How to Take Charge and Gain More Power and Respect In a Relationship

Are you sick of feeling broken? Are you tired of feeling like your emotions are constantly invalidated?

Worse still, maybe you reach the end of your relationship feeling like your partner never even respected you.

Luckily, there is a way that you can claim back the power from either your controlling partner or your weak former self.

You can drop the “nice guy” act once and for all while still becoming a stronger, more grounded man in your relationships. You can be kind and be an alpha male.

In fact, if you aren’t kind, you aren’t really an alpha male.

I want you to become emotionally stronger, develop profound leadership skills, and earn the power and love that the self-actualized-version of yourself deserves.

The key is to develop yourself into someone who people want to love. Someone they need to love.

However, before you can run a relationship, you have to gain control, power, and respect over yourself and your emotions.

It’s Time to Take Charge–and That Isn’t a Bad Thing

When you hear the phrase “taking charge”, you might think of a stereotype of some drunk guy yelling at his girlfriend, or some poster with mountains telling you to “live your truth and take charge of your life”.

Neither of these is what I want for you.

When you hear the phrase “taking charge”, you probably don’t think of a Yoda-like karate sensei sitting on a cushion instructing his students through a training session.

However, when you really think about it, no one has more control over others than someone who holds a true leadership position in their life.

When it comes to learning about taking charge in your relationships, you don’t want to look at the men who you see in your life who are struggling to maintain power, you do want to look at the men who are in control in their ideal relationship.

Every romantic relationship is voluntary. Both of you can stop seeing each other whenever you want to.

The secret to taking charge, having power, and gaining respect in voluntary relationships is to become someone that people want to follow.

You can’t coerce someone to love you, but you can prove to them and yourself that you are worth loving.

This is a 7 step framework that will help you take charge in a relationship and become the partner and leader that you’ve always wanted to be.

1. Study leadership and power dynamics

When I first wanted to become a more powerful, masculine man with more control over my life, I began to dig into some old philosophy textbooks. I wanted to learn about how I could live a life where people I interacted with respected me.

I was insecure, and I was willing to do whatever it took to stop feeling that way.

I found that there are many misconceptions about how people perceive power.

Maybe you’ve heard this quote from the Italian philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli:

“It is better to be feared than loved…”

People often see this quote as a reason for them to become self-obsessed, distant individuals, exploiting people around them for personal gain.

This is insecurity, not strength.

Insecure men look for any sign that they need to command more power over the people in their lives who might leave them. They might believe that people should be forced to respect them, or, at the very least, they should be afraid of them.

Here’s the thing, however: that wasn’t what Machiavelli meant at all.

In the reality, the quote I shared above needs some more context:

“And here comes in the question of whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.” – Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

To translate this into modern dating lingo, it’s better to be deeply respected than it is to have lusted after.

By studying philosophy and the psychology of power dynamics, you can learn to hack your life in a way that makes you the leader you want to be in any aspect of your life.

2. Establish Your Boundaries

In a romantic relationship, “power” can be a touchy word.

This is a big problem for many men today, especially men who were raised to be “nice” or “respectful”.

Some men are beginning to believe that kindness is a sign of weakness.

Some men are even viewing external issues like women’s rights as a sign that they as men need to sit down and comply with other people’s agendas – even if they don’t agree with them.

“Nice guys finish last” is a common quote that men hear, but this is an oversimplification.

Nice guys finish last, but kind, strong, charismatic men are powerful.

“Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness. I am kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me, weak is not what you are going to remember about me.” – Al Capone

That’s why the second step to gaining more power in your relationships is to learn your boundaries.

3. Develop self-respect and self-confidence

In order to have a relationship with someone who respects you, you first have to respect yourself.

In order to enforce the boundaries we talked about above, you have to have the self-love, self-respect and self-confidence to implement them in a real-life situation.

Most men get this backward because men have been taught that they have to be “tough” just for the sake of being tough.

Many men believe that they have to do as their partner says in order to keep them happy.

This is not what being a strong man is about.

Misery for the sake of misery is not what we are trying to do here.

Yet still, many men lose their own vision in the name of having a happy partner. This ruins their lives.

They believe that they have to behave a certain way in order to receive love from their partner when in reality, this is the exact opposite of what a healthy relationship looks like. 

Contorting your behavior to the needs and desires of someone else not only gives them the upper hand in the relationship, but it can also lead to low self-esteem and other certain repercussions that can be detrimental to your mental health.

The solution starts with clear boundaries, but without self-respect, you’ll never implement these boundaries.

By establishing your own clear boundaries in your relationships, you take control of your own existence. By implementing and communicating your boundaries, you become able to have a healthy relationship in reality.

However, the problem is that self-respect can be a difficult and lonely road to take. Plenty of men would rather be miserable in bad relationships than happy by themselves.

You have to be different.

4. Understand that your self-respect could end a bad relationship

A few years ago, I was dating one of the most beautiful women I have ever met.

When we first met, I felt like a king because she liked me. Trying to impress her was exciting. I loved taking her out to dinner and sensing the jealousy from everyone else in the room around me.

But along the way, I lost myself in the game of impressing this woman. I did whatever I had to do to make sure that she liked me and no one else.

Worse still, I became mortified at the thought of losing her. Whenever I was around her, I walked on eggshells.

I loved dating her not because I loved her, but because I loved the way that I felt while dating her.

Over time, those feelings wore off, and after a while, I hated dating this woman. Taking her out to dinner became a chore. Hanging out with her became exhausting.

I hated that I was losing my sense of self in the name of a relationship. This was painful to realize.

To make matters worse, the more I did for the relationship, the more she started to take me for granted. I didn’t understand why until years later.

Eventually, this relationship became a very difficult love situation, and it reached a breaking point for me. 

I had to change. I had to become truly confident.

In order to become a truly confident man, I had to end the relationship.

I learned through this experience that people are looking to date other people, they don’t want to date chameleons. No matter how physically attractive someone is, no one is attracted to someone who will do whatever it takes because they’re insecure.

I hate to break it to you, but the Disney movies were wrong about this.

That is the tragic fairytale of the social chameleon.

5. Stop changing yourself for others

Weak men or “nice guys” are like social chameleons.

Chameleons have the ability to transform the color of their skin to mimic their surroundings.

They are so good at blending in that they probably wouldn’t even be able to identify themselves if they were placed in front of a mirror.

Men who are in relationships with people who don’t respect them are the same way. Both creatures are slaves to their surroundings.

Both have no control over their lives.

Over the course of a one-sided relationship, it’s very easy to lose your sense of self and become a gardener who has become lost in their own garden.

You become so entrenched in the relationship that you lose who you are and you become a product of your relationship, and nothing more.

In a practical sense, this might mean you:

• Don’t see your friends anymore
• Don’t see your family anymore
• Don’t practice your hobbies anymore
• Don’t strive for the same goals that you had prior to becoming lost in this relationship

Any time your behavior changes in a relationship, it’s important to be conscientious and to think about why your behavior is changing.

This is problematic for both you and your potential partner.

You have to do something about this. You have to gain control of your relationship.

6. Demand respect when it is not given

In a healthy relationship, there is first and foremost a healthy power dynamic.

In a healthy relationship, you are friends, lovers, and partners. In a healthy relationship, you are on equal footing with one another.

Love isn’t just about sex or affection, love is about conversation, compromise, and maintaining a healthy relationship with your comfort zone.

Yes, there are disagreements and sometimes there is conflict, but these disagreements are approached healthfully not with “winning” in mind. Compromise is the central goal to get through these difficult love situations.

Conflict de-escalation is a trait that many men struggle with in relationships.

To gain more respect in your relationship, you must become stronger and more self-respecting.

However, that’s easier said than done.

So what do self-respecting people do in relationships?

They listen. They stop arguing and talk openly about their feelings. They build up their partner without putting them on a pedestal and worshipping the ground they walk on.

This is because respect is not about doing things. Respect is about consistently maintaining a baseline of respectful behavior so that you are able to be a better partner.

In order to establish control of your relationship, you need to make the person with whom you are in a relationship feel seen and validated. To establish control, you need to lead.

You need the confidence to orient yourself and the woman you care about toward a common relationship goal.

7. Visualize your ideal relationship

Relationship goals are a challenging topic to discuss because we all want different things out of relationships.

Maybe you want to maintain your independence.

Maybe you want a partner who is equal to you and also has their own passions and interests.

Maybe, you just want someone who you have things in common with and can be your honest self with.

Luckily, whatever you want, there is likely someone out there for you.

However, they’re probably not just going to show up on your doorstep ready for you to take them away and create the life you want with them.

If you really want to take charge, command respect, and gain power in your relationships, you have to do the internal work.

You have to find someone who aligns with your life vision. You have to know how the person you want to be with is going to act before you’ve even taken them out.

Just like success, an ideal relationship can be visualized.

Takeaways

In order to gain respect, take charge, and become a powerful man in a romantic relationship, the journey starts with you, in your own head. You don’t become a man who can lead others and take charge of other people without first becoming a man who can lead himself.

The true journey to leadership starts with you and ends with those who want to follow you.

You can’t coerce someone to love or respect you. All you can do is become a man who is worth following and respecting.

Power comes from becoming someone who deserves power.

Want to break free from those weak behaviors that make you a follower? Want to stop feeling like such a pushover?

That’s what we’re going to master in my exclusive coaching program that is led by me and my team of highly trained relationship coaches.

See, this program isn’t only going to help you break free from nice guy behaviors, build quality romantic relationships, and become a stronger Grounded Man. It’s also going to provide you with support from both myself and my elite community of men.

You’ll be tapped into your own “band of brothers” and you’ll also have access to the best training course for men that exist today, as well as weekly calls with my team of inspiring and determined coaches. There are no boys, no complainers or dabblers, this program is for serious men only.

Click here to watch my new client orientation.