Mother’s Day is this weekend. And my friend Tara Mohr has instigated the very inspiring Grandmother Power blog campaign. I write today to create my own little intersection between these:

I write a love note to myself as a mother (I celebrated my 5th anniversary as a mother on April 25 with Cooper’s 5th birthday).

I write a thank you (again) to my mother, the generous and playful grandmother of my children.

And this is a celebration of that depth grandmothers have to offer.

Finally, it’s also an invitation for all of us – especially those in the mothering (not grand mothering) chapter of our lives – to draw inspiration and guidance from that grandmotherly depth.

As a mother, you are constantly putting out, giving, providing. From the time you conceive a child, your body gives its best to that zygote, leaving you with what’s left over. Adoptive parents give just as fully once a child is born: we all give up sleep, give up amusements, eat hurriedly, hold our pee… To meet the needs of these insatiable tinies.

I’m breastfeeding Mira, and I feel both the nourishment and the depletion I reap from that ongoing act of providing for my girl. Rudolph Steiner said that children live from their mothers’ chakra system – literally drawing juice from her electrical power plant – until they’re seven. So I’ve got two people siphoning my vital essence right now. Not that I’d have it any other way, but let’s not deny how much outpouring there is, in motherhood.

As a grandmother, however, it’s a different level of the story: grandchildren – and other facets of the world that need our care – are not our direct charges. They’re not ours to take responsibility for. They’re ours to enrich, to nurture, to give to from our abundance.

A grandmother is someone who has experience and who, not by parenthood or other direct responsibility but by choice, elects to tend to someone or something. Grandmothers are bestowers of blessings. In fairy tales, the Fairy Godmother is the classic grandmother archetype. She makes things better, as if by magic.

Grandmothers have passed through the stage of having children dependent upon them for their primary care (but God bless the many grandmothers who do take on the job of parenting their grandchildren). They are often retired from full-time careers. They may have accomplished much and moved quickly in their lives, but in the grandmother chapter, they have fuller tanks and more patient laps than many mothers do. As such, they give deeply. Their attention is soft and wide. Their love has room for flaws. Their care is persistent enough to engage with sticky situations.

It’s true that my mother, in her chapter of life, has more reserves than I have: she gets uninterrupted sleep. She works three days a week at a job she loves and for which she is well rewarded. She has financial resources, emotional resilience, and the wisdom of years of experience. She has a seasoned marriage that keeps her cup running over (and to hear her tell it, her pulse racing, even after all these years!).

I am so grateful that my mama is still so young – she’ll turn 60 this year – and so available to my children. They both adore her. She plays hide and seek tirelessly. Knows all the tickle spots. Pops even Cooper up on her shoulders. Always brings a surprise she picked up somewhere on her travels. And she makes the most outrageous birthday cakes. Cooper’s Pirate volcano pirate island cake not only had 15 different species of sea creatures, a treasure chest, a sandy beach, and a boat with Captain Hook, it literally erupted, thanks to jello and dry ice!

I’m learning from my mom to be a mother more like she is as a grandmother. Here are some of my notes to myself:

- Rather than thinking of yourself as a giver, think of yourself as a reservoir. Keep your tank full so the little annoyances don’t throw you off.
- Have plenty of time to yourself so that you cherish your time with children, with clients, with your partner or friends.
- Figure out what’s a big deal and focus on that. Let the rest slide. SERIOUSLY pick your battles.
- Lean into your marriage as a source of nourishment for you that thereby nourishes everyone and everything you touch.
- Take care of your body and mind so they last a good long time, so you can keep actively loving all that you love.
- The most satisfying projects and relationships we nurture take years and years and years. Start now and do a little each day.
- Most of the things worth doing are worth NOT seeing the completion of. We can contribute meaningfully and leave the rest to the next generation.

What have you learned from your grandmother or from your kids’ grandmother? What do you want to be as a grandmother (regardless of your parenting status or your gender!)? What will fuel your activism and generosity?

Please click the icon above to go read the other Grandmother Effect posts, and even to write your own. I can’t wait to read it.

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Happy Mother’s Day everyone!

And I mean everyone: You either are a mother, or you had one at one point.

And every time we celebrate mothers, we expand the grounded, sustainable power in the world.

During a week rife with mother’s day messages, I’m not interested in rehashing the tried and true bits of wisdom and sentiment. I want to say something I’m not hearing much.

Passionate, sensation-filled, turned-on mothers are the best mothers.

Every mother deserves to spill over with pleasure.

Turning toward desire, sensation, and joy makes anyone a better mother.

And while we’re at it, especially in honor of my friend Tara Mohr’s Grandmother Power blogging campaign this week, let’s include grandmothers.

Let’s let go of our tired old vision of mothers and grandmothers as colorless dispensers of care and kindness and re-view the world’s greatest nurturers as women with their vital organs – and vital essence – intact.

Let’s put the O back in mOther and in grandmOther. Let’s let sweet nurturing and sizzling ecstasy coexist in the same woman. In fact, let’s insist that they do!

Here’s my rallying cry for this Mother’s Day and for always:

Let us create a world that views mothers as sensual, pleasure-soaked creatures, and grandmothers as the same, only with more luscious experience under their belts.

Let us hold a vision for ourselves as nurturers, healers, faithful tenders-of-tradition, kind givers-of-hugs and expressive tellers-of-stories…

Let us know ourselves as tender enough to feel the world’s pain deeply and tough enough to do what it takes to repair the broken bits.

And let us include in that vision the awareness that nobody can be all those things without containing inside a pretty deep well… and without allowing that well to fill and refill and fill some more and finally to overflow onto everything she loves.

Let us know the truth – and stretch our arms until we can wrap them around this:

the kindest granny is the one who’s got a spark in her eye.

The most patient listener is the one whose own body’s voice has been heard and sung with.

The mother every child deserves is a well-f*@#ed mother.

Whose fingers know play-do but also know caresses. Whose neck can provide sanctuary for a child or scintillation for a lover. Who savors the smell of a tiny head, fresh from the outdoors, but whose pleasure trove is full of more secret treasures than that.

And let us sustain our sensual selves throughout our lives, renewing the passion with our partners and with ourselves, even as we’re busy loving growing people and even as our bodies and hormones change. Let us ripen into even sweeter, more intoxicating fruit as we enter our later decades.

Grandmotherly relationships are entirely g-rated, but let us each imagine ourselves as a grandmother, and imagine the entire grandmother archetype as a sensual being, full of pleasure, fully in touch with her own eroticism, and devoted to a lifelong relationship with her sweet-hot core.

Let us know what our bodies have never forgotten: the hottest love for the world and all its little ones is forged in the fire of our own hottest relationship with ourselves: our bodies, our divinity, our sensuality, and our bliss.

I wish you a juicy juicy mother’s day, darling.

I promise you I’ll seek one myself.

Please click the icon above to go read the other Grandmother Effect posts, and even to write your own.  I can’t wait to read it.

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Tamarisk Saunders-Davies and Mara Glatzel – two women I adore individually – teamed up to do a February Self-Care Blog Hop.  And how tickled am I?  They invited me to contribute my messy, mega-human take on self-care to the storyline.  Click the badge over there to read the other posts in the series.

Ahem.  Here is what I, being possessed of breastfeeding body and sleep-deprived mind, a coach of 15 years and meditator for 26, should-know-better-by-now, my-best-my-friends-are-experts-in-this-shit, am still wrestling with regarding self-care.

I group these understandings – and misunderstandings – into a small series of distinctions.

Earning Merit vs. Cultivating Self-intimacy

We’re both blessed and cursed to live in a time when yoga is a household word and the notion of taking time to ground and center yourself is not only accepted but encouraged.  Cursed, because the ego will use ANYTHING to its own wily devices.  So my relationship to self-care includes an ice-cream-bowl-sized helping of “should.”  Every instinct I have to take good care of myself, to return to center, to exercise and eat well and floss and meditate and clear off my disaster of a desk?  Morty (that’s what I call my inner critic) co-opts those instincts. He turns ‘em into instruments of torture.  I’m shit for not having done them yet, and doing those things now will not redeem me.

All of which is a distraction, Morty.  A diversion from the real point of self-care. It’s not to make my ass smaller or my teeth whiter.  None of that matters, in truth.  Not even whether I meditated.  There is no scoreboard on which I earn points for practicing yoga or lighting a candle or taking a bath.  Those do not enlighten me and they do not make me better.  Even when I believe they do.  They don’t really matter.

What matters is whether we’re meeting ourselves.  Whether, when we suit up and work out or sit down and bliss out, we are getting closer to or further from the self we are in the moment.  Warts and all, are we coming home?  My husband Kurt says, “You are the final product.”  And he doesn’t mean whether my toenails are painted or my bikini line is tidy.

Which brings me to another area of confusion I have, along with many women, suffered…

Grooming vs. Heart-Tending

My darling friend Dara once wrote this beautiful post: Self-love is not a pedi. 

It’s awesome to take care of your body and your environment. Feels good.  And when we feel better we do better.  That’s why every month includes a pedi.  And some love on my brows and lashes from the incomparable Liberte.  And yeah, she tidies up that wilderness downtown, too.  But that’s all tending to my body.  Tending to my heart is much more difficult, and the part I tend to skip.

Even massage, which profoundly invites us to come into our bodies, to be with their sensations, can be another box we check.  How many hours have I whiled away on the massage table, making to-do lists in my head or rehearsing future conversations or rehashing old ones?  My favorite pedicure is from Jimmy, the mailman who opened Lavish Nails with his partner Amy to build their future after immigrating from Viet Nam.  Jimmy just ABUSES my calves with his massage!  But that’s only half the equation.  The other half is my receiving.

In my Elements of Feminine Power retreats, I include a massage, and very precise instruction to help each woman turn that massage into a lesson in not just pampering but truly receiving.  It’s vulnerable to really feel the intimacy of being touched with such devoted service.  It’s intense to be present to your own body and the sensations of both physical and emotional release that come with a skilled massage.  It’s a discipline and an invitation.  And a challenge to do consistently.

That brings me to the next distinction:

Doing self-care vs. Receiving self-care

The doing is the vehicle.  The receiving is the journey.  You show up for your bath or your yoga class or your massage or your run and that’s the place you have a new chance to be present to yourself.  Or not.  But — no matter what Morty says — there’s no verdict on your worth if you don’t really receive.  You can just try again.

I used to hate myself for spending so much time and money and energy doing things that were supposedly self-caring, while I continued to be mean to myself and not really receive them.  That’s how Morty rolls.  He has me hate on me for hatin’ on me.  Great gig, right?

But the other piece that’s really helped break this open is recognizing that the SELF part of self-care can reinforce the abuse.  I’ve learned to just receive CARE and not think I have to “get it” or provide it or make it happen for myself.  Kurt has shown me so much about how my tanks are refilled by him.  How receiving what he has to offer me – love, tending-to, pleasure, pragmatic support – is my greatest learning edge.  I need not seek new opportunities to tend to myself.  All there is to learn about receiving and heart-tending and self-intimacy is right here for the learning, just between him and me.

Indulging vs. Luxuriating

For the final distinction, I don’t have a tidy segue.  It’s really about what happens when my needs for self-regulation overwhelm my capacities and skills in the moment.  Tamarisk wrote beautifully about how a break-up initially swamped her in this way.  For me, the flood happens in smaller but more frequent ways, amid the challenges of self-employment, giving mountains of intimacy, care and presence to my clients, and giving seemingly endless nurturing – emotionally and practically – to my two small children.

When it’s 9pm and I’ve worked for an hour to get both kids to sleep, but the baby keeps waking and wailing and my last nerve is shredded…

When my son refuses to get dressed and I help him do it, and then he takes his clothes off all over again in defiance and we’re late for school, which is going to make me late for a meeting…

When I realize I haven’t replied to a message that really mattered to me, and Morty’s mean voice pipes in and tells me this is the last piece of evidence:  I really do, completely, suck…

At those times, my instincts can trump my wisdom. My self-love falls to its knees, struggling under the burden of physical weariness, emotional fatigue, and the drone of Morty’s insults and threats.  If you’ve been in this place, you’ll remember it well because at these times, we don’t even know what would help.  We can imagine neither feeling better nor what would help us get there.  And at those times, the best self-care I can give is some form of escape:

A cookie or six.  I don’t know whether I’m hungry or not.

20 minutes with a gossipy tabloid.  I’m sure I’ve got friends I could call, but I can’t think who… or what I’d say.

Reading or cooking or shopping, mindlessly, hungrily.  These same things might smooth my feathers at other times, but that requires more self-connection than I have in the darkest moments.

Self-care is self-care when we’re building intimacy with ourselves, when we’re meeting ourselves where we are, and when we’re deepening our receiving.  When we’re in that spirit, the same trashy magazine or cookie might be a way of communing with our hearts.  But when we reach fumblingly for ourselves and simply can’t connect?  We wind up indulging… Wallowing in so-called pleasures for the escape of it, not really feeling their sensations.

And I want to end by saying that’s okay too.  The worst thing we can do when we’re struggling so much that self-care is out of our reach is to beat ourselves up even more for indulging, for numbing, for soothing in the clumsiest of ways.  So when indulgence, numbness, and distraction are the best I can do, I use them and pray that they’re like an incoming tide that will soon wash me back onto the shore where I can find my feet and (soon, soon, I hope!) step forward in ways that are actually nourishing.

Don’t forget to hit the other spots on the blog hop… click here to read more.

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This is the ninth and final in a series of love notes I’ve written to men. Countless times, women have asked if I could help their husbands understand a few sticky truths about women, men, and love. In the intimacy and safety of a coaching relationship, I do exactly that. Now, for the first time, I’m sharing the message with you here.

If you missed the other posts in this series, best to start at the beginning. There’s a link at the end of the first post that’ll take you to the second, which will take you to the third, and so on.  Already read the first, second, third, fourth,  fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth posts? 

That’s pretty much it, darling:

From Note 1:  You’re a good man.  She’s a strong (and yes, good) woman.  That can all get confusing.

From Note 2: You want to know what you can do to make her happier.

From Note 3: She needs to be penetrated.  Handled.  Held steady.

From Note 4:   When she doesn’t feel held, she doesn’t feel centered.  When she’s not centered, your home has no center.

From  Note 5:  She needs you to demonstrate that you can handle her.

From Note 6:  Do not let this process emasculate you.  Relish the learning curve.

From Note 7:  It’s so beautiful: When she sees how deeply you can hold her, she will let go to exactly that extent.

From Note 8: By demonstrating to her you’re strong enough for her to trust, you’ll demonstrate to yourself that you’ve become the man you long to be.

The process of penetrating your woman will evolve you as a man and give you access to evolving your woman deeper into her softest, most divinely feminine self. 

If after this conversation, you want more specific guidance on how you can apply this idea in the day-to-day situations in your relationship, I’d recommend my book Taming the Tigress: The Good Guy’s Guide to Handling his Strong Woman and I would relish the opportunity to coach you or both you and your partner.

Here’s the table of contents of Taming the Tigress:

1.  Take her in hand.
2.  Aim to meet her, not to please her.
3.  Don’t withdraw – set a limit.
4.  The more she seems like a man herself, the more she’s begging you to be one.
5.  When she talks to you, nurture, don’t provide:  Listen.  You don’t have to solve it.  Ask: “What would help?”
6.  Quit taking responsibility for everything, so you’ve got more bandwidth left to improve the things that actually need it.
7.  Get yourself buffer time.
8.  Really get AWAY so you can really be there.
9.  Shut her up… with pampering.
10.  Learn Orgasmic Meditation as a practice to train both of you in all the rest of the skills you need to thrive together.
11.  Give her handling hours.
12.  Unlock her real desires.
13.  Insist that she make requests vs. complaints.
14.  Make offers to her.
15.  Pay attention.
16.  Her pussy is the hearth.  Happy pussy, happy home.
17.  When she’s anxious, see that and hold her so she can surrender, rather than flailing at you.
18.  Feel your cock.  Find your desire.  Push your sex out in everything you do, from changing diapers to leading meetings to resolving disputes.

I can’t wait to share the book with you.  To be notified when it’s released (and get my other relationship insights weekly) join my Hot List right here:

Until then, bless you for your love, your courage, and your pioneering the new frontier of 21st century relating.  You are truly extraordinary.

I adore you.  Now go penetrate her.

The post What women wish men knew, part 9 of 9: Taming the Tigress. appeared first on The Hot Love Revolution: Monogamy is the hottest place on earth..

This is the eight in a series of love notes I’ve written to men. Countless times, women have asked if I could help their husbands understand a few sticky truths about women, men, and love. In the intimacy and safety of a coaching relationship, I do exactly that. Now, for the first time, I’m sharing the message with you here.

If you missed the first post in this series, best to start there. There’s a link at the end of it that’ll take you to the second post, which will take you to the third, and so on.  Already read the first, second, third, fourth,  fifth, sixth and seventh posts?  Oh, I love that you’ve made it so far on this journey.  Here’s one of the coolest parts:

Your worst pain or your best self?

Until you see through the drama between the two of you and understand the deep yearning for safety and surrender that animates all her extravagant machinations, the two of you will go through unnecessary conflict and truly regrettable pain.

It’s unnecessary and regrettable, because you know and I know that what she really wants and needs is your very best self. Your masculinity. Your power. Your strength, mastery, control, penetration.

And what would you rather give her than your best?  What would you rather your relationship called forth in you?

It’s elegantly simple, really:  what your woman most needs from you is what you most need to give.  

Your strongest, most upright, most penetrating self is in high demand.

And if you don’t call up the part of you that can absolutely handle her, you’ll always be afraid. You’ll always feel like the wimp (or insert your word of choice here) you’re afraid she’s calling you.

You’ll always worry she’s looking down on you.  You’ll always resent her for being more man than you are.

It’ll be a cryin’ shame.

So go ahead.  Man up.  Handle her ass.  She needs it.  She wants it.  She will love it.

Immediately?  Maybe not.  All the more opportunity for you, right?

KEEP handling her.  It’s a test:  she needs to know you mean it.

“But isn’t a test a mind-fuck?  Why would she do that?  Why should I put up with it?”  

It’s not a psychological game that she’s playing to toy with you.  It’s more like NASA seeing if you can handle Gs before they send you into space, or the CIA testing you to make sure you won’t sing state secrets at the drop of a hat.  She might not even know she’s testing you.

But it’s a reasonable test to give, given all that’s at stake.  Plus, remember: you’re going to pass it with flying colors, now that you know you’re taking it.

She needs to know you’re really strong enough to be trusted.

Strong enough to keep her safe.  So stay the course.

Hold firm till you feel her go soft.  

Then you’ll know you’ve finally got your woman…  And she’s finally got her man.

To read the final installment in this series, click here.

The post What women wish men knew, part 8 of 9: What does she need most? appeared first on The Hot Love Revolution: Monogamy is the hottest place on earth..

This is the seventh in a series of love notes I’ve written to men. Countless times, women have asked if I could help their husbands understand a few sticky truths about women, men, and love. In the intimacy and safety of a coaching relationship, I do exactly that. Now, for the first time, I’m sharing the message with you here.

If you missed the first post in this series, best to start there. There’s a link at the end of it that’ll take you to the second post, which will take you to the third, and so on.  Already read the first post, the second, the third? And the fourth and  fifth and sixth?  Damn, man.  You’re on your way to paradise.  Check it ‘n see!:

Things are about to get really, really good.

When you start getting it more and more spot-on, meeting what she’d like with more precision, anticipating her needs and doing things for her better than she could’ve “managed” on her own, she will start to let down, let go, soften, open.

She’ll open up like a flower.  

She holds people, projects, spaces, ideas, and even the world’s problems all day every day.  She is concerned with so many things, thinks about so many things, holds so many details, makes space for so many people…

She needs you to be the one – the only one –   who does for her what she does for so many others.

Can you see what a beautiful gift it is for her when you completely hold her?  

The holder becomes the held.  The thoughtful one is thought of.  The ever-vigilant can pause her anxious vigil.

She melts like butter into your skillful embrace.

When she sees how deeply you can hold her, she will let go to exactly that extent.

Next I want to teach you how to really get her.  Read on.

The post What women wish men knew, part 7 of 9: You’re the only one who can open her. appeared first on The Hot Love Revolution: Monogamy is the hottest place on earth..

This is the sixth in a series of love notes I’ve written to men. Countless times, women have asked if I could help their husbands understand a few sticky truths about women, men, and love. In the intimacy and safety of a coaching relationship, I do exactly that. Now, for the first time, I’m sharing the message with you here.

If you missed the first post in this series, best to start there. There’s a link at the end of it that’ll take you to the second post, which will take you to the third, and so on.  Already read the first post, the second, the third? And the fourth and  fifth?  Grr.  Love your stamina.  Here’s the sixth:

Do not let this process emasculate you.  

She’s not criticizing; she’s – admittedly, clumsily! – asking you to hold her more tightly, to learn with more precision exactly how to meet her, hold her, and handle her.

She didn’t like the carnations?  Find the calla lilies next time.  Don’t take her disappointment or her bossiness about it personally.

Just take pride in your growing mastery at taking care of her.

And do not ever think you should have known this already.

As I’ve said, she may not yet know she needs this.

This need – and our collective lack of awareness and skill around it – is the product of very recent changes in our lives and we’re still trying to catch up.

So please know, it’s not your fault that you haven’t known she needed to be penetrated, haven’t known how to do it, and have perhaps taken offense when she (likely clumsily) asked for it.

It’s not your fault and it’s not hers.

It’s just the learning curve we’re all on.

And your willingness to invest in this learning is about to pay off.  Read more to learn what I mean.  Mmm, mmm, mmm!

The post What women wish men knew, part 6 of 9: Relish the learning curve. appeared first on The Hot Love Revolution: Monogamy is the hottest place on earth..

This is the fifth in a series of love notes I’ve written to men. Countless times, women have asked if I could help their husbands understand a few sticky truths about women, men, and love. In the intimacy and safety of a coaching relationship, I do exactly that. Now, for the first time, I’m sharing the message with you here.

If you missed the first post in this series, best to start there. There’s a link at the end of it that’ll take you to the second post, which will take you to the third, and so on.  Already read the first post, the second, the third and the fourth? Here’s the fifth note:

She needs you to show her you can handle her.

She needs to be able to push and rage and unleash and you must be solid, unmovable, in the midst of her maelstrom.

She wants you to draw her out, call her forward.  

When she retreats or goes away or withdraws, it’s her way of begging you to be stronger.  More solid.  More assertive.  She’s pleading with you – albeit silently – to come inside and find her and pull her out.  She wants to know – from experience – that she can trust you to step forward.

She needs to have  no doubt that you can handle the full range of her emotion and her power.

If she doubts your solidity, your unshakability, she won’t be able to let her guard down.  She needs to FEEL that solidity in your actions, your words, your body.

She won’t open up if she isn’t sure you can hold her.

She’s tired of hearing “you’re such a force” and “you’re so powerful” about herself.  She doesn’t want to have to hold back her ferocity to accommodate of you.  She doesn’t want to wonder whether you’re threatened or freaked out by her intensity.

She needs to get from you the clear message, “You?  No big deal.  I can handle you, EASILY.”  

She needs you to look underneath her sturm und drang and see the soft tender girl beneath all that, without her having to govern herself in order for you to get it or convince you of her fragility, her softness.

For all her independence, she needs to be taken care of.  

She needs you to provide for her.  She needs you to be strong, decisive, in charge, thoughtful, generous, and insightful.  She needs you to do things she hasn’t asked you to do.  She needs you to think of what she would like or what she needs or what would make her life easier or better.

I know, I know: when you do things for her, she criticizes them or tells you that you should’ve done it differently or better and you wind up feeling like you can’t win.

She treats you that way because she doesn’t feel safe.

Her lack of safety shows up in all sorts of ways.  It probably, from your side, feels like micromanagement, criticism, and condescension.

She over-thinks every road trip, vacation, or dinner party.  She tries to tell you which lane to drive in.  She specifies exactly how to take her to dinner, bring her flowers, or write her a text message.

And ALL  of that is because she’s starving to be held, and because she knows (as well as you do) that you’re not very experienced at it.  She’s afraid if she doesn’t do all this herself, it won’t get done at all.

She’s afraid she’ll just be in free-fall.

Will holding her till she chills (the fuck) out be easy?  Or quick?  No.  But read my sixth love note to you to bolster your stamina.  Your prodigious efforts shall be richly rewarded.  Promise.

C’mon.

The post What women wish men knew, part 5 of 9: She treats you that way because she doesn’t feel safe. appeared first on The Hot Love Revolution: Monogamy is the hottest place on earth..

This is the fourth in a series of love notes I’ve written to men. Countless times, women have asked if I could help their husbands understand a few sticky truths about women, men, and love. In the intimacy and safety of a coaching relationship, I do exactly that. Now, for the first time, I’m sharing the message with you here.

If you missed the first post in this series, best to start there. There’s a link at the end of it that’ll take you to the second post, which will take you to the third, and so on.  Already read the first post, the second, and the third? Here’s the fourth part:

She needs you to handle her.  To penetrate her.

Some women know they need this.

This kind of woman tells me:  ”Please explain it to him?  I’ve tried.  He can’t hear it from me.  It just sounds like haranguing.  Demanding.  Insults. Nagging.  He feels criticized and judged.  I don’t mean it that way, but I need him to understand.  Our happiness together depends on it.  Maybe he’ll see it, Michele, if you tell him.”

Some women try very hard not to need this.

“He’s great.  Really.  I’m not complaining,” this woman tells me.  ”I’m trying to be softer.  I try to not micromanage him.  To not criticize him.  To let down. But it’s haaaaard.  It goes against my nature.”

It goes against nature, period.  Animals don’t rest unless they’re safe.  And neither do women.  

“But she IS safe with me!” you protest.

I know that.  You know that.  But until she feels utterly handled by you, she won’t feel safe.

She might not be able to articulate it that way, but it’s the truth.
She needs you to see beyond her latest antics and, with great lightness and approval of how she is, to handle her and the situation.

Some women have no idea they need this and would hate me for writing it if they read it.

“This is just plain insulting!” these women complain.  ”I don’t need to be handled!   I need to be respected.  Partnered with.  Understood.  But not penetrated.  What am I, some damsel in distress or femme fatale from a bygone era?  Waiting for my white night to swoop in and kiss me back to life?”

Well, yes…sort of.

We’ve lost our way, of late.  It is NOT that changes in women’s opportunities and choices in the world are regrettable, off-base or mistaken.  Definitely NOT.

It’s just that the fallout at home has been distressing.
Women – our bodies, our hearts, and these detail-rich minds of ours – are the heart of our homes.  But when we don’t feel held, our homes don’t have the center they need.

And then you, the men, don’t have the grounding that a happy woman would provide you.

Read my fifth love note to you to learn why she acts the way she does.

The post What women wish men knew, part 4 of 9: She won’t feel safe until you handle her. appeared first on The Hot Love Revolution: Monogamy is the hottest place on earth..

This is the third in a series of love notes I’ve written to men. Countless times, women have asked if I could help their husbands understand a few sticky truths about women, men, and love. In the intimacy and safety of a coaching relationship, I do exactly that. Now, for the first time, I’m sharing the message with you here.

If you missed the first post in this series, best to start there. There’s a link at the end of it that’ll take you to the second post, which has a link back here.  Already read the first post and the second post? Here’s the third part:

She wants to be penetrated.  

She NEEDS to be penetrated.

She wants you to take your energy and assert it into her space.  She wants you to use your will and your potency to contain, direct, hold, secure, and handle her.

She wants to be handled.  
To know that you can handle her.  To know that, for all her power and all her chaos, you are a stillpoint that cannot be disturbed.  Your woman longs to trust that she is safe because you cannot be blown over.  She yearns to experience not prevailing.  Not being the most potent force in the room.

She so often is.

She’s smart.  She’s fast.  She’s verbal, articulate, and often sharp-tongued.  

She moves quickly, does a lot, thinks ten thousand details through at once.  She cares (so deeply) about so many things, in fine detail.  So very much matters to her.

It’s a lot of work.  So she’d like to let go sometimes…to be taken care of.

For some women – your woman – that’s hard to say, because in her head, in her mouth, in her ears, the desire to be taken care of sounds a lot like inadequacy.

But she’d love, at times, to be held. Pampered.  Ushered.  Managed.  Handled.

And in the realm of the capable, competent, confident woman, that rarely happens.

But there’s hope!

If she could find someone even stronger than her,  someone who could hold her, she could let go.  She could relax. She could be replenished.

And then she could keep going.  She could be happy.  She might even quiet down a bit, soften a bit, exhale a bit.  She could find ease.

And the look in her eyes… You know her eyes?  Those eyes that tell you in an instant what’s really going on, whether her words match them or not?

They wince when she’s disappointed even if she says, “It’s lovely.”

They narrow when she’s angry, even if she says, “That’ll be fine.”

And when she’s directly drawing a line, her unforgiving, dehydrating gaze withers anything in sight.

But the look she’ll have when she feels really penetrated?  Really held?

You may not have seen it before…or perhaps you have.   It’s the one that tells you unmistakably that you’ve hit the spot.

There’ll be a long blink.  Softness.  Warmth.  Maybe her eyes will get a little misty.  Her breath will get softer.  Her shoulders will relax.  You’ll know you’ve done it.

You’ve penetrated her in a way nothing else could.

Read on to learn what the big idea is in Part Four.

The post What women wish men knew, part 3 of 9: She wants to be penetrated. appeared first on The Hot Love Revolution: Monogamy is the hottest place on earth..