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.

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.”

Photo: Bryan Reeves (Burning Man 2010)

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.

If I haven’t already, here’s where I might lose “evolved man” credibility with you. I might even make you hate me, for this one’s a real stretch in our current understanding of gender equality.

I was surrounded by powerful women growing up – 3 sisters and 2 mothers – so I’m completely for woman-power. This is not about regressing to some 1950s vision of women surrendering their fate to men. No way. It’s far beyond that insanity. Hear me out.

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. He will always want and respect her input on matters that affect their lives, and if he’s truly an evolved man he’ll always work to get her wholehearted buy-in on important decisions. 

He’ll also wisely defer to her direction when she clearly has the expertise, aptitude or passion for an aspect of living he clearly doesn’t.

But this may surprise you:

An evolved man doesn’t actually want 50/50 decision-making in his intimate relationship. When two people dance together, only one can lead.

I dated a feminine latin woman for four years. She was passionate and fiery and brilliant, and our relationship was wildly turbulent.

She actually asked me once to lead our relationship into calmer waters, which I tried desperately to do for years.

Thing is, even while she asked me to lead, she couldn’t relax enough to actually let me. I decided to try an experiment with her where we literally danced together one night. I let her lead first, and I surrendered to her lead.

Our dance was smooth and flowing, sexy and rhythmic (I’m part Puerto Rican, I can dance!). Then I asked her to surrender and let me lead.

The dance suddenly became jerky and hesitant. Our bodies no longer flowed smoothly together. Her body resisted everywhere I wanted to take her even as she tried to flow with me.

She simply couldn’t relax and let me lead. Surrender is about trust. An evolved man wants his woman’s trust to lead the relationship, whatever that means.

Of course he needs to be worthy of her trust, but we are talking about an evolved man here. He’s endlessly demonstrating trustworthiness with his woman.

Which in large part means he’s demonstrating clear commitment to serving a life purpose beyond his own little tyrant ego’s whims.

She can rest assured in her surrender that she isn’t merely giving her brilliant feminine gifts to a purely self-serving man.

I did not do a good job cultivating trust with my latin girlfriend, because I was not yet committed to my deepest purpose of living life in raw truth.

So she couldn’t fully relax with me. An evolved man’s woman will no doubt be brilliant, and he won’t always be right. But when he’s living clearly from his deepest purpose, he wants her to trust his clarity and direction.

I’m not denying the importance of compromise, but I’m also not talking about what an evolved man wants from a roommate or business partner. In a 50-50 relationship, the man may begin to feel he needs his woman’s approval for most of his decisions.

If this happens, he risks abandoning his core purpose (if he even knew yet what it was), forsaking his masculine gift.

This devolves into that pitiable cliche in which his woman has his metaphorical balls in a metaphorical jar. Her will dominates 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 … a man deeply committed to his purpose. 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 everyday towards his deepest purpose, which almost certainly isn’t just to be his woman’s partner (Lloyd Dobler was an adorable evolved adolescent at best, but not an evolved man … look it up).

He definitely doesn’t want a flimsy, timid woman who obeys his every command, but she doesn’t want a wishy-washy man, either.

She wants a man who lives his truth without needing anyone’s permission to do so, even hers. So even in her strength as an evolved woman, she’s able to relax and mostly let him drive … unless he has no direction or he’s driving them off a cliff, in which case revisit #4.

6) He wants her to surrender sexually, too.

I don’t mean to infuriate traditional feminists, but an evolved man still does want sex. Passionate. Consistent. Anytime. Sex. He wants no games; no withholding; no negotiating Sex.

An evolved man would rather negotiate with terrorists than negotiate anything 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’ll want a woman who has cultivated a healthy enough relationship to her sexuality that she can enthusiastically, wholeheartedly and with sincere pleasure offer herself to him most anytime he wants her. He accepts that she won’t always be so willing, and he won’t ever make her guilty for it.

He’ll be deeply sensitive to her needs, but not at the expense of castrating himself internally to protect her from his ravenous sexuality.

This is often what makes men turn to porn, strip clubs, massage parlors, affairs. Feeling his woman consistently shut off sexually from him is aggravating beyond description.

Culturally we’ve created immense amounts of shame around sexuality. It’s time we set that insanity on fire, with our loins.

If his woman is consistently shut off to him sexually, there’s a disconnect somewhere between them 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.

In the end, an evolved man doesn’t actually want anything in particular from a woman other than her authentic self.

He’s self-satisfied, so she’s free to be whoever she wants to be. He’ll certainly recognize when things are off and want to explore that with her.

But he won’t make her responsible for his happiness, either, and he won’t ever ask her to live inauthentically for him.

If ever he does, he’ll be aware enough to see that his request just points to some personal internal confusion he hasn’t quite reconciled with yet. She’s still off the hook for his happiness.