One of my clients had fallen into a trap that was ruining his dating life.
You see, he had been single for a while when he came to me for coaching,
and he wasn't having much luck attracting women.
He was obsessed with finding a feminine woman.
And he came to me for help
because he wanted to connect to his masculinity in order to achieve it.
This is what he had seen on TikTok
is in order to attract someone feminine, you must be ultra masculine.
And I see this advice
given to women all the time: “be more feminine so that you can find a man.”
And yeah, it can be kind of useful to think about these polarities.
It also can lead you deeply, deeply astray so that you actually find it harder to
make a meaningful and healthy connection and to find romantic and sexual partners.
My client was focusing on all the wrong ways to attract the right women,
and when he went on dates with the kinds of women
that he was interested in, it didn't work out.
He was convinced that he needed to amp up his masculine energy, you know,
go for macho, be
dominant and decisive so that he could be appealing to feminine women.
But as he learned, that's not exactly how it works.
In fact, there's something that is so much more important to focus on
that these TikTok gurus are missing.
And I'm going to share that with you in this video.
But first, we've got to break down this masculine, feminine polarity concept.
The first thing that I asked my client to do was define a feminine woman for me,
because more often than not, people's understanding of what
this means is, like, way all over the place.
So when we think of a feminine woman, so many people call to mind the traits
that have been societally assigned to women.
But that isn't necessarily feminine, right?
Like if you're looking for someone who cooks and cleans,
someone who's helpless, someone who's docile while
someone who wants to just nurture you 24/7 then you're actually looking for a maid
or a servant or a new mommy, but not really a partner.
I mean, look at me.
I am very in tune with my femininity, but I am also a boss.
I don't cook, I don't clean.
And if you want to get really archaic, I also have short hair.
Not exactly what comes to mind with that old school way of thinking,
so I might not come off very feminine, but in reality I'm extremely feminine.
I'm in touch with my intuition.
I love dressing up.
I have three closets full of very feminine clothing and jewelry.
I track my menstrual cycle and schedule my whole life around it.
I lead with my emotions.
I'm a nurturer. I'm a communicator.
These are the “real” (quote unquote) feminine traits
that we usually assign inside of the polarity world to femininity.
But the truth is that no one person, myself included, are just masculine
or just feminine.
We all need a mixture of both in order
to be well adjusted mature adults.
Think of a yin yang symbol.
There is a little dot of black and the white and a little dot of white
in the black.
We need both aspects within us to lead a balanced life, and any worthwhile
partner is going to carry both polarities within them.
In fact, it has been said
that the way a man treats women is the way that he treats his inner feminine.
So if you yourself feel kind of hostile to women
or you hate femininity, or like you hate cats because they're like
so feminine in nature, that's probably how you're
relating to your own internal feminine.
And your relationship with women
isn't going to change until you start looking inside.
So while my client, for example, he thought,
“kill all the feminine parts of me, amp up the masculine parts of me,” while
he was actually making himself less attractive to women—not more.
Instead, what he needed to do was find balance inside of himself.
Because you know what? Opposite do attract.
It is also true that like attracts like, have you ever tried dating someone
who doesn't share your political
or your religious beliefs or doesn't share your core values?
How would you relate to each other? Right?
You don't have the most important things in common.
And what we're talking about here is compatibility more than just polarity.
And compatibility is very, very nuanced.
Compatibility is so much more complicated and so much more beautiful
than just saying masculine and feminine.
Otherwise you would be attracted to all people of the opposite sex
or all people of the opposite gender. It's just not the case.
The key here is understanding what you're looking for in a partner
and then working on yourself to become a person
who can match and meet
the person who you want to attract.
And that is how you find the kind of woman who you're actually looking for.
We as humans, we're complex, and it is wild to assume
that our attraction and compatibility would operate on the same system
of polarity as the batteries in your remote control or your vibrator.
And although this might seem a little
daunting and complicated, I have created a system
that you can actually use to take action and get what you're looking for.
You see, when I was working with my client,
I asked him to consider the qualities he was looking for in a partner
and then figure out if he was currently the kind of man
who could actually handle or be compatible with those qualities.
And like a lot of the men that I've worked with, one of the very first things
that he brought to mind was physical attraction.
I asked Joe, tell me about the kind of woman
that you want to be in a relationship with.
And he responded, “Tall, athletic.
She maintains her appearance.
I like manicured nails. I like styled hair.
I like a little makeup.” Very “feminine,” right?
And this is great.
But we also had to take an honest look next at is he a good match
for that kind of woman? Is he athletic?
I mean, being with an active person
likely means that they're going to want to be athletic with you.
What kinds of foods are you going to eat together?
How are you going to spend your Saturdays?
Is she going to want to go to sleep early
because you want to go hiking and you want to go out to the club?
All of which are equally valid!
But if you're looking for a woman who's got a very high standard
of physical appearance, then you need to ask yourself,
are you ready to handle a woman who is going to be high maintenance in that way?
Are you going to help her carry the burden?
Are you going to judge her for needing to go get her hair done or get her blowout?
Or are you going to support her in maintaining that standard?
Whatever your expectations of the woman that you're with,
she's going to have expectations of you in return.
And it's important just to be mindful of these and think
about really what are your priorities when you are looking for a partner.
I think a lot of guys just cast a broad net
and they're like, I'll just take whatever I can get.
But actually, like ask yourself, if you did catch that woman,
would you be able to hold her? Let's talk about mental attraction.
How do you want the person that you're with to see the world?
Are you looking for an intellectual or someone
who's like a little bit more laid back? That's
actually way more about compatibility than whether or not she is feminine.
If you're looking for someone who society has deemed to be feminine,
that might mean that you're looking for
someone who just agrees with you instead of standing up to you.
And I think that's why this polarity thing is like kind of bullshit,
because everyone needs a partner
who is going to be able to stand on their own two feet and meet them as an equal.
Partnerships where there's a big power difference between those two—
he's 100% in charge;
she's the one that's
just going along with things following him—this is not even an antiquated version
of relationships.
This is an unrealistic version of relationships.
That's how you describe a parent/child dynamic.
That is not a healthy relationship for equals in the world
who are romantic and sexual partners. All right.
Next, let's talk about emotional attraction.
Emotional connection is a huge
maybe like the biggest aspect of forming a romantic relationship.
And this is again, where that, like,
whole masculine feminine thing kind of gets lost.
You see, we all want to find a partner who makes us feel emotionally safe.
And they do that by understanding our feelings, understanding
us, really feeling like we are got by that.
Both men and women want that.
So in order to give a woman the kind of connection
and support that she's looking for,
you actually need to be in tune with your own emotions enough to get hurt.
And you've got to be able to express them freely, openly.
And this takes skills.
This is emotional intelligence.
No relationship works without this.
According to the polarity system, it's women who are emotional and men are stoic.
Women show emotions and men don't.
That just doesn't— It does not work.
Listen, it doesn't take a expert relationship
and sex coach to tell you this.
You know this deeply.
No longer do we need men who do not have feelings.
In fact, we need men who do recognize that they have feelings
and actually feel them and don't just treat their feminine partner
as their therapist.
Finding someone who expresses their emotions in a way that you can understand
and support and does the same for you is actually far more important
for having a healthy relationship than any sort of gender roles.
And then social.
Social compatibility is necessary in order to make your relationship work.
So if you're looking for a woman who is charming and gracious
and a hostess who is beloved by your friends,
well, ask yourself, Are you truly a match for that kind of person?
Who do you have to be in order to be with a woman like that?
If what you want is a person who has an exciting and busy social life,
are those things that you yourself have and are you going to be willing
to join her at parties?
Are you going to want to have an exciting social life along with her?
Or if not, are you secure enough to see her
socially thriving outside of the relationship?
Look, a homebody can be with a highly social person.
It's been done plenty of times, but the homebody has got to be okay with
getting left out while their partner's out and the social person has got to be good
going out on their own without their partner.
It's not about masculine or feminine.
It's strictly about compatibility.
And finally, let's talk about spiritual compatibility.
How do we see ourselves in the world in the big picture?
How do we see that things are all connected or not?
Do you see the world as cruel and random?
Are you looking for someone who sees it as magical and meaningful?
Again, it's all about finding someone who's actually compatible with you.
You need to be able to celebrate and relate to the aspects of your partner
in order to feel deeply connected and seen in the relationship.
It's that simple.
Matching—like attracts like—is
probably going to be a better fit than like masculine/feminine.
I walked my client through all these steps that I just gave to you and he began
to look inside and look for ways that he could actually embody
the kind of person who his ideal partner was going to be attracted to,
not just an idea of what a hyper masculine man is,
but someone who is nuanced and I think most importantly mature.
And that is my number one complaint with this whole conversation as I see
it—and having been a student of sex and sexuality and polarity
for, you know, pretty much a decade now—is what it leaves out.
We're not looking for someone who is strictly masculine or strictly feminine.
What we're actually looking for is someone who is mature.
And when I see these Instagram posts or these TikTok shorts, often what
they're actually describing is someone who has reached a level of adulthood.
So that is why I wish for you.
I wish for you a level of maturity, and I wish for you a level of adulthood
that you can attract a person who is equally mature opposite
in all the ways that you want opposite and like in all the ways
that you want like, in the beautifully nuanced,
infinitely complex version of you
exactly as you are and want to be.
I'm Caitlin V.
Thank you for tuning in.
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I'll see you next week.