THE New York Post recently bellowed the headline: "How the 'price' of sex has dropped to record lows".

It referred to the dating game and outlined a study by social psychologists from the University of Minnesota.

While many men were hit hard after the global financial crisis, the research found that in the bedroom, the men were the big 'financial' winners. Women were jumping into the sack faster than ever before, without men having to bother with romance or even paying for a second date.

"What have modern women done?" I wondered. Have legions of women cheapened the dating game to a mere wink, a meaningless hook-up and an awkward embrace in the morning?

I'd had an inkling this would happen when, 10 years ago, I embarked on a journalism career that focused entirely on the study of relationships. Busily reporting on other people's love lives, I'd forgotten entirely about my own.

After all, modern feminism assured us Gen Y women that we didn't need to focus on a man at all.

"Casual hook-ups are the way to go!" they told us. "Focus on your career instead!" "Forget about men and enjoy all the fruits of single life!"

So why now, a decade on, does it seem as if it's all backfired?

Was all that go-girl advice just one big sham?

media_camera Modern men have become complex individuals in the pursuit of love.

Gen Y women will wait to have a wealthy man and ritzy wedding

I closed the chapter of my life as a dating reporter soon after that study came out. I vowed to stop dating and get back to my passion for news (which, surprisingly, led to the beginning of my own blissfully happy relationship).

But as I spent my days chasing the day's latest political story, natural disaster or police stand-off, I realised something remained unanswered.

Everywhere I went, women would ask me why they were still single, while men would corner me in bars and on the road to lament their frustration with modern women.

What had gone wrong? Why did so many men no longer want to commit? Had Gen Y men shifted their behaviour to fit in with what modern women were offering? Had my generation of women let themselves down?

When I recently told a group of men about my upcoming book, titled What Modern Men Want, they all stared at me, dumbfounded.

"So, what is it?" one desperately wanted to know.

"Don't you guys know what you want?" I countered.

There was dead silence.

Apparently, they didn't have a clue.

But I did. Quietly, in between breaking news stories, I continued my research into the perplexing question. In doing so, I discovered what modern men really want, but are too afraid to admit. And the results were astounding. (Gents, you can thank me later.)

Modern Men Want To Be Needed

Maureen Dowd, a columnist for The New York Times, questioned whether modern women need men at all in her best-selling 2005 book, Are Men Necessary? Hanna Rosin went one step further last year when she released her tome The End of Men, which claimed that modern men are becoming obsolete.

When I asked the men about their thoughts on both these authors, the sentiment was conclusive. Modern men didn't like them, and certainly didn't want to date them.

"I don't want to be with a woman who doesn't need me," one male told me.

"Men need to be needed, not necessarily financially, but definitely emotionally and sexually," said another.

"It makes us feel like we're worthy and like we're men," chimed in a third. "If a woman doesn't seem like she needs us, or she continually tells us how successful she is, it just makes us not want to be with her."

Modern Men Aren't Afraid Of Successful Women, But Don't Want It Thrown In Their Faces

The New York Times reported in 2004 that a man would rather marry his secretary than his boss. But modern men assure me that this simply isn't the case.

"We don't want to date a woman without a great career," one Lothario explained. "It's more a case of wanting to date a successful woman in her own right, but it gets rather boring when a woman only ever talks about work and her achievements."

But that doesn't mean modern women need to give up their success - they just need to get better at managing the ever-so fragile ego of the bloke in their life.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer and the author of Lean In, the latest bible for modern career women, writes that almost all the women who have served as CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are married, and say they couldn't have done it all

without their partner by their side. Oh, and she adds that her husband Dave is responsible for paying all their bills, despite her high-paying job…and assures us he actually likes doing it!

media_camera What makes the modern man tick in a relationship?

Modern Men Want To Earn Sex

"Look at my phone!" said a man who recently accosted me in a bar to regale me with his latest dating saga. "This woman continually texts me and asks me to come over to her place.

I haven't even taken her on a date!"

Despite research from the Ohio State University published in the Journal of Sex Research, which found that men think about sex more than 18 times per day (compared with a median of 10 times for women), they still like to know they have worked for it.

"Modern men are bored of 'easy'," the man in the bar told me.

"It's OK being single, but it's not all that great. Although that being said, I'll only settle down with the right girl. And she's definitely not going to be giving it away all that quickly without giving me a bit of a challenge."

Which is my next point: what makes a man commit?

Modern Men Only Want To Commit To A Woman They Can Respect

Modern men who have recently morphed from a player into a stayer all tell me the same story: they flit from woman to woman until one steals their heart, so they throw out their playbook and marry her.

As one recently hitched man lamented: "When I met my future wife, I didn't even want to sleep with her right away. She was just so interesting, I was hanging on to her every word."

You can bet she was actually no more interesting than all the other women he'd dated, but she did things on her own terms, kept her (sexual) cards close to her chest and analysed his behaviour before deciding for herself whether he was the man she wanted to be with. Not the other way around, like so many women mistakenly do, waiting for the man to decide if she's good enough for him.

Modern Men Do Want To Get Married, But In Their Own Time

And then there's the ever-elusive male timeline. Modern men do want to get married, but they are a little slower getting there.

Nowadays, getting hitched is darn expensive. And a man wants to make sure he is financially and emotionally ready before he takes the plunge.

So perhaps if more modern women let men be men, gave them a little bit of a challenge and boosted their egos once in a while, the supply and demand would reverse. Our stock

would climb. And men would be happier for it.

Because all modern men really want are two things: to feel like men, and to feel they've earned a great woman.

Samantha Brett is a reporter for Sky News and the author of six books

Follow Samantha Brett on twitter @samanthabrett

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Originally published as What does the modern man want?