Taddeo examines the motivations which led her to write Three Women. She opens with an anecdote about her mother, a beautiful woman who grew up in Italy in the 1960s. On her way to work every morning, a man in his sixties “large-nosed and balding,” would follow her, watching and masturbating (2). She became intrigued by the way men’s desire seemed to rule them. She writes, “[M]en did not merely want. Men needed” (3). For this reason, Taddeo initially decided to write about male desire and had been interviewing subjects for a non-fiction book which explored this idea. Midway through her research, however, Taddeo reflected that the stories began to “bleed together” (4). She thought that while her father’s desire for her mother was uncomfortably obvious, her mother’s desires were mysterious and secret. Taddeo was shocked when her mother wanted to use the internet to look up a man she used to date. Taddeo admits that she felt uncomfortable knowing about her mother’s desire.

These formative experiences led Taddeo to realize that she found the comparatively secret world of female desire more intriguing than her initial subject. She was particularly drawn to stories of female desire where the object of the subject’s devotion held the power and control.