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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What does The Way of the Superior Man book say about how to understand women? What are the responsibilities of a Superior Man in a relationship?
In his book The Way of the Superior Man, David Deida outlines how a Superior Man should act in a relationship. He provides advice on how to understand the feminine mind, a man’s role in a relationship, and how to rejuvenate attraction.
Keep reading for relationship advice from the book.
Understanding Your Woman
In the book The Way of the Superior Man, you’ll explore the feminine mindset, learn to understand the meaning behind your woman’s words and complaints, and discover how to share your masculine gifts with her.
Attend to What She Feels, Not Just What She Says
The masculine style of communication is to say exactly what we mean, according to a well-considered stance based on our experience and the events at hand. The feminine style is to communicate the textural feeling of the moment, not the literal details of the situation. She lives in the now, and her emotions and moods are solid, real things, but they pass quickly and change often.
Her words take into account her feeling about your relationship and both the seen and unseen nuances of the situation. There’s often wisdom there that’s unavailable to your way of perceiving the world. Let her follow her own flow; the full embodiment of femininity is to be moved by love and life, according to what feels right, rather than considered analysis.
Her role in the polarity of intimacy is to surrender openly and fully to you and, to do that, she needs to trust you entirely. Your integrity is critical; to trust you with her life, she needs to trust you with yours. Show her that you’re doing everything you can in service of your masculine mission, so she can relax into her own feminine priorities.
Meet your woman’s challenges, criticisms, doubts, and complaints with humor and love. Show her your openness, integrity, and strength. Remember that what she wants is to know that you’ll love her wholeheartedly no matter the circumstances and that you won’t stop loving her. Embrace her, make her feel loved, and appreciate her for pushing you to remain who you are.
Share Your Gifts With Her
Remember that the feminine seeks to be filled with love. 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. 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 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. Assume that what she needs is to feel love, and help the mood pass before seeking the problem. Conversely, 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.
Remember that your intimate relationship requires polarity; if you want her to embody the feminine, embody the masculine and be that for her when she needs it. She’ll be able to surrender to you sexually because you’ll have enabled her to relax into trusting your masculine energy.
Manage Your Relationship
In this section, we’ll explore your priority and responsibilities in your relationship.
A masculine man’s primary goal will always be his mission, and a feminine woman’s primary goal will always be to maximize the flow of love in her life—this asymmetry can be a major cause of strife. For your relationship to best serve you and your woman, you must support each other in the pursuit of your distinct priorities. The intimacy between you will give you what you want only if you’re both fulfilled in the way you most need to be.
Take Responsibility for Giving Your Gifts, and for Your Growth and Direction
As an adult, you’re responsible for your own happiness, health, and success. You no longer need someone to take care of you. Beyond this, you have a responsibility to give your gift. Growing past your dependence on your partner is only one step to true adulthood—the larger step is to grow beyond your need for autonomy and independence. Simply put, the stage in intimacy that comes after independence is mutual, loving service.
As you get lost in the daily tasks of your business and your duties, your woman will get lost in the cycles of her moods and emotions. It’s your responsibility to cut through both mentalities: to stay awake to your purpose in living and to remove obstructions to your woman’s connection to the love at her core.
Remember what your masculine gifts are:
- Your ability to lovingly intervene. Your woman can get lost in her moods and find it very difficult to escape them alone. Don’t be her therapist; be her wake-up call. Open her eyes and heart, remind her of how deeply she’s loved, and lift her out of the dark, shrunken perspective her moods drag her into.
- Your ability to set a goal. You know where you are, where you want to be, and how to get there. If your woman is stressed, unhappy, and unfulfilled, examine that. Find out where she needs to go and how she can get there. Share that vision with her and help her accomplish it.
Before you can give your woman the gift of direction, you must find your own. Take control of your life and align it around your purpose. Your laziness, your addictions, and your lack of clarity are your own responsibility—try whatever techniques are appropriate to eliminate them.
In every moment, love through your woman and the world. Embrace every instant of your experience as a lover, and trust the direction in which love moves you. Give your gift so open-heartedly that you don’t even realize you’ve lost your need to be self-centered.
Channel the Energy of Attraction
In this section, we’ll discuss the rejuvenating energy of attraction, where it can lead you, and who to pursue.
Embrace Your Attraction to the Feminine
What attracts you to women is more than their outward beauty; it’s their radiance, their liveliness, and their freedom. Your desire for the feminine is an embodiment of your internal impulse to give love; don’t suppress it. It’s a feeling that rises out of a desire to live, to be a united One, and to be free in your spirit.
There’s more in the world that’s feminine than just women; nature, beer, music—anything beautiful, energetic, moving, and relaxing embodies the feminine essence. Even now, you’re floating in an ocean of feminine energy. It’s life in all forms; the breath in your lungs, the beating of your heart in your chest, the breeze in the trees, and the vibrancy of nature.
The Superior Man allows feminine energy to fuel his energy and his drive and revitalize his masculine core.
When you feel the zing of attraction, allow yourself to experience it fully. Don’t stare or interact with the woman who triggered it in you; just enjoy the gift of her feminine essence. Let the energy of your attraction flow through you and fill you. You don’t need to act on the attraction. Let it be what it is, and take it as a blessing.
Understand that sexual attraction is not the same as having sex. Being attracted to the radiance of a woman is always okay, but having sex with her may not be. Any intimacy needs to come from a shared commitment to loving and serving each other, and if that isn’t there, intimacy isn’t appropriate.
Use Your Attraction to Connect to Your Core
Your need for women comes from your spiritual desire for oneness, for completeness. This total serenity is always within you. The cycle of attraction, desire, and need has arisen because you’re searching outside of yourself for the peace that only exists inside.
Your capacity to love, give love, and receive love comes from your core, which is love. Women can bring you closer to it or take you further away, so magnify your desire. Take your woman in your arms and give her everything you want from her, the entirety of your desperate need to be whole, and feel through her, through the world, and into the core of endless love beyond.
Prioritize Growth Over Desire
As a masculine man, you’ll be most attracted to a feminine woman. Her embodiment of the feminine sexual essence enables her to give you the gifts you most desire, and it will naturally lead her to chaotic impulses and emotional storms. She’ll seem both sexually irresistible and emotionally unreadable.
Understand that this combination is simply the way of the world; like the women you’re attracted to, your world offers you limitless desire and terrifying unpredictability. A good relationship teaches you to embrace that dichotomy and learn to face it with an open mind and a loving heart. Your capacity to stand strong in your loving regardless of the unpredictability of her energy is what will grow you most—and her.
Consider Your Priorities Before You Move on
The Superior Man doesn’t just drop everything when his desires change—he evaluates the situation, makes adjustments, and continues to follow his core.
When the flow of your life changes, you may suddenly desire a different “temperature” of feminine energy: If your days are slow and peaceful, you may desire a “hot” woman to ignite your passion and revitalize your energy. If your days are busy and stressful, you may want a “cool” woman to soothe and heal you.
Energy is easy to adjust; instead of rushing to leave your woman when her energy no longer matches your needs, seek to adjust the “temperature” of your life in other ways first.
If you’re running hot, a change in diet, clothing, or lifestyle can be enough to cool you down. A glass of cool fruit juice, a massage from a cool woman, or a relaxed conversation can rebalance your energy. Likewise, spending time with hot, fiery people can warm you up and enliven your spirit just as much as having sex with a hot woman would. Spicy foods and warmer clothes will do just as well.
Regardless of how loving and satisfying your relationship is, you’ll probably find yourself wanting to have sex with other women. This is not necessarily a problem, and how you respond to that desire depends on your purpose in life.
Before you consider having more than one woman, take a look at the relationship you already have. Unless the intimacy in that relationship is characterized by deep connection, spiritual happiness, and rejuvenating passion, you’re not ready for a second woman, and it’s best to discipline your desire and work to improve the relationship you’ve already got.
If your relationship is strong, perhaps it’s right to pursue a second woman—in this case, ensure that doing so will best serve both your own needs and happiness and the needs and happiness of your current and future partners.
Master Physical and Sexual Practices
The Superior Man prioritizes connection over pleasure. In this section, we’ll explore techniques for the practice of conscious sexual intercourse.
Ejaculate Consciously, or Not at All
Ejaculation without conscious choice or control weakens you physically, spiritually, and relationally. Your addiction to ejaculation prevents you from experiencing the full union of sexual love.
When your woman sees that you’re satisfied with a quick release—that your goal is release, rather than a perfect union—you show her that’s your priority. That in all things, you will seek release over completion, and you will lose her trust in life as you have in sex.
Your goal in sex should be to achieve the highest degree of intimacy and sexual fulfillment available to you—your woman is giving you the gift of her full and open surrender; you owe her your greatest gift in return.
To do this, practice the following exercises:
First, learn to consciously contract the muscles in your pelvic floor: your genitals, anus, and perineum (the space between your genitals and your anus). When you contract the muscles in this area, focus on pulling it upward toward your spine, and into your body. It’ll feel much like trying to hold it on your way to the bathroom.
Practice this in sets of 15 or 20, contracting those muscles and holding them for as long as you can. Do it three or four times a day; eventually, it will become easy, and you’ll be able to hold it as long as you want.
Then, practice moving your sexual energy up your spine. You already feel it when it builds up behind and inside of your genitals, swelling and pushing to be released; this same energy can be moved upward instead of out. At first, you’ll have to visualize it, but the more you practice, the more you’ll feel the energy moving. It’ll feel healing and revitalizing instead of draining and exhausting.
Finally, during sex, relax the front of your body and keep your breath full. Don’t focus on a particular sensation; feel fully and openly, and feel outward—even beyond your own sensations and those of your partner. Feel out toward infinity.
When you come close to orgasm, stop moving, pull your pelvic floor in and up, and breathe the energy of your orgasm up your spine. When you combine the pulling contraction with the breath up your spine, you should feel the strength of your erection as well as your need to ejaculate decrease slightly. Repeat this as often as necessary during sex to extend your connection with your partner until you achieve the perfect union you desire.
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Here's what you'll find in our full The Way Of The Superior Man summary :
- How to reclaim the passion in your relationship and enjoy true intimacy
- Why authenticity is the first key in becoming a superior man
- Why you should embrace your sexual polarity
