Menopause = men-on-pause??

Yes, I actually heard that phrase recently!  I find it simultaneously hilarious and ridiculous. It never ceases to amaze me that there seems to be this weird under current that won’t die, that seems hell-bent on keeping women down. I believe that the author of this never ending agenda is the devil himself. 

Let's explore this idea that women want to, or need to or should??? put men-on-pause when they hit menopause. Who would even say that? Why would someone promote this idea? I believe there is actually something very sinister behind it. 

Why would there be an agenda to somehow shut women down and make them irrelevant when they reach middle age and menopause? Could it be that this is the period of a woman’s life when she truly steps into her power? 

I expect that we are all at least a little familiar with the idea of different archetypes. For women there is the traditional Maiden-Mother-Crone archetype, called the Triple Goddess in many ancient cultures. It highlights the phases of a woman’s life–young womanhood, marriage and motherhood, and “old age”. I hate to use the word crone and prefer to use Queen instead, as it is much more appropriate and fitting to reality. I've read that, once upon a time, the word crone meant “wise one”, but it most certainly does not mean that nowadays.

So we have the new and improved archetype for women of Maiden-Mother-Queen.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that the archetype of the maiden is promoted as the most desirable stage of womanhood in our modern culture. 

The transition from maidenhood to wife & motherhood is a huge initiation for a woman. A long, long time ago that transition was a glorious and sacred “becoming” for a woman. Not the loss of a maiden, but the becoming of a mother, carrying the maiden with you into the next stage. 

But in our youth obsessed society we hear something along the lines of: Now you are a mother, you don’t get to be a maiden anymore, you have lost your appeal. 

And because we are told over and over that the maiden is what men want(by every advertisement under the sun), women spend their entire life trying to retain their youth and get back more of their “maidenhood”. 

But an interesting issue arises when we women insist on retaining this “maiden” state, or trying to anyway–we keep men stuck as "boys". We don’t give men the Woman and thus we emasculate them in a way by our own insistence when we try to stay in our maidenhood.

We don’t hold the space for them to Rise Up. If we are not giving him a Woman, we are perpetuating the culture where men get to have and take without having to rise up. 

Now, to be clear, I am not saying that this is the situation we are all creating and living out. Most of us reading this are probably not stuck in this viscous belief system like the world at large seems to be. But I do think that it does touch our lives in varying degrees and I think it is a good exercise to consider if this is playing out in our marriages in small ways.

I am also not blaming men for this. I actually think women perpetuate this whole obsession with the necessity of retaining our youth and beauty more than men do.

So you can see that if the mother archetype is unappealing and unsexy, then the “crone” archetype might as well just curl up and wait to die!

Glorifying and obsessing over the Maiden archetype, ie the 20-something young woman with a pre-pregnancy body, over the Mother and Queen archetype, actually creates a world where young men, middle aged men and older men never grow into that King that women are seeking— we won’t let him because we ourselves are not embodying the Queen energy!

The truth is that most women don’t have a full sense of their erotic self-empowered glory (not as “imagined” or determined by others) until their 40’s and a full sense of their true value until even later in their 50’s and beyond. Ironically, that is when insecure men stop noticing them. Not all men are like this and not all women lose their visibility later in life. Seeing a mature, erotic beauty in a woman is a sign of a mature and empowered man, an equal to an equal. Without this, there can be no real relationship.

And so now we are back to the new catch phrase of putting men-on-pause, because when we hit menopause: men and sex are uninteresting and painful and we’re just not sexy ourselves anymore. 

I’m going to call BS on this one. 

The female body is meant to regenerate and become more juicy and more orgasmic when we stop bleeding. Bleeding every month for 3-4 decades(not to mention pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding) takes a toll on a woman's body. That is why her menstruation phase is her rest phase, she actually needs to recover and replenish from her bleeding. When a woman stops bleeding altogether her body does not need to expend energy and resources to recover. 

What if when women reach this phase of life they become more powerful, more confident, more unwilling to put up with bullshit, more interested in having good, satisfying, empowering sex? What if a man and a woman who are willing to step into their power, their King and Queen energy together as husband and wife is the very thing that the devil is trying so hard to prevent? What if a powerful, committed, interesting and united husband and wife is the very thing the Lord needs at this moment in time? 

Could it be that we are being lied to...Again!? Could it be that there is an agenda to make women think that they are not good enough, not appealing enough, not powerful enough, not sexy enough and we should just get a new hobby once we reach a certain age because we’re past our “good until” date?

Could it be that men are being attacked on all fronts, that the world is doing its best to make men appear to be idiots and pathetic, powerless and thus abusive and domineering?

Is this being done on purpose? 

Should we say, “Thanks, but no. I’m going to step into my power because that is what I’m meant to do in this phase of life!”