samspade said:
This is one of those dynamics where women will agree in practice but not always verbally. That is, a woman might say she sees a relationship as 50-50, but of course she prefers you to be in control most of the time. This is societal though - today's American woman doesn't want to appear "weak" in front of her friends lest she be shamed as old fashioned or worse.
That's awesome advice. Pook made allusions to this sort of dynamic, particularly in his "********" essays. He was also very adamant that women do not respond well to logic as it is more of a masculine concept, but rater respond to feeling. To that point I'll say this - I've never logically reasoned a girl in to having sex or becoming involved with me... but I have made many feel like doing so. If you want to be the leader in a relationship, I think it's much better just to be the leader than to have some sort of conversation establishing it. Even when you look at great leaders in history... Napoleon, Bismark, Washington, and even evil leaders like Hitler and Stalin... these guys didn't ask the military permission to start issuing orders or have the public vote them in to a position of power (at least at first). They just led.
Despite feminism's grip on society, I still really believe that at heart, women are still women and men are still men, regardless of how they act. I also believe it takes a man for a woman to fully reach her feminine potential. Women say all sorts of things they don't mean for so many different reasons that don't matter we could waste our lives trying to figure it out and never arrive at a meaningful conclusion. We've also established that in general, what a woman says is irrelevant compared to how she acts. And if you assert positive masculinity in her life, unless she more of a tyrannosaurus than a woman, she will respond.
samspade said:
But just like a good manager delegates decisions and gives credit to subordinates where due, a man in charge should give his woman some domain. Your grandparents are a good example, and I'd bet most housewives have domain over the day to day household stuff - because they take care of it and know best what to do.
More great words! Too many guys give a woman too much a domain. Fewer guys don't give the woman any domain. In a way, it's almost like dealing with a child. My grandmother had a nephew who had some mental handicap, mild autism maybe. And she spent a lot of time watching him because she was the only one he would behave for... and why did he? She had a game she let him play called post office, and what she would do is keep all of her junk mail for a week or 2, give it to him, and have him organize it. He felt important and thought it was great... and most of all, he behaved and she got the very best out of him.
I don't think women are mentally retarded or anything like that, but I think there is a valuable lesson to be learned here. There are reasons why women have traditionally taken care of the household while men worked, and they aren't evil. If you consider Plato's forms, they just happen to fit the form of a "man" and "woman" best.
A good leader knows they're subordinates and if he is good, knows where they will function best. Learn your woman, if you care about her, and find where her sphere should be. Give her a certain amount of responsibility and give her plenty of positive reinforcement when she does a good job.
Things like that - that's acting as a leader. If you can do that, the need for conversation is irrelevant.