Men are taught repeatedly that what women want are gestures of investment, commitment, and love.  Give her flowers, buy her an expensive dinner, write her a love letter, etc.

In fact these are things women want, but they don’t want them from just any man.  They want them from a man they are attracted to.  If you think about women’s fantasies as represented in romance novels, etc. you will see that women don’t fantasize about having a bevy of ordinary men falling over themselves to give her the most thoughtful gift.  Women fantasize about winning the heart of the dashing hero, and ultimately having him acknowledge this with tokens of his investment, commitment, and love.  These tokens give her comfort that she isn’t hopelessly pursuing an unavailable man.  She wants him to feel too good to be true, but she also wants some reassurance that she isn’t just being conned.

What men are being taught is to skip the hero part and go straight to the expression of love.  They are taught to offer comfort as a way to build attraction, instead of building attraction first and then offering comfort.  It is no wonder that this not only doesn’t work, but often fails spectacularly.

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Women wanting a man to lead them is counterintuitive given that we live in a fully feminist age. But there is a difference between what women say and think they want in a man, and what their subconscious wants. Ignore the fundamentals of human psychology at your peril.

Emphasis mine. Read the whole thing. Via Romance 101: How to stop frustrating your wife. | Dalrock.