What Women Don’t Tell Men

Poem excerpt. Post follows.

If you want to change the world, love a man
in all his instinctual animal nature,
in all his hunger and devotion to beauty.
Love him beyond your vanity and pridefulness,
your gilded possessiveness and need to special-
beyond your well thought out conditions for safety
and all your concepts of how a man
should be in relationship.
Love him beyond your anger at not getting your way,
beyond your terror of not knowing or being in control.
Love him in his relentless pursuit
to penetrate the deepest sanctuaries within you,
that hold the chaos of your strongest emotions,
your carefully guarded secrets of separation
between light and dark, virgin and whore,
man and woman, spirit and form.
Love him for opening the door to sensuality,
to your primordial self that is beyond duality,
for binding you to pleasure
even as the air closes in around you,
even as you writhe with madness,
cursing your incarnation as the enemy-
even as you contract and claw,
crying out in despair, such joy it brings.
Love him for not yielding
to your resistance to surrender-
for standing in his masculine power
even as you threaten to destroy him

This is my favorite verse from a poem I wrote a year or so ago, “If You Want to Change the World, Love a Man.”

Not surprisingly it wasn’t as popular as my “Love a Woman” poem, in which I gently kick men’s asses and call women to stand in our Divine Feminine and allow ourselves to be loved as the queens we are.

I see several reasons for this, the primary one being I wrote the “Love a Man” poem to kick my own ass.

I, like many women, am not quite ready to trust the masculine and love from this depth of surrender.

Because I’m not ready the majority of men I meet do not embody the kind of masculine energy I write about, the kind that shakes me to the core.  Or more accurately, I do not see or allow their masculine brilliance to penetrate through my need to be in control.

I have compassion for my cautiousness. But what my cautiousness attracts is cautious men or men who try to force their way into my company, proving my need for boundaries.

In my own family, I have men who are unconsciously afraid of me, who hide their fear through resentment and judgment.  In my circles of friends, I have men who respect me, but keep their distance.  And of course I have my inner circle of brothers, who are my role models for my Divine Masculine, who neither shrink or try to overpower me when we go head to head, who know when to hold me and when to push back.

I’m in relationship right now with a very different kind of man for me. Unlike past lovers who busted down my door with their hard cocks, instead he knocked with his soft, open heart.

While most women will initially say “Awwwww” when they read this, my response to this man has been mixed.  While I love his beautiful heart and his need to care for and please me, I want to be with man who is confident enough in himself to take me or leave me.

It’s embarrassing to write this, because on one hand I’m requesting that this man and all men love me “through all my cycles, faces and seasons” as I demand in my “Love a Woman” poem.  But on the other hand, I’m telling them to stand in their masculine truth even if I get so angry I threaten to end the relationship.

My heart goes out to my poor sweet brothers in these razor edge moments of discernment.  But be not fooled.  There is a part of Woman that wants to destroy you.

She does this slowly by trying to control you.  The other half of Her of course doesn’t want this at all-wants you to be free-wants you to know your magnificence-so you will choose her from this place of majesty.  Bottom line, the Queen wants her King.

So to get personal,

my last relationship was with a man whose desire and love for women was very fluid.  He always wanted more freedom and I wanted more connection with him.  Not surprisingly, this time around I’ve attracted the opposite.  I want more freedom, my man wants more connection with me.

After my initial resistance to his possessiveness, I thought, “Do I want to keep swinging back and forth in regards to my relationship with men, or do I want to heal the split between us?”

I chose to heal.

While my work in this particular relationship has been around attuning to my man and making more of an effort to connect with him, his is around claiming his own sovereignty.

This week my man is out of town on business, practicing being in his own sexual masculine confidence.  We have an agreement to not consummate with other partners, but connecting and flirting is within bounds.

As you might guess, I find myself triggered by my man’s flirtatious engaging with other women.

I feel a mix of fear of abandonment, humiliation, hurt, righteous anger, pridefulness and possessiveness that I never expected to feel with this man (who is so about pleasing me).

I feel ashamed of my feelings and want to lash out and pass the shame onto him.  When I call to share what’s going on with me, I get exactly what I ask for.  Instead of reassuring me, my man is defensive and I am left to deal with all of my feelings myself.  I seethe and simmer in them, depleting my energy.  I don’t want to even self pleasure.  I feel tired and desireless.

Remembering my commitment, I lie naked on the floor, circling my breasts with my hands, opening my heart, challenging myself to imagine it is my man (even though I am still angry at him) who is touching me.

“No!” I cry out, jerking my hands away from my body, as my eyes fill with tears.

After taking a few deep breaths, calming myself, I move my hands to my lower belly. I make outward circles from my pubic bone across my pelvis, opening my sexual energy, again imagining it is my man’s hands touching me.  My hips start to undulate.

“No!” I stop all movement. “I don’t want to!” I yell at him, crossing my arms over my chest, protecting myself.

“You will open to me, whether you like it or not,” I imagine him telling me and pinning my arms out to my sides.

I feel a rush of heat that is both angry and turned on.  I am embarrassed by the juiciness between my legs.

Again I hear my man’s voice. “Yes, I have desire for other women and other women have desire for me. And I choose you.  So are you going to open to me or not?”

How dare he!  The intensity of my feelings causes my body to writhe on the floor. An old Sade song comes to mind, “Love is stronger than pride.”  I feel my man’s penetrative force filling the room, filling my whole body.  I have to breathe deeper to receive him.

My fingers are not enough.  I grab the cock shaped dildo inside my drawer and rub it with coconut oil.

“Say you are dependent on me,” I hear his voice again, as I thump the cock on my clit.

Though he would never say this, my choice of dirty talk is psychologically perfect for me.

I have judged my mother in the past for being dependent on my adulterous father and vowed never to let myself risk being in the same situation.  As a woman who has been an advocate of women’s freedom of expression, again I am embarrassed by this fantasy request.

An excerpt from another one of my poems comes to mind: “Sometimes I can’t stand it-how attached I am- how utterly absolutely dependent on Love I am.”

After much resistance, I say the words, “I am dependent on you.” I say them over and over, taking in my man’s cock, who is my inner masculine’s cock, who is God’s cock, receiving all His love, receiving all of my feelings of embarrassment and anger at not getting my way.

Deeper and deeper until nothing else matters but this holy moment of sexual healing.

Later, when my man and I talk on the phone, he apologizes for not being more sensitive to my feelings.  He tells me how crazy he is about me and how he’s never met another woman like me.  He reassures me where his heart and desire is and that he has no interest of being with anyone but me.

“Let me take care of you,” he says.

And for the first time, I say back, “Okay.”