Geoffrey here,
the concept of positive or healthy masculinity is I think one of the least
understood and most confusing topics about relationships in general.
I think a lot of people have a vague understanding of what healthy or
positive masculinity looks like.
But very few people have a very concrete idea of what it means.
And if you've been watching a lot of videos on this topic,
most likely the videos that you watch pertain to the early stages of the
relationship or the dating stages of the relationship,
but rarely is discussed in terms of your marriage or even your long-term
relationships.
And I think the misunderstanding of what positive or healthy masculinity looks
like really causes havoc when it comes to long-term relationships,
in a sense of it's why a lot of men are struggling to create real safety in the
relationship. So be sure to stick around to the very end of this video,
because this video will make it very clear on what positive or healthy
masculinity really is and what it really means.
And I think once you understand what it is,
you'll also start to understand why it's such a crucial part of rebuilding
relationships or reconciling in your relationship.
And if you're new to this channel,
my name is Geoffrey and I help men in long-term relationships or in marriages
with the right skills, with the right knowledge,
to be able to design a thriving relationship for the long haul.
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And if you want to go deeper on the topic of long-term relationships and how you
can save your marriage,
I do have a masterclass does designed to teach you the five proven steps to
rebuilding your relationship from the ground up.
So if you want to join this masterclass,
be sure to stick around till the very end of this video for the announcement on
how you can enter that masterclass and join that masterclass.
So let's start this discussion by talking about how most people define what it
means to have a positive masculinity or display healthy masculinity.
So one is that masculinity for a lot of people is about stoicism.
It's about you managing your emotions, controlling your emotions.
It's about never arguing,
never losing your emotions is that you need to be passionate.
You need to be strong. You need to stand for something.
So all these traits that'd be often associated with healthy masculinity,
but in this video, I'm going to go way beyond the simplistic definitions.
And I'm going to cut through right through the BS and give you a much better
clarity on what this actually means and how it applies to your relationship.
So let's start here with understanding, what does it mean to be masculine?
So if you look at masculinity, we want to simplify this concept of masculinity.
It's really about overcoming challenges and taking yourself from where you are
today and grading the future destination, a desired state, if you will.
So there's a dichotomy here between where you are today and your desired state.
And if we understand masculinity in this way,
we can start to understand why the masculine archetypes are really the way they
are. So we associate masculinity, for example, with confidence,
inner strength, being logical, being purposeful, having the courage,
having the discipline,
because all these traits that we talk about really have the masculine character
go from the design from the current state to desired state. But it's also wide.
The masculine traits is often associated with some toxic traits as well.
So because it's trying to get from here to there in a most efficient way
possible, whenever there's a blocker to him, getting from here to there,
the Maston figure can become too controlling, can become a bit selfish.
Sometimes it's associated often with the abuse of power with being aggressive or
being overly dominating basically.
And these are all the toxic traits and the toxic traits usually come up when the
masculine figure cannot get to the current situation to the desired situation.
Now, I want to contrast this with what it means to be feminine. So again,
we have the dichotomy here of current situation and desired situation.
The feminine is not interested in getting from current situation to the desired
situation. Instead,
they're focused on that current situation and they're focused on either the
expression of the current situation or the taking in the
experience of the current situation.
So either external expression or internal, uh, experience.
And if we understand this, this way with this model,
then we also understand why the feminine archetypes or the traits are associated
with what they are, which are usually things like radians. Uh,
they're very nurturing. They're more creative,
they're more emotional and more just compassionate because all these traits that
we've mentioned here are either the feminine, uh,
character trying to externally express the current situation or internally
taking the current experience. So for example,
they're also usually associated with being intuitive.
They're also associated with usually being understanding as surrendering to the
moment and more accepting as the feminine,
but because the feminine is more in tune with the current situation,
it's also associated with some of the toxic traits that we typically assign to
femininity. The feminine tends to be associated with more of a victim role.
It's usually associated with being more insecure,
being overly emotional and just more volatile in general. So for now,
I just want you to take this two definitions of masculinity and femininity,
and there's a table that for a bit,
and I want you to bring you to my next point,
which is that this is about the importance of the middle ground.
So you'll notice that anything in life becomes toxic only if we embrace the
extremes of life.
And whenever we are too extreme in other one side of life or the other,
we tend to not have a checks and balance.
And when we don't have this checks and balances,
when things become quite toxic and either ourselves, our personalities,
our tendencies and so on. But to give you a quick example of this,
it's the concept of greed versus generosity.
So greet in generosity is something that I think most of us would say,
it's not worth arguing about.
Obviously generosity is a better way to go than greed,
but actually in life, even in this case,
the more you embrace one extreme over the other, the worst things gets,
for example,
if you're so extreme on the generosity side and you have no breed whatsoever,
then I know a lot of people, for example, who have, you know,
who have started their businesses and they give and give and gifts,
they give way too much because they're all, they're so extremely generous side.
Well,
they give so much that eventually they become broke and they have nothing to
give anymore. So even when you embraced the extreme of what we think is right,
which is being generous,
that can really backfire on you become quite toxic in the long run.
Now the same thing also applies to you being masculine or being feminine.
If you're so extreme on the masculine side,
then that's going to wreak havoc on you because you don't have the feminine side
to checks and balance your masculine side and vice versa.
If you're way too much in the feminine side is going to wreak havoc too,
because you don't have that massive insight to checks and balance what you do.
So again, to recap this, anything in life,
the only wrong choice we can make is if we lie so far to one extreme or one
extreme on the other,
and we need the existence of both sides and to be more in the middle in order to
provide a healthier checks and balance in our lives.
So if you understand his two previous points,
now I want to bring it all together to really let you understand, well,
how does this have to do with being healthy masculinity or embodying positive
masculinity? So let's use the two models that we talked about to talk about.
What does it mean then to embrace a toxic masculine or even what
happens when someone is unmasculine or what we call a beta male?
So what it means to embody a toxic masculine is simply that you're all
masculine. You're so extreme in the masculine side,
but you have no feminine side to counterbalance.
And this is when you embody traits like you have ambition, which is great.
We just all masculine,
but you have no compassion to checks and balance that ambition.
And that can quickly turn into abuse or exploitation.
This is when you have strength,
but the strength isn't counterbalanced with some compassion.
And this is when that strength quickly becomes more of controllingness and
dominance, which is quite toxic. And finally,
this is how you get also assertiveness without understanding.
This is when you get behaviors like gaslighting and being disrespectful,
being rude, and being just brash in general and vice versa.
If you're talking about being a weak masculine,
or being unmasculine or being a beta male,
all that means is that you have too much femininity,
but not enough masculinity to balance this whole extremes out.
And this is when you start to get into the realm of having compassion,
but without the ambition to balance it all out.
And this is when we associate someone as being a dud,
almost it's gentleness without the strength to counterbalance that,
which leads to often being soft and being too much of that beta male character.
It's when you have understanding,
but without the assertiveness to opposite to counterbalance that,
which often results in you being a pushover,
or you just having no backbone in general. So if we understand this,
then we can also understand that when we try to, um,
adopt this very simplistic definitions of what it means to be masculine,
for example,
that leads to the danger of easily misunderstanding what it means to have a
positive masculine or healthy masculinity. So for example,
if people tell you that masculinity is all about stoicism,
if we take this too far to the extremes,
this can lead us to being more emotionally unavailable,
and almost like a robot that is not able to be connected with their emotions,
not be connected with our compassionate side,
which destroys safety and trust over time. So again, this is one example of how,
even though we vaguely understand what positive or healthy masculinity is,
if we don't fully understand that it's simply balance a checks and balance
between your masculine side and your feminine side,
we can often fall into the trap of pushing the definition too far on either
side, which leads to some toxicity eventually.
So now that we talked about what a toxic or an unhealthy masculine looks
like, let's talk about what positive or healthy masculinity looks like.
So we understand that we go back to the model again,
positive masculinity is simply if we want to break it down to its simplest
definition is when you have a nice checks and balance between your masculine
side or your tendency to get from the current situation to your desired
situation. And that desire to go from a,
to B is counterbalance or checks and balanced with your feminine side,
which is all about expressing the beauty of the moment or internalizing the
beauty of the moment.
This is when you have both the ambition of the masculine side,
the masculine traits,
but also the ambition is counterbalanced with some compassion.
It's when you have the strength of the masculine side,
but that's also counterbalanced with the feminine gentleness.
That is when you have assertiveness,
but that assertiveness is also counterbalanced with some understanding on the
feminine side as well. So if we apply this to the realm of emotions,
for example, here's how it looks like if you were embodying stream masculine,
that is when you embody complete stoicism,
but complete stoicism again can turn into you being too robotic.
You being too insensitive, which can be quite toxic eventually.
And of course the other side of this is when you are totally on the extreme of
the feminine side.
And that is when you are fully governed by this realm of compassion,
but compassion can quickly turn into the toxic side of you being carried away by
emotions, you being a pushover and so on. Now,
if we go to the middle of ground here and you have the balance of the two,
then we reach what we call controlled compassion.
So what is controlled compassion?
So imagine you're talking to your wife right now,
and she's expressing a bunch of stuff to you that is quite difficult,
that it's quite hard to take in being stoic.
If you're fully in the masculine side, that is when you become a robot,
you become unemotional, which can be, um, quite insensitive.
But if you were in the realm of controlled compassion,
you're stoic enough and you can manage your emotions enough so that you can take
on the appropriate emotion for that particular moment.
So it's not just about being a robot,
but being poised enough to take on the right emotions.
We're going to have another example of this,
where we're going apply this understanding to how you resolve conflict.
So if you will, we're resolving conflicts from your full masculine,
aside from your extreme masculine side. Then that is when you become assertive,
but assertiveness can quickly turn into you being controlling or you being
dominating to dominating. Now, if you will go to the other extreme,
which is the feminine side, then you are coming from a place of understanding.
Yes, but that can quickly turn into you being a pushover or being weak. Now,
if we embrace the middle again,
that is when we can be understanding at some points in the conversation,
but we can also be understanding so that we can be assertive.
It's almost like that leader who spends the first part of the meeting,
simply understanding what are the arguments from all side?
What are the perspectives from all side?
And then because he spends time understanding from his feminine side,
he can then use his healthy masculine side to be assertive. But as a surgeon,
this will be based on understanding here again, that nice balance.
And as you can see this whole concept of finding balance between your,
your masculine archetypes and your feminine archetypes can also apply to your
sexuality, can also apply to your conversations,
can also apply to basically every part of your life or every part of your
relationship. And this is why in our program,
we really prioritized for our students,
the ability to expand their trait potential.
So to understand this concept deeper,
I want you to imagine your masculine side and your feminine side can be
represented by cups or glasses here.
And the size of both your masculine and your feminine glasses really depends on
the potential of how much masculinity or how much femininity you can display at
one particular moment. Now,
the problem here is that because most people misunderstand what it means to
embody a positive masculine or a healthy masculine.
What often happens is that masculine cup can be very big,
their potential of how much masculinity they can display is very big,
but their feminine Cubs is extremely small.
But the truth is that different moments in your life requires you to be more
masculine or more feminine at some point. So for example,
when you're talking to your children and when you're,
or when you're listening to your wife, and you're trying to understand her,
you might need to embody that feminine side a bit, the more compassionate side,
the more emotional side, the more understanding side,
but if your feminine cup is small.
And so you can't express femininity very well.
You're very disconnected with your feminine side.
And that's when we become quite toxic where we're supposed to be more feminine
in that moment, but we can't do it because our feminine cuffs are very small.
So for example, when we're at work,
we might be okay because work requires to be more masculine and not a lot of
femininity required to be at work,
but once you go home and you're trying to be compassionate when you're spending
time with the children, when you're listening to your partner,
when you're planning something that might change the whole, uh,
the requirements of how much masculinity or how much femininity that you really
need. And so you can imagine here,
if your masculine trait potential is very high,
but your feminine trait potential is very low,
then that makes it very difficult for you to be adaptable in different
scenarios.
And this is most likely while I find a lot of men while they can really thrive
in certain aspects of their life,
they really can struggle in the context of their home life or in their
relationship with their partners.
It's also why a lot of men have a really hard time letting go of their work mode
when they come home and they can't seem to switch off from work because they can
really only find what it means to be in their masculine mode and not really in
their feminine mode here, because again,
they're masculine potential may be large,
but their feminine potential may be very tiny.
But when you grow both your masculine and your feminine potentials.
So when both Cubs are really big here and can hold a lot of water, for example,
then you can be quite fluid in the way you handle different kinds of scenarios.
If you need to be more, more feminine, you can do it.
If you need to be more masculine, you can do it.
And you can even flip this around, within the context of one conversation.
So in the previous example we gave, for example, we said, you know,
there's a part of the conversation. You need to be more understanding.
You need to be more of your feminine side, but once you understand something,
you might need to be more assertive and give your win-wins and give your
solutions and give your 2 cents from that masculine side. And so in our program,
in our relationship rebel program,
this is something that we stress quite highly.
So we teach you the processes of a growing your trait potential.
It's not ingest when it comes to being masculine or being feminine,
but really in all parts of life as well.
So you become a more well-rounded person and we teach you how to have a more
balanced approach of both using your masculine side and your feminine side,
to be able to lead conversations, to be able to manage your emotions,
but in a healthier way where you don't become too stoic.
And really what we try to do is to make you more of a freestyle dancer,
where you can just fluidly move between the two to display,
however much femininity or however much masculinity.
You need to be effective at that particular moment. Really.
So if you want to learn how to do this on a deeper level,
I want you to join me in my masterclass and this masterclass,
I will show you the five proven steps to rebuilding your relationship from
ground up and the same process that all my students have used to rebuild a
relationship.
And part of this is understanding how to find that balance of being masculine
and being feminine.
And if you're interested in joining the relationship revival program at the end
of this masterclass,
you'll also have an opportunity to submit your application for the program and
really learn these things on a much deeper level.
So if you're interested in joining this masterclass or joining the relationships
rebel program, that I want you to click the link above my head,
also down in the comments below or in the description box below this video as
well. And if you're looking for a free resource that can help you guide the
conversations better with your partner,
that balances the masculine side and the feminine side,
as we discussed in this video,
then I want you to download the guide I have for you above my head,
or also down in the comments below or a nutrition box below this video as well.
And if you're looking to join a community where you can post your questions
about anything we talk about here,
then you can also join my free Facebook group.
And you can join that Facebook group in the comments below,
or a description box below this video as well. In the meantime,
do leave a comment below.
I know this was a very complex topic and a very deep topic.
What did you find most insightful about this video?
I'd love to hear your thoughts and you found this video valuable,
then click the like button really helps the channel out and click the subscribe
button as well. If you want more content like this one, and in the meantime,
I'll leave you with these two other videos with more knowledge and more skills
to design, to help you design a thriving relationship for yourself for now,
I will see you in the next one.