A man doesn’t commit to the woman he loves the most. He commits to the woman he feels responsible for. That’s the part nobody ever told you. He can love you, text you every day, sleep next to you, and still never claim you. Because love makes a man FEEL something, but responsibility makes him DO something. There’s a switch inside a man that decides whether you’re the woman he enjoys or the woman he builds his life around. Today I’m giving you the seven principles that flip that switch. And most women are breaking at least three of them right now without knowing it.
I’m Brody Boyd, and together with my wife Antia, we’ve been helping thousands of successful women for over 20 years combined to get a loving, long-term and committed relationship with a man they want fast. Let’s get into it.
What Commitment Actually Is
First, what is commitment? The dictionary’s oldest definition of commit is to entrust. To place something precious into someone’s care. So when a man commits to you, he isn’t signing a contract. He’s accepting custody of your heart, your safety, your future. Commitment is not a feeling. It’s a weight a man picks up on purpose. Healthy masculine energy IS responsibility energy. When a man truly cares for a woman, he wants to provide for her, protect her, and lead well for her. First for his own life, then the relationship, then his woman, then the family they build. A free test with this: a man who won’t take responsibility for his own life will never take responsibility for yours. Don’t build a future on that man.
But here’s the catch. You can’t force a man to pick up the weight. Nagging, negotiating, and project-managing all backfire. In the old fable, the sun and the wind bet on who can get a traveler’s coat off. The wind blasts him, and he grips it tighter. The sun simply shines, and he takes it off himself. The masculine takes responsibility. The feminine inspires him to do so. Every day with your man, you’re either the wind or the sun. These seven principles will make you shine like the sun to him.
Principle One: Give Him A Job He Can Win
At his core, a man craves a clear job he can win at. In a relationship, that job is to lead, provide, protect, and cherish. But watch what women do. They beg a man to step up while keeping every ounce of the authority. They plan the date themselves, then edit the plan. They handle the problem, then supervise how he handles his own problems. He’s supposed to lead the dance, but you’ve got him in a headlock.
Responsibility and authority also require each other. If he’s responsible for everything but allowed to decide nothing, that’s not a relationship, that’s an unpaid internship. His masculine reads it instantly: I’m not actually needed here. And a man will never commit to a place where he isn’t needed. The reverse is also true, if a man is trying to have authority over you without taking responsibility for your wellbeing and happiness, then that is a dictatorship and a situation you will need to walk away from sooner rather than later if the dynamic doesn’t change.
Principle Two: Stop Mothering The Man You Want To Marry You
Mommy energy and wifey energy are two completely different frequencies. In mommy energy, you take control. You manage his tasks, his calendar, his decisions. You remind, you check, you follow up. In wifey energy, you step back and trust him to handle things. And here’s the sting that comes with that. Mommy energy is masculine energy. Mothers protect, provide, and lead. That’s God’s design for raising children. It is not God’s design for romance. Mother your man and you become the parent and he becomes the child.
So hear this with love. The more you carry, the less he feels inspired to carry, until you’re hauling the whole relationship while he grows more and more passive. You didn’t inspire his responsibility. You repossessed it.
Principle Three: Respect Him Into Rising
Respect is to a man’s commitment what oxygen is to a fire. Ephesians 5:33 says, "Husbands love your wives, and wives respect your husbands." Notice it commands each to give exactly what the other starves without. Women most want to be cherished and adored. Men most want to be trusted and respected.
A great rule to help with this is to never tell, always ask. Telling is for employees. Asking is for a man you admire. "Take out the trash" and "Could I have some help with that?" get the same trash bag to the same curb. One shrinks him. The other turns him into your hero.
And respect’s evil twin is the fix-him project. Every fix-him project he detects says one thing: she doesn’t respect who I am. And a man never commits to a woman who treats him like a renovation. Goethe put it this way: treat a man as he is, and he stays as he is. Treat a man as he can be, and he becomes it. That’s the whole plot of Beauty and the Beast. One woman refuses to see a monster, and the beast becomes a prince. Your respect doesn’t describe your man. It builds him.
Principle Four: Appreciate What You Want Repeated
A man gets his sense of value from making the woman he loves happy, and the only way he knows it’s working is seeing his effort land on you. So your appreciation isn’t a nicety. It’s his paycheck. The masculine gives, the feminine receives, and your receiving is what completes his giving. A man whose effort disappears into a void stops making effort.
Write this one down: What gets appreciated gets repeated. What gets criticized gets defended. And what gets ignored quietly dies. If his effort earns a "finally" instead of a thank you, you’re training the exact behavior you’ve been praying for right out of him. Appreciation sounds like this. "Thank you for taking such good care of me." "You’re my hero." That’s not flattery. Flattery praises what isn’t there. Appreciation catches what IS there, even small and imperfect, and shines on it. Remember being the sun and not the wind. Watch what a man does when his effort actually lands. He often will double it.
Principle Five: Hand Him Your Heart, Not The Verdict
Something he does or says will hurt you at some point whether intentionally or unintentionally. In that moment when it happens you have two options. The first option is saying: "You always do this. You never think about me." Or the second option is to share your your vulnerable heart with him: "I’m feeling sadness right now.” The first option makes him the defendant, and a man on trial usually doesn’t step up. He lawyers up. Your heart opening instead hands him a problem only he can solve, and solving it makes him your hero. Blame inspires defense. Vulnerability inspires responsibility.
Early on in our dating phase with my wife Antia, after a week where I’d barely given her real attention, she didn’t guilt-trip me or go cold. She looked at me and said, "A part of me wants to manipulate you right now." I was floored. I leaned in, she told me plainly what she wasn’t happy with, and I fixed it. One honest sentence did more than a hundred arguments could have.
Here’s an exact skill we teach in our Magnetic Feminine Communication course for when he said he’d call and didn’t. You: "May I share something with you?" Him: "Sure, what’s up?" You: "I feel sadness." Him: "Why is that?" You: "Because when I didn’t hear from you last night, I started telling myself a story that I’m not a priority to you. And I’m not sure what to do." No accusation, no lecture. And 1 Peter says a man can be won over without a word by the unfading beauty of a gentle spirit. Gentle doesn’t mean silence. You can and absolutely SHOULD bring things up first, including the commitment conversation. Just bring it up with your heart first, not with judgement and verdict.
Principle Six: Own Your Half Of The Weight
This one separates the women men commit to from the women men quietly resent. Everything so far lets him carry more. A man can actually carry so much of your world for you. Your safety, provision, direction, the emotional climate. But no man can breathe for you, eat for you, sleep for you, or do your healing for you. A man can carry a woman. He cannot live her life for her. Your basics, your health, your self-care, your walk with God, that’s actually YOUR responsibility. And here’s the beautiful paradox. The more you take responsibility for what’s actually yours, the more a healthy man will be inspired to take MORE responsibility for everything else.
Now the question I get constantly. Should a man be responsible for your emotions? Here is my answer: He is responsible TO your heart but not FOR your heart. He owns the conditions. The safety, the consistency, how he shows up when you’re feeling something. You own what you do with the feeling. James 1:19 sets the bar: quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry. If your emotions run you, or get aimed at him like weapons, there’s nothing stable for him to be responsible to, and commitment can’t survive in a game he can never win. There are no ugly emotions, only ugly behaviors.
And own your misses. If you disrespected him, let him down, or embarrassed him in front of people, own it cleanly. "I apologize for being disrespectful when I…" and share what happened with him. No excuses stapled on. We call it cleaning up your side of the street. Not all the blame, exactly your share. Our client Holly was on day 59 of our Magnetic Feminine 90-Day Challenge. Her husband had been gone over a year and refused to even meet. At one breakfast she read him four specific apologies. Four times he said, "Apology accepted." Then he began opening up and sharing more deeply, she said, than in fourteen years of living together. One clean apology reopened a door a year of pressure couldn’t. But hear the balance: The doormat archetype apologizes for everything and often for just existing. The bitch archetype apologizes for nothing and takes no responsibility for anything. The Queen is the perfect balance of the two and she owns exactly what’s hers, and your feminine intuition will tell you which is which. Ownership is contagious. Own your half like a Queen, and watch how much heavier a load he volunteers to carry for you.
Principle Seven: Let The Weight Be Real
The last principle, and it makes all the others land. If you rescue every dropped ball and fill every gap he leaves, the weight never actually rests on him. You’ve become his airbag, his alarm clock, and his second-chance factory. You’re calling him so much you sound like a debt collector with a dress on.
The internet loves to say "if he wanted to, he would." But that’s only half true. The grown-up version of this is: if he’s allowed to feel the true responsibility and authority of being your man, and the real possibility of losing you, he will. A man only values what he earns. So he also needs to feel the consequences of his actions. You need to allow him to drop the ball sometimes. You need to be willing to let gaps stay open long enough for him to notice. And your standards need a spine, because your quiet freedom to walk away is what makes his staying mean something.
I met Antia in Waikiki, and on our first date, on the beach under the Hawaiian moon, I told her she was the girl from my story which was my vision of my future I’d been writing down every morning. Then I casually dated her for three months without having the exclusivity conversation and committing to her, with a lot of my old avoidant patterns still running me. What woke me up? When I realized she was still dating other men. I hated it. And I couldn’t argue with it, because I hadn’t claimed her. No punishing, no pressuring. She just kept her life full while I made up my mind. That weight landed on me like a piano. Within days I asked her, on that same beach, to be my girlfriend. Months later I proposed, and three months after that we were married. She never once chased me. She let the weight be real.
The Woman He Can’t Help But Claim
So here’s the truth under all seven principles. This was never about managing a man into behaving. It’s about becoming the woman around whom the man wakes up. He takes the responsibility. You inspire it. One of our clients, Eszter, a single mom of four, watched her man get down on one knee on her birthday with a proposal and say: "I want you to know that my intentions are serious. I am planning a future with you, and you are safe by my side." That’s what commitment sounds like. Not butterflies. Responsibility. So be the sun. And watch him pick up the weight like it’s the honor of his life.
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