The 1000 Pin Pricks of Abdicated Leadership
Perhaps you have been in a relationship in which you and your partner have simply drifted into a state of numb disconnection. Maybe you were both exhausted from juggling a full workload and children? Maybe you were so focused on creating success in your world that you began to take your partner’s beauty and natural gifts for granted? Maybe you took less time to do the things that turned each other on and you became less and less attracted to each other until sex was virtually nonexistent?
As happens to many men, the stresses of modern life leached your energy, sexual drive and desire to connect. The focus and energy needed to create your empire were pretty much all you could manage. Fights became more frequent. Complaints about how present you were or how much time you had together became amplified and more contentious. Perhaps you began to feel unappreciated or constantly challenged about how you were spending your time and energy? Maybe your partner began to work more, or investigate more personal development for herself? She filled her schedule with non-intimacy related endeavors or threw herself into motherhood or her job. Occasionally, you would connect, sometimes even deeply (usually after a fight with promises to do better and more for each other). But the momentum of your default future together was too strong to shift the tides of your relationship and it ended; more often than not, with you feeling like you just could not win with this woman and that another would appreciate what you bring more fully.
Or perhaps you have been the good guy. You are caring and kind. You have even a deep reverence for the feminine. You have a tremendous amount of love to give and you yearn for a good woman with whom to share your life. You date or have had multiple relationships with women who simply haven’t fully given you their hearts or have been tepid to your desire for a deeper relationship. You can feel it and it’s painful. But not wanting to appear needy or create confrontation, you respond with more care and attention. You ask them what they want and listen attentively. You try harder with more elaborate dinners, gifts or experiences. Yet they get even more distant and non-responsive; or worse, take your love and care for granted. Maybe they ghost you completely. Being a good man, you may have wondered, “What is wrong with this woman? I have been so good to her and yet she is not interested.” Perhaps you developed resentments, feeling that they must have some psychological issues that prevent them from receiving love, or that they only want “bad boys.” All the while, you are confused as to what is wrong with this picture.
The answer is so simple that most men miss it. You haven’t lead her into a deeper experience of her own heart. As the unconscious husband, you have been too self centered to truly feel how much pain she is in and mistook it for a nagging or complaining nature. As the good guy, you assumed she wanted niceness, when what she really craved was confident, bold leadership. In both of these cases, what is missing is artful feeling of what her heart most deeply, and sometimes even secretly desires; and then leading her there with strength and open heartedness.
A woman with a feminine essence wants to be led. She wants to be playfully and passionately guided into the deepest realms of sexual and emotional intimacy. In both the above case, the men have ignored a crucial form of leadership and the result is confusion, resentment and disconnection. Ultimately, a woman in her feminine (or a man in his feminine for that matter) wants to have the full body remembrance that at her core, she is love. She doesn’t want to continually explain this. In the flow of love, she doesn’t even know herself much of the time. She wants you to feel what the relationship, or the date, or the sex needs at any moment, and then direct the moment skillfully from that knowing. And so every time she is taken in the opposite direction, every time her feminine nature is unseen or ignored, every time she is called upon to lead herself because you are too distracted, unconscious or self centered, it is painful; often in ways the masculine never fully comprehends.
When there is a lack of integral, trustable, playful masculine leadership in her love life, a woman with a strong feminine essence will feel starved and get resentful. She will often not even know why. The things you do will irritate her more. The seemingly innocuous habits you have had for years will become sources of snarky comments, judgements and disconnection. She will be less attracted to you sexually. She will start to fill her time with tasks and duties, rather than be attuned to the flow of love and devotion in her body. She will literally begin to tighten. She will start to become attracted to other men who display the traits of boldness and confidence she craves. She may even seek men who don’t treat her well, but display these characteristics. It is not that she wants abuse or neglect. It is that she is dying to be felt as the essence of love that she is, and be deftly guided from there. This is true on a first date, or a twenty year marriage.
Most often, men don’t realize this is happening. They only see a bitchy or unappreciative partner in front of them and wonder, “What the fuck do I have to do to get this to stop?” The truth is, you did this to her. The unconscious abdication of leadership in the relationship; or even on a date, occurs as a pin prick to her heart. Over the course of years, thousands of these moments will literally scar or harden her. She didn’t enter into the relationship complaining and unhappy. She entered with a sincere desire to finally be able to surrender the most sacred part of her to a man she could completely trust. As time went by and she felt your lack of presence, awareness and attention to her body and feelings, she got angry. First, she most likely got sad. Then she got angry. And that is when she will, attempting to fix the problem of her broken and unmet heart, start to seek help in the form or relationship counseling, programs and books, and doing her own spiritual and personal development work.
The simple solution is to get conscious where the problem has taken hold and make an unshakable decision. Take responsibility for your relationship from your deepest and most sincere heart. It is not hard. But it does take a cultivation of awareness and feeling; and a strength of conviction that surprises most.
Try this as an exercise: Feel into your relationship right now. What is not right in the relating? Where are her needs or yours not being met? What important truth are you withholding? What skills do you both need to learn to take the relationship to a higher place? Get clear on these points and then apologize for letting it slide for as long as you have. Address it squarely and make a plan to take the relationship deeper. If your partner is truly feminine in her essence, something profound will relax in her. She may even weep. The experience of being led well, from the part of you committed to integrity, depth and love, will change her life.