This is Why My Boyfriends Used to Turn Me Off
“I just want to feel loved,” he said crying.
“You are loved! Why are you crying? Stop crying,” I said back impatiently.
“I don’t feel loved right now. You’re yelling at me and we’re fighting,” he said.
I stormed off into the bedroom and slammed the door, anger pulsing through my veins.
Who does he think he is, telling me to love him in the middle of a fight! What does he want, a hug!? I’m not going to stop standing up for what I believe in just so that he can avoid having an argument. We need to fix this first. Then we can hug it out. Maybe. Ugh, why can’t he just communicate like a man?
I remember this scenario happening more than once towards the end of my relationship with a former partner.
We ended every argument with him crying saying he wanted love, and me storming off doing everything within my power to restrain myself from giving it to him.
At the time, I had no idea why this pattern was happening over and over again. But now, I see it so easily. The energy imbalances within myself (and him as well) are so incredibly clear.
In a nut shell, here’s why so many of my past relationships didn’t work out:
With my sun in Leo and my moon in Sagittarius, I’m a double fire and double masculine sign. I’m courageous, proactive, driven, assertive and determined. All good qualities, of course!
But when those qualities are experienced through fear instead of love, they are fueled by perfectionism and the need for control. When this gets out of hand, I manifest some pretty frustrating problems such as eating disorders, body dysmorphia and anxiety.
When I met a man that introduced me to a softer side, I looked at him and said, “Yessss! I want that!”
I would appreciate his kindness and his sweet words that he would lavishly give to me (ahhh things that make a happy Leo) but when things got heated, I looked at his sensitivity as weakness.
Why?
Because I was so terrified of accepting that same emotional side of myself, I couldn’t bear accept it within him.
When his softness was convenient for me, sure. I liked it. But the minute it became an inconvenience, he “threatened” everything I thought I knew about Masculinity.
He was showing me his true, vulnerable self, and I rejected it because I hadn’t yet accepted my own true, vulnerable self.
Does that mean I didn’t feel sadness? Does that mean I didn’t cry?
No. In fact, I have always been emotional. I have always been a crier. Sometimes I throw tantrums in my car screaming at the top of my lungs to Pink’s Try.
Even though I’ve always had emotions, they’ve only ever come with self-judgments and shame. I’d cry and then cry harder because of the foolishness of myself crying. I would be devastated after a date who rejected me, and then feel like a “weak idiot” for feeling sad over something that obviously wasn’t a big deal to him.
I felt my feelings, but I had so many judgments against them.
So, when I witnessed a man who I inherently believed shouldn’t cry, shouldn’t feel certain feelings and should always be emotionally and physically strong, I felt my beliefs around strength and the Masculine being threatened.
Another problem that happened time and time again is that when I paired up with emotional men, more into their Feminine than I was into mine, I typically grounded myself even more.
I’d find myself jumping to make the relationship decisions, disregarding his wishes, and doing most of the more masculine things. I’d control who slept on which side of the bed, I never wanted to have sex (like everything else, this is actually because I wasn’t really in my feminine and I didn’t feel taken care of as a woman- I’ll go into that deeper at another time), and to be blunt, I found myself with a man I didn’t respect.
Part of all of these relationship issues is because I was with someone who really wasn’t a “life long” partner, but another, equally-important, reason is because I had a lot of limiting beliefs I needed to strip down about what the Masculine and the Feminine meant to me.
I had to dive deep into my beliefs around the Feminine. Even though I was working on stepping more into my Feminine (pole dancing, eating intuitively, practicing with a jade egg), the external acts weren’t nearly enough. I needed to go deeper. Much deeper.
Why do I associate the Feminine with being crazy? Why do I think that being sad is being weak? Why can’t I be taken care of by a partner? Why am I withholding love? Why do I keep finding myself sitting in front of the TV to numb out?
This quote summarizes it so perfectly: “Things that you cannot face in yourself you will hate when you see them in someone else.” – Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
When I started to really work on accepting these qualities within myself, I also started to see them as beautiful in my friends and eventually my partners.
During this Feminine-acceptance process, there was a time period where I thought the type of man I wanted was one that was UBER masculine, and that belief was very quickly revealed to me to also not be the way.
There’s nothing wrong with an “uber masculine” man, but at the time, uber masculine still meant to me not crying, not feeling emotional and not being sensitive.
Uber Masculine doesn’t have to be Anti-Feminine.
These ideals of extremes will never lead to a fulfilling partnership because as women, we desire (nay, we need) a man who can appreciate the softness and sensitivity in us.
So, if you’re with a man who is entirely disconnected with his sensitivity, and also has limiting beliefs around the Feminine, than what will happen is you’ll be with a man who was exactly like you were!
Can this be helped? Of course! There’s a ton of nourishing deep diving you can do around this to come to a place of both Feminine and Masculine acceptance and harmony.
I once partnered up with a man who was like the old version of me. Someone who believe sensitivity was weakness and the Feminine was emotional in a negative way.
At the beginning, all I saw was strength and protection, and of course for a Feminine woman, these qualities are super attractive. But eventually, I experienced the rest. I experienced feeling hurt, but instead of having him there to comfort me, he disappeared and ran off for days to avoid having to listen to me or be there for me.
This does exactly what you might guess: it started to convince me that I was being needy and dramatic. I felt like maybe I was over-reacting…and that I needed to toughen up.
Yikes.
I would start to second guess all the progress I made with my Feminine. I found myself often thinking, “Yes, I’m just being needy.”
No, sister. No, no no. You’re not needy for needing something. Fortunately, I pulled myself out of that dangerous space almost immediately when I noticed it started to happen.
Here’s the main lesson within all of this.
Each of us have our own harmony of these two incredibly beautiful energies. The Feminine and the Masculine are powerful, divine and nourishing.
I believe the most powerful and healing relationships are the ones where two people have come to accept, love and cherish both of these energies within themselves and have taken time to unravel old, stale limiting beliefs they’ve carried around about them.
Some examples of beliefs you might need to bring to the surface include:
Real men don’t cry
Most women are “crazy” and “emotional”
The man must always be the leader and the woman must always follow (and vice versa)
The woman must never show weakness or the man will look down on her (and vice versa)
Men can’t be trusted (my dad used to always tell me “When do you know a boy is lying? When he opens his mouth”)
Wives are always nagging
When a girl loses her virginity, her value goes down
When a guy has more sex with women, he becomes more popular
There are plenty more beliefs you can unravel, but I invite you to take time today to journal your relationship experiences of the past. What patterns do you see?
The only reason why I realized why men “in” their Feminine were so attracted to me, someone totally “in” my Masculine, was because I took time to reflect, analyze and dive deeper. They wanted my Masculine and I wanted their Feminine. The only thing is, we hadn’t yet fully embraced it in ourselves.
Once I realized that softness was a CRUCIAL quality I wanted to have within myself did I finally start to accept it and attract the type of partner I wanted. And trust me…beautiful (and exciting!) things will happen when you get to that place.
Have you experienced anything like this before? I’d love to hear about it! Please share your relationship questions or stories below.
Real men don’t cry
Most women are “crazy” and “emotional”
The man must always be the leader and the woman must always follow (and vice versa)
The woman must never show weakness or the man will look down on her (and vice versa)
Men can’t be trusted (my dad used to always tell me “When do you know a boy is lying? When he opens his mouth")
Wives are always nagging
When a girl loses her virginity, her value goes down
When a guy has more sex with women, he becomes more popular
There are plenty more beliefs you can unravel, but I invite you to take time today to journal your relationship experiences of the past. What patterns do you see?The only reason why I realized why men “in” their Feminine were so attracted to me, someone totally “in” my Masculine, was because I took time to reflect, analyze and dive deeper. They wanted my Masculine and I wanted their Feminine. The only thing is, we hadn't yet fully embraced it in ourselves.Once I realized that softness was a CRUCIAL quality I wanted to have within myself did I finally start to accept it and attract the type of partner I wanted. And trust me...beautiful (and exciting!) things will happen when you get to that place.Have you experienced anything like this before? I’d love to hear about it! Please share your relationship questions or stories below.[Tweet "Are you a perfectionist woman who has had a hard time with love? Read this. #Relationships"]