The Book in Three Sentences
In this book, you’ll learn about the most important issues in men’s lives, including career, family, women, and intimacy. The Way of the Superior Man is a guide for living a life of integrity, authenticity, and freedom. The goal of this book is to teach men how to achieve a life of fulfillment.
Introduction
The roles of men and women are no longer fixed. Since the 1960s, men have increasingly embraced their feminine side by growing long hair, wearing vibrant colors, and adopting a more carefree lifestyle. Likewise, women have also embraced their masculine side by pursuing direction, clarity of purpose, and financial independence. This led to a more balanced life for both men and women. These changes improved society as a whole, but this is an intermediate stage that has one major side effect: unhappiness in intimacy.
Although in this second stage, men and women are equal, it ruined intimacy. Intimacy isn’t the time or place for political correctness. Even if two people love each other, their sexual polarity can fade. For moments of intimacy to work, one partner must play the masculine part and the other must play the feminine part. This is independent of gender. A sense of mission is what drives people with a more masculine sexual essence, and to live fully, they have to discover their deep purpose. People with a more feminine essence need loving relationships. To be clear, everyone has both, but they’re more emotionally involved with one of the two sides. Around 10% of people are balanced, and they don’t care about sexual polarity. To experience fulfillment, you must define your sexual essence. This book is a guide to those who have a masculine sexual essence.
Part One: A Man’s Way
A man’s journey never ends. Don’t wait for the perfect time to do what you love because that time will never come. Do what you’ve always wanted to do now. Spend an hour of your day doing that despite all the duties that constrain you. The fantasy of a life without problems leads nowhere. There will always be reasons to avoid doing something, but ignore those reasons and focus on creative challenges instead. This shows you’re willing to live life with courage and creativity.
In the same way that you shouldn’t expect life to be different than what it is, you shouldn’t expect your partner to be different either. If you don’t tolerate her behavior now, simply leave her because you can’t change her. Don’t try to change people; either reject them or accept them. Interacting with the feminine will always be a struggle, so figure out how to enjoy it. A life without challenges doesn’t exist, so live fully and give your gift despite them.
Never change your perspective or deepest knowledge to please a woman because both of you will weaken, and you’ll resent each other. In the end, you must trust your own wisdom. Don’t deny your deep truth to please women because that makes you inauthentic. If you do this, your actions won’t align with your values. If you make a mistake, though, take responsibility for it.
Your highest purpose comes before your relationship. Your mission in life is your priority. Don’t deny your true purpose to spend time with your partner. Give her your undivided attention, but always go back to your mission. Without a purpose, a man is lost. Everything you do must align with your life purpose because it shows coherence and integrity. If something doesn’t support your core desire, then it’s a distraction. To grow, lean just beyond your edge, capacity, or fear. Push far beyond your limits and do it constantly.
Women will test a man’s ability to stick to his purpose. This is their way to see if men are trustworthy. These tests come in the form of complaining, challenging him, changing her mind, doubting him, distracting him, or undermining his purpose. Women will do this to see your strength and integrity. A man should be complete whether he’s with a woman or not. Never rely on someone else’s response to be happy. Grow beyond the need for external validation. Even if you surmount challenges, they mean nothing if you’re doing them to get praise from others. To make a woman trust you, remain unperturbed by the opinions and validation of others. This makes you a superior man.
Part Two: Dealing with Women
Women are not liars; it’s just that the feminine reality is different from the masculine one. In the feminine reality, emotions are more important than words and facts. In the masculine reality, the opposite is true. Women express what they’re feeling in the present moment. Always hear what a woman has to say and consider her input, but make the best possible decision from your deepest values.
Don’t analyze a woman, and don’t try to find out the cause of her affliction. Most women’s emotional problems come from feeling unloved. The only thing you can do is give her love. Analyzing her mood won’t relieve her. In fact, it’ll only make her feel worse. Men are used to analyzing their problems as a way to diagnose what’s wrong and make changes accordingly. This is good because when you’re in a relationship, you’ll benefit from having a sense of direction. Women want to relax and surrender, which means men must take responsibility for the direction of the relationship.
Don’t try to fix or escape feminine emotions. Women’s emotions are chaotic, but you must stay strong. Similarly, don’t expect women to make decisions and be accountable for the results. Being decisive is the masculine gift. Give her your perspective, but let her know that you’ll love her no matter what she decides.
Part Three: Working with Polarity and Energy
Men are attracted to their complementary opposite. This means masculine men are attracted to women with feminine energy, feminine men are attracted to women with masculine energy, and balanced men are attracted to women with balanced energy. If you don’t find your complementary opposite, the relationship will seem “off”.
Different women have different “temperature”. Some are hotter (tempestuous and quick of temper), and some are cooler (soothing and refreshing). Even if you choose to stay committed to one woman, you’ll need different temperatures of feminine energy throughout your life. Energy, in most contexts, is more important than looks.
Part Four: What Women Really Want
Never choose a woman who doesn’t want you. Women feel neediness and can tell when you need them more than they need you. A woman sometimes uses words to test if a man is weak enough to do it for her. Deep down, women want men to do what’s right, not what they ask for. If the man in fact does the thing she asked for, she will be disappointed and angry. More than anything, women want your integrity and confidence.
The literal content of women’s complaints is not to be trusted. Underneath those complaints, a woman is warning you to align your life with your purpose. In other words, her complaint should be seen as a reminder to “get it together”. What she wants is your masculine capacity to direct your life with clarity. When you give her your word, follow through.
Your words are a demonstration of your purpose. Having a lack of integrity will show, and your relationship will suffer as a consequence. Trust is one of the most important values in a relationship. When you display a lack of integrity or when you aren’t true to your word, don’t blame others, especially your partner. When you work on yourself and you live to your highest purpose, this will also reflect on your partner.
The most important thing in your life shouldn’t be your partner, but your sense of purpose. Having a complete dependence on a woman will make you appear needy. To be clear, you must love her deeply, but before anything, remain totally dedicated to your highest purpose. Your highest purpose comes first, and your intimacy comes second. The main thing that must drive you in life is the gift you have to give.
A woman wants to know you’ll be able to take care of things financially, sexually, emotionally, and spiritually. Your job isn’t to do everything, but to guide the relationship so that the feminine can relax.
Part Five: Your Dark Side
The masculine is always looking for freedom. This may come in various forms, such as sex, action movies, martial arts, philosophy, sports, or death. Death happens in a more metaphorical sense because it represents finality, and at the other end of it, there’s freedom. The feminine doesn’t seek freedom, but love. Women don’t find bliss in emptiness, but in fullness.
Women want fearlessness in men, or as the author puts it, “the capacity to transcend the fear of death for the sake of love”. This is representative of the ultimate masculine gift. We often suppress this dark masculine energy, but it has to shine through sometimes.
Part Six: Feminine Attractiveness
Women and feminine energy never end. There’s only a resistance to receiving, trusting, and embracing feminine energy that creates the illusion of a shortage of women.
Desiring older women is natural because they offer wisdom, power, and healing abilities. Feminine energy has nothing to do with age, and older women have a unique quality to them, which the author describes as radiance.
Denying your desire for the feminine will make you undesirable to women. If you do so, you’ll resent both the world and women. It’s easy to take someone for granted when your capacity for desire wears out, but don’t push her away. Instead, take responsibility for your feelings and persist. Give yourself fully to your woman, and she’ll also respond in fullness.
No woman will be able to satisfy you absolutely. Cherish women despite being deceived by the mirage of desire. You already have what you seek, and it’s within yourself. Nothing external can satisfy you forever.
Part Seven: Body Practices
Finishing quickly in bed creates the feeling of distrust in the relationship. This implies that the world can deplete and weaken the man in question. She will unconsciously undermine him to test his weakness. As a consequence, don’t use sex as a quick way to release stress. Even if most women won’t accept it, the thing they want the most isn’t sex, but a man fully present. In the same way a woman will test you emotionally, she will test you sexually. Your job as a man is to be in charge during sex.
Whenever something’s wrong in your life, something blocks the front of your body (a tightened stomach, a lump in your throat, a wrinkled forehead, and so on). Your job is to keep the front of your body open and relaxed so that your presence fills whatever room you’re in.
Relax during sex. Focus on your partner more than you focus on yourself and your physical sensations. One of the most important things in sex is the force of your breath. Breathe fully and deeply, not just in bed, but throughout the day.
Part Eight: Men’s and Women’s Yoga of Intimacy
Women prioritize intimate relationships, but men don’t. This is the case because women with feminine energy feel fulfilled with love, and men with masculine energy feel fulfilled with their mission. Despite your different priorities, you should still support each other.
Don’t deny your feminine or masculine energy because this often leads to emptiness or depression. Similarly, don’t complain to your partner about their priorities. That’s one of the aspects of the other person you won’t be able to change. Whatever you do, always stay true to your core desires and dedicate your life to them. Honor the asymmetries in your relationships as long as they’re authentic.
Both the feminine and the masculine have their responsibilities in intimacy. While women are responsible for the energy, men are responsible for growth. Growth, in this case, means that your priority is having a direction in life. It’s true in a more general sense, and it’s also true in an intimate relationship. Since growth is your ultimate goal. The superior man will settle for nothing less.
Before you offer your woman direction, you must know your own. The first step is to live fully aligned with your sense of purpose. Even if you forget your purpose as you go about your daily tasks, go back to it eventually. If you don’t, the relationship will go in the same direction, which means both you and your woman will have the same energy, and this leads to arguments. If this is the case, commit to your purpose.
There are different ways to restore your purpose: you can do it in solitude, in challenging situations, or in the company of other men. Likewise, women restore their feminine side with other women. When a man and a woman spend too much time together, their energies become neutralized.
More than anything, men need purpose, and to get it, they must challenge themselves to live at the edge. There are two ways to live at the masculine edge of power: austerity and challenge. Austerity means eliminating the comforts and distractions in your life (such as work, television, sex, reading, and so on). Challenge involves doing physical activities, but you can also tackle activities you’ve always wanted to do. The important part about these activities is that they have some form of consequence if you don’t do them.
