In today’s society, particularly with the (much-needed) rise of feminism, most women are taught the narrative that we can do everything men can do – plus backwards, bleeding, and in high heels.
And yet… there are many women waking up to the fact that, while it’s necessary to have equal rights and equal opportunities to men… inhabiting our masculine energy most of the time is not truly that fulfilling.
If you’re reading this, you might have noticed that you don’t really love taking charge and making decisions in your relationship, asking questions directly and ordering your partner around, and having that result in stress, dissatisfaction, and a boring sex life.
You might have noticed that even though you think you want to be in charge… it doesn’t actually feel that good when you are.
So you might decide to be more feminine. You decide you want to submit to your partner’s guidance, you want to feel soft, intuitive, and more feeling-based throughout the day. You want to inhabit your “being” energy more than your “doing” energy. You’d much rather have your partner (or potential partner) be in charge and meet your needs.
Yay!
And then, chances are, you promptly realize you don’t really feel safe dropping fully into your feminine essence.
Like, at all.
You might discover that you don’t know how to surrender to your partner; you might not be sure that you can trust him. You might have trouble opening up fully to a man on a date. You might be afraid to walk down the street in a short skirt and high heels (a common experience many of my clients have). You might have such a guard up around others that you can’t allow your radiance to blossom fully. You might be clinging to many stories taught to you, such as that a woman submitting to a man means she is disempowered and weak.
We all have a mix of masculine and feminine energies. Ideally, we want to be able to draw on our own masculine and feminine at any time. We want to be able to drop into one more fully on purpose, such as when we’re having really polarized sex, processing emotions, or getting a work project completed. We want to live day-to-day primarily in the mix of energies that makes us feel best.
You can under/overdevelop them both. If someone has only functional furniture in their apartment, never shows their feelings to anyone, and is only focused on work, they probably have an overdeveloped masculine (and an underdeveloped feminine). If someone never works, mopes around all day, smokes a lot of weed, and has frequent emotional outbursts, they probably have an overdeveloped feminine (and an underdeveloped masculine).
Though those are the extremes, many people live within these energies, without developing either of them fully. Instead of these energies both being worked with and integrated, they are unintegrated – meaning they are unmanaged and probably still in a more childlike state.
Feminine energy is flexible, receiving, surrendering. Masculine energy is boundaried, directive, and logical.
Most of the time, women who don’t feel safe dropping into their feminine do not trust their own masculine.
And being able to trust your own masculine is essential. Your masculine energy gives you structure, it makes logical decisions, and most importantly, it is what you lean on to set boundaries.
You may have had many experiences in your life that taught you that you can’t set boundaries. You may have had sexual experiences where you were taken advantage of or not listened to; where you felt you couldn’t speak up because of the narrative you’d been taught your whole life, about how good girls don’t cause problems and you were asking for it.
You might even feel simultaneously not able to set boundaries and also not able to let anyone else in fully. That’s an underdeveloped masculine and feminine, not feeling safe enough to commit to either, or both.
Learning to trust your own masculine comes from practice. It isn’t something you get to immediately switch on and have forever. You have to develop it. It should have been strongly modeled to you, and it probably wasn’t. That’s okay – it just means you have to teach it to yourself. You have to learn it.
This will come from starting to set boundaries. Really getting clear on what your body is telling you and what it needs – this is actually a balance of the masculine and the feminine working together, with your intuition telling you something and you then executing it.
This means that you no longer say yes to sex when you want to say no. It means you start saying, “It hurts when you treat me that way, stop it” to someone who isn’t being that nice to you. It means you leave the relationship that is bad for you.
It means you listen to your body and you act on it. It means that when you want to say “Fuck off,” you do. It means you charge what you want to charge for your work. It means you negotiate with your partner, saying, “I don’t feel like doing ____, but I would feel comfortable doing ____”.
It means you have structure in your life. For able-bodied people, it means that you’re physically active in a way that helps you feel empowered, whether that’s self-defense, lifting weights, or just knowing you can run a mile if needed.
These things all contribute to trusting yourself.
If you trust yourself to handle any situation, you’ll be able to embody your feminine radiance in the world.
I can walk down the street having just self-pleasured, in a long skirt and braless with people staring, precisely because I trust myself so deeply that I know I would be able to handle any situation that arises.
Radiance comes from a deep connection to your body. It is loose, flowing, easy to laugh, quick to please. Feminine radiance is magnetic to others, because everyone – especially masculine men – is attracted to that fullness, that ability to experience life so intensely and magically.
The feminine surrenders fully. This is a fucking gift.
And you won’t be able to experience your full surrender unless you can trust that your masculine is standing by, holding space for you to surrender, ready to jump in whenever it is needed.
If you liked this piece, you might also enjoy:
– There is room for both your boundaries and your feminine radiance
– How to ask for things in a more feminine way
– The difference between submission and surrender
– 51 real-life examples of how I set boundaries and ask for what I want during sex
– To the masculine: she just wants to know that she can trust you