I can't speak for men by any means, but I can speak to the mistakes I've made over the years--from which I've hopefully learned an item or two.

I'm in a very demanding profession; which if I let it, would essentially be the only thing I did in waking hours. There have been times when I've been less than successful in holding back the tide of my practice's needs--at the expense of my personal life. While there are naturally episodes when extra time with work can't be avoided, I can't imagine any message clearer to a man than "my job is more important to me than you are", if I never set limits with the work. If I were on the receiving end of the same behavior as a woman, I'd be hurt if this was how it was all the time. So be careful of "independence", when independence means there's no room for someone else.

Additionally, I know there are differences between men and women. I believe that many men do indeed like to make their mates happy--& if this entails a man removing obstacles for his woman, he will try to do so. Just as any normal impulse is healthy, the exaggeration of it is not. So a man who insists on rescuing to the detriment of his mate's ability to take care of herself, or a woman who makes herself so helpless that she "must" be rescued, is a distortion of normal behavior--just as much as a woman who is so independent she clearly shows there is no need for another person in her life. Either one is too much.

The good news to me is that in that "normalcy" there's a nice wide range of what works--and we can find someone whose needs balance ours. There's no one rule for how it has to be for all of us.