As a bloke I’ve been running on automatic, and an egocentric idiot, in my past, and less so now but still in the present day. These days I am at least more self aware, and able to rectify myself when i feel it’s necessary. At the start of this healing journey I had no clue was toxic – I was a nice guy – overly empathic and giving, attracting narcissistic relationships. Ugh, how much I’ve learnt since then. I’m going to capture my thoughts on the undoing of my own toxicity; masculine and feminine, as I identify it within myself. It’s an ongoing mission…

Previously, I’ve focused on my needs and thought relationships were about finding the right person to fit into the tick box list of acceptable criteria I approved of. People who would fit around my issues and weirdness. If they didn’t, they had an issue and I would point it out.

I’ve been defensive and told intuitive people they were wrong, out of defence and shame for my own actions when pointed out. Defensiveness leads to gaslighting, sadly. Most of us don’t realise we’re even doing it, we just project that shame into anger and push it back. It feels justified at the time, few people are actual narcissists – we all have narcissistic tendencies however, especially if we are acting from shadow impulses, unaware of why we are acting forcefully or defensively.

I grew up in a wounded society, living under the rules of the Church, the entitled and privileged ego of the British Empire, patriarchy and capitalism. This is what I perceive as my toxicity to remove, one bit at a time. To undo the programming put into me, by finding myself through spirit and undoing the behaviours I’ve been taught were ‘right’, which my soul feels are ‘wrong’.

Towards the end of my thirties, my soul felt like it was screaming that everything felt wrong. The idea of releasing and transmuting my negative emotions was completely alien to me. I would have laughed it off and played a competitive video game instead, to take my mind off of the increasing tension and pain in my body and life. Had I not addressed this, I can totally appreciate how I would have ended up a typically shut down, suicidal mid fourties male, unable to comprehend or deal with all of the emotions that I had bottled up for decades. Most men simply don’t understand this until it reaches crisis point, which is why I write articles like this.

We have all kinds of wounds from a society that doesn’t promote individual health as paramount – war wounds, ancestral and past life karma, father wounds, mother wounds, inner child wounds, relationship wounds, etc etc. Men are assigned a role from birth as the provider, the defender, the reliable, strong one. While we progress through life without realising or addressing how these wounds and programming affect us, they show up subconsciously in our own behaviour, to make our, and other people’s lives difficult. Emotions don’t get dealt with, instead they turn into resentful behaviour patterns, mental and physical illnesses. We hurt the ones we love, unless we address our inner hurt.

From where i’m sat, we live in a society where the women, in relationships, rule the roost usually. They are more likely to express and deal with their emotions. They know things. They feel things. If we screw up, they’re onto it. They often know best, emotionally, while men stereotypically focus on practical, logical matters. Men counteract emotional intelligence with domination energy in some form, pushing back to shut down the perceived threat.

We need to balance ourselves, start listening, stop pushing, stop denying we’re less than perfect and realise it’s OK to screw up, what’s not OK is to focus on the other person’s perceived screw ups and tell them they need to change. Like attracts like. We are all damaged, both genders, living in a world of duality where men and women see each other as the problem. We all need to back off and give each other a break, because we are all the potential problem for someone else.

When the masculine stop energetically attacking, either aggressively or defensively, then the feminine can begin to heal… They can slowly realise the previous threats they’ve encountered from other men won’t happen here, and can begin to relax and lower their defences. We can begin to balance out, level off, and meet in the middle. At this point the feminine are often confronted with their own toxicity – no longer needing to employ tactics to work around the masculine’s aggressiveness, their own issues suddenly become apparent, as we have all attempted to control each other in the past, one way or another. Feminine tactics usually use more subtle forms of control – guilt, silence, social triangulation, or emotional manipulation is very effective at counteracting any masculine dominant energy. We all balance each other out one way or another! It takes time and understanding to work through this, usually through relationships where good communication, mutual respect and understanding, setting healthy boundaries and holding space for each other can take place to encourage mutual healing.

Apart from attracting healthier future relationships and healing ourselves, there’s a carrot on a stick for fellas by embracing their own inner feminine energy. By learning to breathe properly, slowing down, stop pretending everything’s fine, accepting help and opening our hearts, something happens. Our defences lessen and we become more reasonable. We learn about ourselves. People are nicer to us. Our intuition switches on. Our psychic abilities develop. Suddenly we know what’s going on like our partners always have done, and can’t be fooled like before. We know when others are projecting their toxicity onto us. Then we have that same power we’ve been trying to shut down in our partners before, and we can relax and begin to heal as well. We no longer need to be aggressive or forceful, and stop. Defenses can be lowered, all round. When both parties in a relationship have great intuition, there’s no room for games – it promotes an honest, trusting, mutually beneficial, supportive relationship dynamic.

That’s my goal and reason for doing this inner work. Is that self serving and narcissistic? Should I be focusing on myself only? Probably, but also I am human, and I know what I want in life in order to be as happy as I can be. I’ve spent most of my awakening journey in isolation, and while I am really comfortable with that and pretty happy overall, it’s not what I want forever. I believe we find our healthy relationships by doing the inner work first. Find balance within ourselves, to end up not needing a relationship – that’s when we are in the best place to have a healthy one. I’d rather not be doing inner work forever, at some point I hope to run out of issues to correct within myself, truly love myself with an overflowing cup, and be ready for the kind of life and partnership I dream of, but I know it comes first by continually accepting and finding balance within myself first.

So men; if you want to feel genuinely strong, allow yourself to feel gentle first. Embrace your inner femininity without fear – it will make you ultimately far more powerful as a person than focusing on traditional masculine pursuits such as being physically and financially powerful. Power comes with responsibility, and currently there are too many powerful men in this world showing they don’t know how to handle that quite yet, including myself. It’s not a quick fix and it takes time – but it’s definitely worth it. Just gently keep plugging away at the honest work ☯️

Note: we all have a mix of masculine and feminine energy. Many men are mostly feminine and many women are mostly masculine. Culture is changing big time, and in the future we’re likely to become a pretty androgynous species. We have a 50/50 energy spilt available to us to tap into, so this is at least partially relevant for whichever gender – or absence of – that you personally identify with.