“I love
you.” (Nope)
“You look beautiful.” (Nope)
“Let’s go shopping!” (Depends how you say it, but still, no)
“How’s your mother?” (No, this will just make her suspicious of you)
Those are all nice to say, and many women want to hear them from
their partner; they like to feel cherished. But none of those by themselves
will necessarily have her soften all warm-putty-like into your hairy masculine
arms.
The three sexiest words I’m referring to speak to primal forces
within both men and women. An archetypal trip wire, these eight letters strung
together can trigger a man’s spine to straighten and make a woman swoon.
I wish I could say I figured this one out by myself, but a lady
friend had to point this out. Once she did, I looked back to my own intimate
relationships and saw overwhelming evidence for her case everywhere.
We were having coffee when she started telling me about her new
boyfriend. He was refined and kind, loving and intelligent. He was a creative
artist, and an accomplished one at that. She felt him a good man and she was
happy. Then she told me about the first morning they woke up together, and
that’s when she really lit up during our conversation.
She has a dog. Normally the dog gets her up early to go pee
outside when she’s still in comatose denial of an outside world. On this
particular morning, when the dog woke her up as usual, her new beau opened his
eyes, looked at her and with nary a hesitation, issued the most magical
three-word spell she could recall ever hearing from a man. She said these words
slid from his masculine mouth smooth as a river stone and strong as steel
(that’s my interpretation of what she said). She swooned. She relaxed. Under
his sudden spell she felt herself completely protected and cherished by this
man’s love.
“I got this”
That’s what he said.
“I’m going to take on this uncomfortable mission-oriented task
because that’s how I can best offer my masculine gift right now while honoring
your delicious gift of feminine energy to my life. I will demonstrate my deep
commitment to your care by ensuring you can stay warm under the covers and
linger in this moment of blissful embodied reverie.”
He actually only said the first three words. That whole second
paragraph is my rough translation as I believe my friend heard it.
But first he said it. And then he actually did it.
She was so impressed you’d think he bought her the Eiffel Tower.
All he did was walk her dog.
♦◊♦
We live in an age when women are empowered to care for
themselves like never before.
I grew up mostly thinking women were supposed to “I got this”
for themselves. My two moms held strong while my two dads struggled to just
hold on. It was my two moms whose strength and character were always saying, “I
got this,” while my dads were unconsciously saying, “thank God you got this!”
I’ve always had so many messages coming
at me that women are my equals in every way. That’s a good thing from a certain
perspective. Women are equal to men, in terms of inherent human worth and
value. They should have every legal right that any man has.
However, my understanding of sex equality completely overlooked
certain ways my more feminine female partners and I were genuinely different.
We yearned differently, meaning we experienced the world in ratherdifferent ways, even wanting different things
from each other. For example, just holding a woman and making love with her is
often a different experience for me than it is for my partners. I don’t embrace a woman
to feel safe in her arms. When I embrace her I feel strong in my body,
masterful even, as though I’m living my purpose by wrapping her up safe and
protected within my steady arms. My female partners, in contrast, have often
expressed that’s what they love most about being in my embrace: the experience
of feeling safe, physically and emotionally, that they can relax in knowing
they’re protected in that one moment from the tiresome chaos of the world. It’s
as if we both journeyed from very different worlds
to secretly rendezvous in this one moment of exquisite embrace.
Failing too often to account for such differences, I have
struggled in most of my intimate relationships with women. Clearly a contributing
factor has been my inability to step up in all kinds of situations and say to my partners—often even to myself—“I got this.”
♦◊♦
Before I wade too deep into controversial waters, let me clarify
that what I’m exploring is less about man-woman and more about
masculine-feminine. Any foray into masculine-feminine dynamics risks offending
those who hear those terms being used synonymously. I don’t mean to do that.
What I’m pointing at holds for all couples—hetero, gay, or otherwise—in which
one partner carries more masculine energy and the other carries more feminine.
Sometimes those energies can switch back and forth between partners. I invite
you to see through to the deeper rhythms I’m exploring, beyond the details of who has
what body parts.
I simply want to convey that when I look back through my life, I
see far too often that I left my feminine partners to fend for themselves in
ways large and small. From making them decide where we should eat to running
away when they were stressed emotionally and I hadn’t the capacity to love them
through it, I failed too often to step up and say, “I got this.”
Which just means I consistently failed to convey, “Baby, I
invite you to relax and trust that all will be well because I have the
strength, the discipline, the fortitude and the vision—and at the very least
the unwavering perseverance—to hold us through this moment of discomfort and
steward us safely to new ground where we will experience a brighter moment of
ease together.”
Ok, so that’s a bit poetic when we’re talking about walking the dog or deciding where to eat.
And sometimes our partners will genuinely want to bear their own burdens,
or bear
them equally alongside us, or even bear ours for us. I’m painting in broad
strokes here.
♦◊♦
I invite you to say to yourself a few times: “I got
this.”
How does that feel in your
body?
Do you feel your chest rise a bit, your breathing deepen, your
backbone straighten? Do you come alive and start looking
around the room for some challenge to take on?
Or do you prefer imagining someone say it to you? Does the
thought of your partner whispering it to you all sexy-like make your body
soften and your heartbeat quicken? Does it set your yearning alight?
Truth is, I’ve always wanted a woman who can take care of
herself. Which seems healthy to me, actually. Any mature adult should be able
to take care of themselves in the modern world. I don’t want a partner who
expects me to run around all day telling her “I got this” so she can stay in
bed all day. That would just be exhausting for me and eventually frustrating
for her. I’m not Superman. She’s not helpless.
Still, there’s something deeply compelling about the idea of
being with a woman who can fully take care of herself, and who enjoys allowing
me to take care of her anyway.
“I got this”
