In our latest blog, RTT practitioner Marcus Mathews explores ideas around masculinity.

Man up – “be brave or tough enough to deal with a difficult or unpleasant situation”.

Manning Up is vulnerability.

With that in mind and the tone set, I want to share my truth. I say my truth because for me male vulnerability is having the courage to claim your masculinity back. The ability to be the man you need to be not the man you are told you should be.

A good friend of mine told me of a conversation she had with her husband which I love. A phenomenally successful alpha female she wanted it all, the career, the perfect family, the money, the perfect husband. But life was not perfect, she was not happy. Her husband who was feeling pushed out, emasculated was vulnerable enough to utter this phrase “There is only one penis in this family”.

That very phrase rocked her world. She realised she had been playing a part, she realised she had lost her power as a woman. She was playing a part society was telling her to play, that she needed to compete as a man. She reclaimed her power back as a women and in doing so, her husband claimed his power back as a man.

She did not bend to her husband will, she recognised his need to be seen as a man. They created a partnership based on respect instead of competition.

She realised, was vulnerable enough to recognise, that she was trying to prove her self-worth by emasculating her husband. He was not the one making her unhappy, she was, because she wasn’t owning her own truth and he wasn’t owning his.

When I left my job in IT and joined the police, for many years my salary was less than my wife and after leaving the police to start up my therapy practice, I felt frustrated, not good enough, that I couldn’t provide for my family. My job is the provider, it is a deep subconscious feeling.

Coming from a loving place my wife said “I don’t know why you are worried, I earn more than you so can help out”.

She may well have taken my penis and cut it off.

The simple fact is thousands of years of evolution have made man the hunter, the provider, the problem solver.

It wasn’t about the money, it was that I felt I had no role, I felt disempowered. This of course was a story I was telling myself, not a truth but none the less, I was vulnerable enough to have that difficult conversation with my wife.

If a man wishes to be the alpha let him, it does not mean he has control over you. It allows him to feel he has purpose. It doesn’t mean he is a misogynist; you are more likely to create a society of misogynist by not recognising years of evolution can’t be changed in a few decades.

You don’t have to agree, but this is what I needed to feel I had purpose within our family unit.

I still struggle, dislikes, despise, women who feel they need to lift themselves up by putting men down. In fact, many of those same women are as opinionated against other women. Normally because they have not had the vulnerability to go inside and truly reclaim themselves.

Be it men or women, society is confused because we are waiting for others to tell us who we should be rather than claiming back who we need to be for ourselves.

You see it is not actually about men and women. Who is in charge or better than the other. When we strip back the labels, what you see are souls struggling to really identify with who they are.

When we strip back the physical and we define who we need to be, we find we are both masculine and feminine. The Divine Masculine includes logic, reason, action, firmness, survival, loyalty, adventurousness, strength, and rationality, whilst the Divine Feminine encompasses intuition, nurturing, healing, gentleness, expression, wisdom, patience, emotions, and flexibility.

Are these not strengths we look for in everyone?

So to all the men out there, vulnerability is not weakness, vulnerability is the ability to be who you truly are. There is no courage without vulnerability.

To all the women out there, men are not the enemy, your strength is to have the vulnerability to understand your own power and be courageous enough to stand up for what you genuinely need in life.

There is no competition other than the competition within the stories you tell yourself and the feelings they create.

 

"We can measure how brave you are by how vulnerable you're willing to be”. – Brene Brown

You are not your gender, you are not a label and as soon as you realise that you can be vulnerable enough, courageous enough, man enough to say the three most important words every human on this planet needs to say right now and that is I Am Enough.

Be vulnerable enough to be the person who makes you happy.


If you would like to discuss this more with Marcus, you can contact him through his profile https://centreforintegralhealth.com/about-us/our-practitioners/marcus-matthews/