This is How to Lead a Relationship as a Man (in Brief)

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 for you as a man, within your relationship, the influence that you have is incredibly important. Now for most men, they're not aware of the influence that they have in their relationship over their partner, much like they might want to ignore or reject the influence that their partner has over over them. So that's probably for a different video. But what I really wanted to drive home here before we dive into the three points, is that leadership for you, leadership in a relationship is about direction. It's about taking ownership over your actions, your decisions, your choices, and where those actions, decisions and choices are leading. You are leading the relationship and are leading your partner emotionally, sexually, financially, spiritually, in all avenues and areas of the relational dynamic. So with that said, with the foundation of how I'm defining leadership, let's dive into the three points. 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, 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? Right. How are you actually allowing yourself to be influenced by yourself? Another thing that you can look at is are you honoring your commitments and practices? This will be a good indicator of how you're influencing and leading and creating direction within yourself as a man. Now, the main thing that I want you to know is that when you as a man do not feel like you're leading yourself effectively, when we're not keeping our word as men, when we're not maintaining our commitments and our practices, when you are not able to make healthy, strong decisions for yourself and create direction. 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, into a kind of coherence of what they believe should be happening. Simply put, the last thing I'll say is she can't trust you unless you can lead you. She won't surrender, won't soften, won't be Open to your guidance, to you in many different ways. If you can't lead you, if you aren't willing and able to step into a position of being responsible, of making decisions for yourself and creating direction for yourself. So, 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 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. Before you have moved into a place that you as a man have made a solitary sovereign decision that you want to move in that direction and that you're maybe not ready to move in that direction because sometimes readiness isn't necessarily available, right? Not every man is ready to have kids, but he's wanting, he's willing and he's committed to it. So knowing that you are wanting, willing and committed to something and then being clear about communicating that, right? Being able to say, you know, in a year I want to start having to try kit for, for having kids or you know, in a year I want us to work towards moving in together. So giving that kind of direct direction, setting the pace, and then on the other side, setting the tone. 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 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? What commitments does a relationship value, right? So for example, maybe part of the tone of your relationship that verbal character assaults in arguments and conflict are not welcome, right? So it's just a non negotiable. It's just like when that happens, we pause, we Pause the conflict. We don't engage with that and we reconvene when both of us have sort of cooled down or when one of you needs to sort of take a moment to pause. So those types of things, setting that structure within your relational dynamic around what you'll do, tolerate what you won't tolerate, and what you really want the relationship to look like, right? You as a man should have a vision for your relationship, because that vision, that goal of what the relationship looks like is the direction that you are going to be taking the relationship. So the final piece that I think is 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 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, right? Is that we don't take a moment to just pause and breathe and think or feel what it is that's actually happening, know what our partner is actually saying. So Viktor Frankl, a great author and psychologist from the early 20th century who survived Auschwitz, who was in World War II, was a Jewish prisoner within Nazi camps. He had a great quote where he said, between stimulus and response, there is a pause. And it's in that pause. And this is my, my part that I'm adding to it. It's in that pause where you find your own voice, where you find your own sense of leadership, where you. You're able to connect to maybe the defensiveness or the anger or the embarrassment or whatever it is that's coming up inside of you. 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 and.