I hear many well organised women complaining that men are flaky and useless. I see men with clearly masculine mating needs having the same opinion about themselves – that they are feminine. (See Jake Woodard, educate yourself – brief summary at the very bottom of the page). I do not disagree with that view, but perhaps there is a different angle to it.
I just realised that the opposite is also true. Many men have reasons to complain that women these days are aggressive, intrusive, compete with them and make no room for their expression. And they get mad at men that they do not meet their expectations or are not fast enough.
Buying time
When I was 8 years old, my parents would ask me some quick questions about maths. I had not memorised the answers, I always needed to think in my head for a moment, do the math. They were impatient: If I need time, that clearly means I do not know the anwers. The truth was, I needed extra ten seconds to think.
My way out of it was to buy some time by pretending to be mentally handicapped and talking out loud “eeeeeiiiight tiiimees siiiiix that wouuuld beee…”. Obviously in dating, times of high speed technology and mobile phones there is no room to buy time, nobody wants to pretend that 🙂
How fast can you go?
When we get stressed a lot, we get used to operating at high pace, in high speed environment, with beautiful efficiency and perfection in every inch. Much faster pace than required for normal human functioning and normal human interactions.
“Having a Bloomberg terminal and infinite resources at my fingertips. It was also great being surrounded by smart, capable, and ambitious people. One lap around Walmart is an easy reminder that the real world operates at a much slower pace and level of efficiency.“ – GS Elevator
The thing is, men are physically better equipped to deal with stress than women. So our career making and competitiveness may be forcing us to speed up more than men. They may simply not want to chase their tails and run around in circles. If the women can create their own masculinity in the absence of the external quality, why the opposite would not be true? Maybe when women are aggressive and competitive, men are overdeveloping their femininity?
Problem with mass media
The dominant message from the media does not just say “Women can also work and make the career if they want to”. I am receiving a lot of pressure: “you should want to make a career”. Let me be clear, it is not that I cannot. I already have and I was very good at it. And I learned enough to be smarter than that. It is not that I could find someone who could date me being career-driven. The thing is, I never wanted to in the first place and it does not make me happy. It is fun and pleasant short term, such a ride. But there is so much more to life than that! 🙂
Another dominant message is “women can be the chasing ones in dating”. That reverses the energies between men and women, fucks up the polarity and leads to conflict and PMDD in some extreme cases. So no, thank you.
A man to be happy needs to be committed: the more active and pursuing side. If a woman is having a mental diarrhoea and neurosis, she does not leave any room for him to be such.
Women also need men to be more active. Men can inspire women to soften. But the fact that women decided to speed up 300% does not mean that men also have to. And that is not their fault.
Global changes
As someone recently said, there is so much tension, something is going to explode. I kinda agree with that. And I think the change is coming, not just women, but everyone, judging by the global Big Quit situation and the likes (here). We do not need to do detrimental things and persisting at all costs. We all just want to be happy. And why go against the nature if we don’t have to?
We do that if we have some unfinished business we are trying to run away from. Maybe we had a suffocating mother that made it uncomfortable for us to receive attention? When things get too close, you just feel like wanting to be elsewhere? Or maybe the connection with the caretakers was broken so we developed abandonment wounds that get us attracted to unavailable people? Or maybe due to the parentification we are drawn to people that exploit us and take advantage of us? Or maybe we have C-PTSD of some other sorts and choose violent partners, codependency or addiction to distract ourselves? Every neural pathway that we developed that is not optimal for the best and most efficient brain functioning, will force us to pursue opportunities that get it corrected. And we will call it Karma 😀 Whatever pattern you see repeating in your life, whatever discomfort or pain you go through, you can release it and heal. The cherry on the top is post traumatic growth that will make things mean so much more to you afterwards.
Slowing down means letting some of that femininity in, so that we can let the nature do its work. We could also be purposeful and use dedicated tools. We could face our issues head on and use psychedelics to heal (and have fun while doing so). As much as we may want to keep running forever, fortunately every few years we are exposed to economical slowdown, or a crisis of sorts. The life cracks us open, whether we want it or not. And that has its roots in pure neurobiology 🙂
Recap of polarity – just to give you an idea.
| Signs of wounded masculine energy | Signs of wounded feminine energy |
| Forceful/aggressive Controlling Overgiving Overworking Overly self-protective Hyper-analytical Isolated/hyper-independent Emotionally numb | Emotionally chaotic Weak boundaries Heavy shame and guilt Over-explaining Hyper codependence Feels too much/unworthy Timidness/repressed Blocked sexual energy |
| Signs of healthy masculine energy | Signs of healthy feminine energy |
| Present Grounded Healthy leadership Decisive Healthy boundaries Structures&disciplined Clear direction Listening/observing Sexual energy/vitality | Healthy and honest expression Intuitive Radiance/warmth Receptive Healthy boundaries Magnetic Sexual energy/vitality Openness Discerning |
