Ladies, I’d like to know which impresses you more and/or which quality you prefer in a potential partner - strength or skill?
For example are you more impressed by a man who can lift a rather heavy load of suitcases at an airport, or a man who can negotiate a high gate with one masterful jump at the same location?
Both these acts are physical, and that is all we are considering here for the moment. Try to think of your answers as binary - so in other words, it’s either one or the other, not a little bit of this, a little of that etc. (Also, don’t bring in completely external ideas - like “Oh well I just prefer a guy who can read/write poetry…”)
We are also talking in purely sexy terms. So in other words, it has nothing to do with being practical. If you are thinking, “well this guy could do all my grocery shopping, but then again this guy could chase after the neighbourhood vandals who stole our Christmas presents…” forget it. It’s all about what impresses you the most, or whichever one turns you on as you watch it. Which one gives you the shivers, the spikes, the tingles… I know you know what I mean.
So picture one Herculean strong guy tussling with a bear with his powerful bare (n.p.i) hands, and the other swinging and swivelling his sword around like an Arabian knight. Which one gets your juices flowing?
And as a potential date, which one do you think you would go out with? Is it the same as the one who tickles your feathers (you are now allowed to be as practical as you like ladies)?
I like skillful. I really liked coming home one day and finding the very complicated dresser all put together, even though it was made of some very heavy wood. He did it all by himself.
I don’t get it. Is the man who can tote the suitcases meant to represent strength? Because I’d prefer him to the guy who can jump over a high gate. Jumping the gate just seems dumb, but more importantly, it also seems like it would take strength, just as it would take some skill to balance a heavy load of luggage. I can’t really view these examples as “binary,” but if all I knew about a guy was that he could maneuver luggage through an airport, or that he could jump over a gate, I’d take Luggage Man over Gate Jumper Man every time. I mean, how often do I need a guy who can jump a gate? Oh, sure, when I’m running from terrorists or infilitrating the Nigerian embassy, but that doesn’t happen more than once, twice a month max.
Sorry, but I can’t do that. If I perceive gate-jumping to be a useless skill, I’m not really going to be impressed by it. I’m not impressed by someone’s ability to recite boring statistics about every ballpark in the US, either. Does that take “skill” to learn? Sure, but it’s completely useless to me. At my age, practical is sexy.
If a guy can tussle with a bear with his bare hands and win without using any kind of skill or strategy, I’m a monkey’s uncle.
Still skill. But, frankly, if I’m out on a date and the guy is wasting time jumping over gates, hauling massive piles of luggage, tussling with bears, or swordfighting rather than talking to me, I shall be quite put out.
Man here to chime in, as I wondered what the question was all about. Maybe I can list some examples of what I’d consider to be strength and skill along your definitions and you can say which ones work.
A man with strength…
…can carry a heavy load of suitcases
…can wrestle a bear
…can carry his bride over the threshold
…can tear a telephone book in half
…can win at shotput, discus, and tug-of-war
…likes to play American football
…could protect you with his fists by using boxing and wrestling
A man with athletic skill…
…can leap over a high hurdle
…can swordfight or fence
…can dance with his bride at the reception
…can juggle three telephone books at once
…can win at figure skating, archery, or tennis
…likes to play hockey
…could protect you with his body by using karate or jujitsu
I have tried to leave out examples that are particularly marketable or primarily knowledge-based (like changing a spare tire or remodeling a bathroom). The strength-based list does require some skill, yes; and the skill-based list does require some strength, but hey, nobody’s perfect. Do these fit your categories, Mantelope?
At first all I could think of in the “strength” category was picking up something heavy or pushing something heavy. Ho-hum. But then I thought about it some more and I remembered one time seeing a young man jump up and hang on a door frame by just his fingertips, and then do a bunch of pullups that way. All strength, no skill, and man! was that hot.
I guess I’d really need to rate each incidence individually to be truly accurate.
Yeah, I’d be likely to call it agility as well. In general, I tried to pick things which require some conditioning (save juggling, archery, and maybe dancing) so it was still fairly athletic. The sport activity stuff I listed (tennis, hockey, figure skating) was what I could think of where strength comes in handy but being big and over-muscly is a disadvantage.
I tried to leave off most “pure skill” skills such as darts, pool, etc.
I also tried to put in mostly equivalent situations. I considered “can pull your car out of a ditch” and “can move your furniture for you” but there weren’t really agility-based analogues. There’s also no strength-based analog for snowboarding or ski jumping that I can think of.
Can anybody else expand on what we think the difference is while we wait for confirmation? I’m sorta curious about this myself, though there really isn’t an equivalent question for women.
I don’t understand your example, either. What the heck kind of skill is jumping over a gate? Skills are things like: can fix your car, can program a computer, can make a piece of furniture, can write well… not doesn’t fall on butt or trip while jumping.
I guess being agile trumps being strong, but neither one is particularly attractive or abhorrent to me, nor anything I’d spend much time looking for in a guy. Real skills, on the other hand, can be quite attractive.
I have to vote for agility and skill. I’ve known men who can turn backflips and dance in full armor–that’s pretty sexy. Guys who are really good at mountain biking and snowboarding and climbing are sexy. As for skillful, I love a man who can fix stuff, and not just easy stuff either. Guys who can weld and figure out how to invent something that will fix something else, who know how to mix and pour concrete and who can build things and use power tools, tres sexy. Guys who are just mindlessly strong, eh–it’s neat and all, but I can hitch my truck up to pull something heavy and I have handtrucks to move appliances. It’s all about smarts and being a tool using animal, that’s what’s sexy–not brute strength.
Fish, you are my new best friend.