How To Lead A Woman In A Relationship – A Man’s Guide

How to lead a woman in a relationship:

As a man, the best way to lead a woman in a relationship is to become a man of true value, to embrace high standards for yourself and for your own life, and to take radical responsibility and ownership for the care, well-being, safety, security, and forward momentum of your relationship and family unit. 

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Even though I got married at the relatively young age of 20, that certainly didn’t mean that I knew how to be the capable leader, husband, father, and man that I needed to be to make the relationship work. 

Both men and women are capable of being effective leaders. 

However, in the context of relationships, when you take the masculine-feminine paradigm into account, it’s almost always true that women want their male partner to be a capable, responsible, and effective leader for the relationship and family. 

Women crave and desire the strength, guidance, and security of a leadership-oriented alpha mentality man.

But unfortunately, I realized this too late to save my own marriage.

And at the age of 30, I experienced the breaking apart of my marriage, the defeat of divorce, and the realization that if I wanted to make my life significant and more successful in the future, I would need to figure out how I failed in my marriage and then back engineer those failures to learn lessons that would empower me to succeed in the future. 

This is part of taking radical responsibility for our lives. 

If all we do is embrace the victim mentality and point fingers at other people, we will never grow and develop into better versions of ourselves. 

But if we embrace radical self-responsibility and take full ownership of our experiences in life, we can equip ourselves with the power needed to actually create the destiny we desire. 

Shouldering the burden of the responsibilities of your life is a heavy weight. 

But with it comes a great deal of power—and the realization that you can affect great positive change for your future. 

This is what I learned in the years following my divorce. 

And today, I’m happy to say that I’ve come a long way from where I was. 

And in this blog post, you’re going to learn the most important lessons I’ve learned about how to lead a woman in a relationship.

Take it from someone who learned the hard way. Every single one of these steps is crucial to the process of making a long-term relationship work from the masculine perspective. 

Simply put—if you truly want to succeed in long-term relationships with women, you can’t afford to not be an effective leader. 

Here’s how to make it happen.

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Note: If you’re interested in the content matter of this post, then you’ll definitely be interested in our master guide to tribe building. Make sure to check that out to get a complete rundown of the entire tribe-building process, from beginning to end.

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20 Steps – How To Lead A Woman In A Relationship

1. Embrace The Alpha Mentality

This is where it all starts—by choosing to have an intentional, action-oriented mindset, to live with purpose, and to always strive to be the best man in the room.

To learn how to fully embrace the alpha mentality in your life, read this guide: How To Truly Embrace The Alpha Mentality. 

2. Become A High-Value Man

It isn’t enough to just become a good man, or even a great man. 

We must always strive to become the highest-value man that we can possibly be. 

Let’s be honest. We should always be shooting for the mark of being the best man in the room in any given situation. 

Obviously, you won’t always hit this mark—but that’s not the point. 

The point is that we should always be trying to increase our value as men and do better in life. 

There’s no room for complacency on the alpha journey. And there certainly isn’t room for complacency when you’re trying to lead a woman within the context of a relationship.

3. Become A Man Worthy Of Respect

Simply put, a woman will not follow a man that she doesn’t respect. 

And in order to command/earn respect from a woman, you truly have to embody all of the standards and virtues that will actually make you competent, effective, and formidable. 

Simply put, you need to literally be better and perform better than the woman you’re in a relationship with on a daily basis so that you can command/earn her respect in real-world terms, and show her that you’re capable of moving the family forward toward success in the future. 

4. Lead From The Front

Being willing to take the hardest tasks upon your own shoulders is crucial to the process of successfully leading a woman in a relationship. 

When the time comes to divvy up tasks, make sure that you always take personal responsibility for the worst, stinkiest, smelliest, most difficult jobs for yourself—and to give her the jobs that aren’t nearly as taxing. 

This is called ‘leading from the front,’ and it’s paramount to the success of any relationship.

To learn more about how to be an effective leader, read this guide: How To Be A Leader – 21 Alpha Leadership Qualities That Truly Matter. 

5. See To Her Needs

Women have a fairly complex range of needs. And as the man in the relationship, it’s in your best interest to take responsibility for these needs. 

Here are a few of the most important ones to consider. She needs:

• Emotional support
• A listening ear
• A teammate 
• A cheerleader
• Someone to encourage her
• Someone to validate her
• Someone to desire her and let her know that she’s beautiful
• Someone to believe in her
• Someone to admire her
• Someone to be a true team player with 
• Someone to plan the vital infrastructures of life with so that she can have hope and faith that her work and actions will truly lead to future success 

6. Become A Servant Leader

As men who want to lead in our relationships, it’s important for us to understand that this doesn’t just mean that we tell other people what to do while kicking back and drinking a beer. 

Being an effective leader actually means serving your family and tribe to the highest degree. 

This could, for example, mean staying up late with a crying baby when you know that your wife desperately needs an extra few hours of sleep, because there’s just nobody else available to do it—and because ultimately, it’s your responsibility to make sure that everyone in the family succeeds. 

This is just one example of what servant leadership could look like.

7. Take Full, Radical Responsibility For The Relationship

As the leader of the relationship, it’s important for you to take responsibility for not only your trajectory within the relationship, but also for hers. 

If she begins to do things that are going to lead the relationship in a bad direction, it’s up to you to immediately bring those things to her attention and to kindly and respectfully make her understand that if she wants the relationship to succeed, she needs to change her behavior. 

A lot of men are unwilling to have this necessary conflict upfront—and the recourse is almost always disastrous. 

Remember—taking full responsibility for the relationship means that if the relationship fails, it’s your fault. 

Therefore, you must do everything in your power to get ahead of the problems (both yours and hers), and to make sure that these problems don’t derail the relationship or lead it to disaster.

To learn more about this, read this in-depth guide: How To Embrace Radical Self-Responsibility In Life.

8. Become A True Protector And Provider

Learn to become dangerous and formidable. 

Learn a combat sport, and become effective and skilled in the use of a weapon.

The idea isn’t to become a dangerous man who hurts people. The idea is to become a man who is capable of danger should the need for it arise—but who has his ‘ability to be dangerous’ under control. 

Also make sure that you’re getting real money in life, and that you have a plan for increasing your income every single year for the rest of your life. 

To learn more about building a sustainable income, read this guide: 9 Steps For How To Build Sustainable Wealth. 

Never be complacent in these things. As a man, you have a responsibility to be a protector and provider for your family and tribe.

9. Understand The Natural Masculine/Feminine Paradigm

According to our evolutionary design, the purpose of man is to generate resources and solve problems to provide safety and security so that the tribe can survive and thrive.

The duty of women is to create life and emotionally nurture the tribe with her feminine beauty and inspiration. 

It’s crucial for you to not only understand this paradigm, but to also embrace your masculine responsibilities within it. 

It’s also your responsibility to communicate the female paradigm responsibilities to your partner, and to encourage her and support her in taking on these responsibilities within the context of the family and tribe.

Note that not all families are in the same place. For example—some women don’t want to have kids (or don’t want to have any more kids). Some women are more career-oriented than others as well. 

So you need to find a balance between the masculine and feminine that actually works for your specific relationship and life. 

10. Continue To Level Up—Always

You must always be striving to become 1% better than you were the day before. 

If you fail in this crucial mandate, you’ll start to stagnate and deteriorate. 

And this will make you a less effective man, leader, father, and husband/boyfriend.

11. Increase Your Attraction

Just because you’re in a relationship and have a family now doesn’t mean that you need to stop working on your attraction.

Every single month, you should be making strides to become an even more attractive version of yourself than you were the month before. 

This is especially true over the years.

Every single year, you should be a newer, better, more attractive version of the man you were the year before. 

DO NOT do what most men do and just let yourself go after you get into a relationship and/or get older. 

Don’t start eating junk food and stop going to the gym. 

Don’t stop dressing well, upgrading your wardrobe, and grooming yourself. 

Not only should you continue to do these things, but you should also continue to strive to do them better and better as time goes on. 

This is crucial to being an effective leader especially—especially when it comes to leading by example and setting the standard for the woman in your relationship—as well as for the rest of your family.

To learn more about how to keep leveling up in your alpha journey, read this guide: How To Level Up Your Mind, Body, And Spirit. 

To learn more about how to level up your attraction as a man, read this guide: What Do Women Want In A Man – The Man’s Complete Guide. 

12. Choose Her Intentionally—Every Day

Women crave and need to believe that the man they’re in a relationship with is really ready, willing, and committed to choosing her as his partner and his primary family responsibility every single day if she’s ever going to truly have any sort of real physical or emotional feelings of safety or security within the context of the relationship. 

This is basically an issue of the man channeling his resources to her in a manner that she feels confident in and knows that she can rely on for the future. 

This isn’t to say that there’s never a place for nonmonogamous relationships, where a man may commit resources to more than one woman or spend time with more than one woman. 

However, those situations are far more likely to put a strain on the woman’s ability to feel safety and security—and tend to be much more delicate and prone to drama, chaos, and destruction than relationships where the man chooses one woman and commits his resources to her as his sole committed female partner.

A woman in a relationship with you needs to believe and feel that she’s being chosen intentionally every single day in order to have any sort of emotional or physical security. This is incredibly important, and you’re going to struggle to lead the frame of the relationship if this need isn’t met.

13. Draw Firm Boundaries And Enforce Them With Kindness And Respect

As a leader, it’s crucial that you draw very simple and understandable boundaries—and that you maintain a firmness about those boundaries.

If the woman in your relationship oversteps those boundaries or steps outside of them, it’s crucial that you reinforce them with ironclad determination and rigidity, but that you also use kindness and respect to communicate this enforcement.

You also need to be willing to walk away from a woman who refuses to agree and respect your boundaries. 

A man who fails in this step is very likely to set his own relationship up for disaster, right from the beginning, either by choosing the wrong partner or by failing to enforce boundaries until it’s too late and you lose your partner’s respect.

For more information on how to draw healthy boundaries in life, read this guide: What To Do When People Disrespect You – 8 Crucial Tips. 

14. Take Full Ownership Over The Destiny Of Your Family

Understand that as a man, it is your responsibility to ensure that the family is successful in moving forward into the future.

• If something goes wrong, it’s up to you to fix it. 
• If there’s a problem that could be prevented, it’s up to you to prevent it. 
• If there’s a problem that needs to be solved, it’s up to you to solve it.
• If you sense some kind of trouble coming in the future, it’s your responsibility to make a plan and find a solution for it.

As the man and the leader, you must fully embrace this responsibility. 

The woman in your relationship will be looking to you for leadership, guidance, and protection from the dangers of the future. 

And if you want to effectively lead, you must take responsibility for the future success of your family.

15. Maintain High Standards And Values In Your Life

If you want the woman in your life to hold a certain standard in her life, then you must actually take responsibility for upholding even higher standards for yourself in your own life, to set the proper example. 

For example—if you want your girlfriend to dress nicely and to a certain standard, then you should be dressing to 150% of those standards. 

If you want her to maintain a proper diet and exercise, then you must be 150% more diligent with your own diet and exercise than you expect her to be with hers. 

Remember, women are hypergamous by nature. 

They’re hardwired to only respect men who are actually better than them at the business of generating resources, solving problems, and providing safety and security for the family. 

This is literally nature’s built-in safety mechanism—to make sure that women don’t mate and reproduce with low-value men, and drag the human species downward. 

Therefore, it’s crucial that you remember that it’s always your responsibility to perform at a higher level than the women in your life—whenever possible.

And even if you don’t necessarily meet this standard—for example, if she just tends to be really really good at a certain thing, and you actually you struggle to be better at that thing than her—then it’s at least important that you try to maintain the highest standards possible in that area—and that you actually expend at least equal or greater effort at it.

Note that this really only counts in areas that are relevant to the leadership of the home/relationship—in the sense that you wish to lead in this area in a certain manner, and have certain expectations of your partner that are relevant to that area.

For more information on how to achieve and maintain higher standards for yourself in life, read this guide: High Standards – How To Create, Maintain, & Demand Them. 

16. Continuously Communicate These Standards And Values With Her

Along with having high standards and values comes the responsibility of communicating the standards and values to your girlfriend/wife on a daily basis. 

This process of working to move your family to a higher standard of living is literally a daily process where you sit down, talk about it, inspire each other, and plan together to move forward into the future.

Men who just state their standards and expectations once, and then get angry or have an issue when those standards aren’t met, are not acting in the full sense of responsibility that their position demands of them. 

This must be a daily habit—and it’s your responsibility as a man to see to it that it’s conducted consistently. 

17. Be A Listening Ear

As a man, it’s your duty to be an emotional support person for the woman in your life. 

Be willing to be able to let her put her problems on your shoulders. 

And if she’s worth it to you, be ready to help her bear her burdens whenever the need arises. 

Note that this responsibility isn’t the same in the reverse order. 

In other words, you would actually be abandoning your duty as a man by making her be listen to your problems, by complaining to her, and by asking her to shoulder your problems as well.

As the leader, the buck stops with you. You must have control of your life—to such an extent that you don’t need to ‘cry on her shoulder’ to be strong, capable, and confident.  

This isn’t to say that you can’t tell her that you need a bit of help from her, that you can’t give her tasks to help you with, or that you can’t talk about your day. 

This is just to say that you can’t make your problems her problems or ask her to shoulder the burden of solving issues for the family. 

This will violate the natural order of the masculine and the feminine. 

18. Always Have A Plan

As a man, it’s crucial that you always have a plan. 

• Don’t panic when things go wrong. 
• Don’t look to her for a plan when you don’t know what to do. 
• Stay calm and be rational. 
• Ask her if she has any ideas to contribute to the solution, do research, and find it within yourself to come up with a plan for every situation that arises on your path as a couple.

As a man, this is your responsibility.

19. Create A Solution For Every Problem And Assist Her In Doing The Same

As a man, you must create solutions for every problem the family faces. 

However, it’s also your duty to assist and equip the woman you’re in a relationship with to deploy solutions to problems in her life as well. 

As the man, you must be the tactical strategist of the family. 

You must make sure that every member of your family has the tools they need to deal with the challenges in their lives, and that they end up victorious in their own battles.

20. Invest In Making Your Lives Better Every Day

Life is going to have its ups and downs. 

There are going to be periods of hope and prosperity—and there are going to be periods of defeat and despair. 

With that being said, it’s your responsibility to invest whatever needs to be invested to take your family in a positive direction, and to make their lives better. 

Your family should:

• Experience a consistent forward and upward momentum.
• Gradually get happier. 
• Gradually experience less drama. 
• Increase the quality of their diet, sleep, and exercise habits.
• Gradually increase the standards by which they live their lives. 
• Gradually increase their income over time. 
• Gradually get better at communicating with one another, and having positive relationships. 
• Gradually get better at the business of building their own successful lives.

And all of this progress is your responsibility to spearhead, strategize, and deploy as the man and leader in the relationship. 

Best Books For Learning How To Lead A Woman In A Relationship

Conclusion

Hopefully, this post has helped you to understand some of the finer points of the concept of leading a woman in a relationship – like a true alpha-mentality man.

Just remember – it all starts with demanding excellence of yourself first, and then leading from the front and by example.

Become a man of truly high value, and this process will fall into place much more easily.

Go with grace my friends, and never give up your power.

Until next time…

Joshua K. Sigafus, signing off.