It's a Guy Thing (20 page)

How Can I Change My Man’s Ways?

When you take off the limitations on what men do together it sometimes gets rowdy. If you look at traditional men’s activities they are often forms of competition, debate, challenge, even death. Sports, hunting, boxing and war are essentially men’s clubs. Men love war. Men might not love killing people, but they love war, the game of war: opponents, competition, the risk of death. Men love that. Most sports are a ritualized form of war. Something is at stake. The challenge is on.

If you want to debate and compete with your man, offer him a challenge. Confront him with masculine energy. Tell him what to do. If you don’t want to do battle with him, then have one of his men friends tell him what to do. This is a form of wisdom that still operates in traditional communities: Men straighten each other out. More often than not, if a woman tries to change her man’s direction he will get angry and will not change. Let another man bring it to him. Let them do battle. Let them get to the bottom of it. This is one way men exchange love with one another.

If He Can Tell Me What to Do, Why Can’t I Tell Him What to Do?

Imagine you are making love and you say to your man, “You don’t know how to make love. Your penis doesn’t work very well.” Your comment, however truthful, isn’t going to sexually excite him. In fact, it will probably turn him off, immediately—instant depolarization.

An essential masculine quality is directionality. Any time a woman is critical of her man’s directionality he receives it as a criticism of his essential masculine energy. It is equivalent to you telling him that he is a lousy lover. It is equivalent not merely because he has a delicate ego, but because you are criticizing his directionality, the quality which is closest to his identity as a man.

If a man says that you are ugly and smell bad, are you hurt merely because you have a delicate ego? It is a criticism of your essential radiance, your natural feminine attractiveness. Such a criticism will depolarize you immediately, regardless of whether it is true or not.

It is the same for a man. Any time a woman says something to her man which implies that his decision or direction is not good, he feels she is saying, “You are not a true man.” If in some way you tell your man he should be doing something differently, if your attitude says, “You are not doing it right,” he will feel it as a criticism of his essential masculinity and he will be depolarized.

If you want to avoid depolarization, then tell your man how you
feel
rather than criticize what he is
doing
. For instance, if you are making love and you are uncomfortable, instead of saying, “You can’t make love very well,” you might say, “I’m hurting.” Or, you might just move your body a little bit, changing your position.

It’s the same way in all aspects of your relationship. You might know your man is on the wrong track. Sometimes it is appropriate to simply say, “You’re on the wrong track.” For instance, it may not be a moment in which you are hoping for polarity or attraction between you and him. But if you want to put him on the right track
without
depolarizing him, try saying, “I’m uncomfortable.” If he tells you his plans and
they make you anxious, say, “I’m feeling anxious,” rather than, “That’s ridiculous.”

If you say, “I’m feeling anxious,” you are inviting him to change without giving him masculine energy. You are guiding him and directing him through the invitation of your feminine energy. You are teaching him to discover a better direction, and you both remain polarized through the process. If it is not your priority to be polarized, then you could say anything you want.

Not all couples want polarized relationships. Some couples are involved in a marriage of convenience or a relationship based on mutual business interests. Some couples concentrate on being parents, or friends, more than on being lovers. Each couple is unique, and polarity may be more or less important to them. But if you want to give and receive sexually transmitted love, then polarity is essential.

How Can I Get My Man to Make a Decision Without Creating Tension?

Imagine that you and your man are supposed to visit some friends for the evening. He’s just come home from working all day. He’s been wielding his masculine sword all day long and he’s tired and ready to put it down. He flops onto the sofa and wants to relax. He doesn’t want to make any more decisions. But you realize that in order to get to your friend’s house on time, some decisions need to be made and some things need to be taken care of before you leave. You need to get ready soon or you’ll be late.

You could come into the room and tell your man, “It’s getting late. We have to make some decisions and get going.”
If you did so, you would be using masculine energy. He would probably experience this as nagging. You might be very loving, but because his masculine energy is weary, your strong directionality will feel very masculine, as though you’re bossing him around.

There is a key to making this kind of situation work: If you could be more feminine than he is, he will experience himself as masculine, regardless of how weary he is. Therefore, he will take responsibility to make a decision.

How do you empower his masculine so he makes a decision? Imagine he is laying on the couch, finally relaxing after a day of work. He doesn’t want to make any decisions. You’re thinking, “We have 10 minutes to make some decisions and act.” So, you sit down next to him, snuggle up against him, and put your head on his lap. He’ll immediately begin to feel masculine compared to you.

You may say, “We are supposed to be at the Smith’s at seven o’clock, but I’ll just stay here all night with you if you want.” He’ll feel,
Someone has to make a decision here
. By consciously being more feminine than he is, you make him aware of his masculine energy. You put the ball in his court. Now, he carries the masculine energy, whereas if you came in and demanded that he make a decision, you would be carrying the masculine energy. If this doesn’t work, then just make a decision for yourself. But at least you’ve given him the opportunity to direct with
his
masculine and maintain polarity.

This is a conscious way to wield energy in relationship so you remain polarized with one another. It is not a matter of secret manipulation. It is a way to communicate that allows the force of polarized love to remain strong between you. It is not deception. He knows what you are doing. You know what he is doing. He would probably prefer you to be this way,
polarizing his masculine energy with your feminine. You may want to ask your man which style of communication he would prefer you used.

10
How to Prepare a Man for Intimacy

Are All Men Obsessed with Something Other Than Intimacy?

The priority for the feminine energy in all of us is love. The priority for the masculine energy in all of us is freedom. Therefore, when a man is in his masculine energy his priority is freedom. What freedom means to a man is enlightenment, ultimately, and being free to act on the basis of his highest vision, to act on the basis of what is most meaningful to him.

If the most meaningful thing you could do is write a novel, to be free in your masculine means that you write it. It means that you go through and beyond your own laziness. You battle your own inner demons. You battle the external world if you need to. If you need to somehow make money so you can write, you do it. You arrange your relationships so you can write. And you actually write, you actually do it. For a man, or anyone in their masculine, freedom involves all of this.

To another man, living his freedom might mean meditating, or making money, or perfecting his game of golf. It is different for each man. But for any man to be living on the basis of his freedom, he must be actually involved in the moment-to-moment fruition of his deepest desire and the unfolding of his highest vision.

When he does that, he is also free to love a woman, to love you. But when the freedom or purpose of a man’s life isn’t being lived fully, then his love gets withdrawn in confusion and weakness. In order to fully love a woman, a man must be living his life on the basis of his true vision.

Does He Really Want to Leave Me or Is It Just a Phase?

As a woman you have an innate sense of what love is. You can sense the incredible reservoir of love that you are. You can feel the love inside you and you look for a way to give it or to share it.

Sure, there might be barriers to your loving. There might be childhood resistances that temporarily limit your expression of love. There might be all kinds of things that cover up your love. But, as a woman, you have an innate sense of love and your ability to give and receive love.

Most men don’t. The innate knowledge of your man is probably not about love, but about his destiny, his purpose. Yet, there may be a lot covering up his sense of true purpose as well, and it usually has to do with fear. Frequently, a man’s journey to discover his purpose involves doing exactly what he is afraid of doing.

Therefore, you see many of today’s men who are searching for their true purpose take up activities like hang gliding, fire walking, martial arts, and so on. The way most men contact their purpose is by direct confrontation with fear.

If you look at uniquely masculine forms of spirituality, they usually have to do with being right at your edge. Fasting for 40 days and 40 nights; being right at your edge in meditation with some guy whacking you on the back with a stick the moment your attention wanders; being right at the edge with a Zen koan, a paradoxical spiritual question, and no matter how you answer the question your master whacks you. You are being put right at your edge—total terror and frustration.

In more shamanistic cultures a man might ingest psycho-active plants and have terrifying visions, from which he
returns whole, victorious and humbled. The masculine form of vision is almost always a confrontation or battle with demons in one form or another.

A man discovers his vision by doing what his heart senses is true, even though he fears it most, and then carrying through with it. If he is terrified of making money, of his success, or of his failure, he must do it. It may mean going out, confronting his fears, going through with what he is afraid to do. His visionary challenge has very little to do with relaxing into who he is, which is the feminine way.

Ultimately, he must relax into who he is. But he must first find his vision. In the Hindu holy book, the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna didn’t say to his disciple Arjuna, “Remember me, and relax.” He said, “Remember me, and fight.” Arjuna was a warrior.

For men, growth usually involves a “holy war” with whatever prevents them from being free. Usually they engage this struggle in isolation or in the company of other men. Once they find their vision, once they are in the process of working it out, they can also embrace life with a woman and share intimate love.

Then they can also relax into who they are, profoundly, because they have disciplined themselves from wandering in distraction. They have used their sword of discrimination to cut away internal bullshit and slay the demons of their inner conflicts so that their heart-purpose is singular. Now they can relax into love without distraction.