Women in Love

What do women want?

That question had even Sigmund Freud stumped, and he was supposed to be an expert on human desire, sexual and otherwise (remember Oedipus and his Mommy?).

But it's no myth that women often want the same thing out of relationships as men do; they just go about getting it in different ways and in different phases of their lives, says Julie Schwartz Gottman, PhD. She should know: as co-founder and clinical director of the Gottman Institute, she focuses on helping couples build and maintain healthy relationships. "There's kind of a developmental process to relationships that in some ways parallels that of the individual, and then calls on different things from partners in relationships throughout a lifetime," Gottman tells WebMD.

Gottman says that what each woman needs, wants, and expects from her marriage or intimate relationship may change from one phase of her life to the next. Yet there are tips that help couples in all phases of life. So let's start with those:

• Make time for conversations where you find out what your partner has experienced lately.
• Express fondness, appreciation, and admiration for your partner often.
• Acknowledge your partners interests, even in small moments.
• Avoid the "Four Horsemen" of Marriage: criticism, contempt, defensiveness (which follows criticism and contempt), and stonewalling (that is, when one partner completely shuts down and refuses to respond).