If a woman is playing the initiator in a relationship—the male, aggressive role—then a man can only stay in her space at the expense of his masculinity. If he gives in to a woman’s psychological demands, he is playing female to her male. Even if he is willing to surrender that in order to satisfy her, a woman isn’t usually happy with a man if he arrives at her door like a puppy dog.
If you can lasso a man, then what you get when you do get him is not a man but a boy. The woman who refuses to even try to lasso him is the only one with the real chance of ever getting him. With her, he is at least likely to say, “Hey, why didn’t you tug when I let my side of the rope fall? I’m used to women picking up the slack!” That woman’s answer would be, “Because I didn’t want to. I only play with grown men.”
At this point, some women would be thinking, “Yes, but my man doesn’t know how to be a man!” Exactly! Only a woman who has high standards, who has no interest in anything but the most adult interaction between a man and a woman, has the capacity to inspire a man to learn how to act like one. A man will not be attracted, or at least he will not remain attracted, to a woman who emotionally tries to do his work for him, because in his heart what he wants most is the experience of his own manhood. He is unconsciously seeking initiation into new levels of masculine strength, and any woman who indulges his childish behavior cannot be his initiatory experience.
What ultimately attracts both men and women is the fire of initiation, the unconscious lure of the situation that represents the next stage of our personal growth. But the only way we can teach others is by conscientiously trying to learn our own lessons in their presence. Finding and living our own truth—not telling others what theirs should be—is the greatest gift we can give to others. Psychologically it’s important that we stay on our own side of the net in a relationship, doing our own work and focusing on our own reactions. If the other person doesn’t reach over for us, we have to accept that there’s not really a game here.
A man who doesn’t want you right now is not the man for you right now. Trying to make him into that creates a negative loop in relationships. And what is the way out of that loop? Commit to breaking through it. Recognize your negative thoughts and emotions as addictive patterns, based more on childhood dramas than on the realities of the here and now. Do not underestimate the power of your own self-hatred and its insidious way of leading you into the darkness you so very much want to be free of. Fall to your knees. Ask God to help you.
The experienced doctor can diagnose diseases he or she has seen before, more quickly. When a man comes on strong—but then pulls back at the first sign that he’s getting what he asked for—he is announcing that he is not yet ready for love. Announce that you are, not by co-dependently explaining to him what he obviously doesn’t understand, or by trying to get him more hot and interested again. Announce to the universe that you are ready for a relationship that is more adult—and not by getting angry at someone who isn’t acting like one yet. Anger at a man for doing the boyish thing in love is no more reasonable than anger at a six-year-old for not yet being able to tie a necktie.
Actually, didn’t you act childishly yourself, if you rushed in with your heart before it had been proven to you that this was a psychologically and emotionally adult situation? It always helps us to remember that our bodies grow up early, but our hearts and minds and souls can lag far behind. A friend of mine once said, “Women want love as a lifestyle, but men want love as a vacation.” I don’t think that applies to all men by any means, but it’s an interesting statement nevertheless. Many times men are blamed for not making a trip that they hadn’t signed up for in the first place.
Men don’t usually lie, unless we’ve proved to them that the truth makes us hysterical. It’s amazing what happens when you ask a man what he wants from a relationship; usually, he’ll tell you. But often, if what he says in one way or the other is, “Not all that much, just some fun,” we think, “He doesn’t really mean that,” or “I can change his mind.”
Nyet. He probably meant it.
So what a marvelous opportunity this is for two people to grow up. He starts outgrowing those situations where he wasn’t adult enough to take on what he himself invited in, and healing from the chronic habit of showing up for something and then wimping out. She starts taking responsibility for the fact that she had a habit of giving her heart to men who never really said they wanted it.
We rarely learn our lessons from people who are judging us or blaming us. For instance, if a man drew close to a woman but then failed to honor the depth of their sharing, then he will not see his own behavior clearly if the woman expresses anger at him. He will probably get his lesson very clearly, however, from a woman who doesn’t find him wrong, so much as, well, weak. She finds it somewhat annoying perhaps, but ultimately simply amusing, that he’s so immature at love. Ouch. That’s a woman with something to teach a man, not because she is trying to, but simply because she has learned something herself. Every man is unconsciously looking for his next rite of passage. A woman who indulges, or even punishes, his childish behavior cannot give him that.
Some lessons we learn only when we have done something, and then upon understanding what we did, start to squirm. A whole new level of humility, and then adulthood, starts to happen after that.
MEN LIKE TO HUNT. My mother used to tell me that, but I thought she didn’t understand very much. Now I am in my forties, and like many other women I know, I finally understand that in many ways my mother was right. Men hunt because it is part of the hormonal imprint of the universe that they do so. This isn’t control or domination. Actually, it’s just courting.
A man doesn’t ultimately desire what he didn’t have to work for, at least a little. Women often complain, “He worked to get me, but once he got me completely, he stopped being interested.” So whose fault was that!? God help us, our mothers were right—we give too much too easily. A man should never get to totally stop working to figure out his woman, not if the woman wants him to remain interested. That doesn’t mean he can never relax, but simply that a fascinating woman is high maintenance and doesn’t apologize for the fact. Does a Mercedes apologize for being high maintenance? Does a Jaguar? Does an expensive house? Please. To a male who is an adult at love, there’s no relaxing until he knows that he can get away with very little immature behavior with this woman. He can relax into the sure and certain knowledge that she will forever be fueling the part of him that doesn’t want to stop working, that doesn’t want to stop hunting, because he doesn’t ever want to stop being fascinated.
And why should he? A woman who knows who she is is endlessly fascinating. And a man who knows who he is knows this about women.
A woman should always be just a step ahead of a man; he should never know everything she’s thinking, and if she’s truly current with herself he won’t. This isn’t game playing, by the way; it’s dancing. It’s enchantment. A man can feel it when a woman desires him yet doesn’t need him. It drives him crazy, but in a way that he loves.
If God comes first in our lives, then we are clear from whence we derive our sustenance. God is the only partner we need. The human at our side is a partner we desire. A clear difference between the two puts our inner world in balance, and then, and only then, can love rule all things.
GOD GIVES TO US, constantly and unendingly. When open to receive His gifts, we initiate the next phase of His giving. The eternal dance of giving and receiving is built into the spiritual rhythm of things.
Receiving is as blessed as giving, and at bottom they are the same thing. When we can’t receive, we are like people who, though fed, have malfunctioning digestive systems and therefore remain unnourished. On an emotional level, the reason this is so important is that emotionally hungry people are angry. We are angry about feeling unfed, but meanwhile, people right in front of us might have been feeding us constantly, as best they can, and are starting to wonder why we ourselves are so ungrateful, bratty, and ungiving.
I was like someone at my own birthday party who, instead of receiving gifts from guests and enjoying the surprise and affection poured into each one, had a list of what gifts I wanted and what they should look like, and I kept tabs on whether or not they were good enough. Sometimes people gave me magnificent gifts, but I was too wrapped up in myself to even see that there was a gift here at all. Someone might have given me one thing, but because I thought I was looking for something else, I missed the gift entirely. Most of us have been on one side of this equation or the other at some point in our lives. A man once said to me regarding our past experience together, “I had two tickets to the World Series and I didn’t even know we were playing baseball.”
Yet if all people truly are is love—and all we ever really do is extend that love—then everyone is gifting us on some level or another, at every moment of our lives. Mystical power lies in asking ourselves what the gift is, and then opening ourselves to receive it.
Clearly some people are more generous than others, and sometimes the gift is in what we learn from an experience, not in how good it feels. Sometimes a gift can come in a very odd package, indeed! But still, if we train our minds to ask, in any situation, “What is the gift here? Am I acknowledging the gift? Am I receiving the gift?,” then the tenor of our emotional nature begins to shift. We’re not just standing in front of the drinking fountain of life; we are choosing to drink the living water.
Someone who does not know how to receive love will, of course, end up feeling unloved. We then grow bitter or cynical, making us less and less attractive, keeping love at a distance, and bolstering our belief that a loving universe isn’t really that loving in our case. Uh, right. . . .
The truth is that love is always pouring forth upon us, but our belief that the purpose of relationships is to serve our needs as we define them often blocks reception. Asking only, “What am I getting here?” is death to love because it puts all responsibility on the other person. Asking, “What lesson is there for me to receive here?,” however, is a mystical key that unlocks your own heart. And that is our greatest need—to experience the things that make us more loving and more lovable.
What we experience and what we receive are in many ways our own choices. The same experience will be experienced completely differently, depending on the mind of the one who experiences it. One woman might say about a man who left her, “He abandoned me.” She will then have even more data to support her “abandonment issue.” Another woman, however, or the same woman once she has grown bored enough with that idea, might say, “He was being himself, going through his stuff, and this time I didn’t choose to see that as abandonment. I blessed his path, respected his choice, and was grateful for what I had received from him.” When the wisdom of the heart replaces the chatter of the mind, the power of love flows forth.
To the extent that our mental focus is on blessing rather than condemnation, we are in our natural state and love can find us. Every thought and every word determines that. And we are responsible for the conversations we engage in; they are heard by the universe itself. People who say to us, “He abandoned you. You should feel angry,” are our allies, perhaps, but not necessarily our spiritual companions. The I Ching points out that even thieves have allies. It is possible, in fact, to validate someone’s feelings while at the same time validating their capacity to move beyond those feelings. People who say to us, “I know you’re in pain, but could we look at this another way? Could we find a way to bless him?” are our true spiritual companions, because they are helping us find the spirit of love within ourselves.
In the state of love, we are magnets for love. We are literally more lovable and more enjoyable to love. Love with us becomes intoxicating, and that is how it should be.
ONE OF THE enchanted keys to love is learning how to receive a lover. You inwardly bow to the spirit of one who has graced your path. It’s much like receiving a guest at the front door, making the person feel more welcome in your home. While none of this occurs on the outer levels, it is felt within, and binds your lover’s heart to you.
We cannot truly receive someone until we have learned, with grace and gratitude, to receive his or her many gifts to us. The lover’s smile is a gift. The lover’s thoughts are a gift. The lover’s work is a gift. The lover’s advice (yes, I did say that) is a gift. And if you don’t think that, then why are you with this person? And if your answer to that question is that you really don’t know, then perhaps if you start to think this way, their gifts will become more attractive to you.
I once heard Pat Allen say that men produce into women’s appetites. Men are by nature producers, and one of the things they produce into is female desire. From our sexual lives to our emotional lives, that is an archetypal pattern of great beauty and significance. But a woman who blocks the gift, by either minimizing it, demanding it, or in some other way resisting it, makes it difficult for a man to experience this essential aspect of himself. That then denies both of them the thrill of this particular part of their dance together.
We are in relationships to experience aspects of ourselves that cannot be experienced when we are alone. Some of those aspects are facets of our more solitary existence, expanded to include another being.
I used to feel that prayer and meditation were basic to my life when I was not in relationship, but didn’t fully appreciate their power to guide me when I was. That changed as I began to realize how much of relationship work is inner work. We sometimes seek to keep from God the areas that we think aren’t spiritual enough for His attention! Or perhaps, we try to hide them from Him because we’re scared of what He might say. After all, who among us was raised to think God would care about our date last night, much less that He wouldn’t judge us for what we might have done on it! Once I finally got over all that, I began to find myself in almost constant conversation with God about things that mattered very deeply to me, indeed.
“So then, God, when he said that, I got totally reactive. I knew I shouldn’t have, and I knew that I was judging him, but it’s like a part of myself I couldn’t control. Please God, heal me of the part of myself that keeps doing this all the time.”
Things like that. And then the same situation would present itself, and the next day’s conversation would go something like, “You know, Lord, when he said that again, it wasn’t too bad. I mean, I wasn’t Ms. Serene exactly, but I wasn’t hysterical either. Please help me get better at this.”
Finally, the same situation would happen again and I would feel like I had received a true healing. And I knew where it had come from. More and more, I began to see my meditation and prayer times as opportunities to commune with God regarding all, not just some, of the issues I was dealing with in my life.
Spiritual practice rests on inner stillness, and stillness is the root of personal power. From within that space, we visit the inner temple of God. It is an underground sanctum that exists in all of us because He placed it there. When we pray and meditate, the mind is naturally drawn to its Source. There we find strength and serenity and guidance and love. Just spending time in that place draws love to us, as everyone is subconsciously seeking that peace within themselves, and we gravitate toward those who have already achieved it. When we think about the beloved while in sacred space, asking that our perceptions of each other be lifted up to God, it is as though a blessing has been cast over the relationship. Stillness draws love to us, and draws our hearts together. Whom we have found in God’s stillness we have truly found.
Ultimately, I learned that I need the sanctuary of God’s love not just in my own life; a couple needs it as well. Just as old-fashioned homes often used to contain chapels, every romantic relatio
nship should have a chapel space, a place where we turn to each other and say, “Let’s pray.” Here we pray together in the morning. Here we go together, to surrender our anger and resentments. Here we go with our perceptions of each other and our decisions we need to make as a couple. Here we go at the end of the day. Here we surrender the relationship itself, and ask that it be used for God’s purposes. An enchanted love cannot exist without regular visits to the heart of enchantment.
The enchanted lover is able to just stand in the light of someone else’s love. For women, this is particularly significant. Men are willing to fall all over themselves to give to a woman, but some women don’t know how to allow that to happen, simply because they do not know how to be still. We might feel embarrassed or inadequate when a man is coming toward us, and then defend against the moment. We start chattering away, or saying, “No, no, no,” when instead we should just be smiling and serenely basking in the glow of a man’s input. If he keeps giving, and we keep not receiving, then ultimately he will lose all interest in trying because his joy is in giving, and giving to a brick wall is a drag.
I remember vividly a situation I experienced once in my early twenties. I witnessed two people, ten or twenty years older than myself, encounter each other in the kitchen of someone’s house. They were newly in love, and I was struck by her response to him when he looked at her as though to say, “I don’t know what to say, but I’m absolutely crazy about you.” Her response was total stillness, a mysterious stance that looked to me as though she were saying, “I don’t know what to say either, but there’s no way in hell I’m gonna pretend I do, and mess up this moment by saying something stupid.” I can only assume they stood in some miraculous bubble that surrounded only the two of them, but in that moment, the intensity and purity of their connection healed everyone in the room.
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