How to lead during courtship and why

She is seeking the leader in you, and will test you by letting you take the lead during courtship.

I know we live in progressive times where men and women are considered equal. And yes, they are legally equal in rights, as they should be, and it is a good thing. But when it comes to the roles they play within a couple, or during courtship, it doesn’t work like this. For a million years of humanity existence, men have assumed the role of leaders, and women the role of followers. This fact did not change as a result of 50 years of women emancipation.

Along with boldness, leadership is one of these masculine attributes that women are actively looking for in a man.

So now, why should you lead during courtship? And how exactly would you do that?

Why you must lead during courtship

During courtship, the woman normally expects you to take charge of the interaction, and to put it on the right track. Yes, there will be a few instances where the girl will be wanting to lead. But this is only a small minority, and you should not count on it. The vast majority of the time, the only thing she will do to help is to give you hints of her interest, and showing up to your date. That’s all.

From this point onward, she takes the passive role of the passenger, and you’re in the driver seat. The responsibility to lead the courtship in the right direction is now entirely in your hands.

You are the man, therefore you must lead.

She is not going to make it easy for you

The immediate implication is that if you do not actively lead the courtship process towards a successful conclusion, you won’t get anywhere, because she’s not going to do that for you. She expressed interest in you, and she showed up to your date. That’s about all help you will get from her. And that is already huge!

Apart from that, don’t expect her to make it easy for you. It is not her job. Her role is to be pretty and nice, and to follow your lead.

In general, you should simply ignore anything she does which is unhelpful to your objective, and simply proceed with your plan.

Also, if she comes up with her own terms about the date, expect these terms to be unhelpful to your objective. So you should politely decline, and propose a date on your terms instead.

For your mutual good, you stand a much higher chance of success if you date her on your own terms.

She likes you, she follows you

Here is an interesting fact. If she likes you, she will follow you. Conversely, if she doesn’t like you, she will not follow you, or otherwise with some reluctance. And if you can get her to follow you, she will be more attracted to you.

This is very powerful!

There are a few ways you can take advantage of that:

• By checking how well she follows your lead, you can infer how much she likes you. I have used and abused of this test myself many, many times. I can usually know fairly well where I stand with her from the very beginning.
• By asserting your leadership over her, you can cement in her mind the idea that she likes you.

Demanding compliance

Getting compliance is when you are doing anything that asserts your leadership over her. It helps your seduction by cementing in her mind the idea that she likes you.

I personally use a physical version of this.

• When we are moving places during the date, I like to extend my open hand towards hers. What I am doing is silently demanding to put her hand in mine. Once she complied, I walk slightly ahead of her, leading her in a “follow me” fashion. It frames me in the leader role. At the same time, I gauge how well she is following my lead, and it gives me cues about how I will run the date.
• During the date, I normally progressively escalate my touch over her, as described in my post here. You can view that as getting her to comply with my physical presence.

But you could also seek to establish verbal compliance by asking her to do something for you.

The more she complies to your requests, the easier it is to get her to comply further. You can start by asking her politely: “hey, you give me your hand, please?”, then later adopt a more demanding tone: “give me your hand!”

But it is a double-edged sword. If, on the contrary, she successfully resists your compliance request, it will make it easier for her to resist even more. This is called negative compliance. The more “No” you get from her, the more likely you are to get a “No” next time. You want to avoid this situation at all costs!

This is why it is extremely important to not let yourself into a situation potentially leading to negative compliance. There are cases where you shouldn’t ask her opinion, and adopt a position of authority instead.

The key leadership moments during courtship

There are three key moments during the courtship where you must pay a particular attention to lead her properly.

• When you setup the date – discussed in the next section
• When you end the date and bring her home – discussed below
• And when you escalate her sexually – will be the object of a separate post.

These points in the date are when your leadership is most likely to be tested and challenged. While it is essential that she feels free to refuse and leave if she wants to, it is your job to not make it too easy for her to do so.

Here is the wrong way to go about it. Say you just ended the date, paid the bill, and going out of the venue.

You: How about we go to my home and chill now?
Her: Well, I need to get up early tomorrow. Maybe another day 🙂

The mistake you did is to make it up to her. You exposed yourself to a “No”. Like I wrote above, she is not going to make it easy for you, so if you give her a chance to derail you, she may very well take it. It was a leadership mistake.

Instead, try something like this. Say during the date, you gathered that you both like jazz music.

You: Now we’re going to listen to some jazz music. Let’s go! (while helping her taking a seat in your car)
Her: Wow nice!

You are now driving her to your home.

Of course she could also say she needs to get up early, but the way you presented it was an assertion, rather than a question. It makes it harder for her to refuse. This is better leadership.

When she is testing your leadership

Consider this: she requires her romantic partner to be a good leader. She passively screens for this quality during the date, by letting the man lead the courtship. If he leads it to the wall, dating ends, and he screened himself out. The date is already in itself a leadership test.

Now, if a girl likes you, and assuming you lead the courtship well, things will go usually without problems. But once in a while, you will have a girl that explicitly tests you for leadership. And the typical way she does it is by attempting to derail your plan. Just like I wrote, don’t expect her to make it easy for you, because it’s not her role!

I like to view that as a leadership test. If you let her derail you, you failed the test, and she screened you out. She expects her romantic partner to be a better leader!

The proper way to respond to leadership tests

Here are a few principles to follow:

1. Recognize the leadership test. It’s any situation she is bringing up, which result in moving you away from your courtship plan. We usually get caught in this mess by failing to recognize the test.
2. Politely decline her proposition, and make a counter-proposition, which results in getting your plan back on track.
3. Whenever your leadership matters, frame your propositions as an assertion, rather than a question. If her acceptation is important to your courtship, don’t make it up to her, and use authority instead.
4. In case you reach a dead end, make sure that the initiative remains in your hand. Never leave the initiative with her! And come back a few days later with a new proposition.

Let’s now see these principles in action.

Example 1. Bringing a friend to the date

In the below situation, you proposed the girl on a date for Friday night, and she asks if she can bring a friend with her. That will be unhelpful to your objective, because there will be less opportunities for intimacy.

You handle this as follows:

You: We should get a drink on Friday night.
Her: Sounds cool. Can I bring a friend with me?
You: No. This is a date. You and me 🙂
You: Great! Will you need a ride? I could come and pick you up…

First, notice that you do not ask her “Would you like to have a drink on Friday?”, because that exposes you to a possible “No”. By framing your request as a question, you gave her a wonderful chance to derail you. This is weak leadership, don’t do that to yourself! Instead, frame it as an assertion: “We should get a drink on Friday night”. It makes it harder for her to wiggle around.

Second, you directed her attempt to derail you and set it back in the right track by requiring her to be alone. Saying “No” to her request is actually doing good things for you, as it shows her you are able to hold your ground and not yield at all her whims.

Third, you nicely wrapped up the convo by assuming her answer was yes. You avoided ending the convo on the confrontational note “You and me”, so as not to let her dwell in her feelings over your refusal. Instead, you cleverly switched the topic to giving her a ride, making her acceptation implicit. This is called “assuming the sale has already been done”.

As for offering her a ride, it is now OK to frame it as a question… Because her answer does not matter much in your courtship plan!

Example 2. Turning the date into a party with friends

Below is a variant where she tries to make you join her group of friends. This is detrimental to your courtship because there will be little intimacy. Moreover, it frames you as “one of them friends”. You don’t want to be her friend. You want to be her lover. Don’t let her do that to you! Instead:

You: We should get a drink on Friday night.
Her: Mmmmh… I have a group of friends who are going for a movie night. Maybe we could join them!
You: Mmmmh… Or maybe not. I think we will be much better off you and me only over two drinks 😃 We can do a cinema another day!
Her: Okay!

Same technique. You identify her attempt at derailing you, decline, and put your plan back on track. You use assertions instead of questions. This is firm leadership!

Note: If instead she had presented the movie night as something she already agreed and committed to, then you would have politely declined and proposed to do the drinks another day.

Example 3. The “I will let you know” classic

Last, here is a typical case where she steals the initiative out of your hands, and let you stuck in limbo waiting for her update that will never come: the classic “I will let you know”. We all have fallen for this classic trap at one point on our lives!

You: We should get a drink on Friday night.
Her: I am not sure yet… I will let you know if I’m free!
You: Ah ok. Well, it’s alright if you’re busy, we’ll do that another day. Will make other plans Friday 😃

You already know what will happen if you fall for that. As Friday comes closer, you still have no news from her, and you become anxious and nervous. You are in limbo, you don’t know if you have a date or not. You now start to chase her for an update. By doing so, you are losing your cool, and display neediness and insecurity. Your chances of ever getting anywhere are now close to zero. More chasing ensues.

From her point of view:

• You are not a good leader. She stole the leadership away from you, and you let her do that so easily.
• You do not respect yourself. You are now unable to make plans for your time on Friday, and stuck to waiting a text from her that may never come.
• And if you lost your cool and start chasing her for an update, you are a needy, insecure man.

So here, instead of falling for the trap, you play it cool, decline, and withdraw. You hint at doing it another day instead, keep the initiative of the interaction, and maintain the leadership. And four days later, you come back with another proposition.

Conclusion: the big picture

As a parting thought, I will quote what my girlfriend has to say on the topic:

“It’s good to have a man who takes charge in things… It’s attractive and very manly :-)”

The woman requires her romantic partner to be a good leader, and her first way to screen for leadership is by letting the man lead the courtship. Normally she just won’t make it easy for him. But occasionally she may make it harder for him by presenting him obstacles for him to overcome. In fact, you will even notice that, the longer he takes to conclude courtship, the harder she makes it for him.

Women can be reckless in how they test their potential partner. I suppose that there are evolutionary reasons for that. Mankind evolved constantly on the verge of extinction for nearly a million year, and seeking to mate with natural born leaders was a way to make sure your progeny had a chance to survive.

For our purpose, dear Reader, you will significantly increase your romantic success if you just apply a few principles:

• Have an objective and a plan for the date beforehand
• Firmly lead through your courtship plan
• Don’t fuck around with too many dates
• Boldness pays higher dividends than prudence

This is exactly what the date template I advocate is doing for you 😃. Read it here if you haven’t done so already.

Yours,