It's a Guy Thing (9 page)

Why Is It So Difficult for Him to Honor Me As a Woman?

In ancient cultures where women were not obliged to act like men, men and women cherished the feminine. They honored the feminine in a way we don’t see today. As women have taken on more masculine characteristics to make it in today’s world, both men and women have lost their deep respect for the feminine. They no longer provide the support, integrity and care for a woman that would be natural if both partners trusted and honored the feminine.

In a polarized relationship, a man and woman honor and gift each other. One way that a woman could gift her man is by relieving him of the obligation to be in his feminine too excessively. She gives this gift by relaxing into her feminine energy and doing what she loves to do for him and for herself. Thus, he remains sexually polarized with her, full and strong in his masculine energy. He remains decisive. In order for her to gift him this way, he must relieve her of the obligation to be in her masculine too excessively by providing her with everything she needs to be able to relax into her feminine energy at the appropriate time.

Today, however, the feminine and masculine have been dishonored and degraded. For instance, very few men today are totally connected with a vision that carries them through life with integrity, skill and clarity. They have lost the ability to guide their life from their highest purpose. They have lost
touch with their true masculine core, and therefore have trouble honoring you as a woman.

Very few men live a life of conscious completion: “If I were to die today, my life would be complete.” As the masculine has degraded, many men have lost their vision. They have lost their ability to say, “This is my highest truth. I want to share it with my woman in love and make it possible in the world.”

While many men have lost touch with their masculine sense of direction, many women have lost touch with their bodies. The feminine is very bodily oriented, very sensual and full of life force and pleasure—very alive. Yet the degree to which many women today don’t love their own bodies is profound. Your relationship to your body is your relationship to the feminine.

Our culture has allowed a degradation of both the masculine and feminine. It is up to each of us to reclaim the fullness of our sexual character, strengthening our vision and relaxing deeply into our bodies. Then we can honor our partners with our native sexual energies, relieving them of the necessity to be overly masculine or feminine.

5
Culture Is the Enemy of Sex

Why Does Our Intimacy Seem So Lifeless?

In our culture, there is a very strong bias toward the masculine. Imagine a woman and a man walking down the street, both dressed in suits and carrying briefcases on their way somewhere. This is a common sight in every major city in America. But what if the man and woman were both dancing down the street, singing, touching each other affectionately, sometimes stopping to smell the flowers? This would be a pretty unusual sight.

Even when you go to the beach you don’t see everyone in ecstasy, dancing, laughing, rubbing oil on each other’s bodies, and celebrating life. But often you do see many people sitting on the beach reading newspapers and books, focused down and using their heads. Our culture is very supportive of the masculine and not very supportive of the feminine, in both men and women.

In our culture you will find many men who are uncomfortable with the feminine aspects of themselves and others. You will also find many women who don’t value their own feminine aspects.

Most agriculturally based cultures are sensitive to the flow of the seasons, the elements and nature. In these cultures, men and women both have strong connections to the earth. These cultures are more feminine-oriented. As cultures become more modernized, more daily activity is dissociated from the earth. Work becomes driven by abstract goals and schedules. The culture and its people become more and more masculine-oriented, distancing themselves from the earth and the wisdom of their bodies.

When the individual lives of men and women become
more masculine, so do their intimate relationships. An excessively masculine intimacy seems orderly, dry and lifeless.

When our sexual character becomes distorted by cultural pressures, our intimate relationships suffer. By understanding the masculine and feminine in all of us, we come to understand what makes intimacy work and what makes it fail.

Why Has the Passion Gone Out of Our Relationship?

In traditional cultures, the polarity between men and women was very well understood. It was an artful matter for them to relate to one another without distraction and sexual degradation. Over time, this mutual honoring of sexual differences became dogmatized. It became a rigid and dogmatic approach which kept women and men in their places. It was felt that women should do one thing and men should do another. Rigidly forcing men and women into roles is entirely negative, and the current movement to equalize their access to money, political power and creative expression is very positive.

Yet our culture today has produced quite a few confused and neutralized men and women: passionless men who have difficulty making decisions based on deep vision, and unhappy women who are excessively goal-oriented and more hardened than they would be if they didn’t have to live in a masculine-oriented world.

In order to restore passion to our intimate relationships, it is time for men and women to learn how to relax into their full feminine and masculine energy, especially during moments of intimacy. These delicious differences provide
emotional and sexual attraction, enchantment, healing and passion between men and women. Without these differences there is no polarity, only two neutralized people wondering where all the passion went.

Can Spending Casual Time with Men Be Harmful to My Sexual Health?

If you spend a lot of time lifting weights, your muscles get bigger. If you spend a lot of time sitting at a desk, your muscles can lose their tone. If you spend a lot of time being with a man, but not
fully
being with a man
in an intimate way
, then your body gets used to that, and it shows. Our bodies and personalities retain our experiences.

For instance, imagine you spend a lot of time working as a waitress in a restaurant where all the men are “hitting on” you, so you put up an energetic sexual defense throughout your workday. This defense remains in your body, emotions, and mind, for several hours after work. In fact, if you put up a defense for too many years, you may develop a chronic disposition of superficial friendliness while cutting off any deeper exchange of sexual energy.

Then you come home to be with your husband. Or perhaps you start a new relationship. And now, even though it is appropriate to be fully sexually polarized with your partner, you have just spent the day, or perhaps many years, being halfway polarized, because it wasn’t safe or appropriate to open all the way. It wasn’t safe to fully relax and radiate your uninhibited feminine energy. So, now, you bring a halfway feminine energy to your man, and he brings a halfway
masculine energy to you. Your sexual characters have become compromised.

When you are attracted to someone, a spiritual energy is released. When you connect with a man, you naturally exchange sexual energies. These energies don’t necessarily lead to sexual intercourse, but they are a subtle flow of sexual energy between the two of you.

In our culture, we frequently spend the day intermingling, and maybe even flirting with members of the opposite sex. We express some of our sexual energy, but suppress much of it out of necessity, to guard ourselves and feel more secure.

By suppressing sexual energy and spending a lot of casual time with men, you can inadvertently dampen the passion in your intimate relationship. You bring this habitual closure home to your intimate partner. Doing this day after day can ultimately sabotage your intimate relationship unless you learn how to re-open yourself and relax into your full feminine energy.

How Has Our Culture Changed the Way Men Look at Themselves?

In times of masculine cultural orientation, there is economic and technological growth, political expansion and the destruction of the Earth. In times of feminine cultural orientation, there is a rejuvenation of the Earth and a growth of cooperative politics and historically less technological and economic growth.

Right now we’re transitioning from a predominantly masculine-oriented culture to one in which both masculine
and feminine are honored. In the process some men have given up their masculine instead of reowning their feminine.

It is almost a
faux pas
for men to be masculine these days. Even the most masculine men belittle themselves in politically correct circles. A little men-bashing and social feminism is considered hip. These days, men are not relaxed in their masculinity. They don’t feel as free to do or say what is natural to their core.

Temporarily, a devaluation of the masculine and a revaluation of the feminine may lead to a balance. Hopefully, at some point, we will all be able to be strongly masculine and strongly feminine whenever it is appropriate.

When a culture is one-sided, then androgyny seems like the direction of balance. Androgyny seems superior to a masculine-dominant culture, for instance. What is truly desirable, however, is the full expression of masculine and feminine energies. Why settle for a weak masculine balanced by a weak feminine? Rather, everybody should be free to have highly developed masculine and feminine energies. Then we are free to play in full polarity, enjoying the gifts of strong masculine and strong feminine energies in our intimate relationships.

Is Feminine Energy Less Competent Than Masculine?

The masculine form of competence is the benchmark in our culture. We might presume from this that the feminine is incompetent—but only because it is the masculine form of competence that is given value in our culture.

If our culture was more feminine-oriented, we would value loving relationships, creating and sustaining life, healing each
other and the Earth, and freeing the emotions. Based on this feminine benchmark, masculine energy is quite incompetent. Whatever we value most will color our sense of what is competent and vice versa.