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{Excerpt from a talk with my girlfriend.}
Me: Are all women sad?
Anita: All women are sad and feel pain. All men are neurotic and fucked up boys. They’re in pain. At the same time, they’re trained to have everything under control. Then they play along with this control game while being in pain. If they don’t take care of both sides of this equation, they’re ruined.
Women are more conscious, they have a stronger sense of intuition and more superpowers. It’s their job to bring men back on their conscious journeys. The women will be able to see the men’s darkness with more clarity.
She will have to be patient about this if she wants to get him back on track of facing his own demons. Men hold the control by default. It’s her job to be there to support him with his own darkness.
On the outside, this could seem like she’s changing him or even raising him. Men cannot hold everything in their hands and deal with their darkness at the same time. She feels more and she always sees his demons before him.
If she’s unconscious, she’ll say how fucked up or childish he is, how jealous, sexually twisted, or whatever he is…she will label him somehow and leave him.
Or she will notice he hasn’t faced his own demons yet and point him in this direction. Step by step.
Me: I love this image of a woman taking care of her man.
Anita: It becomes a label—that she’s being a mother to him if she acts in this way.
But she is the next woman to take care of him. She’s not gonna feed him by her hand, check his piss & poop, and worry about his exams.
She’s being there for him to face his dark side so he doesn’t burn out while holding tons of control, providing, focusing, being stable and productive.
Me: There’s a problem with this image of a man who has to be manly, handsome, and funny. It reduces him. When you meet a person who is smart, tall, and funny—you’re drawn to him. What you realize is: he’s fucked up, has low self-esteem, has a lot of pain, and suddenly it seems like he’s not a man anymore!
He’s still a man.
Anita: His job is to bring the stability, control, playfulness, and care on the ground. That’s what makes her safe and settled. Then she can experience her emotions and the world.
Then she’s ready to take care of his emotions. He is in charge of the material side and she’s tackling the emotional and spiritual sides of the relationship.
Me: The challenge for me and maybe lots of other men is to let go of control and embrace woman to enter my system. To fill me up with intuition, emotion, and a creative vibe.
Anita: I know. The problem for women is that they could feel they’re changing him in these moments. Like she’s heading somewhere she doesn’t belong.
And then there’s a common belief how everyone should take care of themselves. It’s bullshit. If everyone is taking care of themselves, then everyone is taking care of materialistic and emotional/spiritual at the same time.
But I would say it’s two departments in a company. I do the marketing and you do the sales. If you don’t sell, I’ll be out of cash to market our products. If there’s no marketing there will be no sales. Those are different departments. One is material and the other one is emotional/spiritual.
She is closer to emotional and he is more designed to face the material. She’s the creative one.
As Jesse Elder says: ideas, creation, and all the inspiration comes from the same place as children. Then he says “not literally”. But what if they literally do come from the same place as babies?
Me: From the womb.
Anita: Women catch the ideas and creations from the universe and give birth to them. Men provide the safe ground for this to happen and for ideas to survive.
Me: I’ll use this footage for my column. I’m putting your ideas into practice. I’m the space for the fire of your ideas.
Anita: I’m good with ideas and you’re good at writing. You struggle with ideas, I struggle with writing.
Me: Maybe this is the job for a man. Not to get trapped in ideas, but to grab one from my muse and implement it. No need to suffer in the limitless specter of ideas. Take your pick and do it.
Anita: Yes. And then you bring food for me to do this.
Me: I’m gonna sign you as a co-author of my last script.
Anita: Don’t do that. I don’t need any credit. That’s the ultimate phase of a woman surrendering to her man. Imagine if you only wrote down my ideas until the end of our lives and never gave me any credit.
Why would I need credits if you’re providing for me? I provide you with ideas which lead you to success and richness. You provide me with an awesome lifestyle. My name doesn’t have to be on this at all.
It’s surrendering. If you want to surrender, surrender like this.
Me: You’re crazy. No one will ever do that.
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My girlfriend insisted on picking a soundtrack for my first column:
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Photo credit: Getty Images
I firmly believe in partnership, shared resources, mutual respect and service. But I’m feeling now like I was misled into clicking this column, because I read a whole lot of stereotypical gender roles being asserted, without any real advice on how to surrender, abandon or overcome gender stereotypes. In fact, if that was truly done by a couple, they would negate about 75% of what is said here. But, the conclusion here is not about “how to surrender your gender stereotypes”, instead it ends on a proclamation of “surrender” as a feminine role or duty. This isn’t helping…
I like the honesty in this discussion. It seems to me that gender roles can constrict and limit a person’s ability to develop in every way possible as a human. I believe this kind of development is where we are headed because it makes us better people: better to be around, better partners. It makes our conversations more equal and shared – more inclusive which will in turn help us grow more. In the spiritual world we are genderless and if spiritual beings are the highest we can attain to then fewer gender roles are better than more. This doesn’t… Read more »
Thank you Leila for sharing your thoughts!