Who Leads? The Dynamic Interplay of Competence & Desire

Should men lead women?

If you’ve ever spent any time exploring polarity teachings, you will have found very early on a strong assertion that the masculine is the leader.

He leads, she follows.
He directs, she surrenders.
He dominates, she submits.

I’ve found though, that while having a ring of rightness, this notion as it stands on it’s own is a bit too simplistic.

Because I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met a woman who will willingly go somewhere she doesn’t want to (unless she is in a fawn state, but that’s for a different article).

Leading and following is therefore a consensual act.

Whether it is conscious or not and spoken about or not, an agreement takes place in which she consents to being led by him, and he takes on the responsibility for being that leader.

The question, for me, then becomes:
“What has her decide that she is willing to follow one man, and not another?”

Because there is a truth here that I’ve found that generally the feminine, not necessarily woman, but the feminine… when a woman is in her feminine (or even a man too)… she enjoys being led.

She delights in being danced through life, taken into novel experiences where she can surrender into the moment-by-moment encounter with what is occurring right now.

She can immerse into the sights, smells, tastes and feeling of all of it without having to hold any of the structure.

To the feminine this experience seems to be immensely pleasurable.

It is, after all, the place she goes in her deepest, wildest, most profound orgasm.

So why will she allow one man to take her to these places, and another man not?

Competence.

The potential for a man to lead a woman further than she can go on her own is summed up in this word.

Is he competent enough for her to let go into trust.
Is he capable of meeting anything that can go wrong.
Is he skilled enough to create an experience she can immerse herself in.
Is he safe enough for her to know that when she is with him, she no longer needs to defend herself from the incessant onslaught of the world.

And if so, then this man is competent.

Competent lives across any domain in which skill is required.
Yet in this moment we are discussing the skill of relationship.
The skill of meeting the feminine.

Women can spot a competent man from across the room.
And given the right circumstances, a woman will willingly let herself fall into the hands of such a man.

So… competence is the necessary prerequisite for consent from the feminine to be led.

This is perhaps as far as most polarity teachings might get with this whole dynamic.

But…

It doesn’t end here.

If the feminine requires competence, what does the masculine require?

What has him decide to take on the mantle of leading one woman over another?

Desire.

No, not his desire.
Hers.

The pure feminine is pure desire.

She wants to feel it all, experience it all, be it all.

Desire dances through her veins.

And it is her desire which his competence harnesses and leads.

When he decides which restaurant to take her to, how does he know?

How does the competent man know that this experience will delight her, but that one would not?

It is his ability to harness her desire.
And it is her capacity to feel her own desire that allows him to weave with it.

When a man chooses a woman, he is choosing a woman whose desire he wishes to meet.

Her desire leads him into an experience of her opening which deepens his consciousness.

Read that again.

Does her desire take him into a reality that is more fulfilling?

Or to make it more explicit…

Is the sound of her orgasm the one that he wants to hear over and over and over again?

Because every time he hears her desire clearly, even before she consciously knows it herself, and he takes her there… it IS orgasmic for her.

It doesn’t need to be sexual, yet the pleasure of the feminine encountering a desire that she didn’t even know she was feeling, is a profound experience for the masculine.

If her desire is one he wants to meet
And her pleasure is one he wants to feel
Then he will show up for her again and again.

If his competence has the skill to meet her
And his lead is one she wants to trust
Then she will open for him again and again.

Who leads?

Well it depends from what dimension you are looking.

The man may lead the steps of the dance
Yet to create a truly incredible dance
He is following the rhythm of her body.