Guest Book Review: The Alpha Female’s Guide to Men and Marriage: How Love Works” by Suzanne Venker

As seen on Fox & Friends
The Alpha Female's Guide to Men and Marriage shows women who have a dominating personality how to love a man.
America is in love with the alpha female. She’s the quintessential modern woman—assertive, razor sharp, and fully in control. Her success in the marketplace is undeniable, a downright boon to society. But what happens when the alpha female gets married?
She becomes an alpha wife, of course.
An alpha wife is in charge of everything and everyone. She is, quite simply, the Boss. The problem is, no man wants a boss for a wife. That type of relationship may work for a spell, but it will eventually come crashing down. Since 1970, just as women became more and more powerful outside the home—more alpha—the divorce rate has quadrupled. And it is women who lead the charge. Today, 70% of divorce is initiated by wives.
Do men just make lousy husbands? Not at that rate, says Suzanne Venker, bestselling author of The War on Men. The truth is that women don’t know how to be wives. Why would they? That’s not what they were raised to become.
But women can learn. There’s an art to loving a man, says Venker, and any woman can master it. An alpha female herself, Venker learned how to be a wife the hard way—through trial and error. Lots of error. And here’s what she knows today—the set of skills a woman needs to pursue a career, or even to raise children, is the exact set of skills that will mess up her marriage but good. No man likes to be told what to do. And no woman respects the man who does.
The Alpha Female's Guide to Men and Marriage gives women who are used to being in charge the tools they need to make their marriages less competitive and more complementary. Part memoir, part advice, this brave manifesto argues that while marriage is more challenging for the alpha female, it is possible to find peace in your marriage. In fact, it may be easier than you think.

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The Alpha Female’s Guide to Men and Marriage: How Love Works” by Suzanne Venker was just the book I needed. Being a newlywed and an alpha female myself, it was helpful to read this before I went too far down the wrong marriage path and made the same mistakes that the author did! A few points that stuck out and resonated with me were:

1. “People who lack the ability to trust compensate by taking control.” I have had trust issues ever since my boyfriend back in freshman year of high school slept with my older brother’s ex-girlfriend and the whole school knew about it except for me. I wish it didn’t affect me the way it had, but it was during a really formative time in my life and I decided then and there that I would never again be the “stupid girl”. So I hardened my heart and I guess decided to become an ‘alpha female’ so that I wouldn’t get hurt again which has correlated to not wanting to be vulnerable in relationships and taking control when I can’t trust.
2. Another point Suzanne made was that “no relationship can last if one person is mentally preparing to get burned by the other” and that is what made me decide to change my mindset about my husband, instead of constantly trying to protect myself, I decided that we are in this together have started to be completely vulnerable in trusting him. And honestly he hasn’t given me even a millimeter of a doubt not to, so it is about time (after 6 years of being together)!
3. “Your attitude is the single most important determiner of your success in life and marriage.” I thought this was quite extreme but honestly quite surprisingly true. Once I mentally let go of my distrust, life has become so much easier because my mind is a lot calmer, not constantly trying to find something wrong. What I used to believe was if I found out about something before it happened, I would hurt less, but even saying that aloud now sounds kind of silly. It is better to trust first until proven wrong than the other way around.
4. “Ironically the deepest need of the wife, to feel loved, is undermined by her disrespect.” This stuck out to me because of how true it was for me in the early days while we were still dating, in order to prove that I was in charge, I would make snarky remarks or tease him in front of my family and his friends, without realizing that it was causing a rift between us. It wasn’t until he wanted to break up with me and my family started pointing my bad habits out that I decided I needed to control my tongue and start being nicer because no one wants to love someone who is mean all the time!
5. “Be easy to please and you will be easy to love.” When I read that I was like, yea right I am going to be easy – he needs to earn my love! But Suzanne makes a good point; first off, I am already married so honestly he shouldn’t need to be constantly pursuing me, but also who wants to feel that they need to be on presentation mode all the time? She connects this way of thinking with the American culture that “easy women” aren’t the ideal. This may be true outside of marriage but once you are married it is a whole different situation.
6. “Culture elevates women in not changing themselves, but that is ridiculous because you need to improve.” No one should change themselves for a man, but once you have decided on a man and in order to constantly be growing in the same direction, one must change! When I first met my husband we were in college, now we are both in the working world and completely different people than we were just 6 years ago. If we didn’t grow and adapt to each other, we probably wouldn’t still be together.
7. “In the same way women release while talking, men release sexually.” I thought this was an extremely interesting point that isn’t often talked about! If my husband wasn’t around to listen to me and talk to me, I know I would go crazy and have all these pent up feelings, so to relate talking to sex is very interesting to me because I have a tangible way of understanding how he would feel if I were ever to “hold sex” against him or use it as a weapon!

Suzanne made lots of other interesting points in her book, which you will have to read for yourself to find out what you relate to most. Overall, it was a very easy and eye-opening read for me, partly because I agreed on a lot of her points, but also it was packed full of useful and actionable items. Definitely learned a lot from it and will be implementing these new insights in my marriage life!

I recently featured Suzanne Venker on my blog, Ladybossblogger.com, a blog that highlights female entrepreneurs via interviews – please check out her interview by clicking here.