Men: How to Be a Supportive Partner to a Woman

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The Way Of The Superior Man" by David Deida. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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Do you want to know how you can better support your girlfriend or wife? How should you go about handling her unpredictable energy and flow?

Many people seek a supportive partner in a relationship, but not enough people put in the effort to learn how to be a supportive partner. In The Way of the Superior Man, David Deida teaches men how to support their woman’s feminine energy so she can become her best self.

Keep reading for advice on how to support your partners’s dreams.

Let Your Woman Follow Her Own Flow

The feminine energy is an ocean. It is vast, unpredictable, and chaotic. It is both destructive and creative, and its course changes according to its own logic.

The masculine enjoys charting a path, making maps, analyzing the tides, setting goals, and following through; we’re the ships on the ocean.

The Superior Man understands that his woman benefits more from reassurance and love than she does from analysis, and doesn’t force her into his masculine mindset.

The full embodiment of femininity is to be moved by love and life, to go with the flow and be swept up in the moment. A woman who fully embodies her feminine sexual essence is deeply connected to her energy, sexually and spiritually. When she surrenders her body to you, she does it in the same open, wholehearted way that she surrenders herself spiritually, emotionally, and experientially to the world she lives in.

Your woman will be emotionally chaotic, she’ll change her mind according to a spiritual, energetic sensitivity that is totally invisible to you. And her connection to that energy—the way it fills and moves her body—will delight and excite you as much as it’ll confuse you.

Don’t ask your woman to be more like a ship; asking her to analyze her mood with the goal of fixing it will not serve her well. Her ideal is to relax and surrender, to sink into and embody her internal ocean.

Analyzing and fixing restricts and restrains the fullness of her experience. Her freedom, unlike yours, doesn’t come from analyzing the blocks to her ability to love. It comes from embracing that love and allowing it to overflow without limits.

What to Do:

Encourage your woman to be as unreadably feminine as she is; be the stable masculine pole and allow her to be the chaotic feminine. The polarity is what feeds your mutual passion and desire. Let her be who she is fully, without suppressing it, without asking her to change or calm down or be reasonable. Stand firm in your masculine stability and allow her to flow around you as aimlessly and chaotically as she feels is right. If you want to be happy in your intimacy, allow the polarity of your sexual essences; let her be crazy, mysterious, and irresistible.

Don’t analyze her, and don’t ask her to analyze herself. Instead, allow your analysis of yourself to stabilize you, and allow her to use your stability as a point of reference. Share your love with her fully, no matter where her internal ocean takes her, so that she has a safe port to return to. When you give her that, she’ll be able to surrender to her own flow, follow it wherever it goes, and return to your loving safety whenever she needs it.

Share Your Gifts With Her

In this section, you’ll learn what you can give your woman that she can’t give herself. These are your greatest gifts to her; a Superior Man understands that giving these gifts freely and openly is his role in the relationship.

Love Is the Greatest Gift You Can Give Her

Remember that the feminine seeks to be filled with love. This is what drives and motivates her; when you express unconditional love to her, you give her the greatest gift she can receive.

At her deepest level, your woman’s difficulties arise from a feeling of being incompletely loved. This is the source of her destructive moods; her anger, sadness, and upset. Because she always lives now, her moods deeply impact her experience. Throughout the day, her feminine side is either opening or closing her heart as her mood fluctuates, making her daily world unpredictable and frightening.

The Superior Man understands that while his woman can escape her darkness on her own, his loving intervention can brighten her mood far more quickly than she could herself. He is a supportive partner and gives his woman the love and support she needs to pursue her own solutions, instead of promoting her feelings of powerlessness and insecurity by bombarding her with advice.

When you refuse to engage with her—when you recoil from her moods in fear and disgust—you teach her that she isn’t always worthy of love. And you practice retreating from challenge, fear, and unpredictability, instead of living at your edge.

You experience the fullness of life when you give your greatest gift in every moment regardless of your fear, transforming the occasion by magnifying love and having no attachment to the outcome. There will always be a cycle of rise and fall, and your options are fear or mastery.

The purpose of intimacy is to help each other grow better than we could alone, in our personhood and love, through mutual gifting. Your greatest gift to her is to open her heart, and her gift to you is to provide you with opportunities to face your fear. In this way, you’ll learn that every situation is workable, and she’ll learn that to be loved, all she has to do is be who she is.

By engaging with her, you grow closer to your deepest purpose, and she to hers.

What to Do:

When your woman is caught up in her emotions, get involved. Instead of trying to fix the problem, start by addressing the mood. Assume that what she needs is to feel love, and help the mood pass before seeking the problem. Your goal is to keep loving freely, openly, and fully no matter what your woman or the world confronts you with.

Breathe fully, deeply, and openly. Join her in the mood she’s inhabiting, embrace her, and lift her out of it. Love her fiercely and uncompromisingly; show your love with humor and physical touch, not just words. Use your body to show her your stability and clarity, and let her feel that she’s safe with you. Communicate your freedom from the fear her intensity throws at you with your body. Release her from her fear that she has moods in which she becomes unlovable by loving her no matter what.

Practice responding to fear and uncertainty with openness and love; if you show your woman you can’t handle her anger, she’ll feel that she’s unlovable when she’s angry. Because she needs to feel loved no matter how she is in the moment, she’ll return to that anger until you fill the emptiness that drives it with your love.

Similarly, understand that the feminine side of your woman thrives on praise and support, not challenge and criticism. When you tell her she could be more attractive if she exercised, she hears that you don’t love her the way she is. Instead, praise the qualities you want her to grow, no matter how small they currently are—she will hear that you love what she is, and she will magnify that.

Give Her the Benefit of Your Perspective

The masculine enjoys analyzing situations and making the best decision, but giving your woman this opportunity is not a gift. When you expect your woman to make her own decisions and to be responsible for the results, your refusal to share your masculine gift damages her ability to trust you.

Feminine decisions are based on what feels right, and masculine decisions are based on an analysis of the possible outcomes of all the options. When your woman asks for your opinion, she’s not asking you to choose for her. Embodying the masculine pole by sharing your analytical perspective enables your woman to embody her feminine energy more fully, deepening the intimacy of your relationship.

Often, her feminine way of deciding will be better for her than your masculine way, but it’ll still be helpful for her to hear what you think. Her deepest desire in intimacy is to relax and surrender to your direction. When you don’t share your masculine perspective, you force her to be her own man; to embody the masculine and analyze the situation herself. The more you make her do this, the more she has to neutralize her feminine essence. Instead, give her the opportunity to open herself up to whatever you have set for her, and to relax into simply enjoying what comes.

Remember that your intimate relationship requires polarity; if you want to be the masculine pole and to have her embody the feminine, embody the masculine and be that for her when she needs it. Let her be free to make her own choices, but give her the gift of your masculine decisiveness. In doing this, you’ll maintain the polarity of your relationship, giving her the comfort of your stability. She’ll be able to surrender to you sexually because you’ll have enabled her to relax into trusting your masculine energy.

What to Do:

Always help your woman make decisions by sharing your masculine perspective and telling her what you’d choose. Be clear and decisive, and let her know that in the end the choice remains hers, and that you’ll love her regardless. If the choice she makes isn’t the choice you’d make, don’t be offended; her decisions are based on what feels right for her. Don’t think your input is wasted if she doesn’t follow it.

When it comes to planning events, don’t just ask her what she wants: figure it out yourself. Learn from experience what she enjoys, what blooms and fulfills her, and give her that without asking. Escort her, lead her, and let her trust your direction. She doesn’t want to do the work of analyzing her options, choosing the best direction, and deciding on an itinerary. Instead, she’d much prefer to relax, knowing that you’ve planned everything out of your love for her. Give her that, and watch her shine.

Men: How to Be a Supportive Partner to a Woman