What Mature Men Want

Dedication: To the restoration of authentic manhood… whatever that might be.
The thought to write such a book strikes such terror that there is a certain wisdom in writing the introduction before knowing what is said.
In focusing attention on what mature men want, we mean no slight to what mature women want. It is not as though mature women don’t have their wants nor is it that their wants are well supplied by what is presently passing for manhood. It is only that there seems to be a greater literature on the subject of their wants than those of their male counterparts.
In exploring the possibility that there might be a need for the present offering, a rather thorough search was made of the internet, using some of the most probing search engines, and nothing was found as either “What Mature Men Want” or by any domain name registered with that in view, not .com, not .net, not .org, .gov, .edu, etc.
In short, we are in virgin territory, (you should pardon the expression).
Not to keep the reader in suspense as to what we have in view, we should say that the key word here is “honor.”
By now, “honor” certainly qualifies for a place on our endangered attitude list. As evidence we offer the media, whether the programs or the commercials that sponsor them. The male gender at any age and speed is portrayed as clueless, and, perhaps not without reason.
On a more personal note, I have to confess at the outset that, at 66 I may be too young to qualify for the authorship of such an undertaking. It is only because certain facts of aging have driven me to risk taking up pen before being fully qualified to do so. I fear that I may be losing my mind on the front end, and waiting any longer puts this writer, at least, in danger of boot disk failure.
While we are aware that “… in the multitude of counselors there is safety,” and that would urge delay, by now we have lived long enough to know from experience that women are much more ready to share with their female friends their wants and even their frustrated wants than are their male counterparts.
In short, the male “multitude” seems to this researcher to be shut down, hunkered down, closed, and just not talking. There are many reasons for this, some of them even having a certain wisdom.
Having spent some part of the past 30 years as an amateur counselor, even marriage counselor, (An amateur does for love, what a professional does for money.) it has become very clear that women are wooed by love and men are wooed by honor.
From those rare moments of male candor it is also clear that men are as sensitive to the presence or absence of honor as women are to the presence or absence of love. By now it is clear to almost everyone with eyes to see, ears to hear and hearts to understand that there is a love deficit of epidemic proportion, all but terminal. At least, I hope it’s not terminal.
What is not so widely understood is the “honor deficit.”
At this point there is a strong foreboding that this subject will have to be approached with a good deal of humor. There are several reasons for this, some of them good, and right and valid; others, more in the nature of sweetening the medicine, nervousness, and ever present stark terror. (This is the terror that results in male default, which began when the first man watched the first woman do the wrong thing and kept his mouth shut for fear that to say anything might spoil the evening.
In that sense then, this could be called “Confessions of an old chicken.”
If that has my men friends trembling with fear that we are about to get into it, then, at least, they can be thankful that someone else decided to come clean, saving them the trouble.
In our view we can wait no longer. This has to be said before what’s left of the human family drowns in a sea of its own dysfunction. To be continued with age…
Notes:

He’s wired -She’s wired
Function- Appearance
To get it done -To do

Jay Ferris 2004