An open letter to men from a woman (part 3): Where to go from here

This is part 3 of the An Open Letter to Men from a Woman series. It is designed to be free-standing but is best paired with part one and, most especially, part two, which serves as the preamble to this set of recommendations.

Here are a few recommendations for men who want to explore the hills and valleys of their inner landscapes with which they are not so familar. Exploration can be scary but it is also really interesting and FUN! And, in addition to coming away with a (re)newed fascination with your amazingness as a human, becoming familiar with henceforth unexplored aspects of yourself benefits relationships immensly. So, dig in and enjoy the ride!

The following recommendations are derived from my experience as a psychologist, my experience as a mental health professional, my vantage point as a woman who has lived 5+ decades on this planet, and my experience as a coach/support to those awakening to a new way of being in this unique time in history.

First: read what I suggested in part one of this blog. And add this:

1. Get curious.

This is the most important recommendation I have because it is the vehicle that will take you farthest fastest. Don’t try to immediately get to fixing or changing anything, focus on understanding first. At this stage, it is self-study that will help you slow things down, detach, learn, and understand. Some of the patterns you notice will serve you well and some you will probably need to modify. But you can’t amplify, leverage, or modify anything without knowing what you’re looking at and what you’re going for. So, learning about you is step number one.

It helps to record what you are noticing. If you journal, visit it regularly to record what you notice about:

• Your patterns.
• Patterns you notice in other people’s responses to you (look for trends. If you do not like it, then there is probably a pattern in yourself you do not see. Use this as data to begin seeing it rather than as a self-flagellation tool).
• Any insights or epiphanies you have about yourself, your relationships, your feelings, or anything else that grabs your attention.

If you do not journal, consider using your phone’s voice recorder to note these things or sharing them with another person (share with a man and notice what shifts — it can be gratifying!).

After you have begun your self-study, try cultivating curiosity about others, without any agenda.

One of the side benefits of cultivating curiosity about these more ephemeral things is that it will absolutely improve your relationships.

The value of curiosity is reflected in some of what women say to each other in those heart-to-heart moments of girlfriend time: How come our men are not more curious about themselves? How is it that they can spend so much time strategizing, making money, pursuing desired objects, rooting for their team, and competing for power and esteem, but have seemingly sub-zero curiosity about themselves and their human journey? And, most especially, how come they’re not more curious about me, about who I am as a human at the deepest level?

Being curious and sharing the deeper elements of one’s human experience creates powerful relational glue. Not understanding and cultivating this compromised our ability to pursue true intimacy — with ourselves and with each other. Not having it amakes it easier to forgo the honesty and closeness on which intimacy depends.

2. Practice receptivity and find the strength in opening

It is my experience that many men look to women for the softness they need from themselves.

While I understand and appreciate the idea that men and women, masculine and feminine, are distinct but complementary forces, it behooves us all to understand that we each possess both.

I have a lot of feminine traits — — I can be soft, compassionate, receptive, and deeply caring. But I have many stereotypically masculine traits as well — — I can be focused, precise, assertive, and highly goal-oriented, among other things. I’m slow to anger, but when I’m there, my inner warrior is seriously fierce.

In other words, I don’t need a man’s masculinity to complete me; I have learned to identify and use what we might all understand as masculine traits within me to great effect.

Mostly, this is because I’ve had to. This is one of the upsides of being born with a serious disadvantage in the existing power structure — — you have to learn the rules of the power structure really, really well to survive and get anywhere above that. I learned early that without many of the traits we think of as masculine, I wouldn’t have a prayer as a professional and be taken seriously by many men. Since men are not only half of our species but over-representeed in the leadership and decision making ranks of my professional life, learning how they filter and preference information served me.

Most men, by comparison, especially if they are able to negotiate a comfortable role within the existing structures have not had to learn anything outside what is natural to them. They certainly haven't had to learn how to navigate in the more curvy intuition-based nature of the divine feminine. Men who are raised with a lot of sisters are an exception, and they do present differently to women, but the majority of men seem to find this part of their nature foreign and uncomfortable.

And no, balancing my inner yin and yang has not turned me into a lesbian or left me uninterested in men, as some of the more reactive and ridiculous ideas out there might suggest. I am quite hopelessly heterosexual (and believe me, it would be much easier not to be in the current moment!) and enjoy partnership. I just don’t want a man to need my femininity to feel whole (shout out to my girl Barbie here!).

The other reason I implore all of the men reading this to find and honor your inner feminine is that no matter how much you want the women in your life to give you the softness you long for and no matter how much they would like to, we simply cannot. Nor can we redeem the ways you feel like you have failed as a “real man.” To be honest, very few women understand a man’s inner insecurity about being a man. We weren’t raised knowing the rules of the game you all have to play and, if we are being honest, many of us find the fixation on being man to impress other men both baffling and annoying.

And please know that I am not suggesting that you need to eliminate or suppress your natural maleness. Quite the contrary. This is about balance — about dialing up what has been sidelined so that your inner warrior and king has a trusted feminine mate INSIDE of you. I promise that it is worth your while because you are now living in a time where your and our very survival may be dependent on connection and collaboration.

So, how do you do this?

Great question! This one may well be the toughest thing you have to confront, because nearly all of us have some form of internalized misogyny — — meaning that we do not value what feels soft, open, and vulnerable, because, well, it feels soft, open, and vulnerable. It makes us feel like we are not protected. And this is especially difficult in the current moment when so many of us feel unsafe for many reasons.

Since this is antithetical to a lot of what men are taught it is not likely to feel natural to you at first. It will get easier (and interesting!) over time. Practice:

• Opening rather than pushing
• Getting curious about control/force/dominance impulses
• Shifting from defending to understanding

Men are so deeply conditioned to do, push, and, when necessary, use force to accomplish their aims. But, this approach simply cannot be the primary approach to all things in life. If you’re reading this, you probably know this. The key to learning, growing, and becoming skilled in self-knowledge, emotion, and relationship domains is allowing, learning, opening, and being willing to just flow in the moment.

Once you get the hang of it, is quite pleasant.

3. Step into the emotion void and look around: it is not as empty as it seems.

You do have an “emotional body” that stores pretty much everything you have experienced. All those experiences and emotional insults that you think you just went past and put away forever are lodged there. Years of stuffing, denying, and flatling emotions is a form of neuro-entrainment that takes time to undo so feeling confused, numb, or unable to access feelings outside of your usual range and context is normal.

But, to find your emotional body, you have to be open to your feelings. For this, you need space, your curiosity, and some help in finding labeling emotions. You’re probably familiar with anger, that’s one emotion men are allowed to feel. But, anger is typically a secondary emotion– — meaning that it happens quickly in response to unallowable emotions — — grief, fear, loss, uncertainty, confusion, or any other form of distressing or “I don’t know” experience.

If you struggle to find other feelings, anger is a good starting point. Don’t throw it out, get curious about it.

What you feel is data. You can use it to trace backward. Anger, for example, is often linked to other feelings and comes in to cover them over so quickly that you don’t have time to register whatever is it masking. Rather than get caught up in judgment, find a time and space to get quiet and ask yourself:

• What am I feeling? What is in there besides anger?
• What am I so angry about? What other feelings might my anger be masking?
• What is my anger trying to protect me from feeling?

Your anger isn’t bad, it’s trying to protect you from more vulnerable feelings. Honor it and ask what else is there. When information starts to come in, don’t shut it off because you don’t like it or you don’t understand it. Stay open and learn.

Don’t worry if you don’t get much at first, just stick with it. You’ll start to be able to tease apart all the different feeling strands that are feeding the anger. It’s kind of like getting glasses after having blurry vision — — things will come into focus pretty quickly once you start understanding what you’re looking at.

One way to get started is by using a feelings wheel to see if any of the labels resonate with one or more of the emotion strands you feel but cannot fully identify. Once you find it, get curious again. It can help to write, speak it out loud (even if you are alone — talking to yourself is effective and healthy), or share it with another person.

Like a lot of the harder things you have done in life, finding, labeling, and understanding the links between emotions and life experience is a skill that takes practice. It does get easier over time.

Here are a few other tips:

• Resistance is normal. Know that you’ll probably encounter inner resistance to feeling profound or buried feelings– — both because some of the deeper feelings like grief, fear, and confusion come along with feeling vulnerable — a state that makes most humans nervous, especially men because they are conditioned to feel in control at all times.
• When you start to wake up to uncomfortable feelings, it can really hurt. It’s a little like having your very, very, very cold and numb fingers and toes start to warm up again. Those of you who experienced this know what I’m talking about. It hurts like hell (like someone is holding a flame under them, actually) but it’s what needs to happen. Like frozen fingers and toes, it’ll become comfortable eventually. And like frozen fingers and toes, keeping them frozen indefinitely not only deprives you of fingers and toes but eventually they may just fall off.
• You do not need to share anything before you are ready. If you’re not sure what’s coming up for you, even if somebody you love is pushing you to know, you can be honest about that. Being honest about your confusion is an excellent first step at allowing in what might be a new experience.
• Embrace the new, the novel, the scary, the profound. Some of the first feelings you might experience as you start to explore your emotional body relate to vulnerability, buried sadness, grief, or other hard emotions. That’s part of the process. But stay open to the new and novel. Particularly important is to allow and enjoy positive emotions. Remember that one of the reasons to fully feel feelings is to have a robust and expansive repertoire of positive emotions– — this is where a lot of the juice is that we all seek! Feeling “open” feelings: love, awe, delight, joy, connection, gratitude, and spiritual inspiration with as much full-throatedness as you allow yourself to feel anger, lust, accomplishment, pride, or any other feeling that comes naturally, will grow the repertoire of emotions you have access to. It feels good, it’s wonderful for relationships, and at the end of our lives, it’s our moments of joy, love, connection, and other highly positive feelings that we will most cherish. This alone is the reason for learning how to feel deeply.
• Allow memories and/or associations that often accompany new or larger doses of emotion. Some of these could be hard. Some of them might be confusing — — you may not know why you have them. Stay open, yielding, and supple. Allow yourself to feel, see, experience, and get through to the other side. There are gems in there for you. That place my father could not go — — into that see a feeling and confusion that I know he had — — was full of gems that he did not get, and that we could never leverage to heal and enhance our relationship. Our relationship wouldn’t be so broken if he could’ve gone there. It makes a difference, trust me. Professional help is available if you need assistance sorting through it all. Use it.

4. Want to feel more love, awe, delight, and/or gratitude? Give it.

If you’re reading this, my guess is that you want more positive feelings and intimacy in your life and relationships. Hallelujah and congratulations! It is your birthright to feel boatloads of juicy, positive feelings. There’s so much more for you to experience than you probably have any idea is even possible. Emotions are the pathway to a full-bodied experience of life — of course, you want them all! (Seriously you do, even if you don’t know if you’re up for what it takes to get there).

You got this. The reality is that the most sacred and valuable experience of human life is the ability to experience authentic love, care, and connection.

The deepest truth is that you won’t be well-positioned to feel deep, intimate, authentic love until you’re capable of really feeling it toward another person (or pets or the Earth and/or anything full of life). That’s the real gift here. It is not money, not power, not prestige, or anything you associate with transactional living. It is the all too fleeting gift of life. For just the briefest of moments, it will seem when it is all done, we get to touch, hold, love, grieve, experience, and give.

And if you don’t get that before you die, then you’ve missed something essential about getting to live as a human.

The cool thing is that you can get started right now. You don’t need anybody else to have the feelings you want. In fact, nobody can give you the feelings you want. Only you can do that; this is not about finding the right person to give you love, attention, or tenderness. The most powerful way to have an embodied experience of love, connection, or any other feeling you want to experience is to give it.

This is an inside job.

The good news is that you probably have experienced this, even if you don’t recognize it. When you feel love for another person, a pet, the planet, anything — you experience it viscerally in your heart, mind, and body. If you have a child, you may know what I’m talking about. Imagine a moment when you watched your child play, sleep, giggle, or do something utterly amazing. Remember that blossoming in your heart? If your child looked at you at that moment, then they knew you were pleased with them. But the person who really felt and benefited from the emotion that you were feeling at that moment, is you. You were essentially bathing yourself in the powerful nectar of love. And love is the substratum of all creative energy in the universe.

Because you can close your eyes and imagine a scenario that would elicit the emotion you’re after, you can bathe yourself in these lovely feelings any time — it just takes intention, a little spaciousness, and access to the reservoir of feeling that all humans are born with.

When another person feels love for you, you may or may not experience it — — it largely depends on your personal filters. If you carry guilt, shame, remorse, regret, rage, and/or the tendency to make everything a transaction you won’t feel it. If you do feel it, it’ll be fleeting, muted, and/or dissatisfying.

To fully receiv and benefit from the love others carry for you, you may need to clear some of the debris from your emotion body. If you carry chronic confusion, regret, guilt, shame, or anger you block your authentic love and intimacy channels. Nobody’s doing this to you, you’re doing it to yourself. If you want to feel full-throttled love, you have to live clean — Mind, heart, body.

It’s that simple and that hard.

5. Use resistance as an opportunity to learn.

Resistance is a normal part of this process. Try not to get discouraged if you feel defensiveness or resistance rising inside you. It’s going to be reflexive, especially at first. It also helps to understand your resistance or defensiveness as an ego effort to protect you from vulnerable feelings. It means well. You can essentially say Thank you for protecting me, but I am interested in actually feeling my feelings. I would love it if you would help with that. I know it sounds a bit odd, but it works.

If you find yourself going into self-defense mode, use the self-study/curiosity approach to gather data. See if you can suspend the defensiveness and get curious about what’s happening. Even if you’re in the throes of emotion, you can still log it as data to revisit later.

To get access to the data you need, you have to query yourself. You’re a walking database, even if you don’t know it. Ask yourself: Why did I throw the shields up? Why did that make me so angry or resistant? What was I feeling just before the shields and resistance went up? Where did that come from? What emotions, images, words, associations, seem to be associated with it?

Don’t worry about understanding what comes back, you might not. Just practice noticing, logging it, digging a little bit, and storing it away. You’ll start to see trends over time. You can help to journal it — — that’s one of the easiest ways to spot themes.

Other people’s responses to you are data, too. The person that you are having conflict with may be responding to signals you’re sending out that you’re not aware of. Of course, it may not be that, and self-defense may be warranted. Start with curiosity and note that defensiveness is often a reflection of a lack of self-understanding at that moment. It is particularly helpful to use this approach if you notice multiple people having similar responses to you. Don’t throw it out because you don’t like what you’re seeing. Learn from it.

Practice humility and, most importantly, self-compassion: There is a boatload of hubris and resistance that simply comes along with the transactional orientation of the way we live and do business here. Men, in particular, are programmed this way — these are necessary features of an effective defensive/offensive stance. Assume you’re going to have it and that it’s going to take a while to root out. You can’t correct this until you notice it, so start by noticing where your internalized resistance shows up.

Try noticing the unconscious assumptions and judgments you make, as well — especially in relation to those closest to you. Once you can see where it resides, move into, “don’t know mind” — — what happens if you just let go of what you think you know and listen with an open mind and heart? Don’t dismiss it, get curious about it.

6. Always assume the best about yourself and others.

If you take nothing else away from this blog, please take this: One of the reasons people avoid feeling things is that they have a lot of stories about what will happen or what they will find even before they dive in and allow themselves to feel, experience, or understand anything. And often, we assume that what we will discover if we open our heart gate is that we suck.

Who wants the feelings that tell you what a shit you’ve been or are? I get it.

I’m pretty sure this is what was happening to my father. He didn’t want to go in there with me because he didn’t want to feel bad about himself. I understand. I’ve been there too. Because his story about us was bound up with so many other stories he had about himself, I don’t think he could stomach it. I understand that now but also grieve the missed opportunity — — one he and I will never get back.

Here is the truth: you may see or experience some things you don’t like about yourself if you follow my advice above. If you’re resisting going in there, it’s probably because you know you will. But you’re going to find a whole lot of other stuff about your own needs, desires, yearnings, and goodness that you didn’t expect. I promise. That’s in there, too — — and it is way more potent and life-altering than any of the negative stuff. You don’t want to miss it.

Also, you don’t fundamentally suck, no matter how much you might fear that you do. My experience has taught me that every single experience and reaction the vast majority of humans have is rooted in an understandable set of sensibilities, assumptions, and experiences. You’re never going to find that you are a fundamentally bad person. You’re not going to find that you are irredeemable. That will never be true. You may find wounds, pridefulness, pettiness, or spiciness, just to name a few, but beauty comes along with being human, and you have it in spades, as well. Look for it — you will never regret it.

7. Ask for help

One of the most damaging myths that men grew up with is that strength somehow means not asking for help, not asking for connection, not asking to be held. All humans will need to ask for help sometimes. All humans will struggle and will need to ask for help sometimes, if they’re healthy that is. It’s human to want connection, support, and to be touched just to be (non-sexually) comforted.

This is a hard place and a hard time to be alive in many ways. It’s gotten harder over the past decade or so. The last few years have been positively brutal for many people. Stoicism is not strength. When it cheats you of a full human experience, stoicism is a weakness.

If you find yourself, getting into tricky territory, get professional help. There are a slew of amazing people out there who can assist you. It’s part of what we all do for each other — — help each other out in the ways that we can. You’re strong for knowing what you need and doing what’s necessary to open your heart so that you can love fully. Please don’t pass from this earth without that experience. You will have cheated yourself and everybody who loves you.

A final message from me to you

You are a role model. Hundreds of people benefit from your courage. Most especially, though, are your children, your buddies, your partner, and the many people in your life that you interact with in daily life. As a parent to a daughter and a son, I have longed for male role models who embody the kind of strength that comes from deep self-knowledge, the courage to explore uncharted territories, authentic curiosity and openness, and the capacity to authentically and deeply connect with other people.

I know we can do better.

I’m writing it because the world desperately needs massive transformation, and we are all a part of it. You, me, all of us. The small things that seem to matter only in our lives are not small at all — — they affect everything.

Take a look around you right now and tell me what the world needs more of. Do we need more weapons? More walls? More wealth accumulation to the people who have figured out how to siphon all their way already? More technology? More kings, armies, or soldiers? Should we be exerting more control, bringing people to their knees in submission?

Tell me, dear reader, what do we need more of? I want to know. Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

Part of what I think we need is more honest sharing so I’ll start. You don’t have to agree with me.

From where I stand, the world needs more love, and more spaces for thriving, creating, and robustly expressing. Every being here wants to be seen — seen in the avatar way, especially. Every human being here wants to share their wisdom, their skills, their gifts, their creativity, their unique expression. We are only here for a little while and we all want to express who we were born to be — like a seedling wants to grow into the tree secreted away in its tiny husk. Every living thing here, human or not, wants space on a healthy planet to grow, to express, to know itself fully as life expressed before it passes from this earth.

Every. Single. Being.

The truth from where I stand is that it is going to require deep connection, humility, and collaboration for us to survive. Excess of the patriarchal model has brought us to this edge and is not up to the current moment. And, I would add, the kicker is that the very qualities that we have been taught to demean and negate in ourselves and others — deep self-understanding, capacity for vulnerability and authenticity, empathy and connection and collaboration in support of life and love regardless of personal material gain — are the abilities we most need to ensure our individual and collective survival.

It’s that simple and that hard.

All of this takes courage, deep, incredible courage because it requires charting a very different course than the one we are currently on. I’m up for it, are you?

Thank you for reading. I value respectful comments and feedback, so please do share. Also, let me know if you have other blog topics you’d like me to write about. I’m hoping to pick up the pace here, but no promises — — the world is keeping me plenty busy!

Like my work? You can keep me fueled up by buying me a cup of coffee.

Want individual support? I provide individual coaching/support for people aware that we are living in transformational times. If you’re struggling with an identifiable, mental health challenge, I recommend finding a therapist in your area. If you are interested in delving deeper into the topics I discuss in my blogs, I am here to help. I’ll be getting a website up soon, but for now, reach out to Janis at wttafriend@gmail.com.

In love, respect, and eternal hope,

Janis