Life Coaches Blog

At the deepest level, we all want to be whole. But we cannot experience personal wholeness until we can fully express and integrate our innate masculine and feminine natures.

Asking yourself if you’re masculine or feminine is a different question from asking if you’re a man or a woman. You can be a woman but have a masculine core and vice-versa. If you’re unbalanced, you can also be a woman with a feminine core but displaying mostly masculine qualities and vice-versa. For easy reading, I’ll generalize to mean masculinity for men and femininity for women in this post.

The Chinese had an easy-to-understand metaphor to explain all this: the symbol of yin and yang. Yin stood for the feminine essence, yang for the masculine, both had each in the other and both formed a complementary whole in a dynamic moving relationship.

What’s Masculine and Feminine?

Masculine energy is described as light, directed, focused, logical and action orientated - masculinity is the active element. Feminine energy is described as dark, vague, intuition and receptive - femininity is the passive element.

When masculine energy is strongly expressed, it manifests itself as power, dominance and leadership. When feminine energy is strongly expressed, it manifests as radiance, love and spontaneity. The masculine attaches more meaning to rationality and directness, while the feminine attaches more meaning to the feelings of the moment and subtle communication.

So to fully express your core being, a man has to learn to lead and stay true to his life mission, while a woman has to develop her capacity for relationships and feeling.

Why Relationships Go Wrong

It is the masculine and feminine polarities that create the passion in a relationship and help sustain it. A man with a masculine core won’t be attracted to a woman with a masculine core, nor would a relationship between a feminine man and woman last for long. The polarities need each other and a reason why relationships go sour is when both partners don’t complement their energies.

If your woman has a feminine core, she needs you to demonstrate strength and leadership. The more she is being passive and submissive, the less she wants you to be the same. If both parties are passive and submissive, she knows you are both not going anywhere.

If your man has a masculine core, he needs you to demonstrate feeling and being in the moment. The more he is being active and dominant, the less he wants you to do the same. If both parties are struggling for dominance, he knows that sooner or later he will leave in frustration.

The masculine finds rejuvenation in the feminine and vice-versa, they are complementary energies and not in opposition. This can happen only when both parties realize their complementary cores and can express them fully.

In Part II discover a simple way to discover your core essence and what needs to happen after you develop it.