Any man who wants to know what women really want should read a romance novel. They are as close to a marriage manual for men as you're ever going to get.

You only need to read one. They're all the same. Go to any thrift or second hand store; you'll see scores of them along the back wall, and each one will only set you back about a quarter. Buy one of the thin, discreet ones with the red covers, and if you're too embarrassed, rip off the cover. No one will ever know.

If you do read one, you won't be alone. If you sneak a glance at what the women on the rush-hour subway are reading, chances are you'll catch sight of titles like "Passion's Sweet Embrace", "My Irish Love", or "Donovan's Bed". That's because in spite of what feminists would have you believe, romance novels are phenomenally popular, so much so, in fact, that they make up nearly half of all paperbacks sold worldwide every year - and net their publishers nearly $3 billion annually.

Why?

Because the people who write these books, and those who publish them, have tapped into the essence of what women fantasize about. And they milk it for all it's worth.

Women's fantasies? As much as some men would like to believe that women, like the ones they see depicted in porn, fantasize about having sex with each other, the reality is that most women fantasize about three things: passionate lovemaking, marriage-worthy love, children by the men they adore.

And that's precisely what romance novels deliver. A gorgeous, sexy, intelligent and warm-hearted man falls madly, hopelessly in love with an independent, feisty, beautiful young woman. They flirt, tease, and eventually make explosive love to each other. The story ends with either a proposal or an actual wedding, and sometimes a pregnancy. And they live happily ever after. The end.

But here's the rest of the story... Romance novels are sexually graphic, politically incorrect, and more often than not, describe seduction scenes in which the heroine is totally, helplessly submissive to a dominant, sexually experienced man. They describe everything from oral sex to full penetration, sometimes bondage, sometimes safe sex, sometimes wild abandon. The heroes are unashamed of their desire and the heroines are flattered by it, and the stories are held together by breathless, butterflies-in-your-stomach passionate love. If you want to step out of the reality of a feminist-controlled world and into a time where women are "taken" by their mad-with-desire lovers, and like it, then get your hands on one of these books. And if you see a woman reading one of them, believe me, this is someone you want to date.

These books are admittedly too simply written, too predictable and melodramatic, too one-dimensional even to ever be considered literature, but the sentiment behind them is admirable: the unapologetic pursuit of values like love, sex, marriage and children.

Women want these things desperately. Given the plethora of reading material out there, they are drawn over and over again to these simple stories of passion and seduction, love and marriage, to the escapism of a world populated by women they want to emulate and men they can adore.

The sad thing is that the majority of romance novel readers are married women, women who, for whatever reason, get their fill of love and romance from the pages of pulp fiction rather than the arms of their husbands. Whether this is a failing on their part or on that of their husbands, I don't know. Maybe more women need to acknowledge their true desires and seek out men who arouse these feelings in them, instead of curling up with a book while the man they're married to slumbers on. Maybe more women need to admit that this is what they want from marriage and stop worrying whether they're betraying so-called feminist ideals by fantasizing about tumbling into love.

Or maybe more men ought to realize what it is that really turns a woman on. Maybe we wouldn't have time to read romance novels if they did.