Dear Men: This One Practice Can Drastically Improve Your Relationships

More often than not, we find ourselves lost, confused about how to work things out in our relationships.

However, as humans, we all long for healthy, harmonious connections with one another.

And to do so, we have to first harmonize our inner conflicts.

The inner relationship: animus and anima

We all have our inner masculine and inner feminine.

Our inner masculine resides in the mind, and it plans, strategizes, structures, protects, and takes action.

Our inner feminine is our authentic heart, the emotions we feel, and our intuition.

As we grow up, we solidify our inner animus and inner anima, often based on our relationship with our parents and the social conditioning from our immediate environment.

This has a direct impact on how we show up as the gender we identify with the most, and how we perceive and interact with others of the opposite gender.

We also tend to attract and feel attracted to those who are the closest embodiment of the opposite gender, as their energy is the most familiar and what we resonate with the most.

This is also why when our inner masculine and inner feminine are not in harmony, this disarmony ends up reflecting in our outer relationships.

The inner disharmony with your inner feminine

In some shape or form, by our loved ones or society, men are often told not to cry or that emotions are a sign of weakness.

And because many have grown up in a highly punitive environment where mistakes often meant trouble instead of an opportunity for growth, they might lack even more safety in being vulnerable in their emotions.

This often leads to a general disconnect with our inner heart space, and for many men, whenever they begin to feel any undesirable emotions, they’d dismiss them and talk themselves out of them.

And when they get into relationships, they end up doing the same to their partners. Whenever their partners show up with what seems to be undesirable emotions, these men would end up dismissing them or talking their partners out of them.

How does one show up for the other person’s emotions when they don’t even know how to do so for their own emotions?

Many men care for their partners, it’s just they don’t really know how to show up for them when they haven’t been able to show up even for themselves.

A simple practice to harmonize with your inner feminine

To develop a healthier connection with your feminine partner, you must first develop a healthier connection with your inner feminine.

You don’t have to go full-on, complete vulnerability, and pour all of your heart out right away. You don’t even need to involve your partner or anyone yet.

What you need to start doing is to notice when your inner critic shows up whenever you feel an emotion that makes you uncomfortable, and change what it says to you.

Whenever you feel something, instead of letting your inner voice tell you that you need to be stronger, carry on, or even suck it up, or that you are not supposed to feel that way, simply ignore that voice, or ask it to give you a moment, and switch into a place of curiosity.

Ask yourself questions such as, “what makes me feel this way?” and try to simply name what you feel.

Emotions are not necessarily good or bad. They are just signals to let you know about something that is going on. They are just a byproduct of what your subconscious concludes about what it perceived from the environment.

For example, if you feel angry, your subconscious has perceived that a certain situation is not ok with you and nudges you to fix it by using anger as a signal. When you repress it, you miss out on a potentially useful signal to warn you of something. You can use your conscious logic to reach similar conclusions, but that is often much slower and potentially clouded with too much thought noise. Your subconscious is a fast-wired, powerful inner logic black box that uses emotions and intuition to inform you.

As you embrace the nature of your emotions, you can learn how to channel them and use them to your advantage.

The more comfortable you get with their appearance inside you, the less you are eventually triggered by them. And the less you are affected by them, the more in control you eventually become.

And the less you are eventually triggered by your inner emotions, the less you are eventually triggered by outer emotions from other people.

The more you practice and reprogram your inner voice to switch to a place of curiosity, every time emotions show up, the more naturally you’ll respond this way when emotions show up in others.

How this change everything in your relationships

Deep down, many women argue because they want to feel seen, understood, and reestablish the precious connection with their partner.

The problem is often that the woman doesn’t know how to communicate her needs from a more authentically vulnerable place, or the man doesn’t know how to hold space for her emotions, or both.

When at least one side starts to improve, there is more emotionally safe space between the couple, and it works as an invitation for the other to put their guard down and match on a more harmonious level.

When a woman can feel that there’s a safer container, she subconsciously relaxes and becomes more receptive to a man’s leadership.

Because to feel safe enough to be led, she often needs to first feel that there’s care and understanding towards her feelings.

Mónica Valverde is a daydreamer navigating the experience of human life. She’s in love with Spirituality, Inner Work and Relationships.

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