Flattery or Criticism: Which Do Men Truly Want?

The Desire for Flattery Comes from a Way of Seeing the World

Aesthetic Realism shows that when a man wants flattery from a woman, his family, his boss, it comes from an attitude he has to the whole world. Our deepest purpose, Eli Siegel explained, is to like the world, to respect it as much as possible. But every man also has a hope to see the world as an opponent he has to vanquish, and this, I learned, is contempt.

In an Aesthetic Realism lesson he gave, Mr. Siegel was speaking about this when he asked a person, "What is a danger, if one feels the world is against one?" And he explained:

You look for a remedy. If a person feels the world is against one, he looks for someone who will be utterly for one...If one feels the world is mean, the anodyne is...flattery.

Growing up in suburban Miami Shores, Florida, though there were many things I liked, such as going down the block at dusk to Biscayne Bay with my friends, often I felt the world was mean. And this feeling began early. At six, when I went to the Honey Bun Kindergarten, I remember feeling that the other children were harsh, they played too rough at recess, and that things seemed much safer and more soothing at home.

My parents made a lot of me. They told me how cute I was and made me feel I was more sensitive and mature than other children my age. "You could charm the wallpaper off the walls," is something I heard at home, and I loved it.

Once in the 60's when I was twelve, my parents came home from a trip and gave me a present of the newest high-tech watch—along with the time, it told you the day of the month. But I had found out in advance what the gift was, and said in my most boyish, naive and carefully planned way as I opened the box, "Oh my—what boy my age has a watch like this!" I got just what I wanted when they beamed at me like I was the most adorable thing on earth.

"If you're looking for flattery," said Mr. Siegel in the lesson I quoted earlier, "the first order of business is to respect the flatterer. When you get flattery and don't respect the flatterer, there's trouble."

I didn't respect the flattery or the person giving it, and there definitely was trouble. I knew I didn't deserve it—I was competitive with my brothers, ambitious to be liked by people, and could be scheming and mean to get ahead. That included my flattering other people in order to get things from them. Years later, when I had my first meeting with a boss who was new on a job and she asked me "So how's the morale around here?", I answered in a greasy way, "Oh, I think it's much better now that you're here." I didn't even know this person, who turned out to be a corporate shark—but I sure tried to butter her so she would like me and give me a promotion.

The way I wanted people to make a lot of me while I had contempt for them had huge consequences: often I felt lonely, empty and like a mean faker who pretended to be a nice guy. I didn't feel I deserved to be honestly cared for by someone.

Meanwhile, deserve it or not, I thought a woman should praise me, not criticize me. At Syracuse University, when I took singing lessons with Sue Hammill who was very pretty, she told me in a very matter of fact way that I had a pleasant voice, but that no one would know it because it didn't project beyond about 10 feet from my mouth. It made me angry, and try as I might I couldn't seem to charm her, and in lessons she kept insisting that she couldn't hear me. "What's wrong with this lady?!" I thought—"maybe she has a hearing problem." But she was right, and the criticism she gave me I was to hear again and again as my acting career continued.

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