew.

We knew she was different, no question, but what happened? What could morph the powerful woman that we knew, that had the world by the tail, into someone we could hardly recognize? She just wanted to get down to business, so we let go of our curiosity and concern for the moment and got to the subject at hand, her next research project.

As we were wrapping up our conversation, she asked us a question out of the blue:

Client: “So I guess via market research you could probably ask anyone anything, on any topic, right?”

Us: “Yes.” (Our witty reply)

Client: “It would be great if I could find out stuff about men.”

Us: “Why is that? What kind of stuff?” (We start to sound like psychologists)

Client: “I don’t know if you heard, but I got divorced recently. Getting back into dating has been a real eye-opener.”

Us: “Sorry to hear that. What’s the big deal? Has it changed that much?”

Client: “Yes, and the rules are different. I don’t know what men really think, and no men I know will give me the straight answer. They sugarcoat the truth. It would be refreshing if, for once, I knew ahead of time why men act the way they do, so I could be more successful in dealing with them.”

At that moment, a light went on. Why couldn’t we do what she asked? Why couldn’t we find out from women what they wanted to know, ask men, and then deliver the answers back to women? Why not? We had vast research panels of male respondents we could leverage. We had the knowledge and the technology.

But, with a research mentality, we needed validation. We first needed to know if the premise would even work. Would other women be interested in the same type of feedback that our client was talking about?

So we then set off to (a) find out what women want to know about men and (b) ask men those questions to then (c) compile the answers in a book to share what we had found.

This is the book you are either reading now or will be (hopefully) reading soon.

You’ll move through the questions in categories, and we’ll start by tackling one of the big ones: communication. After that comes the dating chapter, which covers questions and mistakes that might happen before you are in a relationship. Following logically is the relationship chapter, in which we discuss the insights and nuances of being and managing a relationship with men. Romance is covered next, including how men feel about romance, what they think is romantic, and what they wished you knew about romance.

Once romance has been discussed, the next step is sex, and we cover that topic head-on with a no-holds-barred approach that will probably be one of the biggest surprises in the book. Marriage is then discussed, and we reveal how men actually feel about being and staying married. We round out the data with our chapter on work and relating with and to men in the workplace.

We finish with some final takeaways that men have for you, including what they say are the top mistakes that women make.

So go out there and buy the book.  We know you’ll enjoy it!