LADIES!!!! What qualities separate a "real man" from a man?

Well, I can tell you what qualities my hubby has that I consider most important:

Patience
Kindness
Self-control
Gentleness
Compassion
Integrity
Selflessness

This isn't just a real man, but the PERFECT man

You know what's sad? That list isn't even close to hard to meet. It's just that so few guys nowadays bother to even try...IF they're even aware of what they should be doing in the first place.

Someone very important to me authored this piece. It's slightly related, because I think it depicts what many women consider to be a 'real man'. You guys might find it interesting:

I have grown really tired of watching friends and relatives treat their spouses like garbage. And I think too much of it is a result of the blurring of lines between genders. I am not married yet, so I would like to thank my parents for teaching me all of the following things (and God for blessing me with common sense):

■As a woman in "modern" times, I'm not supposed to feel what I'm going to express here about men, women, and our respective roles in relationships. Society is screaming at all of us that we're equal and that gender roles shouldn't apply anymore. That's crap. If I wanted an equal, I'd become a lesbian.

■Men and women are very, very, VERY different creatures, and guess what. WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE. If we could all put down our self-righteousness for a second, I think we'd agree that that's why we can't get enough of each other. So why is everyone so afraid to just accept that for what it is? Why are women so adamant about being "equal" to a man that they get pissed off if a guy opens a door? Newsflash, honey: he's well aware that you can open that door without his help. He's trying to treat you like a woman because it makes him feel like a man. I'm all about self-sufficiency, but men like to feel useful, especially where women are concerned, so take the stick out of your rear end and let a guy be nice every now and then. Capiche? Oh, and for the sake of everyone's sanity, let him drive. And do it in silence.

■Men, really, stop emasculating yourselves (or, worse, letting some woman emasculate you). Women who are worth the trouble (and we're ALL trouble, to some degree) kind of like it when you act like you know you wear the pants in the relationship. We LIKE men. We RESPECT men. We want you to ACT LIKE men. So please, open doors, pull out chairs, and offer to carry heavy objects with reckless abandon. And we (real women, I mean) will say thank you and smile at you like no other man on the planet could have done what you just did. We feel like a princess, you feel like a knight in shining armor, everyone wins.

■Nothing is a bigger turn-off for me than a guy who needs me to tell him what to do. I went on a date recently with a guy who wanted me to decide everything, right down to what he should order for dinner. When I called him on his BS, he said "I don't like making decisions." My first thought was "You don't have time for dinner. You've gotta find your balls, and that could take a while." Seriously, give me a man who takes the liberty of ordering MY food anyday over some guy who wants me to order his. I'm not into chicks, okay?

■There is something incredibly attractive to me about a man who is just unapologetically male ... one who is neither afraid of nor ashamed of his masculinity, who understands and appreciates the male vs. female dynamic, and gladly accepts his responsibility for the former (which includes being able to order your own freaking food). Also known as an alpha male, this is the kind of man who, invariably, is motivated more by his desire to be with someone than by his fear of rejection. He meets a woman he likes and says to himself "I want her, and whatever I have to do to get her, I'll do it," rather than "What if she doesn't like me? What if I'm not her type? What if she says no?" As the Governator would say, don't be a girly man. There are enough of those in the world already.

■(Prepare yourselves, girls ... here's where I turn on you)

■Feminists, forgive me for saying this (actually, I don't really care if you forgive me or not because, again, I'm not into chicks), but you'll be a lot happier if you get over your fear of being women. There's no need to feel threatened or disrespected by men just because they're bigger, stronger, and a thousand times more reasonable than you are. You see, I believe (and I'm right) that God designed Man and Woman to complement each other, not to be exactly the same. He didn't give us the same things; instead, He hard-wired us to want and need what the other has. If you're a straight woman, are you sexually attracted to your chick friends? No. Why not? Because they don't have the right equipment. Let's just put it out there. And because men have different equipment, they do things differently. So why on Earth do you want a man who acts like you? In short, ladies, you can either wish for the world to be different than it is, or you can stop denying biology and start relating to men as they are, rather than how you wish they were.

■I do not use the term "man" loosely. I am fortunate enough to have had an abundance of good men in my life since the day I was born, so I know what they look like. I have no delusions of grandeur about being the romantic heroine who saves a "bad boy" from self-destruction. Unlike most women today, I don't have severe emotional problems that cause me to believe that "fixing" someone is my job in a relationship, let alone a marriage. Acting like marriage is going to solve your personal issues is a little bit completely insane.

■I believe real men are natural leaders, providers, and protectors of what belongs to them, and, if left to their own devices, with complete trust and without judgment, they will always put the people who depend on them first; that's their job, and they'll do it, if given the chance. A woman who is lucky enough to find a real man needs only to support him in that regard, and there are a lot of things involved in that, but primarily, it means you give him your advice and your faith, and you let him do what he thinks is best. He is not a child, and you are not his mother.

■Finally, if your man gets up, goes to work, and slays dragons for you all day, every day, he deserves to hear the words "thank you" every now and then. A man who loves you will level mountains to make you happy if you can get over yourself long enough to let him know you appreciate what he does for you.

■The End.

The first word that popped to mind was the word responsibility. For himself, his life, his kids, his spouse. But really that's just being a grown up, which applies equally to either sex and seems to be more rare than one might hope.

When I hear a question like this I always think of Ruydard Kipling's poem "If"

I pretty much agree with him.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Way better than the other long lists that are on this thread, imo.

This isn't just a real man, but the PERFECT man

You know what's sad? That list isn't even close to hard to meet. It's just that so few guys nowadays bother to even try...IF they're even aware of what they should be doing in the first place.

Someone very important to me authored this piece. It's slightly related, because I think it depicts what many women consider to be a 'real man'. You guys might find it interesting:

I have grown really tired of watching friends and relatives treat their spouses like garbage. And I think too much of it is a result of the blurring of lines between genders. I am not married yet, so I would like to thank my parents for teaching me all of the following things (and God for blessing me with common sense):

■As a woman in "modern" times, I'm not supposed to feel what I'm going to express here about men, women, and our respective roles in relationships. Society is screaming at all of us that we're equal and that gender roles shouldn't apply anymore. That's crap. If I wanted an equal, I'd become a lesbian.

■Men and women are very, very, VERY different creatures, and guess what. WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE. If we could all put down our self-righteousness for a second, I think we'd agree that that's why we can't get enough of each other. So why is everyone so afraid to just accept that for what it is? Why are women so adamant about being "equal" to a man that they get pissed off if a guy opens a door? Newsflash, honey: he's well aware that you can open that door without his help. He's trying to treat you like a woman because it makes him feel like a man. I'm all about self-sufficiency, but men like to feel useful, especially where women are concerned, so take the stick out of your rear end and let a guy be nice every now and then. Capiche? Oh, and for the sake of everyone's sanity, let him drive. And do it in silence.

■Men, really, stop emasculating yourselves (or, worse, letting some woman emasculate you). Women who are worth the trouble (and we're ALL trouble, to some degree) kind of like it when you act like you know you wear the pants in the relationship. We LIKE men. We RESPECT men. We want you to ACT LIKE men. So please, open doors, pull out chairs, and offer to carry heavy objects with reckless abandon. And we (real women, I mean) will say thank you and smile at you like no other man on the planet could have done what you just did. We feel like a princess, you feel like a knight in shining armor, everyone wins.

■Nothing is a bigger turn-off for me than a guy who needs me to tell him what to do. I went on a date recently with a guy who wanted me to decide everything, right down to what he should order for dinner. When I called him on his BS, he said "I don't like making decisions." My first thought was "You don't have time for dinner. You've gotta find your balls, and that could take a while." Seriously, give me a man who takes the liberty of ordering MY food anyday over some guy who wants me to order his. I'm not into chicks, okay?

■There is something incredibly attractive to me about a man who is just unapologetically male ... one who is neither afraid of nor ashamed of his masculinity, who understands and appreciates the male vs. female dynamic, and gladly accepts his responsibility for the former (which includes being able to order your own freaking food). Also known as an alpha male, this is the kind of man who, invariably, is motivated more by his desire to be with someone than by his fear of rejection. He meets a woman he likes and says to himself "I want her, and whatever I have to do to get her, I'll do it," rather than "What if she doesn't like me? What if I'm not her type? What if she says no?" As the Governator would say, don't be a girly man. There are enough of those in the world already.

■(Prepare yourselves, girls ... here's where I turn on you)

■Feminists, forgive me for saying this (actually, I don't really care if you forgive me or not because, again, I'm not into chicks), but you'll be a lot happier if you get over your fear of being women. There's no need to feel threatened or disrespected by men just because they're bigger, stronger, and a thousand times more reasonable than you are. You see, I believe (and I'm right) that God designed Man and Woman to complement each other, not to be exactly the same. He didn't give us the same things; instead, He hard-wired us to want and need what the other has. If you're a straight woman, are you sexually attracted to your chick friends? No. Why not? Because they don't have the right equipment. Let's just put it out there. And because men have different equipment, they do things differently. So why on Earth do you want a man who acts like you? In short, ladies, you can either wish for the world to be different than it is, or you can stop denying biology and start relating to men as they are, rather than how you wish they were.

■I do not use the term "man" loosely. I am fortunate enough to have had an abundance of good men in my life since the day I was born, so I know what they look like. I have no delusions of grandeur about being the romantic heroine who saves a "bad boy" from self-destruction. Unlike most women today, I don't have severe emotional problems that cause me to believe that "fixing" someone is my job in a relationship, let alone a marriage. Acting like marriage is going to solve your personal issues is a little bit completely insane.

■I believe real men are natural leaders, providers, and protectors of what belongs to them, and, if left to their own devices, with complete trust and without judgment, they will always put the people who depend on them first; that's their job, and they'll do it, if given the chance. A woman who is lucky enough to find a real man needs only to support him in that regard, and there are a lot of things involved in that, but primarily, it means you give him your advice and your faith, and you let him do what he thinks is best. He is not a child, and you are not his mother.

■Finally, if your man gets up, goes to work, and slays dragons for you all day, every day, he deserves to hear the words "thank you" every now and then. A man who loves you will level mountains to make you happy if you can get over yourself long enough to let him know you appreciate what he does for you.

■The End.

VERY AWESOME!!!!