Sunday, September 10, 2006

‘What makes women happy?’
Headline on the front of the Sunday Times magazine.
Search me, mate, if you ever find out let me know, I’ve been wondering that myself.
Finding baby fish in my pond last week made me happy (fleetingly). I bet they didn’t put that in the article.
Thing is, little happinesses like that (there’s a French expression for them that someone told me once, but it escapes me) are all very well in the general run of things, but they’re no defence against the Big Miseries.
And anyway, how can you possibly generalise? You can no more generalise about what makes ‘women’ happy than about what makes ‘people’ happy. We are all different, after all, what makes you happy won’t necessarily work for me (and you probably don’t even have or want a pond, never mind baby fish).
Then I read the article – 7 articles, in fact. And most of them were crap.
But Ariel Leve hit the nail right on the head:

‘…more than anything else, women want to be heard and understood. What makes women happy isn’t when a man pays for dinner, it’s when a man pays attention. Attention is the invisible currency. It is the only thing that can buy a woman’s happiness and devotion.
Ask a successful lothario: what is the skill that matters the most? Most likely he’ll say it’s the power to make a woman feel special. A woman feels desired when she feels she is being listened to. Is that too much to ask? Often it is. And if you have to ask, it’s too late. Whenever people talk about the reformed lothario Warren Beatty, they mention that he has the ability to make the woman he’s talking to feel as if she is the only one in the room. There is indeed something to be said about that when it happens. I’ve experienced it a few times, and it’s intoxicating.
Attention, for it to count, has to be genuine. Because, if they can, men will fake attention the way women fake orgasms: to get it over with. The difference is, we can tell.’

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2337690_3,00.html

Susan Greenfield didn’t have any answers, but she had been reading my mind:
‘Wouldn’t life be simple if footwear was the panacea, a generic prize that instantly ensured that warm glow inside? But to try to generalise a formula is as crazy for women in particular as it is for humans in general. The question to ask is not what makes us happy, but what are the different means by which we women get there?’