The male responder — Bill from Chicago — requested I put my original question below to better ground his response.

My question:

“We girls have developed a theory that, as much as men say they want a normal, well-adjusted woman, they secretly crave the drama of a crazy girl — crazy, of course, being open to interpretation. The way we sometimes see it, as much as a guy says he just wants an even-keel, well-adjusted, totally low maintenance girl, he actually craves the drama of a girly girl.

He WANTS her to be possessive. He WANTS her to be all up in his business. He even WANTS her to take a lot of time getting ready and never be able to make a decision and be generally needy.

We’re not 100% sure why this is, but we guess it’s either that guys get bored with normal, well-adjusted women OR that the normalcy is perceived as indifference/not caring/lack of a spark.
Some girls try to be as low maintenance as possible, but from what we sometimes see – that’s not the best way to get or keep a guy.

Guys like a certain degree of crazy in their women — just enough to make them feel needed and keep them certain that this girl is just like all the rest.

True? False? Does this even make sense??“

His answer:

True story, for sure.

The best place to find the answer to this question is to ask a girl who is the “guy’s girl”. She’s the one that watches the game, tosses back a beer, doesn’t cringe at the word “pussy”, and would rather spend a summer afternoon tossing a football than laying out in the sun evenly tanning every inch of her body.

That girl will tell you the straight up answer – guys aren’t falling all over her or itching to jump in bed with her.

If a guy had a choice of this girl – we’ll call her Sam – or a “girly girl” – we’ll call her Candy – chances are he’d choose Candy. That immediately opens up a dangerous situation, though…what if she’s too girly? Is that just as bad as being too low maintenance?

Let’s go with this Candy thing, for a second (let a man have some nice images in his mind, k? don’t be high maintenance and just roll with it…). Alright, so if Candy is the turn-up-your-nose, big sunglasses, martini-sipping bitch that thinks she’s hotter than hot, she’s going to fall into a category that most guys call “yeah, I’d fuck her”. But that’s about as far as she gets (bless the poor guy that impregnates her and has to deal with that shit for life…)

Clearly, then, we can throw out the extremes. Obviously a girl that makes farting noises while throwing back a PBR (any Midwest folks out there?) is really narrowing the pool of guys that will be interested in her. And, the classy young woman (aka bitch) that idolizes Paris Hilton will only attract the guy with double earrings, slicked back hair, and a gold chain.

But what about everything in between?

When it comes down to it, no matter what, a guy just wants there to be a balance. No guy would turn down a hot girl that liked to chill and watch sports but still maintained her “girliness”. But, the key is that the more things that she does “unlike other girls”, the harder it can sometimes be to think of her as…well…a girl.

So, most guys want the girly stuff, but to a certain point. He wants her to take longer to get ready for him – that way he doesn’t feel like a tool for being the high maintenance one. He wants her to be whine every once in a while – that way he can tell her to shut the hell up and stop whining. He wants her to be up in his shit – he feels wanted, and it reminds him of his primative-function of “conquering”.

All of these things just kind of reinforce that the relationship is normal – the societal roles that each is playing is right in line with what the next couple is going through. And with that said, a guy can shoot the shit with his buddies and commisurate about “yeah she does this” and “yeah well mine does that”. No real guy wants these roles to be reversed. It’s immasculating.

Our open-ended “crazy” is good if it makes a guy feel like he’s in control. He’s making the decisions. He’s the rational one. He’s the one that feels like his girl wants him so much that she’s vocal about wanting him to stay in instead of hanging with his boys. You make him feel like he’s got the best of both worlds – a girl who wants him so much to herself, and the option to go have a great drunken night with his friends. It’s a ridiculously good predicament of choosing staying home and having sex (assumption being made, of course…) vs. going out and having a guys night. That’s the best.

With all of this said and done, you know then that you’ve got a little breathing room when it comes to letting that inner girl sing free (probably to the tune of some Leona Lewis song or something). But, please just chill on your obessession with the color pink and your need to talk about the latest Project Runway episodes – at least until after you’ve shown your man that you can shotgun a beer while watching the game.