Masculine in women - Sarah Poet

Women, have you felt hurt by the feedback, “You’re too masculine?”

I’m seeing a theme lately in women coming to me and sharing that men are giving them the feedback that they are too “masculine.”

Not only are they giving women this feedback, they are insulting women with it, and using it as a reason to leave the relationship.

I was so impacted this year by the look on a woman’s face as she told me that her husband of over twenty years was leaving her because she was “too masculine.” It was the look of a woman who knew how to be stoic and save face, but had no idea how to handle this information. The look of a woman who had done her best, and from the suit jacket she was wearing and the leather bag she was carrying, I’d say she had been a powerful and influential woman in her career. And now he was leaving her, and she wasn’t showing any emotion about it. She looked like she was just going to “handle it.”

I’m not placing women as the victims, here, don’t misread me. These nuances of realizing where we went wrong with feminine and masculine, and how to culturally and spiritually redefine these concepts and learn to apply them to our lives – it’s huge work that we are in as a collective right now.

But what a double bind for a woman who received cultural messages that to be a strong woman meant she had to be equal and climb the career ladders just like men. Women have learned to do this because it was necessary for survival, actually, and it also feels good to many to climb those ranks.

Until women themselves are beginning to realize more and more that that was never a game we would have designed on our own. It was a game we inherited. The rules of the game sounded like, “If you want an equal shot at salary and resources, if you want independence and if you want to earn your own resources, you’re going to have to compete with men in the workplace.”

One woman I recently heard from was a lawyer. Her boyfriend had just broken up with her using the reason, “You’re too masculine.”

So I want to take this article in a direction you may not expect.

“You’re too masculine” is not very evolved feedback.

Women, I know it hurts, but this wouldn’t be thrown at you by a man who is actually aware of healthy feminine and masculine, rather, this is likely coming from his subconscious desires about the feminine. (I’m not saying this as an insult, I’m saying this based in psychology and observation.) I would recommend taking the feedback as information for self reflection, but not necessarily as an insult, if you can help it.

And men, we actually know we’re overworked and taking care of things we would rather a man take care of. It would be better to stop insulting her and start asking how you are contributing toward it. How can you help her to feel more embodied, safe, and comfortable in her feminine archetype, if that is what you want more of?

Isn’t it just like dominator culture to give punitive and identity-forming feedback to a woman? Isn’t it just like dominator culture to shape a woman one way such that she learns to survive with certain tactics, and then shame her for it?

What is dominator culture? A culture built on some having power and some not having power.

The feedback that “you’re too masculine” is shaming, and here’s the thing – this is something that can actually be worked with. Feminine and masculine polarity can always be re-balanced, or re-assigned between two people. This can be exciting work with a coach or through your own research and implementation. And a man who is accusing a woman of being too masculine is also a man who has embodied a feminine polarity that he is no longer happy with. Don’t shame her for it – learn about how to embody a masculine energetic, embody it, and ask her if she wants to practice embodying more of the feminine polarity. I promise you, she probably does. She’s probably tired of holding the world up all the time and would love to experience letting go of the masculine tendencies she’s learned. Try her!

I couldn’t look at this woman and tell her to shrug off her husband using this as an excuse to divorce her, and I would never want to.

But my general feeling is that women, if this has happened to you, it’s okay. Here are some suggestions on how to move forward.

See it for what it is. There is some truth to it – you have masculine tendencies and they probably serve you at work. It’s okay to ask yourself what of this “masculine” energy you also may want to let go of in certain situations or love relationships. Sometimes for women, what looks like “masculine” energy is actually a self-protective energy.

2. Everyone has masculine and feminine inside of us, so there’s no need to abandon the masculine within you altogether. The masculine is needed for things like structure, earning an income, keeping a schedule. I’m not saying these are “man” things, but they are aspects of masculine energy. When said like that, it’s easy to see that we all have both.

3. Begin to ask yourself, “What are healthy qualities of feminine and masculine, and what are unhealthy qualities?” For example, domination is an unhealthy masculine energy, but leadership is a healthy quality. Try to consciously choose what feels healthy, more and more.

4. Decide if you want to hold the feminine or the masculine pole in relationships. Regardless of the gender of two people, one person (in any given situation, or generally) holds the masculine pole and one holds the feminine pole. Of course, two people can also create amazing, conscious balance within themselves, but honestly, feminine and masculine polarity is part of what makes a relationship fun and juicy. So if you are masculine at work in a leadership role, how do you shift into a feminine role with your male partner if your choice truly is to hold the feminine polarity? I can certainly help couples shift this dynamic in their lives, and another resource to look into may be Dr. Patricia Allen’s work.

5. Welcome any feedback or realization you may be receiving about being “overly masculine” as an invitation to get to know the feminine. A few friends of mine with excellent resources for coming to know the feminine are Liz Kelly, the author of Home to Her and the creator of the Home to Her podcast. Liz is always researching and sharing the “Her-storical perspective,” as she calls it. Also, Sarah Grady has developed a body of work called Homecoming which is an excellent path for women to re-embody their feminine nature. And, of course, I created over 144 episodes of the Sacred Remembering Podcast, which encourages women to trust their direct knowing and path of reawakening not only to the feminine, but to what healthy union of feminine and masculine actually looks like.

I could tell you more from a psychological perspective what is really going on in a man’s own feminine / masculine dynamics both internally and with his residual mother wounding, but sometimes I feel like I’ve already analyzed men enough. So for today, I’ll end here and I’ll say that no one is “too” anything.

We are humans who inherited life in a patriarchal system, and this is an exciting time for us to come to consciousness about how to utilize feminine and masculine as paths of personal and collective awakening.

If we don’t like it, we don’t need to insult others. We need to start getting curious about what we truly desire our relationship with these archetypes and energies to be moving forward.

If you are looking for support in re-balancing, re-harmonizing, or re-defining feminine and masculine in your life and relationships, schedule a consultation at www.sarahpoet.com/book today. I’d love to support you and help us all to move past our hurtful misunderstandings.

Woman, What is your Masculine Template?

For years, I’ve been talking about the necessity as women for us to heal our relationship to the masculine. We have an old imprint of what “masculinity” means based on cultural standards, and we have to wash that clean and open our minds to what else is possible. I’m not so much interested in defining masculinity as I am inviting us into relationship with the masculine archetype.

I’ve been upgrading my masculine template lately.

While I’ve been healing my relationship to the masculine for many years, this new language of the “masculine template” recently came into my consciousness. It’s been a really helpful conceptualization and I hope that sharing it is helpful for you as well.

“Masculinity” I see as a narrative full of cultural assumptions and that’s not really my interest. Knowing the masculine archetype in both women and men and being in right relationship to it is what I am interested in.

I want to talk about the “template” that we have of the masculine, and I mean the masculine archetype. This template informs literally everything we do as women, and we don’t even realize it. Women are literally always forming their behavior based on the “template” of the masculine they hold in their consciousness.

Just this week, in a coaching call with a woman, she was able to see that her deep resistance to the concept of structure was because she subconsciously associated structure with the masculine and oppression. So – it’s happening in your subconscious literally every day, all day, that you are behaving in relation or reaction to your “masculine template” in your consciousness. I promise you.

I’ll explain further and take us deeper into this juicy, worthy, and potentially slightly uncomfortable contemplation.

As women, we have an “orientation” to masculine. We have a set of associations with men/patriarchy that are rather subconscious. We assume certain things of men and come to expect certain behaviors from men – not all of which are positive. This orientation to the masculine also includes all of the memories and imprints of wrongdoing that men have done. And, to take this to the depth that it really needs to go – we have imprints of the wrongdoings that patriarchy and religion have done, which are both associated with domination and oppression of women and the feminine.

Let’s look at some more real life examples of how the masculine template we carry influences our lives.

A woman was raised by a single mother with an abuse history who worked her butt off to secure minimal resources and basic needs. This woman formed beliefs from her childhood such as, “Men don’t show up, I’ll always be on my own, I have to work really hard but it won’t pay off.” She still carries these in her adult life and it forms and shapes the way she interacts with work, men, money, and even the extent to which she values herself.

How can you relate to that?

Another example: A woman is super talented in her work but it goes unrecognized by her male colleagues. She forms beliefs like, “Men are just in it for themselves, I have to work twice as hard to be recognized, my ideas as a woman are undervalued.” She spends her entire workday energetically responding to these perceptions. It shapes her.

Can you relate?

Last example: A woman grows up as a girl inside traditional religion and hears messages about subservience and being seen not heard. She grows up to be a good girl, silently frustrated with kowtowing to men who don’t even live in alignment to the true virtuous messages of the religion, but use it as a way to be dominant. She forms an orientation to the masculine that says, “I need to ask permission to be me. If I don’t behave I won’t be loved or provided for. I just have to keep giving myself to men and volunteer causes even though I’m not fulfilled.”

How did your relationship with this supposed “male god” influence your relationship with the masculine?

Each of these women has an orientation to the masculine.

Each of these women have so very naturally confused the behavior of men and religion for the true masculine. It’s happening everywhere, so commonly, that we don’t even question it. Entire feminist movements have been oriented toward fighting against what is conceptually in front of them – an orientation toward an oppressive masculine.

When we see the masculine as destructive, abuser, oppressor, dominator – we carry that as our masculine template. The template we then orient to. When we have the formative experiences of shadow masculine, including trauma and oppression, our psyches, our cellular structure, our bodies begin to orient to all men, all ideas of masculine, all masculine essences as oppressive. The template was formed, and then the template is what we carry out.

“Men are dangerous.”

“Men are takers.”

“I’ll have to do it all on my own.”

“I’ll have to give him sex if I want to secure my livlihood.”

It’s so common for women to carry a template of an old, wounded, shadow masculine, isn’t it? We’ve grown up in patriarchy, for thousands of years now, and so our orientation toward this immature, aggressive, dominator masculine is well formed. It is the template to which we orient our lives.

But it’s not serving us. In fact, it’s keeping women very trapped. It’s causing women to expend massive amounts of time and energy defending themselves, hustling extra hard, giving away life force energy, fighting against something, feeling as if something is being taken from them, etc.

Orienting toward an outdated template is a trap. And, it’s a choice.

Women can upgrade our template of the masculine. And we can do this whether or not we have the external evidence of it.

And we must.

When women with masculine-related trauma in this old and outdated template ask me how to heal their relationship to the masculine, the first thing I tell them is that this happens inside of their hearts.

Women habitually look outside of themselves for the examples of masculinity that they can have faith in – and when they think they’ve found that person, they put all their eggs in that basket. We enter relationships with men who we think, “This guy isn’t like the rest, he won’t hurt me.” We look for men who understand “sacred masculine” and do men’s work.

But this is not actually the way we heal our masculine template (because nine times out of ten, we’re just attracting more of the old template when we search for it in a man). We update the masculine template in our hearts, in our imaginations, in our own healing journey with the masculine and in our own contemplation.

We heal our masculine template by healing our traumas associated with the masculine, which of course can take some time and is big work. But, if you’re reading this, you’re up for that work.

Begin to ask yourself what the evolved masculine, the sacred masculine, even the masculine aspect of God looks like to you. What does your heart know and dream?
THIS is the creation of YOUR NEW masculine template! This is where YOU get to recreate the masculine that is possible and what you want to see. You get to feel it, imagine it, and then *form your behavior in relation to this new template.

Even before you have the external evidence that it exists, this is what you do.

For example, I know that the entire universe is comprised of both feminine and masculine and that there would never, ever be a Holy Father who would renounce the importance of the Holy Mother. I know that religious representation of God as a dominating force that positioned women as less-than is a total farce. Therefore, I don’t have to look for a church that understands this in order to validate my upgraded template. I can investigate what I believe and trust in my own heart. I can redefine my personal spiritual relationship with the Holy Father. In doing so, I get a new definition of that divine masculine essence, and I can orient toward that instead.

I can *choose* to orient toward the painful past template of masculine through the church or I can *choose* to orient toward a progressive and restored template of the divine masculine.

In this way, I re-imprint my own psyche and not only that, it changes the way I live. Maybe I don’t walk around as guarded or defensive anymore. Maybe I relax in how hard I push myself because I discover more trust in a benevolent provider masculine divine. (Real life example right there.)

Or, if you’ve not had good experiences in love relationships with men (maybe because you’ve been attracting from an outdated template), then you get to begin to rewrite your template of what is possible in love. You get to imagine it by developing your own relationship and reflection to the question, “What is masculine? What do I want in relation to masculine and men?” You get to dream it up, and then that dream becomes your template, and you not only orient to life from that new place and feel much better, but you also get to attract your next partner from this upgraded template.

Ask yourself what template of the masculine you are orienting to. Additional reflection questions could include:

How do I believe I will be treated by men?
How do I relate to the masculine archetype in my work?
How much do I trust I’ll be provided for vs how much do I work super hard to ensure that I meet all my own needs?
What do I believe is the definition of the divine masculine?
If I were to develop a relationship to the divine masculine, what would that look like?
In what ways do I trust or do I not trust the masculine in men or God?
What do I expect from men?

The template can always be upgraded, and in doing so, you are doing the entire world a service by re-imagining masculinity and orienting toward that upgraded template. You might not see it yet, but if you carry that template in your body, mind, psyche and orient your life and behavior toward it (instead of a victimized or wounded orientation), you will essentially birth it into being with your faith, curiosity, and the energetic template you carry.

Women, what is the masculine that you choose to relate to? Start living it. Today.

How a woman heals her relationship to the masculine.

Healing the relationship with the inner & divine masculine is the foundation of our own inner safety, provision, space holding, and discernment.

Last weekend, while hiking in the very cold woods with my pup, I listened to an interview I did with Artemis Rose for her Embody U Podcast. She asked me to come on her show and talk about how a woman heals her relationship to the masculine.

I actually really love this topic. As she says, it’s not talked about enough. But, I do think that it is some of the most crucial work a woman will ever do on herself.

Women often want something from men and judge men for not being able to give it to them.

Or, we spend a lot of time and energy looking for a man that embodies certain characteristics.

No doubt, we are doing what’s called “projecting” our inner, unmet needs of the masculine onto men. It’s very common to do that in our culture, especially as women have been oppressed as a gender for a long time. In the psyches of women, we are very hungry to know and be in relationship with the “sacred masculine.” But what does that mean?

It starts within.

Listen to the episode HERE. This is an important transmission.

Artemis writes, “In today’s episode, Sarah dives deep into a discussion around healing our relationship with the masculine (our own inner masculine, men, and our relationship with God).

How do all of these relate to embodying who we truly are? How does this relate to the feminine? You must listen. She does a beautiful job of simplifying, defining, and articulating how our sacred remembrance rests on the Truth of us diving deep within to reclaim both the sacred feminine and masculine for our own homecoming and inner union.

However, in this episode, she focuses on how important it is to see our relationship with God and our inner masculine as being the foundation and sustenance of our own inner safety, provision, space holding, and discernment.”

To access the Modern Women’s Pathway to Feminine / Masculine Reunification, CLICK HERE.