So, I’ve recently had situations where people I’m into, who are attracted to me (nominally or overtly), decide not to date me for different understandable reasons.
It’s been novel because my experience thus far in my life has been if there’s any kind of mutual attraction or “something”, it’s like boom, game on.
Experiencing a situation where there’s a mutual “something” that leads “nowhere” has been eye-opening, and has led me to some thoughts regarding femininity & masculinity.
(The following is informed by my “straight girl” lens, but I think will be applicable to queer folks too.)
I have to admit, initially, a part of me was like “whaaat? My feminine charms aren’t working? 🤯”
I don’t think of myself as someone who particularly leads with her feminine charms, but this situation revealed to me that unconsciously, in certain contexts, using my feminine charms is a subtle security blanket.
I think feminine charms are unconsciously a security blanket for most conventionally attractive femmes.
Actually, scratch that and say, most femmes.
I’m reminded of Red’s line from OITNB- “You take a woman’s power away. Her work, her family, her currency. You leave her with one coin… the one she was born with.”
I think femmes have this unconscious using of the feminine charms/sexuality as an ancestral trauma holdover from millennia of patriarchy.
For a long time, it was our grandmothers’ only bargaining chip. And this subtly distorts the organic and natural expression of femininity when it’s used as a survival strategy. i.e “You’ll never leave me, ‘cause I’m sexy.”
This is why the beauty industrial complex has such a stronghold.
And it keeps femininity ruled by inner child unmet needs — in essence trapping it in the “princess” archetype rather than the Queen.
And, the next key point is using the feminine charms in this unconscious way only works when you’re working with undisciplined sexuality on the masculine side.
I never really thought of the status quo of masc sexuality as undisciplined until I started to dig deeper into the world of sacred sexuality.
One example of this is a teaching about yoni massage, which explained the importance of when one is giving the massage that things don’t lead to sex (essentially because having non-sexual genital touch helps create safety i.e the pussy doesn’t always have to “brace” for sex with certain stimuli.)
I think, the status quo is very much a linear approach to sex & dating. A + B = C, touch here, touch there and boom you get an orgasm. Insert tab A into slot B / slot A takes in tab B, and call it a day. Lol.
(Queer people are obvs way more enlightened in this arena, haha.)
I guess what I’m saying is the pathways are rather entrenched. When you have the initial inputs (mutual attraction), the script is, all roads lead to dating/sex in a very particular way. The path of no action or “not” is rarely ventured, or even an available pathway.
Having a range of pathways is the natural organic expression of things. Rigid pathways are typically trauma responses. For example, stress responses: whether fight/flight/freeze/fawn is your typical response, it tends to be entrenched and other options for behavioural responses are limited until you bring embodied presence and awareness to that stress pathway.
And patriarchy, in a nutshell, is this: splitting apart the masculine and feminine from the unified whole, and demonizing and suppressing the feminine.
Spoken of in very simplified and overgeneralized terms, I think the masculine “always” going for sex/dating/porn with the right inputs is not just a biological hormonal thing, but that mixed with patriarchal trauma. (And we know it’s not purely biological from things like #nofap / the yogic tradition of vajroli, sacred sexuality / tantric practices, etc.)
With patriarchal ancestral trauma it’s like A) emotionality becomes shameful (“boys don’t cry”), and the only socially acceptable ways it gets expressed in dudes is either through fucking or fighting, and B) the split and demonization of the feminine within and without creates this obsessive need for Her via sex.
So the masculine and feminine distortions feed off each other. The distorted feminine uses the codependency of the distorted masculine to ensure her safety, which makes her codependent as well, of course.
If the distorted feminine is never challenged (i.e always gets what she wants from the distorted masculine), the Princess never gets a chance to look at her patterns and evolve into the Queen.
So, experiencing non-codependent masculine sexuality has helped shed a light on subtle codependent aspects of my feminine, and that’s awesome.
It all serves to bring things back into balance once again. ☯️
P.S Definitely open to hearing thoughts! Especially ones outside of my “straight girl” lens i.e dudes, nb, queer folks
Codependent Charms & Undisciplined Sexuality
