Dear men, again...

 Several years ago, right before my marriage experienced its “mighty change”, I had an experience. I had come across a book about Tantra and was flipping through the pages. I didn’t really know much about Tantra and was curious. I stopped on a practice called eye gazing and read. It was basically saying that the eyes are the gateway to the soul, particularly the left eye. You were to situate yourselves closely so you could gently gaze into each other's eyes. The goal was to be able to see the divinity in your partner and have your own divinity reflected back to you, or something along those lines. 

As I read about this practice, I experienced a vision of sorts of my husband and I doing this practice. As I imagined us gazing deeply into each other's eyes and really being seen, it was almost as if some veil dropped between us and he actually looked into my soul or something. As soon as that happened I felt a jolt of panic ripple through my body in response and I backed away from the book a little and kind of shook my head as if to say, “No way, I’m not doing that!”

Now, remember, this is the man I love more than any other person on earth! But the thought of allowing him to see me completely with no protective “shield” up was incredibly unsettling for me. I was very uncomfortable with the thought of being completely vulnerable and open to him in that way.

Well, that was almost 5 years ago when that happened and a lot has changed. Today, my husband and I spend a lot of time gazing into each other's eyes with nothing hidden from each other–completely open and exposed to each other. And it produces some of our most intimate experiences together–communicating beautiful things to each other with no words at all.

As I considered this change between us I’ve come to the conclusion that it is related, at least in part, to speaking the truth. 

I have spent most of my life not speaking the truth, at least not the full truth. I grew up with absolutely no model of what healthy, open, honest communication looked like between a husband and wife. And I was a little shy when I was younger, so I came into my marriage with very unhealthy communication skills. I also learned fairly quickly that it was not entirely safe for me to be open and honest about my feelings with my husband. Not that he was abusive or anything like that, it was just that if I expressed my being upset about something that he did, his response was usually defensiveness in some form or another. 

So I settled into a pattern of not being honest with him. Of bottling up any negative feelings I had until they finally went away and we could settle back into our normal interactions. It was easier than dealing with the “fall-out” of me being open and honest, and I also lacked the confidence to be honest and vulnerable. As a result, slowly over the years, I built layer upon layer over my voice.  

An unintended, but very real, side effect of this repression of my voice was that I rarely expressed my deep love and affection as well. You see, when you shut down and repress your voice, you don’t get to just repress the negative things, you also repress the positive things as well. It’s unavoidable. 

Because I did not feel safe to express my pain to my husband, I also could not fully express my deep love and admiration for him, which caused him much pain. It is a very vicious and difficult cycle to be stuck in. 

I have had a few men reach out to me about and express their deep pain at not having their wife respond to them in the positive ways I spoke of in this post. How their wife almost seems to withhold her approval and affection and joy on purpose, as a way to control or punish him. 

This post is to shed some light on one aspect of this kind of situation in relationships. In a way, I think sometimes a woman IS punishing her man when this is happening. She is angry and frustrated because she does not trust him entirely. She does not feel safe to let her guard down and be completely vulnerable around him. She has repressed her voice because she does not feel safe to be open and honest with him about her own suffering. 

I am a huge believer in the old adage: You can only change yourself. 

So, if you are a man reading this and you feel like this is the dynamic playing out in your marriage, I would say to you–it may be because you are not fully embodying your divine masculine energy and she does not feel safe.  So her masculine energy goes into defensive mode and her walls go up spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically to bring balance. 

I am not saying that she does not have her own healing to do, but as the man, that is not your concern. Your concern is yourself and what you have the power to change. If you want a woman who submits to you, who fully embodies her divine feminine energy, then you must become a man who embodies his divine masculine energy. 

It is as simple as that.

Feminine energy is naturally magnetized towards masculine energy. If you are consciously choosing to embody your highest, god-like masculine self, then her masculine energy will retreat in safety, allowing her feminine energy to make itself known in all of the ways you long for. 

If you want a woman who embodies all of the delicious qualities of an uninhibited divinely feminine woman, then she must be safe to speak her truth to you. That means that she must be safe to express her upset about something or to give feedback about something you do that doesn't make her feel safe. 

She needs to be free to do this without you becoming defensive and wallowing in shame and unworthiness and inadequacy. Defensiveness in men is often a coping mechanism to avoid feeling like a failure. It is an unconscious pattern, not necessarily a deliberate choice.  But it causes deep pain and invalidates a woman's feelings. 

 If you become defensive, you invalidate her emotions and you’re right back in the loop of her walls going up spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically which pushes her away and will cause you to feel even more like a failure. Your defensiveness becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and the antidote is ownership. Healthy masculine energy is about taking radical ownership. Radical ownership is not just a gift to your partner, but also to yourself and to the world. It makes you trustworthy, reliable, and solid.

This is a high bar I am speaking of here. It requires a purposeful yielding to the spirit of God in lieu of the natural man. And it will be almost impossible to do if you do not love and accept yourself. 

Being trapped in a constant storm of self-rejection is a barrier to the true level of intimacy that we all crave. We will never feel fulfilled in any relationship until we love and accept ourselves. 

God is the source of this. Go to God and learn of your value and worth. When you experience that love, nothing can take the wind out of your sails. And when you bring that level of your God given self-worth to your woman, she will melt in your arms. Eventually. She’s probably going to test you first, to see if it’s legit.