How to Lead a Relationship as a Man

Foreign.

Welcome. I'm Connor Beaton and today we're going to talk about the three things that you can do right now to lead more effectively in your relationship as a man. Before we dive into that, just a quick reminder, if you haven't already done so yet, hit the subscribe button and the bell icon to get notifications. But when I drop new videos on how you can be a better self led man in the world. All right, so leadership, what does it mean? How do we lead in a relationship? Why is it important? Before I dive into the three things that you can tackle and you can start to take action on, I just want to say a few things about leadership. Number one, the definition of leadership is a process of social influence, of influencing one person or a group of people towards a common goal or task or vision. So rule number one is how are you leading yourself first? So your relationship is going to be a mirror in some ways of your leadership. But the most important aspect is how are you leading yourself in your life? Do you have healthy routines? Do you have a structure that you abide by? Are you disciplined? Are you doing the things that you ultimately want? Are you able to make healthy decisions, good decisions for yourself, for your finances, for your health, for your well being, for your career, for your business? What most men do, unfortunately, is they begin to try and control their partner. So they begin to look at their wife, their girlfriend, their spouse, their whatever it is, boyfriend, husband, et cetera, and they begin to try and control that other person. They begin to judge their actions and criticize them and try and make decisions for them and force them into a kind of coherence of what they believe should be happening. So this isn't leadership, right? This is dictatorship. This is an authoritarian standpoint that a lot of men fall into the trap of. And it's almost like the more out of control that you feel as a man, the more that you feel the need to control your partner. So that brings me to point number two. Direction is leadership. Where are you going? Who are you going with? When are you doing it? What does it look like making the decisions for, for where the relationship is going? Setting the pace and setting the tone are two very important things. And so one of the things that I want to do is just define those two entities. So setting the pace means being clear and transparent and knowing for yourself at the speed at which you are comfortable with the relationship going right, not allowing yourself to be pressured into moving in together or to solidifying certain things in the relationship or to moving into being engaged or marriage or having kids before you know that it's unequivocally a yes for you. What is acceptable? What will you tolerate? What will you not tolerate, both within yourself and within the relationship? So in modern online culture, this is called boundaries. But I think in many ways, it's about how you as a man hold the frame of the relationship. It's how you build structure when you within the relationship. And that tone is really almost like the relational culture, right? So if you've ever been in a work environment, talk a lot about culture. That's just the sort of feeling and the essence of the dynamic within a group. But here, the tone within your relationship is set around what do you value as a man, as a couple, what does the relationship value? So the final piece that I think is a. Arguably, the most important aspect of leading within your relationship is the notion of don't react, regulate and respond. Don't react, regulate and respond. Rather than reacting to external stimulus, right? Because a reaction is. We get stimulus and we immediately react to it. We immediately become defensive or say something, or we don't think about it. We don't process it in any way, shape, or form. We don't metabolize what's going on. We. We just react to the stimulus. For a lot of men, because you're busy, because you got a lot going on, because you're doing your best to balance work and life and health and fitness and finances and kids and all of the things that you have going on in your life, we move into a reactionary state so quickly, and that's often what gets us into trouble. All of those things, over time are going to erode the safety and the trust and the sanctity of your relationship. So moving into a regulated response pattern is very important. So here's what this means. It means that you notice your physical and emotional response to something, to the stimulus, right? To your partner saying, hey, you forgot to take the garbage out. So maybe the reactivity pattern would be, well, you know, you just don't know how much else I've done today. You know, you didn't notice that I folded the laundry, put the laundry away, or, you know, you don't know how busy at work today. Or that would be the defensive reaction. The grounded response would be to breathe, take a moment to notice what you are physically feeling, right? Maybe you feel some agitation brewing up. Maybe emotionally you feel immediately angry and to breathe and to pause and to say, you know, is it true? Is it helpful? Yep, it's true. I forgot to take the garbage out. Is it helpful? Yeah, it's a great reminder. Okay. Yeah. You know what? You're right. Cool. No problem. I. I got it. Let me know if you enjoyed everything that we touched on in this conversation. Be sure to like the video. If you enjoyed it, subscribe. Feel free to share it with somebody that you think will enjoy it. And don't forget to hit the bell notification so that you get notified of when new videos are out.

Sam.