I hear women these days talk about wanting an evolved, conscious man. I’ve decided that mostly means they want to be with a man who can see a woman’s entire humanity, the profound gifts she has to offer as a feminine woman and a human being, before focusing on her ass. He has also embraced his own internal dose of femininity, so he can truly embrace the feminine women in his midst. There’s surely more to say about that, but I don’t want to make a big production of this point. I won’t claim to actually be an evolved man, anyway, which might disqualify me if I did. I still eat cheeseburgers, so…
Nonetheless, a brilliant mature woman I consider to be evolved recently asked me what an evolved man wants from a woman. So with her inquiry as my sole credential, here goes:
(quick note: this might push some buttons due to centuries of imbalanced masculine oppression; I invite you to see past that to new possibilities for how masculine and feminine energies can come together in true wisdom)
1. He wants her full authentic self.
An evolved man wants a woman who won’t change to be with him, who mostly doesn’t give two sheets what other people think about her, including even him. She isn’t arrogant; she just knows who she is and doesn’t need to prove that she has the right to live however she desires. Sure, they might have to make difficult choices in the details of their life together (aka “compromise”), but she doesn’t shrink or sell herself out to make him happy. It won’t.
He won’t criticize her for being her authentic self, either.
An evolved man longs to see his woman radiant and genuinely happy. If she isn’t thrilled about her everyday life, he won’t be, either. Not because she’s responsible for his feelings (she’s not), but because the second best gift she could ever give him is her own authentic happiness, which brings me to #2 …
2. He wants her authentic happiness.
This is not some sinister desire to capture a woman’s joyful heart in an iron box and isolate her in a household castle. An evolved man just wants his woman so in love with her life that her radiant joy is present in the room more often than not. Yes there will be tough times. He won’t expect her to always be happy – he doesn’t want some spooky Stepford wife with a fake smile. He simply wants her aware enough to know that she’s responsible for her own happiness.
He’ll be doing his best to be a good man for her, but he doesn’t want to be burdened with “making her happy.”
He’s busy enough trying to manage his own experience. Understanding this allows both partners to safely bring their real truths to the relationship every day, which is essential to sustaining real intimacy…which is what an evolved man truly wants.
3. He wants her to love him with wild abandon.
Many years ago I witnessed a new bride gaze with such absolute adoration upon her new husband’s face that I felt the Earth jealous even though it had the Sun. An evolved man wants his woman to radiate her love all over him like that. He will do his best to earn that from her, but then again…what has the Earth ever done to earn the Sun?
An evolved man wants his woman to love him profoundly despite his imperfections, to consistently see through his human flaws to the very best of him.
There’s an important caveat, however, as so many women are great at loving with wild abandon, but in a way that’s often self-defeating. An evolved man doesn’t want a woman to abandon herself to love him or stay if he consistently acts horribly, failing to honor their agreements (an evolved man can still fall victim to messing up big time; he’s human, after all). Which brings me urgently to #4 …
4. He wants her to communicate openly and even call out his bullshit…but respectfully.
An evolved man wants a woman who will speak her truth to him, a woman who knows men aren’t equipped to read minds or even not-so-subtle clues.
He also wants her to hold him accountable to his highest potential as a man, and always with love and respect.
He does NOT want her looking for every flaw in an attempt to make him perfect. That’s just annoying. But he also doesn’t want her to hold back when she sees him acting out of integrity or playing small in his life. An intimate relationship is a powerful vehicle for a person’s evolution, and he knows he’ll always be growing and evolving. He wants a woman who will support him in that evolution, and who’s also learned the difference between healthy, honest communication and needling criticism.
5. He wants her to surrender…to Love.
When I originally wrote this article in 2014, my ideas on “surrender” were a bit “less evolved” (hence the wild variety of comments from readers below).
At the time, I essentially wrote this: “An evolved man doesn’t even try to possess a woman. He doesn’t want her to abandon her dreams or live only for him. He wants her to live fully in her truth. However, he does want her to relax and trust him primarily to lead their lives together. … An evolved man doesn’t want 50/50 decision-making in his intimate relationship. When two people dance together, only one can lead.”
I understand now that the true power in surrender is never in surrendering your will to another person’s will.
The real power in surrender is in surrendering your will to LOVE.
An unconscious relationship is a battle of egos living together mostly in fear.
When both partners are living in their own ego stories (L.I.E.S. = Living In Ego Stories), it means they are believing fear-based thoughts that create anxiety and stress, for example:
“My partner must act a certain way to prove he loves me.”
“It’s my partner’s job to make me happy.”
“I’m afraid my partner will lie to me, so I need to keep a close eye on his behavior.” … and so on.
A relationship in which fear-based thinking dominates the dynamic will inevitably create an exhausting power struggle. Things will either stagnate in a stalemate … or outright suck.
What does it mean to surrender to LOVE?
Surrendering to Love means being willing to do the inner work to recognize when you are coming from fear (aka ego), and learning how to shift towards living in a mindset of love.
There’s a lot more to this that I’ll go into here. I support people in doing this fear-to-love inner work in my coaching practice, and I’ve been doing this essential work with my own coach for years.
Surrender to love is about trusting in love over fear.
An evolved man is only “evolved” in that he’s learning to trust in love over ego-fear. Naturally, he wants his woman evolving in the same direction. If she’s not actively learning to trust in love, she’s stuck trusting her own ego-fears.
When you trust in your ego-fear, there’s no room for authentic love. Trusting in love doesn’t mean staying and tolerating abusive behavior. Quite the opposite, trusting in love means trusting that love will show the way forward in every moment that results in the highest good for all. Sometimes surrendering to love might mean allowing the relationship to end.
That’s why trusting in love is so difficult for most of us – and why there are surely so few “evolved men” (or women) on the planet – because it means your ego won’t always get its way. But that’s the only way a relationship can be deeply fulfilling.
A relationship with a woman who trusts her fear and ego more than love can devolve into that pitiable cliche in which she has his metaphorical balls in a metaphorical jar. Her fear controls their lives because they’ve created a pattern in which he needs her permission for every decision.
Eventually, she won’t want to fuck him anymore, because she’s attracted to a man with balls – and a man with balls is fully committed to his highest purpose, which is Love, not her ego. It’s a sad irony.
A woman who wants to strap his balls to her vagina won’t do well with an evolved man.
He doesn’t need or even want her permission to live his purpose everyday, whatever that looks like for him. His woman’s ego and fear cannot ever be his purpose.
Because Love is his highest purpose, it will be excruciating to him to be with a woman who is not surrendered to Love as hers, too.
6. He wants her to surrender sexually, too.
Most evolved men, still in their prime, will almost certainly want sex. Passionate. Consistent. Unbridled. Anytime. Sex. He will want no power-games; no withholding; no negotiating … Sex.
Culturally, we’ve created immense amounts of shame around sexuality. It’s time we set that insanity on fire, with our loins.
An evolved man would rather negotiate with terrorists than negotiate for sex with his intimate partner.
An evolved man would never take his woman sexually when she genuinely doesn’t want him to. That’s called rape even when you’re married, and it’s always wrong. But he will want a woman surrendered to LOVE which also means that she is surrendered to her deeply deliciously sexual nature.
Because she is surrendered to Love, she will be so deeply connected to her inner radiant, sensual feminine essence that she enthusiastically, wholeheartedly and with sincere pleasure offers herself to him most anytime he wants her. Sexuality will be a natural extension of her self-love practice, and will therefore likely enjoy sex as much as he does … if not more!
He accepts that she won’t always be so willing – when she’s in physical or emotional pain, for example – and he won’t ever make her guilty for it … which just turns her on even more.
Because he is also surrendered to Love, he will always be deeply sensitive to her needs … but not at the expense of castrating himself internally to protect her from his ravenous sexuality. This is what makes men turn to porn, strip clubs, massage parlors, affairs. A woman not surrendered to love – a woman loyal to her ego and fears – inevitably creates a woman who sexually shuts off from him.
If his woman is consistently shut off to him sexually, there’s a disconnect somewhere between them – there’s a disconnect from LOVE – and he’ll want to explore it together with haste. It might be the way he’s showing up in their relationship; it might be chemical; it might be something else. But he’ll want to explore it. And he’ll want his woman to want to explore it openly with him.
That’s what evolved couples do: Communicate deeply, vulnerably, with appreciation for differences, with the ultimate goal of creating pure fucking magic together, every single day.
One last thing on #6: an evolved man won’t make his ejaculation (or hers for that matter) the point of sex. But that’s a whole other article.