The Way of The Superior Man (1997) is a self-help text and a popular manosphere book mixing spiritualism with relationship and sex advice.
Contents
Bullet Summary
- Embrace your masculine energy (or feminine energy if you are a woman)
- Find your purpose: respect everyone, but follow your purpose first (and before her)
- Don’t wait for a future moment to be happy: your moment to embrace is always now
Full Summary
About the Author: born as David Greenberg, David changed his surname to Deida.
His biography seems a mix of standard medical background with more ascetic practices, such as developing yoga techniques for intimate relationships.
Find Your Life’s Purpose
David Deida recommends you know what you are on this earth for and that you find a WHY for your existence.
He recommends you go to a quiet place and think. Think about who you, what’s important to you, and where you want to go. Do it for as long as it takes until you find your purpose.
He says that your woman will test you to see if you found your WHY and if you are serious about it. She wants to know that you can stay the course and she doesn’t want to be your first priority in life.
She will also prod you and test you to see that your happiness does not depend fully on her, and that all your eggs are not solely in her basket. But deep down, she wants to relax and let herself in your direction and leadership.
Put Your Purpose First
Deida writes:
Admit to yourself that if you had to choose (..) the perfect intimate relationship or achieving your highest purpose in life, you would choose (..) your purpose.
(…)
Tell your woman that you love her, but you cannot deny your heart’s purpose. Tell her that you will spend 30 minutes (…) in absolute attention and total presence, but then you must return to carry on your mission
The idea of finding one’s purpose has become a central tenet in the manosphere.
Also see:
Embrace Your Masculine Energy: Polarization Attracts
David Deida’s book is heavily based around the male and female energy of the yin and yang philosophy.
Both men and women have both male and female energy within them, but for a harmonious, passionate, and successful relationship there has to be a balance where the man embraces his masculine energy and the woman embraces her feminine energy.
When neither genders embrace their gender-specific energy the relationship lacks passion. When one gender is not embracing their energy, the other partner is forced to make up for it.
A man who does not embrace his masculine energy is forcing the woman to act more like a man.
And a man who embraces his masculine energy allows the woman to celebrate her femininity.
Indeed, if you want more femininity or masculinity in your partner a great way is to increase your gender-specific energy and purge yourself of the opposite gender-specific energy (ie.: be less feminine as a man and be less masculine as a woman).
Deida says:
If he spends more time in the mirror and his own radiance and life force makes him happier than his woman she will be upset (..)
If he spends more time combing his air than he spends receiving radiance, then there is no polarity.
My Note: Exceptions apply in seduction
Narcissistic men and more feminine men can be very successful with women. Just listen to the song “You’re so vain” and you will hear a woman who fell desperately in love with a narcissist who was all about his own image.
Also see: “archetypes of lovers“.
The Masculine Traits
You need to define your own masculine traits, but The Way of The Superior has a few pointers:
- Lead the relationship
- Find a life purpose
- Live his own personal truth
- Stick to his value
- Live with integrity
- Seeks freedom
- Faces his fears
Also see more examples in “how to be an alpha male“:
https://thepowermoves.com/alpha-male/
Embrace Her Drama
David Deida advises men to welcome their women’s drama, embracing it with love and good spirit.
He says:
You can’t escape the tussle with the feminine.
Learn to find humor in the unending emotional drama the feminine seems to enjoy so much. The love that you magnify may realign her behavior, but your effort to fix her and your frustration never will
He must seek to understand what she really needs, because women will rarely say what they actually need. And the vast majority of times her turmoil stems from not feeling loved.
As most relationships books advise, Deida says you must listen to understand, not to fix.
My Note: Generic advice is terrible advice. What if she’s a drama queen?
I think that telling men they mus endure a woman’s drama can be counterproductive. Some women are troublemakers and the drama leads to toxic relationships.
See for example borderline personality disorders, or bad personality matches like with the anxious-avoidant trap.
See instead a different approach to handle relationship drama:
Women also use drama as a way to control men, or as a manipulative relationship game to acquire power, so I actually don’t recommend men to “embrace drama”.
For Real Passion: Let Go, Ravish Her
The Way of The Superior Man embraces love in its most animalistic aspect.
Deida writes:
When was the last time you really ravished your woman? That is, when was the last time you really “took” her, savagely, lovingly, with no inhibition whatsoever?
He makes some fun of “neutral” loving:
If you want real passion, you need a ravisher and a ravishee; otherwise, you just have two buddies who decide to rub genitals in bed.
The female can do her part by letting go of her sense of directions to allow her partner to exercise direction (ie.: be the leader in bed).
Finally, Deida says I’m sure not without some criticism by some of the readers, that “the difference between rape and ravishment is love”.
The difference between rape and ravishment is love
Leverage Sexual Energy: Don’t Come
Deida puts it much more gently, but in practice, that’s what it’s about: delaying coitus.
He says:
Third level man walks away from her without consuming the desire
Albeit I wasn’t really sure what this “third level man” meant, he advises men not to peak during intercourse and to keep that energy to stay hungry and motivated during his life pursuits.
To enjoy sex without coming Deida says:
- Relax your muscle instead of tensing them. When your face contracts, relax it, when your breath get short, breath deeply
- Focus more on your partner than on yourself
My Note: But also focus on yourself, sometimes
this is something that I did a lot when younger. I used to ejaculate less because I made it more about her. If you’re not ejaculating because you make it too much about her, then it’s not coming from a good place (read: No More Mr. Nice Guy). If you do it consciously to keep your sexual energy, then it’s OK. Otherwise ravishing and coming and are not mutually exclusive of course-
Face Your Fears, Do Your Best (& Get Friends Who Do The Same)
Deida exhorts the readers to do their best in life, to go after their grand vision, and to be intolerant of mediocrity.
Men should have friends who do the same and who help and push each other. With love and caring, our friends should hold us to our highest standards and nudge us towards facing our fears and pushing our limits.
Real-Life Applications
- Pursue Your Goal, Not Duties
It’s easy getting distracted by to-do lists and duties others pile on us. But it’s up to you to make sure that your duties and tasks align with your goals. Otherwise, you’re a puppet on someone else’s strings.
- Stop Putting Contingencies on Your Happiness: NOW Is Time to Be Happy
Don’t think that once you will reach X you can relax, be happy and enjoy life. It rarely works that way. Your life is now, now is the time to be happy.
Ad David Deida says: every moment waited is a moment wasted.
Every moment waited is a moment wasted
CONS
- Counterproductive Advice: Operant Conditioning Done Wrong
I don’t believe that you should “embrace drama” and that “the love you magnify may realign her behavior”. That’s not effective advice for men in a relationship.
Deida writes:
A superior man sees his woman’s moods not as a curse, but as a challenge and an amusement.
There are many ways to creatively deal with her moods and help her to open. Tickle her. Take off your clothes and dance the watusi. Sing opera for her. Make animal sounds. Shout at her louder than you ever have and then kiss her passionately. Press your belly into her until she melts. Lift her off the ground and spin her around. Occasionally, talking with her helps, but not as often as humor and physically expressed love
This is basically saying to “lift her moods when she gives you drama and shit”. That’s a terrible approach, in my opinion, rewarding bad behavior and the opposite of what one should do.
- Woo-Woo on Feminine/Masculine Polarization
The concept of polarization between masculine and feminine makes sense for certain traits and behaviors, but the way it’s represented her feels shallow, unscientific, and not entirely accurate in its generalization.
- Unfounded Conclusions: Sexual Chemistry Make Bad Relationships?
The author says that the woman who most turns you on sexually will turn you off for the rest of your life. I’d really like to know based on what does he say that.
So, for a happy relationship in Deida’s word, one should pair up with partners whom they don’t find sexually attractive?
- Sweeping Generalization, Unfounded Claims & Unscientific
“Variety is the essence of the feminine”.
Maybe. But based on what?
The author says that shoe shopping about women is about “variety of shoes”.
I wonder if the same could not be said of men collecting cars and footballers stickers -just to stick with gender stereotypes-.
In many ways, the relationship part and the descriptions of “The Way of The Superior Man” reminded me of “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus“, but with more generalizations and less overall quality.
- Too Convoluted. Is Meaning Amplified By Poetry – Or Lost?
The Way of The Superior Man, a bit like 12 Rules for Life, has some great ideas. But in my opinion, they get lost, and not amplified, by the rhetorical embroidery.
Here is an example:
Her gift, if she is a good woman, is to test you with her darkest moods, over and over and over, until your consciousness is unperturbed by feminine challenge, and you are able to pervade her with your love, just as you are here to pervade the world. In response to your fearless consciousness, she will drench your world in love and light.
I think the content, teased out from the text, could actually be good. But put it like that, it’s more about sweet-sounding prose than about delivering concrete wisdom.
If the author wished to keep it like that, which is OK because it does sound beautiful, would have at least added, after or before, the meaning in plain English.
- “I want you my bitch”
In the last chapter of “The Way of The Superior Man”, Deida suggests using that sentence.
The vocal delivery in the audiobook felt corny.
PROS
Reconnect With Your Dark Desire
The part I liked the most was in the reconnection with our animalistic and darkest desire. The
Review
I’m not the best reviewer for new age and spiritual texts.
I like information straight up, clear, concise, and accurate. That’s not what you get in spiritual texts.
And I didn’t like “The Way of The Superior Man”.
Too convoluted, too many aesthetics and too gospel-sounding.
To convince me, one should say something that makes rational sense, that I personally experienced, that you personally experienced, or that is supported by evidence.
Unluckily, the author doesn’t even provide his own experience and examples to back up the facts.
I felt like it was a mumble jumbo of gender generalizations and watered down manosphere packaged in a cool sounding but information-poor new-agey format.
Moving beyond the writing style I did like a lot of concepts and some of them are very profound and life-changing.
What I liked most is that Deida elevates animalistic, carnal desire to a Godly, sublime experience. That was awesome. A reconnection to our primal, darkest selves is a huge takeaway.
But overall, I prefer “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover“.
You give it a try, and let me know what you think.
Check the:
Lovely work
Thank you Mike!