While I am in sympathy with the idea that being obedient does not mean being a servant, I do think it is absurd to suggest that the woman need not work either inside or outside the home. That IS a denial of the reality of life for most people. Most men can not afford to support wives and provide them with servants. NOWHERE in Pat Allen's book does it say that the woman should do NO work. what she does say is that tasks should be devided up according to what suits each couple "There are no gender-specific tasks" she says, and I totally agree with that. She does not advocate that the woman should be a parasite with no responsiblity for anything. If you think that Pat Allen's book says that the woman should take no responsiblity for anything, then I don't think you have read it with sufficient care.

I have to desagreewith the ideas proposed here. I feel that my submission is an active thing.. in my personal myths I have always been the priestess, the good witch, taking care of people and healing them... my vision of submission includes service and sacrifice and I think there's nothing un-feminine with that, is there?

I think what Under His Wing is trying to say, is that the idea of submission being defined as becoming a slave or a servant feels inherently wrong to her.

I feel the same.

I agree absolutely that a woman becoming a man's slave or servant is wrong. However, the author of this article has interpreted Pat Allen's theory as meaning that a woman need contribute nothing to a relationship, and that it is the man's responsibility to provide everything. That is not what Pat Allen says in her book at all. When she talks about a woman being a receiver rather than a giver, she does not mean the woman should be totally passive, and she believes that chores should be shared between a couple, which strikes me as eminently reasonable.

I think Louise hit the hot button here on the head when she said "the author of this article has interpreted Pat Allen's theory as meaning that a woman need contribute nothing to a relationship, and that it is the man's responsibility to provide everything". It seems like Louise holds the standard politically correct feminist brainwashing we have shoved down our throats from every direction that tells us it is only male qualities that are worth anything. Thus by a woman being in her female energy and receiving/receptive based and instead giving BACK she is "contributing nothing".

I’d like to see just how long we could last without feminine receptive energy in this world. We couldn’t. It is far from "nothing" even though we are over and over again told it is. In fact it is just as sacred and central as male energy, and what true male energy craves as his complement. A masculine-energy man wants a feminine energy woman, not a servant. And a woman who is forced to act outside of her female core and become more male like and provide and protect is definitely a servant.

Also, thank you so much to the anonymous writer that was pointing the servant issue out more.

You obviously know very little about the history of the human race if you think that a woman being totally passive and being expected to do nothing at all except what she wanted to is somehow the way life was in pre-politically correct days.

Women throughout history have ALWAYS been expected to contribute materially to life. For most of prehistory , we were hunter-gatherers, with women responsible for gathering the bulk of the food, i.e. the fruit, nuts, roots etc that made up the bulk of the diet, while men brought home the meat. With the change-over to agricultural societies, women found themselves working a lot harder in the fields, and producing more children. During the Middile Ages, women were actively involved in their husband's businesses, and even aristocratic women were expected to be actively involved in the running of their households, not just passive. With the seperation of home and workplace, you got an increasing number of stay-at-home wives whose sole responsibility was running the home and looking after the children, but nevertheless it WAS regarded as a responsibility.

Unless you were the wife of a sultan languishing in some eastern harem, or the mistress of a wealthy man, there was never likely to have been a time when you were a woman who was expected to have no responsibilities whatsoever. It's not to do with 'political correctness' it's to do with the fact that every grown-up has some responsibilites in their lives, and "feminine energy" women are not for ornamental purposes only.

The link referred to in the Cherishing Past and Present comment is this.

I got the part about having actual foot warmers wrong though, I was just remembering how they were talking about a woman needing to keep her feet warm. But I LOVE this post and this deeper understanding of our hidden cherishing past. From the post, “So even in those times, when life often was extremely difficult, men were trying to make it more comfortable for ladies... I think even in those times good men did everything to make life easier for women and to protect them from hardships.”

My comment to Mike was intended to convey that I thought it was a silly idea that women should have no responsibility at all for doing anything, whether inside or outside the house. I certainly don't believe that all women should go out to work whether they like it or not, th mere mention of that dread word "juggling"makes me want to go and lie down in a darkened room. But that's not the same as believeing that a woman shouldn't contribute anything of a practical nature to a marriage unless she feels like it, which I think is daft.

I mean, Mike's idea seems to be that the man should be responsible for earning a living AND running the household as well, and that the woman should do only what pleases her. But much of life, whether you are a man or a woman, consists of doing things that don't particularly please you but that just have to be done. You accept that the whole of life cannot be about simply pleasing yourself. It would be a physical impossibility for my husband to earn a living, do all the housekeeping and look after the children as well while I sat around doing nothing, yet Mike implied that this would be a reasonable thing for me to do. Which is crazy.

My husband cherishes me quite a lot, more than a lot of husband do their wives, I know. But he can't do everything, and I don't think he should have to. I'm lazy God knows, but I'm not so lazy that I expect him to do everything. It can't all be about what you want to do, some of it is just about what you have to do.

I think Pat Allen's comment that there are no gender specific tasks is very sensible, my husband is certainly better than I am at all practical tasks, including those traditonally considered to be "women's work". It's very nice to be cherished, but however cherished women were in the past, there's never been a time when women have been expected to be purely ornamental, they have always had responsibilities, just like men. And I think to suggest, as Mike does, that a woman has no responsibilities in a relationship is actually a way of diminishing women. If you don't have any adult responsibilities then you're not an adult.

I have not always taken responsiblity for the things that I should in the past. I've let the house get in a mess when I know my husband hates it like that, I've let the children run wild when I know he hates that too. But these days I try harder with those things, just as he tries harder not to lose his temper with me. He's actually kept his side of the bargain rather better than I have.

For instance, the other night he was due back (I thought) at about 10pm. so, I thought complacently, I'll start tidying up at about 8pm, that's two hours before he'll be back. But he walked in at 7.30 pm (I'd got the time he was due back wrong). Seeing the house looking like a bomb had hit it though did not cause him, as it might have in the past, to blow his top. He said it was almost worth seeing the house like that in order to enjoy the expression of guilty dismay on my face when he walked in. He doesn't let things anger him so much any more, and this in turn makes me feel like trying harder with the housework etc, so it is in a way because I feel he is giving more to me that I am able to give back.

I like your response very much, Under His Wing, and your nickname too. In my favourite song there the lyrics say: "Close the curtains and turn out the lights / Beneath my wing it's gonna be alright".
Our archetypes are individual, and even the common ones seem to have a different meaning for each of us. So sometimes you get disgusted by the feeling that somebody has "exploited" your most private fantasy or violated it. It's a good idea to admit, I think.

Also (Louise) we have too keep in mind that it's a pretty difficult thing to express and share you inner feelings and so-called archetypes and one may fall into the danger of making them sound racional and by doing so, adding other aspects - religious beliefs, political, evolutional... these may be pretty subjective and even untrue, but you have to interpret them in the light of the unique personal experience.

Hey, I get p****d off too every time I read about the "paradise 50's" or the "men-provided archaic society", but I count to ten and realize that not everybody is a history fan like me. In fact it is probable that the first people were semi-vegetarians. And innocent people were executed by hundreds behind the Iron Curtain during the fifties before Stalin's death made some major changes in he politics of the communits party.

Well, I don't know much about archetypes, but I do know that women have always been expected to look after home and family, as well as doing a lot of other stuff, and have never been considered to be there to do only what they feel like doing.

What I mostly feel like doing is reading books and watching reruns of 'Columbo' and 'Diagnosis Murder' on Hallmark, but life, unfortunately, isn't like that, and I find myself having to do a lot of other stuff as well. Such is life. I wouldn't actually mind all that much if my husband was to leave the running of the house to me, so long as he was satisfied with the way I ran it. If he was content with the quality of my housework, and if he would eat food the way I cooked it, that would be all right with me, but he isn't. He likes to clean things so he gets them as clean as he wants them, rather than the way they end up when I do them, and he cooks things that he doesn't trust me to cook the way he likes them (sometimes I feel I'd kill for a slice of underdone beef). We teeter on the brink of driving each other round the bend, but mostly manage to retain our footing on the side of sanity (so far anyway).

If I said to him "I am a feminine energy woman, so I'm only going to do what I feel like doing from now on" I can't imagine what he'd say (actually I can, but I couldn't repeat it here). I mean honestly! The world just isn't like that!

The lyrics of my favourite song by the way are;

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men,
Feared by the bad, loved by the good,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood.

They simply don't write songs like that any more.

Would a kind reader explain 'feminine energy' further?

Please imagine you are telling a visitor from another planet how to identify the gender of human beings based on behaviors that are easily observed. Please explain to the alien that one gender exhibits behavior that is:
'initiatory, active, giving, imparting, impacting, and accommodating to the feelings of others'

while the other gender's behavior is:
'receiving-based, receptive'.

Please also explain how the alien recognizes that one gender
'naturally gives back a little less than XXX has received, because that allows XXX to remain in XXX naturally receptive mode'
(for 'XXX' please internally substitute your favorite gender reference term)

RichM

RichM, the answer I offer to your question is unfortunately a rather graphic one. I think the “aliens” could best see the deeper natures of men and women by seeing how they “copulate”: A man imparts/gives his seed and the woman later, if that seed has been received, gives back a child. It is from those core essences that the rest flows, as such a core and central activity does not spring from nowhere. Perhaps for a machine it could spring from nowhere, but we are not machines. Such a core act is not merely physical but a key illustrator of our more archetypal realm.

I don’t know if an alien would understand human archetypes though (he has his own species archetypes). He might be able to understand them, or he might not and rather simply need to be satisfied with just the graphic picture alone. And perhaps that would be enough for him to get the basic idea of male and female energies. Or enough for those that do not believe in archetypes.

“He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust” (Psalms 91:4)

Louise, I have been following your page “Letting Yourself Go” with interest, and I loved how you described your views there. What jumped out at me is when the boss said this:

“But acceptance goes both ways, and I think Louise's acceptance of her husband's desire for her to wear nice underwear is just as special as his acceptance of her as she is now. Some wives would stridently refuse to indulge their husband's penchant for nice underwear (no doubt on the grounds that their husband should jolly well accept them as they are, underwear or no underwear) but Louise doesn't. She accepts her husband as he is, underwear preferences and all.”

And you responded with this:

“…Of course, I also find it sexy to feel that I am pleasing him by wearing the underwear he likes, I like it when he tells me what he wants me to wear, or when he's away and he rings up he always asks what I'm wearing, "You're not wearing BKs (boring knickers) are you?" he asks sternly.

And if he wanted me to start wearing makeup or something because he thought it was sexy I would probably make the effort to try, it's just the idea that it is somehow an obligation to look a certain way that I rebel against”

To me this is EXACTLY like the difference between serving and obeying. Obeying is wanting to please him, wanting him to be happy, joyfully accommodating him except where your body really tells you no, because that comfort cues focus your body gives you is what keeps you in your receptive female energy in the first place and brings you to truly WANT to obey, and to obey with a FAR different gift than one who is not really obeying but rather serving. True obedience is not forced but pulled forth, inspired by cherishing. But a woman living in fear and “obeying” by forcing herself to because she knows she must no matter what she feels, she is a servant. True obedience, it is almost an ache, something truly pulled forth from you when you are both cherished and receptive, and overall your body gives you positive feedback (that inner happiness you spoke of when you knew your wearing what was asked pleased him). That doesn’t mean everything you do in obedience is convenient, or comfortable in the smaller immediate sense all the time, but overall you DO have a feeling of rightness about it, you do not resent it, it feels GOOD in the long run, the right thing to do, and you feel loved.

But it becomes serving when you are expected to do it even when your body truly tells you no. This is what I mean by the comfort cues. Not necessarily that you are wearing that underwear for the purpose of comfort or that it would make sense to refuse just because it was inconvenient, but rather that in complying it still does not in the deeper sense violate you and what your body is telling you. If he wanted you to wear something that didn’t just make you “feel silly” (the boss’s lipstick example) or was inconvenient but that truly your body said a real no to, you are cherished enough by him I gather that you could say so and not be less loved or viewed as “not contributing” or whatever because you would not do so. So that makes obedience natural rather than resented. It is the OBLIGATION to just give whether or not it violates these deeper comfort cues that becomes a woman’s serving. But giving back to please, just like in your example, actually ties into positive inner feedback/comfort cues (“ I also find it sexy to feel that I am pleasing him by wearing the underwear he likes, I like it when he tells me what he wants me to wear…”) instead. And I think that is absolutely key to what “giving back” is about.

A cherished woman WANTS to please, to obey, it becomes the deeper desire. It’s the same feeling a woman can get when caring for their home or cooking a wonderful meal etc too---if she is able to do it knowing her own comfort cues will be respected, that she can do these things in a way that do not violate her deeper cues, that she is free to shift the rhythms of how things get done to suit or say no to what would truly feel wrong to her without being judged for it as a female serving would be. A female serving is fear based when it comes down to it. She would be wearing that underwear because she would be attacked judged or unloved if she didn’t and deep down she knows it. If she didn’t do what was expected of her for some reason because her feelings truly told her no, she knows she will not be cherished but rather will be judged a “parasite”, “not contributing” etc because she dared to honor her feelings and comfort cues and did not “serve” well enough. Being fear based like that is a real thing, with very real things to fear. And it cannot lead to that wonderful “serving with abandon” feeling that anonymous commenter brought up either. That feeling of “abandon” to me is far different than being a servant, it is a feeling of trust, a trust for a very real reason, his cherishing. You really CAN abandon yourself to obeying him, because you know it will not truly harm you. And a man cherishing you would never want you harmed in the long run by something anyway, and if he ever asked something your body told you was truly harmful then you are safe enough with him to say something.

The assumption that obedience means doing whatever asked harmful or not, or means ignoring your own feelings and body cues, makes zero sense to me, and I suspect (though I don’t know) would feel wrong to you as well. True obedience in the end feels RIGHT. That is the true test of it. I think so many hold the view that obeying is about simply taking orders and serving whether our body tells us it is right or not. To me, it is not this at all, it is something much deeper. Because why on earth should we assume obedience is just doing as ordered what harm may come? That is not obedience, that is becoming a servant.

True obedience is not demanded, it is inspired, pulled forth. It becomes true obedience when deep down we know it is the right thing to do in the end, good in the end not just for him but for us too because we are being cherished through our feelings and needs truly mattering. If in the long run a partnership dynamic does not benefit us as well and not just them then that is not a woman being loved but merely her giving self sacrifice, which is definitely harmful to a woman's receptive based core. Self sacrifice may be part of heroism, but heroism is for male energy not female energy.

I think self sacrifice and self denial is what many think obedience is. But that is NOT the same as obedience. The difference may be subtle but it is a profound one.

So true obedience is offered in lots of ways, even in examples like yours for instance of things that may seem inconvenient or “silly” at the time like the underwear or lipstick. Because deep down these are not violating and prostituting you by forcing you to do something your body truly says no to, they are simply pleasing the one you love.

Sometimes expressing subjects like this is a real challenge, so I’m hoping more personal examples like this might help.

“He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust” (Psalms 91:4)

I never said obedience had to be harmful to the person doing the obeying, but to me obedience implies that you do what you are told to do even if you aren't pleased with it. This goes way beyond wearing silly underwear or lipstick because your husband likes it. Maybe you're happy to take the orders because the cage is a gilded one, but it's not the same as what I hear Louise saying.

To me, that's not obedience, it's just being cooperative and pleasant and getting along. Unless we're talking about the women that Dr. Laura likes to use to characterize all of us females...the selfish harpies who would never think of doing anything to accommodate their husbands...I can't see why it wouldn't just be simple getting along to do what pleases one's partner, especially if it is no skin off your teeth.

If that's being obedient and taken in hand, then every woman who is the least bit pleasant and kind to her husband is "taken in hand" and I think that waters down the concept tremendously.

"Pat"

Thank you for saying you enjoyed my 'Letting yourself go' thread, it is true that I get pleasure out of obeying my hsuband in a lot of things, but the important thing for me is that I have freedom of choice in the matter. The thing about obeying and serving is that, in the past, these things were expected of women, whether they liked it or not. The modern society we live in now gives us freedom of choice. I don't have to obey my husband if I don't want to, but I do want to. If I didn't, I needn't. This is why I dont have any nostalgia for the 'good old days', because I think these are the good old days now.

There are things I have to do that I don't particularly want to, but I'd have to do those things, to a certain extent, even if I wasn't obeying my husband. And the same goes for him. Ideally, he'd like to be able to chuck his job in and spend all day in the workshop doing strange things to bits of metal, but he can't. What I mean is, some things you have to do whether they're within your 'comfort zone' or not.

I think with all this talk about feminine and masucline energy one point is perhaps overlooked. The 'feminine energy', the Yin as they call it, is in the Daoist philosphy that gave birth to the idea, definitely considered not 'complementary', but inferior to the Yang (masculine) energy. I'm reading 'The last Empress' by Keith Laidler at the moment, his biography of the last Empress of China, Yehonala. Last night I read this paragraph, which gave me a new insight into the whole yang and yin thing(it's about the making of eunuchs, the only men apart from the Emperor allowed to live in the Forbidden City):

Maleness was yang, characterised by strength and action: the feminine principle was yin symbolised by weakness and passivity. So it was believed that males deprived of their yang would tend towards yin; they would be forever accomodating and acquiescent and could therefore pose no threat. What they overlooked was another 'fact' of this quintesentially Chinese philosophical system; the association of the yin principle with evil.

That makes the whole 'feminine energy' idea look a lot less appealing to me. 'Feminine energy' implies weakness, passivity, even evil. None of these seem to me desirable qualities. Obeying because you choose to and because it gives you pleasure is one thing, obeying because you are took weak and feeble to do anything else (which is the real meaning of yin and yang)seems a lot less desirable. It totally puts me off the whole 'feminine energy' idea.

I received an unexpected gift today, a cd set called “The Essential Barbara Streisand”, and what immediately jumped out was her singing of Disney’s “Someday My Prince Will Come” from Snow White. I knew it was not a coincidence gift. I played it and it left me in tears.

This experience here has really been teaching me. As it is my first article I was wanting to be really involved in the conversation, following it and jumping in. These are important topics for me. But tonight I noticed just how quickly I had set aside the fairy tale calling inside and had quickly come more and more from my head. Having an academic background, it’s a very old habit. But not necessarily a good one. I know for myself I lose something really precious when I get stuck in analysis.

We all have our own process, mine is led a lot by dreams. And though I had that waitress dream that was underneath the article posted, it was not stand alone. Because I also had kind of a “sister dream” to it a few months later. As the waitress in the first dream I was serving and deeply miserable. In the second dream it was a kind of journey, a rather mythic dream. And in it I saw this ancient Japanese woman humming while she was sweeping in her home. In her and around her, I felt the most profound peace I think I’ve ever felt. She is who woke me up to that focus on the ”glow” mentioned before. I will never forget it. And I long for that so much. I long to “sweep my home” with care and have a wonderful homemade soup simmering on the stove and all of those very domestic sphere sort of things. I just don’t want to have to do them as a waitress/servant, that changes everything. I want to instead be humming like the cherished woman in that sweeping dream and reflect that peace, that glow.

Anyway, taking a pause from the analysis here and sharing some songs from Snow White, from http://www.go2lyrics.com/D/Disney/album33034.html …

SOMEDAY MY PRINCE WILL COME

Someday my prince will come
Someday I ‘ll find my love
And how thrilling that moment will be
When the prince of my dreams comes to me
He’ll whisper I love you
And steal a kiss or two
Though he’s far away I’ll find my love someday
Someday when my dreams come true

Someday I’ll find my love
Someone to call my own
And I know at the moment we meet
my heart will start skipping the beats
Someday we’ll say and do
Things we’ve been longing to
Though he’s far away I’ll find my love someday
Someday when my dreams come true

Someday my prince will come
Someday we’ll meet again
And away to his castle we’ll go
To be happy forever I know
Someday when spring is here
We’ll find our love anew
And the birds will sing and wedding bells will ring
Someday when my dreams come true

WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK

Just whistle while you work
And cheerfully together we can tidy up the place
So hum a merry tune
It won't take long when there's a song to help you set the pace

And as you sweep the room
Imagine that the broom is someone that you love
And soon you'll find you're dancing to the tune
When hearts are high the time will fly so whistle while you work

“He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust” (Psalms 91:4)

Her's a prime example of what I was talking about, people being different from each other. Because while you are moved by 'Snow White', the Disney film that moves me is 'Mulan'. The lyrics of 'Some day my prince will come' leave me cold, whereas the lyrics of 'Be a man'from Mulan go through my head often.

Let's get down to business to defeat the Huns
Did they send me daughters when I asked for sons?
You're the saddest bunch I ever met
But you can bet before we're through
Mister, Ill make a man out of you

Tranquil as a forest but on fire within
Once you find your centre you are sure to win
You're a spineless, pale, pathetic lot
And you haven't got a clue
Somehow I'll make a man out of you

I'm never gonna catch my breath
Say goodbye to those who knew me
Boy, was I a fool in school for cutting gym
This guys' got em scared to death
Hope he doesn't see right through me
Now I really wish that I knew how to swim

(Be a man)
We must be swift as the coursing river
(Be a man)
With all the force of a great typhoon
(Be a man)
With all the strength of a raging fire
Mysterious as the dark side of the moon

Time is racing towards us till the Huns arrive
Heed my every order and you might survive
You're unsuited for the rage of war
So pack up, go home you're through
How could I make a man out of you?

And that's the moment when she's turning away defeated and suddenly she realises how she can use the weights to help her climb the pole, and everyone is gazing up at her as she climbs to the top, and Captain Shang walks out of his tent and sees the arrow at his feet where she's hurled it down. That's my very favourite moment in a Disney movie, almost I think my favourite moment in any movie ever.

And that's what I mean you see. You and I are both women, yet you are inspired by Snow White,and I am inspired by Mulan, two heroines as different as they could possibly be. We cannot be squeezed into the same 'yin' box.

Just a small reflection on the yin and yang area. I do think there is male yin and female yang (those little inner circles), but I think these things support rather than battle male yang and female yin. In other words a woman embracing her female yang aspect is not simply becoming male yang, rather her female yang benefits her female yin. I see female yang as the part that not only receives those inner comfort cues but voices them, and the part that not only receives from the world around her but says something when she then feels something is out of sync. And male yang, when it is complete by having that little circle of male yin inside it underneath, will listen to that voice she expresses. He will want her to be comfortable, and he will also want the world to be a better place.

I believe earth energy by the way is female, as do many others. As women speak, the earth can be heard too, I think many of us feel her pain. And a true yang man will listen to that pain being expressed through the help of his male yin and then act upon it from his male yang. That is what makes a hero. The heroine is “contributing” that voice that is heard, like the princess was when she felt that hidden pea in the princess in the pea. A yin woman is the one who tends to feel those hidden peas that are bringing pain to the world, and a yang man cares about those “peas” being revealed and acts on them.

Louise, your Mulan post has been mulling in the back of my head. When one feels attacked the tendency is amplify one’s self protection, and as a more feminine-energy woman as Allen might put it, I have found myself attacked in every direction in my life for daring to just want to be who I am. So every time I come across a woman “dragon slayer” so to speak (one who idealizes such), or a man who wants one in a woman, in the back of my mind I find myself thinking “Oh great, one more person adding fuel to the attack.” That is, the attack of the “female dragon slayer ideal” (in all its subtle and not so subtle heroic forms) being forced upon me, and others like me, from every direction, when in fact it is soul killing for us. Not that you have personally attacked me, I’m talking about a much broader world sense.

If a “feminine energy woman” was cherished and supported for being who she was (support and cherishing IS the polarity a feminine energy woman truly needs I feel), then deep down I really wouldn’t have a problem with the “female dragon slayers” of the world and the men who are their desired polarity, whatever that would look like for them. In my mind it really is natural to think of things more in terms of the feminine energy woman and the masculine energy man as I see them (such as what I expressed in the yin and yang comments etc). But I know that doesn't necessarily mean there arent also other polarities existing in our archetypal realm as well, like the female dragon slayer and the ____ (you’d be better filling that in), alongside this. And honestly I don’t have a problem with that.

My problem is this. The feminine energy woman is attacked, from every direction, and more so today than ever before. As an upper class woman at least, in many past times I'd have at least had a chance of thriving as a feminine energy woman. Not so today. Even as part of the elite I would still be surrounded today by the attack and judgment of our mainstream ideals. Wherever I look, wherever I turn, I feel attacked just for wanting to be who I am and needing what I need as a feminine energy woman. That’s why Pat Allen’s stuff caught my attention, because she put at least some of that feminine-energy stuff into words and so supported some of it rather than attacking it. Some folks in the Christian world have done the same (though most of them still hold to a female servant image rather than cherishment, and only give lip service to the man as the servant leader). But these small islands of some support are very rare. Overall in the civilized world and all over the media, the “female dragon slayer” type is toted as the ideal and the feminine-energy woman is judged and attacked. More like mutilated. She is called boring, parasitic, not contributing, irresponsible, selfish, immature, I’m sure some might even add “evil” to the list. She is almost under a misguided witchhunt really, trying to burn out every trace of her at every turn by making fun of, devaluing, or maligning her. And I can feel the toll on my body and soul building each day.

It’s taken me YEARS to even realize this was the problem, before that I tried to be the hero type in many subtle ways, over and over, rather than having a hero beside me supporting and cherishing me. And it deeply harmed me, in SO many ways. It was only when a very serious injury hit and forced me to take care of myself and listen to my own body and comfort cues and intuition that I realized I had been betraying the feminine energy based core of who I was all these years---because pretty much everyone around me was betraying it as well and judging or attacking me if didn’t betray it along with them. It really IS soul killing stuff. And barely anyone will talk about it. What is outside the feminist PC ideal is quickly attacked or ridiculed or judged or squashed. I for one cannot live this way, and so I cannot help but speak about it. (One side note: there is a small and generally attacked sub branch of feminism that I feel much truth in, that of “difference feminism”, but most feminists do not consider them part of their group).

So I’m hoping that might lend a little perspective. That I’m not out to attack the “female dragon slayers” of the world. I’m just at the breaking point with seeing myself and other feminine energy type women attacked for just being what we are and needing what we need. Feminine energy woman implies I just mean Allen’s stuff, but really I mean more than that. I mean the stuff I’ve written, which overlaps a lot with her stuff though it’s not just exactly the same. I’ll have to find a new way to say it at some point.

Anyway, I thought that was important to share for perspective.

Ironically, I am drawn to the Samurai very much by the way. Had that song not been about "be a man" but rather "find your center" (the parts of the song like that I loved actually) I would have been drawn to it too probably. I have a huge draw to Japan, and I think martial arts practices have a ton to offer for their centering and their focus and their grace and simplicity. It's the self-denial/self-sacrificing/battle aspect of things I balk at as I think that is heroic. And I do not want to have to betray my feminine energy soul and play the hero, I want him beside me.

I honestly think it is not a good idea to get too hung up on the "women are like this, men are like that" thing. We're all such a mixture of things.

I mean, take me for instance. From a very early age my ambition in life was to be Robin Hood. They were re-running the old Richard Greene tv series and I loved it with a fierce passion that has scarcely ever been equalled in my life since. I went everywhere with a bow and arrow, I wouldn't go out without it, because you never know when you might meet the Sheriff of Nottingham.

When I was about eight years old I saw an episode of the Lone Ranger in which he spanks a woman who has been stirring up trouble of some kind. I was almost as thrilled by this as by Robin Hood, and ever since then the two fantasies have run concurrently in my mind, the one about being Robin Hood, and the one about getting spanked by a strong, attractive man.

The being spanked fantasy has proved much easier to achieve in real life than the Robin Hood one, but still I am always thrilled when I hear about women having daring adventures and doing brave things. In the past, a lot of the women who disguised themselves a men in order to have adventures weren't doing it because of any scarificial impulse, but because they longed for adventure and wider horizons than they could achieve as women.

I despised (and still do) the fairy tales where the goody-goody heroines take any shit that is handed out to them and wait patiently to be rescued by a prince. I particularly despised Cindrella for letting herself be put upon by those horrible stepsisters. I admired the girls who didn't let themselves be put upon. They stood up for themselves, which I think everyone should do, male or female. It's not about sacrafice, as far as I am concerned, but about not letting yourself be kicked around. Which I think is one of Pat Allen's notions, that a woman should not let herself be put upon.

And those feisty heroines I admire usually end up with a handsome prince in the end. My favourite fairy tale, Kate Crackernuts, ends with the words "So the sick son married the well sister, and the well son married the sick sister, and they all lived happy and died happy and never drank out of a dry cappy."

I think that people need to find the sort of life and relationship that suits them without worrying too much about whether they're feminine energy or masculine energy or whatever. Accepting yourself for what you are and others for what they are is the important thing I think.

The stuff in Pat Allen's book that I found most useful is the stuff about negotiating, deciding who does what, and what the 'non negotiables' are etc. If my husband and I had done more talking about those sort of things before we got married (or for that matter before we got divorced) it would have been better for us. And I wholeheartedly agree that a woman should not make herself into a man's servant. And the stuff about 'finding the toad in every prince', about accepting the things you don't like about a person as well as the things you do, that I like very much. All the rigid insistence on men expressing thoughts and women expressing feelings etc I found rather tiresome. My husband has always been much better at me at expressing feelings and emotions (it's one of the many ways in which he does not fit into a typically 'masculine' definition, I've always been much more reserved than him). Once you get hung up on this 'masculine energy/feminine energy' thing, I think it can get to be a bit of a hindrance to being yourself.

Just what do you mean by being attacked by other people? If it bothers you so much what those other people say, why do you hang around them? I can`t choose the kind of people I have to work with, but I can choose the people I want to have contact with privately. And if somebody else wants to judge me I ignore it, it`s nobody's business how I want to lead my life and I wouldn`t tell people exactly what is going on in my home anyhow. I think you should build up enough self-confidence that it shouldn`t bother you. Live your life and try to be happy in what you are doing. It`s as simple as that.

Autumn

Amber that was a really good question you asked, but a big one to answer. For now, I offer a link to an article that talks about the harm of our mainstream values upon those who have a more naturally submissive nature here. Many of the things she speaks of there tie in to the answer to your question. Not all of us are as able to be so detached as to the judgments and impacts from others around us, the more “female yin” one is (or the more vulnerably receptive one is, vs a male yin’s being actively receptive/listening in order to act), the more these things truly do matter because they are more deeply received and felt.

People mean different things by submissive. I don’t agree with all of what the author of this article says, but some of it strongly resonates. Early in the article she sees a natural submissive as yearning to depend on (yes, depend on), and follow the lead of, a man stronger than herself. She then goes on to say:

“In thinking about this, I have come to question the cultural determinants of what is considered the highest good. Here in Western society, we place highest value on independence, on "pull yourself up by the bootstraps", on the lone pioneer, the trailblazer, the less needy and more self sufficient...There is something wrong with believing that such independence is the only good. It is especially wrong for the most relatedness-oriented among us, the submissive female.

Part of the newly aware submissive's task is to separate out the internalized voices of her culture: those voices that tell her she is too needy, too dependent, too focused on the others in her life. Once she can articulate what those voices tell her, she can begin to question not HERSELF, but the validity of those internalized values, using her own yardstick to measure her life, rather than our culture's standard…

(So that later) the healthy submissive accepts herself as she is, knowing that while her culture values independence and self sufficiency, she has strong dependency needs and that there is no inherent "wrongness" about those needs…

The healthy submissive hunger is to be the object of an intense and penetrating understanding. When her nature is understood and she is held in a loving and firm frame, her devotion is almost limitless.”

So maybe you can see why a nature such as this does not find your advice to be as easy as you suggest. A more detached attitude you seem to find so simple is much more of a challenge here.

As a sidenote, I feel an underlying question in your post as to why would I visit or post here if many are not agreeing with me. And there are a few things there. First, I am not the only one who has posted who has gone against some of the grain here, nor do I suspect I’ll be the last, even of these are in the minority. The second reason is because even with the areas I conflict with I still find some very real common ground with the Taken in Hand concept, which is not found in too many places really, and also I find some really excellent articles here, even if there are others I disagree with. And third, because I suspect those with similar personalities and concerns are being silent as it is not their nature to just “have confidence” and go against the grain, as I have been the same way in that silence for years. It is only recently I am gradually finding I want to speak a bit about these things so I am following that right now.

Hope that helps.

I think the big difference between Allen’s feminine energy woman and Tovah’s definition of submissive is that Allen focuses far more on a woman honoring her own comfort cues, which I think it critical. So where Tovah deviates from that I disagree (like some of the stuff you noticed there too), but I do really like her stuff for the admitting of a more naturally dependant and especially sensitive/easily wounded and impactable nature in being submissive, one that needs true protection and strength from her partner. No, I don’t think this is the only way to be submissive, but it IS the way that is under constant judgment and attack from the majority of people, even in the alternative world that websites like this make up. In the mainstream world there is pretty much no opening. And the only way to admit dependency and high vulnerability in the alternative world, and also in the religious world, is usually only to have that along with a focus on being a self-denying and sacrificing servant too. So seldom do you really see a matching of that dependency and vulnerability with still being able to honor one’s self comfort cues and obey from a truly cherished place. And personally I think that match is truly critical. I think that take may another article to really explain though, though I may try later in a comment if I can summarize it more.

I’m not surprised to hear you say you don’t have problems due to being judged. The dragon slayers and resistant women of the world wouldn’t of course, because deep down they are usually not violating the deeper mainstream ideals of female independence and overall strength (even those more cared for feel this need to say they COULD be more independent if they needed to), and likewise they are not violating the mainstream ideal of not admitting deep vulnerability and need (this stuff is just a “want” for them, can almost never be admitted as a need because they are too strong for that of course, and all of this men eat up because it lets them off the hook in many ways). That list is not meant as an attack on you, nor as an assumption that it all even fits you, more that those are the sorts of things I see over and over again touted overtly or subtly by mainstream ideals, things which are truly harmful for some of us to be expected to force ourselves into, and I can’t help but see how that female dragon slayer and resistant woman stuff seems to strongly tie in with it.

The thing is, though, if judgment is so hurtful to a particular type of submissive woman who isn't able to shake off society's supposed judgment of her for being vulnerable and needing protection, then why are so many of the self same women so quick to hand down universal statements about how men and women are supposed to be?

Now, after a lot of articles and discussion, the real issue is coming out...that it's hurtful to you to feel judged for not being a dragon slayer or a resistant woman (whatever that is...I basically saw resistant women as submissive but fiesty and wanting to be subdued before enjoying submission).

But I think if you came out and said, without going into the "men must be servants and leaders, and women must be cherished and obedient" edicts that you stated at the outset as if they were written as an addendum to the Ten Commandments, that you are emotionally vulnerable and want someone to look after you, that you are happy to be cherished and please your man but can't deal with being forced to serve or sacrifice yourself, I think the reactions you would get out in vanilla society would be a lot different.

It's when these ideas are passed off as universal truths that people get their backs up. And that's when you are going to get the judgment of "you're not contributing," or you are "purely ornamental" thrown back at you.

It's possible that the way you present your ideas is what's causing the judgment, rather than some uniform political correctness that the entire rest of society subscribes to.

I've been home since my son was born. I worked for 4 months and will do some temping until a permanent person is hired. They wanted me to take the job and I told them that I couldn't do that because my family needs attention and I can't devote myself to a full time (and overtime) job and still be the wife and mother I want to be.

Guess what? No one judged me for this. Instead they practically stood on their heads trying to accommodate me. They offered to let me come in and leave on my schedule instead of the usual hours. When I told them I'd done too much overtime and had to quit, I was asked to work for them from home. I heard no judgment..in fact I got respect for putting my family first.

If you are hearing judgment and disrespect for the choices you make or for the kind of person you are, re-read your early posts on this thread and see how didactic and overbearing they sound to people who don't share your view that men and women have strictly assigned roles that it is harmful to deviate from. Perhaps you project these attitudes out there in your social contacts, and the judgment you get back is the reaction of people whose feathers you have ruffled.

"Pat"

This desire to be totally submissive and 'cleaving' etc may be a true deep need for you, but that is a personal matter. You have been saying in your comments, as far as I can make out, not just that this is how you are, but that you think it is how all women should be, and that those who are not like that have something wrong with them. You suggested that there's something wrong with me because I prefer Mulan to Snow White. But that's just the way I am. I admire heroines who have the spirit of adventure.

This is the thing that invariably irritates me when I read comments like yours, it's not "this is what I want because this is how I am" it's the "this is how I am therefore this is how all women should be". There's a big difference. There's nothing wrong with you saying that you want to be totally dependent on a man, but there is something wrong, to me, in your assumption that this is how all women should be, and that there's something wrong with those who are not.

I don't think that a man who enjoys a resistant woman is a man lacking in responsibility, there's nothing wrong with a man who enjoys being with a woman with a bit of spirit. I enjoy feeling submissive, but my husband has to put a bit of effort into making me feel that way, and he seems to accept this as being his job. This doesn't seem to me to be indicative of a lack of responsibility, I would say that a 'resistant' woman probably requires a bit more effort to deal with than one who is totally submissive. My husband seems to enjoy me being "submissive but feisty" as Pat puts it. In any case, it's the way I am, and I feel that my way is just as normal and natural for me as the 'cleaving' mode of being submissive is for you.

Actually, I would never assume that anyone would be able to stand up for themselves with a hostile interviewer. I would probably be hopeless at doing this myself. I find it very difficult to make conversation with people, particularly strangers, though I generally find it easier with women than with men. The kind of thing you wanted to talk about, women having different needs from men etc, is not the kind of thing I could ever imagine raising in conversation.

But it's perhaps just because I feel myself to be a rather strange person that I don't feel the need to prove that all other women are like me really, because I know they're not. I think that people who are seized by the missionary zeal to prove that the way they are is the way all women are really, are probably women who have been very used to being considered ultra-normal, and therefore have to prove that their own impulses are the normal ones really.

I could never imagine talking to anyone about my Taken In Hand relationsip because I feel it is personal and private, and I would certainly never assume that because I like it all other women must too. It's something that just seems personal to me.

I feel similar to you, Under His Wing, when you describe that Taken In Hand is more than just a lifestyle, but something that fulfills the core of your being. At the same time, you lost me a bit on the feminine energy-maculine energy stuff. Perhaps there is some great explanation as to why submission satisfies me, but I look at it very simply: Submission fulfills a very deep need in my soul. It fits me, but it certainly isn't for everyone. I applaud anyone who can be introspective and learn what it is that satisfies them, and then act on it.

As for the issue of judgment in the average world, I don't really see it as issue of either acting "naturally" or falsifying behavior. I think there is a gray area there. If I submit to my husband in a public setting, I doubt anyone would notice (unless he spanked me in the middle of the department store.) Most people are so into themselves that I doubt they notice the dynamics of another person's relationship unless it is outrageous.

As for the judgment that you received within the circles of academia, I can understand how devastating that was, but I would not condemn the "outside" world for it. Many professors have warned me about how harsh (yet fulfilling) an academic career can be. I would try to look at it from a positive angle: I would be incensed with the interviewers' questions, but at the same time, I would be grateful that I found out well in advance that I was not a good fit for the department. (I also probably would have bawled my eyes out afterward.)

I appreciate your articles. Even if I don't agree with 100% of the content, I love the different perspectives from "submissive" and "resistant" women alike.

Hopeful

Dear UHW,

Thank you for the reply. The imaginary alien can see that one gender seems to initiate copulation and the other seems to respond.

But how do we (and the alien) know that one gender gave less energy than recieved?

And why? What is one gender saving the energy for? Must this gender measure its energy output and hold back some to ensure that it gives less?

Thanks, RichM

Louise, this has really stayed in my head from your “Standing Up For Myself” comment, “I think that people who are seized by the missionary zeal to prove that the way they are is the way all women are really, are probably women who have been very used to being considered ultra-normal, and therefore have to prove that their own impulses are the normal ones really”, because it is so intensely opposite to my own experience. It is being told at every corner and channel again and again and again that my sort of qualities, the deeper among those same qualities that matter most to me that is, were not normal or worthy anymore, that led to a desire to prove normalcy I suspect. And for some people the effects from other people’s judgments really do cut more deeply I think than for others. Part of it is because of one’s nature to be impacted more or less by that, but part of it is I think something else, which follows.

I know I may or may not be seeing this right, but the way it looks to me this taken in hand stuff is to you is this: That it is private. That where it really affects your life is more just in your private sphere. And so these things, the dynamics and discipline and such between you and your husband, yes those would gain you attack or ridicule by many if you told them, and so because of that, and also because one’s more private life is a private matter, hiding it is just natural. And that since there is at least a bit of support for stay at home mothers (and only mothers, not women without children as well alas) that you might get some flack about it (if you ever do, sounds like not so far) but it would still probably be deal-able. You may be in the minority being something like a stay at home mom, but the odds are good that there will always still at least be some others around you who will either stand behind you or at least just get used to the situation and not make a big deal out of it.

But now comes the deeper stuff. Deep down I think you must know that on the deeper level you are not violating what the mainstream expects of you in the key and charged ways. You still consider yourself strong and independent, and “feisty” and the like, as is idealized. You still despise Cinderella and love Mulan, with all that flows from things such as this (very popular/encouraged choices to make) and the like. So while you do need to hide your more private life, which is meant to be private anyway really, you are not being subtly coerced into hiding your own nature by the judgments blaring at you from every direction. For you it looks like this taken in hand stuff does not include the broader things like the more vulnerable type “traditionally feminine” (still searching for a good phrase there) sorts of personal qualities that are so under attack everywhere (ie the opposite of the things listed above etc).

So of course this taken in hand stuff would not affect your life in the outside world so much. For me however, it is about more than just the relationship itself. It is also about embracing what I consider my deeper feminine qualities that the world right now in general seems to despise at every corner. And so it is not enough for me to just embrace those behind closed doors and play-act my personality in the world (I’m not saying you are play acting, but for me, since I am so at odds with the deeper personality trait norms the world expects right now, I WOULD need to play act to not get attacked and judged as a rule). And that reminds me of someone who is miserable doing a job she hates out in the world where she needs to pretend she is stronger and tougher and more left brained or whatever it is than she really is and such acting (type falsifying) drains her body and soul, and then she supposedly is able to just poof leave that behind when she comes home. I couldn’t do that, I can’t break up my life like that and put on this huge acting job in one place and then suddenly switch gears when I get home, it just doesn’t work for me. I need to be in what I consider my female energy in my life in general, not just at home.

This does NOT mean however that I hand my surrender to everyone or am “naturally submissive” to everyone of course, to me that is a whole other level of things which IS reserved just for my partner because he is the one who can cherish and draw this out of me, and also to me this deeper level can only happen with cleaving anyway. So I guess I see two layers to this taken in hand thing, and for you it is just your relationship/intimate surrender layer I think, for me it is that but also the more general reclaiming of what I see as the more deeply female traits I have had to suppress to avoid judgment and attack in the world. Because to me an amplification of a woman’s female essence and a man’s male essence is what Taken in Hand is all about really, and this deeply affects one’s relationship of course but it seems very bizarre to just freeze it and stop there only. One’s female energy is not just part of one’s relationships. One’s SURRENDER is really just part of ones relationships of course (and one spirituality I would add), but that is only part of a reclaiming of female energy. For me this reclaiming is a package deal, it isn’t just the relationship part, I can’t just box it up like that. Only reclaiming my female core only in my relationships to me is like only reclaiming a part of my soul. A very big part granted, but it still leaves one fragmented if one still has to deny that core in the rest of one’s life.

The other thing I’d like to mention can be best illustrated by your draw to Robin Hood for example. Ironically I loved dressing up as Robin Hood as a kid too, and would keep the costume in view in my closet all the time because it gave me this happy rush. But for you this Robin Hood stuff was obviously a much deeper thing, a rather core and precious thing from the sound of it. And you may or may not have had support for this from those immediately around you. Maybe you were told you were even a bit of a freak for it, I don’t know. BUT, and this is huge “but”, even if those in your immediate circle attacked or judged you, still there was underlying culture around you that would have embraced or at least not attacked what you were doing (I’m guessing England is not too far off from the US in this), and deep down you had to have sensed that. And that gives one a subtle but real sense of safety, and confidence, even if those in their immediate circle would not approve. It is very easy to think that cultural and political etc opinion doesn’t matter when in the more important character trait type things it is not really affecting you. Once you run counter to it in the deeper key things it is most against (ie not just the superficial stuff but the personal traits expectations/judgments), I think one starts to see things differently, and be impacted differently.

So now let me compare this to my own experience. I didn’t initially plan to get into this much personal stuff, but I’m realizing abstraction has not been helping things and maybe personal is easier to understand or not feel as judging etc. So here was how things were for me growing up. I didn’t fit a more traditional stereotype exactly either really. Growing up I spent most of my free time outdoors climbing trees and gazing out into the horizon wanting to see the world, and going off on long walks in nature, and sneaking my rocks and leaves and treasures “from the wild” into the house because my mom was paranoid of germs, and hanging out with my cat and such. I was not really wanting to be in the kitchen with my mom (although that may have been because she tended to shoo me out, that was her zone and she didn’t really like sharing it). And I had zero interest in the homekeeping stuff too, I wasn’t the sort who loved to follow mom and learn there, I just did my chores quick as I could and ran off to other things. (Though I’m not sure if that may have been because being so overburdened and working so much herself that she exuded such tension and stress around her when she did these things that I naturally veered away.) And I hated with a passion that my mom wanted to dress me in fragile pretty little clothes that she would only get upset that I tore and dirtied with my frequent little adventures out in nature.

Nor was I a cherished Daddy’s girl (well this part is a sore point), instead I was expected to be his intellectual battle buddy rather than him cherishing what I felt, and also expected to be self supporting in so many ways (he was definitely not the provide or protect type), not to mention I was sexually abused by him (talk about not being cherished, it’s I’m sure part of why cherishing is such a charged area for me). But with the more previous paragraph stuff especially, what I am trying to show is that I was not your typical girly girl in these ways. Nor when I grew up. I never did understand the desire to wear makeup or style one’s hair or engage in the latest gossip etc, and always veered away from those things for example, the first two felt/feel objectifying to me and the last one just mean.

But in other ways I was more that feminine type that would have been more embraced in some of the times past. I strongly cherished my dolls and fairy toys and the like for example and gave them a great deal of focus growing up. And for less intense things such as this I never felt deeply attacked for that sort of girly girl stuff really. I think deep down perhaps I knew it wasn’t seen by others to be as “cool” as the interests of some of my more trendy and sporty acquaintances who were more like those they showed in the movies and books so popular, and my best friend and I in grade school were considered a bit freakish really because we were just SO into the doll collecting and fairy stuff even past the age it was the norm, but that was all deal-able. And with this same friend, together we both kept trying to get ourselves out of PE (we both hated sports) by proving that we were going to rather intensive ballet classes after school (pretty uncool seen we knew, the popular girls were into sports). And I didn’t mind in the least being thought strange in ways like this, it actually gave me a bit of a rush inside I think, made me feel kind of special and unique.

And the point is, in all this stuff above, both the ways here I matched a more traditional stereotype and the ways I didn’t, they are on a less important/more superficial level, the judgments either way don’t really hit as deep there was my experience, so those sort of things aren’t such a big deal. Also the pressure and expectation is not as coercive or impacting I found there either.

But not so when it came to the deeper “female classic type stuff” being attacked (in next paragraph), this was more about personality traits and who I was at my core and so judgments and expectations here harmed much more deeply. And just as important, it was in these deeper areas where I knew I was pretty much on my own---the PC etc mainstream was firmly against and judging me in these following things, and so I had the very opposite of a hidden confidence from that subtle mainstream support, it was more a fear I had instead, and I think a deserved one. When someone attacks you in your personal sphere and you know there are potentially others elsewhere who would hold you up because the culture is on your side more, well it really does give you this inner subtle confidence so you can be more thick skinned about those deeper judgments and attacks from those around you in your circle. But believe me, being attacked for who you are growing up while deep down knowing that the culture at large would just back that up, it makes things have far more impact.

So some examples. Though I could be downright silly with the few I trusted, I was otherwise very shy around most people (as it sounds maybe you can be too?), and in my case the effect of the judgment of that around me was so strong that I quickly learned to try and swallow that and try and pretend outwardness and confidence I didn’t have (your feisty heroine ideal and the like, touted by the mainstream), outwardness and confidence the world around me idealized as it harshly judged my more inwardness, plus that inwardness was attacked so creating a shell was necessary. It may also be partly a personality trait to tend to adapt like that, one that can maybe be fine tuned to be more healing later (I’m trying to do that with this whole not being a servant focus I think). Anyway, I adapted then. Adapting in these sorts of deeper areas was what was strongly being called for around me, and it was done as much as I was able to I think, and it was much to my harm.

As another example, I usually had tears start in my eyes if someone even looked at me the wrong way because I was just particularly sensitive in that sort of way by nature, and that was so harshly judged that I had to harm myself by shutting that off and becoming more cold and detached because, for one thing, I was always so often and so negatively being told I was “too sensitive”. My grandmother for example used to tell me all the time I was just like the princess and the pea ( a favorite tale of mine even then) and to her that was a huge insult, this high sensitivity was seen as just plain wrong (I think that’s why I loved Allen’s embracing that tale so much, it was healing). And the culture around me was definitely backing this judgment up and echoing this back to me from every corner, they touted everyday women and heroines alike who were tough enough to swallow that “immature” or “inferior” sensitivity and vulnerability too (in favor of toughness and bravery). There were/are two pushed choices for women out there as I see it: be a strong confident and heroic type armed and ready on whatever level; or be self sacrificing and self denying in favor of honoring the needs and feelings of others by putting your own comfort cues on the back burner. And underneath I think they are really just two variations on exactly the same thing.

Backing up, my body was especially sensitive as well by nature, I would naturally get unusually impacted by scent and sound that others around me could tolerate quite easily, and I think I had chemical sensitivity even back then too but it was ignored. My body knew that the smoking and hairspray and perfume and the like, not to mention the fighting and alcoholism, all around me in my home growing up, were harmful. But when I heeded those comfort cues and said something I was attacked as “too sensitive” or “faking it”. My body reacted the only way it could by getting ill a lot to physically and emotionally deal with things, and childhood migraines, and ulcers, stuff that not only affected my well being then but in the future.

And I was extremely I/introverted (I’ve scored a full 100% on introversion each and every time I’ve taken the Myers Briggs test) as mentioned above, along with strongly N and F scores and borderline J (these make a very inward feeling based contemplative and peace needing combination in general, while at the same time needing deep bonding in relationships), but I had to squash that a lot to push myself through detached yet social (the worst combination for me) and competitive and left brain oriented academic achievement (I had to maintain scholarships, school was the only way out I saw from a chaotic family life) and also to work afterwards.

And these things were definitely encouraged around me intensely, to put it mildly. A more vulnerable nature, or also a more feeling oriented etc nature, was/is seen as immature or inferior; and a desire to not be out in the work world would have been seen (then as in now) as selfish or immature or inferior or even immoral (with the exception of the at least marginal acceptance of a stay at home mom, but I do not have children). And it was all extremely harmful for me to be so pretending less impactibilty/vulnerability/needs, falsely outward and imparting and “pushing myself” and “putting myself out there” like that, and to pretend a strength in these ways that I just didn’t have (but “SHOULD have had to be worth anything” I was told, that was the hardest damage, being told that at every corner) when my body told me no over and over again, and over and over again I had to betray that inner voice. It deeply took its toll. I felt, in a word, prostituted. And I’m not saying that lightly.

There are just SO many hidden assumptions and judgments we accept as gospel now and they are typically presented as simply truth, and it truly does have a very harmful impact on folks like me who do not at all fit that mold. Not fitting the mold in the superficial stuff is not a big deal, but being judged and attacked in these deeper ways is a different story. And the problem is it’s not ADMITTED as a belief/mold for women at all, it is considered just a given as correct because it has been repeated so often now that so many have just assumed its true when really these are just beliefs and judgments. And as I see it it is definitely the more traditional female type qualities that have been judged thus—for a woman anyway, I see men being given permission for effeminacy all the time. So for someone like me who does really have many of these more “traditional type female qualities” by nature that are judged so intensely, it truly is a real issue.

There is this hidden judgment for example that a woman cannot actually need and love if she is really loving, that “real love”/”mature love” is only based on that “superior” state of want, and so if she needs rather than merely just wants she is not really loving. That is a big one, with many facets to it, and it is definitely a rather PC idea (much of the popular self help stuff out there and the PC to me are intimately connected in shared ideals, though it took me years to see that).

Connected, there is also the judgment that a woman being active is better than passive (that really IS a judgment, not a given truth), and that being strong is the only good way for her to be, that a woman’s weakness is inferior or immoral. Weakness etc being a bad thing is definitely just a judgment, the other side of that is a higher receptivity and vulnerability and intuitive focus as well, which are sacred things. But of course those are judged as wrong too, except where they fall into a female servant capacity (when they honor her own comfort cues on the other hand they are judged).

And many other judgments spin off of this, such as a woman’s need for a hero or rescue or cherishing is wrong, or that her confidence and standing up for herself or battling things in the world (being in a work environment is an aspect of that too) should just be an expected given and that those women who can’t are inferior (God forbid we should call it the sensitivity and sacred vulnerability it might really be, because that would deserve care and protection and we can’t have that).

And there is also the judgment that the same standards and ideals should apply to both male and female energy rather than acknowledging difference and polarity (that one is HUGE).

These things really are just judgments and beliefs, and very harmful ones I feel, but they are NOT presented that way, they are assumed just automaticaly “correct” (like the “politically correct” title implies) and this unspoken assumption and judgment-- judgment that is, worse yet, just assumed as truth ---really DOES come across to those it attacks. And people come from these judgments all the time without even knowing it because they don’t even see these things as judgments, like I have experienced in many of the posts on this thread for example. And these harmful judgments are NOT just a given.

The reason I look at certain times past (certain, not all) and not just the present is that in some of the times and places past, the ideal (ideals really do impact, manifested widespreadly then or not) truly was that a woman’s sensitivity/impactabilty/needs/higher vulnerability/softness and the like were rather than being judged as inferior etc actually truly treasured instead, treasured enough to be actually cared for and protected. I do not see the ideals of today treasuring female energy in the least little bit in these ways, but rather just using it. And that is the female servant to me. To me the true test of how a woman is treasured is how she is protected and cherished.

Anyway, it was only after the serious neck injury mentioned in another post that I started looking at my life and really realizing the true impact that this denial of my deeper female energy was having. And even after realizing the problem, it took a lot to even start turning it around. It took me years to feel safe to cry again after having to clamp down on that so much, years to listen to my body and comfort cues and intuition again when I had learned to clamp down on those too, and I still have a hard time for example writing from feeling after clamping down on that so long.

It also took years to be able to let my body relax enough to sleep more than a few hours (one of the other effects of all this “type falsifying” was my body was so stressed that often I slept only about three hours a night as my body did not feel safe enough to relax enough to go deeper). I also only have slowly learned to stop apologizing for my introversion and actually embrace it, and have slowly been learning to stop pretending I am so “strong” and to stop judging myself for not being so. And very very slowly I have been learning to finally admit the deepest part---without judging myself for it anymore---that what I deep down truly needed and wanted all that time, and still do, is the classic “fairy tale” sort of things I’d over and over again been told were immature or inferior or wrong, things that I see as the deeper underpinnings of this taken in hand type stuff really, which is the hero and heroine in a man and a woman, an amplification of ones male and female energy respectively.

So you see, for me it is much bigger than just a relationship thing, it is that of course but it is also far more. And also this “desire to be seen as normal” is not just some tiny little thing I can brush off. And I also can’t help but think that there must be others in a similar boat who are naturally silent about this sort of thing like I was before. Well, I still am silent about it in most my life actually, its very difficult for me to be otherwise at this point, the only little safe avenues are writing things like this. I think it should say something when a forum that started off really attacking my post still feels like a comparatively safe space to talk about this deeper stuff than the world at large. And I’m not talking just about the private life part which of course is more in smaller places like this, I’m instead also talking about the more generic parts of this thread. That’s how bad it is out there for those that go against the grain of these deeper PC etc ideals, and those that don’t go against the grain in these more core ways usually cannot see it. So that is my attempt to be more understood here.

I do want to say something else though. I really do feel badly if I’ve been hurtful in any way, such as what you were saying about my talking of Mulan. I didn’t realize what I said had a harmful effect, and I really feel bad about that, and any other things that may have been hurtful.

Just like I imagine you probably didn’t realize just what you were putting across when you told me for example that the snow white song I posted left you cold and how you “particularly despised Cinderella for letting herself be put upon by those horrible stepsisters. I admired the girls who didn't let themselves be put upon. They stood up for themselves, which I think everyone should do, male or female” (I heard: those that dream of rescue or being swept away or need a hero stronger than themselves ---rather than forcing themselves to be that hero instead by battling things on their own--- well they must be pathetic). And that the problem with words like 'feminine energy' was that it “implies weakness, passivity” (I heard: those qualities are baaaad, one must be strong and active oriented to be worth anything). And that it was just fine for you to embrace some of Pat Allen’s stuff and reject other parts but when I did so your big concern was that I was not following all her stuff. And that my view of feminine energy was to you “parasitic” and being like “a fluffy toy cat or something”.

When we get past all that though, I still think there is some real common ground. I had written this stuff before I read your recent yahoo comment where you express the very opposite ("I don't recognise anything of myself in the stuff that Under His Wing writes..."), but I'm exploring this anyway as despite our key differences I really do still sense some common ground. I’m drawn to where you said for example this:

“I wouldn't actually mind all that much if my husband was to leave the running of the house to me, so long as he was satisfied with the way I ran it. If he was content with the quality of my housework, and if he would eat food the way I cooked it, that would be all right with me…”

And it would be alright with me as well. Because then I would not be being a servant who had to ignore what my body was telling me, I would be cherished there.

I also agree with so much of what you have said on the “letting myself go” issue in both here and the taken in hand yahoo group. In the latter you said for example, “I like to please my man, but I don't think I'd like it if I was continually having to do things that are against my own natural inclinations…”.

And that sort of thing is very much under what I am saying as well with being allowed to take seriously one’s comfort cues rather than becoming his servant.

And then there is Laura Ingalls Wilder, who we are both drawn to even though we have a different lens seeing her in ways. But I think we can both see that she was not a servant but rather cherished. And can both strongly relate to her wanting to see the world and have adventures. It’s just that my sense of adventure and your sense of adventure are different perhaps, shown in the different types of fairy tales etc we are drawn to. If I’m learning anything from this exchange, maybe it’s that if hidden judgments can be acknowledged and released on both sides, then even very different people can find a lot more common ground or understanding than they think. Which could definitely be a good thing in life, taken in hand or not.

The other common ground area is probably being “uppity” as you put it before in your broader aspects comment; I think I share that, but I think that is very different from the whole “resistant woman” thing, which to me crosses this subtle line into servitude. I am continuing that thought in another comment though later, as this one got long. The distinction between being uppity (needing your surrender drawn out) rather than what I am sensing underneath the resistant woman stuff, is another real difference/fine line I’m finding myself exploring in looking at this serving vs obeying stuff, but more later…

Although this entire thread is intriguing and speaks loudly and broadly to many taken in hand/BDSM-based relationship issues, I believe it only accurate to point out that Under His Wing's general point of view seems to be one formed by an obvious faith and belief in what appears to be a Christian-labeled religious theme/organization/lifestyle/church/viewpoint/fill in the blank. I am reminded once again to "beware any fundamentalism" and although I am not presuming the written viewpoint to be from a fundamental POV, I do encourage all readers to take into account the author's and their own POVs and for all of us to remember we are free to choose to live with or without religion. These are scary days in the world and it's getting more and more challenging to rely on our instincts, research, analysis and smarts in an increasingly faith-based environment.

That said, one thing the essay really brought up for me (recently removed from a four-year lifestyle d/s relationship) is an on-going discussion between my exdom and myself that went something like this: he became less and less interested in initiating "play" and leadership and cherishing because he did not want to be in the role of "servant". This compromised his general belief that once the sub started expecting and enjoying the interplay, he was no longer in control. This unwavering and non-growth-oriented MO ultimately led to my great emotional, spiritual, mental and physical discontent; not because there wasn't enough "healthy" physical and emotional and psychological "play" (there wasn't, it's true), but because I was no longer cherished. I agree with Taken's idea that, at least in my alpha-female-sub ways, to be cherished and to trust that I am cherished, is the single most important key to giving myself to an alpha-male-dom. Without the cherishment (new word, eh?), I am just giving, giving, serving and giving and serving some more and, as I learned, I ended up empty. (But full of smarts and insight!)

Thanks for the provocation.

Well, Mulan is actually a 'classic' fairy tale, or at any rate legend, her story has been told in China for hundreds of years.

I really don't understand this business of a woman not being expected to have any responsibilites, I honestly can't see why you think it is a good thing that a woman should be expected to be a sort of passive creature who need not do anything at all except what she is 'comfortable' with, it's more like being a jellyfish than a human being. Real human beings have responisbilities, and real human beings, whether male or female, sometimes have to do things just because they need to be done, rather than because they are 'comfortable' things to do.

And nowhere at all in Pat Allen's books is there any indication that she believes a woman should have no responsiblities at all. She says (very sensibly) that there are no gender specific tasks, and that chores should be shared according to each couple's preferences. This seems extremely sensible to me, and I can't see anywhere in her books that she says that a woman should not have any responsibilities. Her belief that a woman should give less than she receives appeals to my own very un-self-sacrificing nature, but I don't believe that is the same as saying that a woman has no need to contribute anything to a relationship, because I don't think she believes that, and I certainly don't. I'm a pretty selfish person, but I'm not THAT selfish! And she doesn't say that a woman should give NOTHING back.

Mulan appeals to me not because she is self-sacrificing, but because she has exciting adventures, and saves the day, and incidentally gets gorgeous hunk Captain Shang as well ("whoopee, sign me up for the next war!" as Mulan's grandma remarks when she sees him). This is to me the opposite of self-sacrificing. It's Cinderella and Snow White who are the self-sacrificing ones, slaving away and doing whatever they're told by anyone who comes along. Snow White is so dumb that she lets the evil stepmother trick her not once but THREE times, how stupid is that? She's quite hopeless.

And those Madonna paintings are very lovely, but they don't show the Madonna at two o'clock in the morning when the baby is teething and crying and she's dead tired and can't get him to go back to sleep, or when he's just thrown up all over her beautiful blue robe, or when she's changing his poohey nappies (no disposables in those days). That's what motherhood is all about too, you know, the moments of serenity are interspersed with long periods of having to get on with messy, smelly, disagreeable and tirings stuff, whether it's 'comfortable' or not.

(Reply is to Louise)

Wow. Snow White is a true heroine to me in so many precious ways, and I need to send back to you your judgments on her, calling someone stupid or hopeless is just plain mean. With Mulan, she obviously appeals to your own comfort cues, so that works for you, and I hope you find your own precious things there. For me, Mulan would be being very self sacrificing and harmful, but Snow White is the opposite. My draw to Snow White is the 1937 Disney version, as I think Walt in this movie reached a deeper fairy tale archetypal place than even the earlier Snow White tales, and he brought together not only elements from Snow White but from Vasilissa and her helping doll (reflected by the animals), and elements of Sleeping Beauty and her Prince’s life giving kiss, and even biblical elements reflecting Rachael and Rebecca’s meeting their true loves at a well.

Your criticism of what happened with her stepmother to me echoes what happened in Genesis, I don’t think an evil person standing there with an apple intent on harm in both is mere coincidence really. Snow White, like Eve, was unprotected in the face of evil. And she was vulnerable by being female yin centered and should have had male yang centered energy around her protecting her, yin needs yang. Female yin is NOT inferior because of this vulnerability and needing this protection, it is simply an extension of her deep receptivity, and is part and parcel with the very same vulnerability that leads to so much beneficial receptivity as well, they are a package deal. The fault in Genesis did not lie with Eve, nor with Snow White in this tale. Biblically, Christ was said to be a kind of “new Adam” and thus he helped heal the harm of the past, and his self sacrifice was a form of true rescue really. In Snow White, the healing of the past comes in the form of her Prince’s true rescue of her. I find that all incredibly healing.

And Snow White is no servant underneath it all, she manages to stay comfortable and “in her skin” overall. Even when oppressed in her home growing up she focuses on how she is surrounded by loving animals and receives help from them, and she also gravitates towards the well (aka Racheal and Rebecca) and never stops honoring her feelings and wishing, never stops believing she is worth those wishes coming true, and her wishes do come true. She wishes to hear her true love sing to her and suddenly he has hopped over the fence and is over by the well doing so. She wishes for finding a home in the forest once she is there, and that manifests too as the animals bring her there. Once in the cottage her prayer that night is “Please bless these Little men who have been so good to me, and please make my dreams come true”. And later even in her death like sleep her wish for rescue, and a happily ever after, end up soon coming true. That is powerful stuff, being so in tune and receptive that your wishes come true, being able to receive like that. It’s “passive yin power” extraordinaire in my book. And though it’s all outwardly in fantasy form in the movie, I don’t think the deeper elements in play behind them are mere fantasy at all. Toughening up and hardening and actively ”standing up for one’s self” or battling things is not the only solution, one can also pray and soften inside and open to receiving help as well, and this is just as healing and honorable.

What’s more, when it comes to what she gives things are on Snow White’s terms/comfort cues really. She immediately enlists the animals to help her with her cleaning, and it is done not with someone over her shoulder but on her own terms and timing, and so it is not mere drudgery but deep down it feels right to her, she is even singing and humming (Whistle While You Work is still one of my most favorite songs). And with her gentle but firm insistence, the dwarves must change their lifestyle to one of politeness and order and cleanliness before they will get her yummy cooking from her (reminds me of how Rabbi Shmuley Boteach talks of female energy being what inspires men to become gentleman, and how critical that is). And the reason those dwarves shift like that is “to please the princess”, they want her to be happy and comfortable. At bedtime they give her their room with all their beds in it and sleep in the living room instead, to respect her privacy. And they have her there fully knowing that they are taking on danger since the queen is after her, and that’s heroic. And they provide for her.

Surrender by the way to me really includes all these above things happening, they do not negate it but rather the opposite. Because surrender to me admits vulnerability and need like that and so isn’t afraid to expect shifting will happen to meet these needs either. Surrender involves being able to truly depend on that in my book. Without that, and without ones needs and feelings being cherished, I would definitely feel a servant instead. I remember one example you gave somewhere else where a woman in older times (can’t remember the era exactly) was telling her husband what she needed in the house a lot and such in her letters and you were saying how unsubmissive that “list of demands” was. But I couldn’t disagree more. She was voicing what she needed, and to me submissiveness admits need, and a partner’s ignoring or attacking rather than meeting those needs leads to female servitude. To me at the core of submissiveness is admitting vulnerability and need. And vulnerability and need should be honored and protected, not ignored or attacked or taken advantage of, that is the key.

So back to Snow White, most of all her needs and feelings really do seem to matter as real priority to the dwarves (and I’m assuming later with her prince). She definitely loves and nurtures them in her own healing way and it really benefits them, but under all that the dwarves want her comfortable and happy and thus respect her wishes for peace and order and such, and they are cherishing her in their own way. Even the animals cherish her feelings, gathering around her in the forest when she is afraid and she has the courage to admit her vulnerability there and cry. And the hunter cherished her feelings too, sparing her from the queens orders of killing her. To me being cherished and having one’s deeper feelings and needs honored rather than having to “buck up” and bury them is how I as a woman feel loved. Maybe not every woman needs that cherishing (more on that in a bit), but I know I do, it is at the very center of things. The problem for me with Mulan is I don’t feel her being cherished one little bit so that would be soul killing for me, it would be being unloved. But you obviously do find something there that moves you, so it nourishes you in the way you need. Maybe not every one needs cherishing to be loved, I’ve been thinking about that. But for some of us it is a very true and valid need.

Because the thing is, I am realizing more and more that we have very different comfort cues. That has been one hidden lesson I’ve found in all this, that different women can be strongly in their own female energy and comfort cues and the result of what they desire from that place can be very different, because their comfort cues are so different. That’s what I’ve concluded on the whole uppityness/ resistant woman thing now too. For me being a resistant woman would be utterly soul killing because it is not about being cherished at all, and I could fill pages with why I see that. But uppityness, what that is about is only surrendering on your own terms, by having your surrender actually drawn from you by your partner in whatever way you need that. Folks like DeeMarie for example need that through violence and machismo and bullying type behavior which would do the very opposite of draw my surrender it would harm me instead, but they work for her. And I’m sure you need your own different things drawing forth your surrender too. But the point is that we are all being “uppity” and in our female energy and honoring our comfort cues by not settling for less than what we all need to have our surrender drawn forth. And what I need, and I’m sure some others need as well whether they are silent or not, is true and manifest cherishing.

It’s kind of strange to have to be a broken record with some of this stuff, but I’m finding the need to repeat a few things. One is that I never said I agreed with all of what Pat Allen says, so I am asking you yet again to please stop comparing me to her. Many of the thoughts on all this are purely my own, even though much of her stuff overlaps. But it is not simply the same thing. That Allen would not agree with all of what I write is totally irrelevant. She wouldn’t agree with all of what you write either. Yet we both have found some real value in parts of her work and incorporated some of her ideas. And that is all it is.

Another thing to mention again is that by being comfortable I mean this in a deeper sense. Yes of course there are times the baby is crying etc, but still overall deep down a woman should be comfortable, and gaining more than losing from the situation, being nourished by it underneath, like what shines through in those Madonna paintings for example. If that is not the deeper feeling deep down overall, one of inner contentment (or whatever is one’s “rightness” signal, for me it’s contentment), then I think that is a signal something is wrong in the situation. Different things may give different women contentment etc but an overall feeling of that should be there I feel if one is in a situation true to her female energy.

As I’m sure it is with you. Because even with those moments of tantrums or chores or whatever that are part of the package I’ll bet you are overall happy with your life and wouldn’t want to lose it. And I’ll bet what you feel is actually honored by your partner, I can’t picture you truly doing something that deep down violated your comfort cues. Again, following your comfort cues doesn’t mean that every little thing is comfortable but that deep down overall things truly do feel right to you, more nourishing than not, and giving to you more than they take from you overall so that you can still remain in your own form of female receptive energy. But you wouldn’t feel that way if you were a servant, you wouldn’t be able to expect that contentment etc deep down and be able to listen to your comfort cues and shift things according to your needs when you can. You would instead just be expected to ignore those comfort cues and buck up and serve whether it felt right to you overall or not, so you’d have to clamp down on your very own female receptive core much to your harm---- because your feelings and needs would not truly come first to your partner.

And the third repeated thing is this. That while it is shoved down our throats at every turn, still not everybody just buys into the judgment we’ve been handed that what is active and imparting and more “male yang” is all that is “adult” and valuable and worth anything. But I feel you very strongly coming from this assumption underneath it all. Just like the later Taoists may have, but that was not overall in their much older “the way of water” stuff as I understand it, yin was seen as actually superior there. Not that I think that, I think yin and yang are a perfect complement and what BOTH offer are “contributing” and “valuable” in their own equally important but very *different* ways---not just male yang type active and duty oriented sort of imparting being valuable (as is idealized). To understand the fullness of what I am saying with female and male yin and male and female yang, you might want to see http://www.takeninhand.com/node/1177#comment-8784 ,
http://www.takeninhand.com/node/1177#comment-8790 and http://www.takeninhand.com/node/1177#comment-8791. One thing I’d like to mention from there: That I do think there is male yin and female yang (those little inner circles), but I think these things support rather than battle male yang and female yin. In other words a woman embracing her female yang aspect is not simply becoming male yang, rather her female yang benefits her female yin.

So this also connects with the area of giving and giving back. I never have said a woman in her female energy “gives nothing” but that she “gives back” IN A FEMALE ENERGY WAY. Another way to see this is that she gives back through her female yang which SUPPORTS her female yin rather than trashes it, by being true to her comfort cues and vulnerable/receptive nature----not by having to be male yang which is more the servant leader and so puts another’s comfort cues first and actively serves and also really risks, which I think are not true to feminine energy but rather masculine energy, those are heroic things. The stuff of life can still get done without betraying one’s female energy. I think a woman can still “whistle while she works” and be true to her female core---but only if her feelings and needs there are truly cared about and priority; not when she is expected to pretend less vulnerably and need, and expected to “harden” and “buck up” despite what she is feeling or needing, and thus “serve”. And again I am talking about a deeper overall sense of comfort, not that every little thing is comfortable but that overall there really is a feeling of ful-fill-ment deep down, a true receiving happening, so that a woman can still be true to female energy’s receptive nature. You still give back from this place, but that giving back now becomes healing rather than harmful, feminine energy rather than servanthood. And to me that still makes ALL the difference in the world.

Maybe you are more comfortable with how Pat Allen talks of male and female energies to be more accepted by the mainstream , that this sort of thing is what would only apply to a “feminine energy woman”, as if that is just an “option” for women, albeit a most beneficial one. And though I use that feminine energy woman phrase I actually see things in a more archetypal way. I think what a woman’s comfort cues might lead her to may vary (mine led me to Snow White, yours to Mulan, DeeMarie’s to wanting a rather violent partner for example), but I still think that female energy is still comfort cues based, it is just that different women have different sorts of comfort cues, through listening inside with female receptivity they find they are ful-filled by different things. So I think every woman is a “feminine energy woman” deep down really just by nature of being female, though the degrees and ways she will embrace and express that may vary. This is not the same thing as just thinking gender makes no difference and non-physical gender differences are merely some sort of socially construed thing rather having some truly sacred underpinnings. We are not just bodies but also souls, and I think it is not just our bodies but also our souls that have gender. My most loved quote on male and female energy is by a favorite author John Eldredge, from his book “Wild at Heart”:

"(In describing God’s invitation to us:) Come, and live out what I meant you to be. Permit me to bypass the entire nature vs. nurture “is gender really built-in?” debate with one simple observation: Men and women are made in the image of God as men or as women. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”(Genesis 1:27). Now, we know God doesn’t have a body, so the uniqueness can’t be physical. Gender simply must be at the level of the soul, in the deep and everlasting places within us. God doesn’t make generic people; he makes something very distinct – a man or a woman. In other words, there is a masculine heart and a feminine heart, which in their own ways reflect or portray to the world God’s heart."

And I still do feel it has very real impact when what a woman’s particular comfort cues lead her to/what she needs, when that is demonized or trivialized by those around her, such as it is for those of us women who really do need actual cherishing, not just in words but in actual providing and protecting. And there is no getting around the fact that in ideals at least (and ideals DO impact greatly and are aspired to in a time if not always manifested) this WAS more honored in some times past, and also that it IS overall attacked now especially strongly (and I feel very harmfully!).

Anyway, I know you get a lot of ful-fill-ment out of argument and battling, you have expressed that before. I don’t. But still, our different views have been valuable to learn from and refine and expand inner beliefs, so I’m thankful for that.

I think you are suffering from some confusion about my preference for Mulan over Snow White. I don't admire Mulan because I think she is like me, but precisely because she is everything that I am not. She is brave and adventurous and quick-witted and she doesn't give up in the face of a challenge. She is all the things I would like to be, but am not.

I still think Snow White is pretty dumb to let herself be taked into eating that apple by an obviously sinister old woman. But she and Eve both get into trouble because they don't heed the word of the wiser male, God in Eve's case, the dwarves in Snow White's case.

But in both cases beneficial resulst occur. Snow White gets her handsome prince, and escapes from a lifetime of cleaning the dwarves' house, and Eve got us out of the Garden of Eden, which must have been an incredibly boring place. I mean, imagine an eternity of living in a place where nothing ever happens, and everything stays the same. I've always admired Eve for getting us out of that. If it wasn't for her, none of us would be here. "Blessed be the day that apple taken was" as the old carol says.

So not doing as men tell you is obviously a Good Thing, at least that's the message I get from both Snow White and Eve, eat the apple and good things will come to you. Maybe Snow White, on reflection, wasn't so dumb after all.

All this Yin and Yang stuff is really beyond me, I'm not much of a one for spiritual stuff ('mumbo-jumbo' as my husband calls it). I do know though that people are more of a mixture than you think they are. Not all women are feminin energy women,not all men are masculine energymen. That is one of the things I like best about Pat Allen's books, that she doesn't insist on rigid stereotyping of men and women, she allows for differences in character.

And as Pat points out, however 'feminine energy' you may be, you have still got to be able to look after yourself should the need arise. My husband, for instance, has recently been diagnosed as suffering from very high blood pressure, "I could go pop at any moment" as he puts it. Well, if he did go 'pop' it would be necessary that I be able to look after myself and our two younger sons, it's no use me just sitting around wallowing in a sea of yin, I've got to be able to be active and yang if the need arises.

The woman whose letters I quoted from was Margaret Paston, who lived at the time of the Wars of the Roses in the 15th century, a very turbulent period. Although like all women of her time she pays lip service to the fact that she is very submissive to her husband, addressing his as "right worshipful and reverend husband" in her letters etc, like an awful lot of medieval women she was actually very active and busy running their household, organising, telling people what to do etc (she spent a lot of time browbeating one of their daughters to try and stop her marrying the man of her fancy). She actually had a very strong and dominant personality. Most medieval ladies didn't just sit around doing embroidery and listening to minstrels. They were expected to lead quite active lives. And some were, like Margaret Paston, very tough cookies indeed.

Well, that's one thing I would agree with you about, I definitely wouldn't want to be married to Peter Pan (mind you, I wouldn't want to be married to the seven dwarfs either). Although Peter does have his moment of glorious heroism, when he stands on the rock with the waves coming in saying "To die will be an awfully big adventure". Of course, one doesn't need glorious heroism in a man very often in real life, and a man who wanted to be mothered all the time when he wasn't being heroic would be very tiresome. And of course Peter Pan in the play is traditonally played by a woman, which might help to increase the impression of effeminacy.

Actually, 'Peter Pan'(the play) terrified me when I was a child. I must have been about seven, so it's more than forty years ago, but I still remember the horror I felt when it came to that part where Tinkerbell is dying and Peter has to appeal to the children in the audience to shout 'yes' when he asks 'do you believe in fairies' because otherwise Tinkerbell will die. It seemed a really terrible thing that someone's very existence should depend on whether or not someone else believed in them. And of course it pops up again in Barrie in 'Dear Brutus' where poor Margaret, who knows she only exists in her 'father's' imagination , is left crying 'I don't want to be a might-have-been' as he runs away from her back to reality.

So you can imagine how appalled I felt when someone on this site a while ago suggested that I might be only a figment of the boss's imagination. My own worst nightmare come back to haunt me, the fear that I might only exist in someone else's mind, and what will become of me if they cease to believe in me? Supposing the boss ceased to imagine me, what then? That totally freaked me out.

I think this is possibly why I feel a distaste for too much of this business of the woman being dependent on the man for everything, an instinctive feeling I have a person should be able to exist without other people, if they have to. Nobody should be so dependent that their very existence depends on someone else. However submissive a woman may feel towards a man, she's got to be able to stand on her own two feet if she needs to, it's nice to be cherished, but you have to be able to do without it should the occasion arise. I don't want to feel that I might turn into a 'might-have-been' if my husband wasn't there. I would still be me, I hope.

The ancient Chinese philosophers were usually 'animists'; they believed that there were spirits in the trees and rocks and dragons over the mountains. They also believed that wood contained fire energy and water contained steam energy.

From that point of view, it is understandable that they also believed people contained a specific type of energy and that the energy would be different between females and males. But if you tried to explain to a physicist that men and women have a different type of internal energy, I fear she would laugh at the whole idea.

Although we should not mock the ancient philosophers who did the best they could with their limited tools of discovery, neither should we adapt their views to the modern world. Would you like to have your feet bound ?

If you wish to use 'energy' as a convenient label for all the many things that make people feel and behave the way they do and for the differences in men and women, it is not harmful.

But it isn't helpful. It's just old wine in new bottles.

I am not writing this just to snivel about the meaning of words - well not completely. I think there are two esential problems in what I interpret as your views, assuming I have not misunderstood all of it.

First is the energy balance concept where the woman gives less. This seems to require that women who share your beliefs become accountants in all their relationships, measuring each exchange and always maintaining a positive balance. This just does not make sense to me.

The second problem is worse.

You have firmly stated your objections to the fact that the current PC sensibility is 'shoved down our throats'. I think that is a reasonable position and is supported by most people in this forum.

But your alternative, following the dictates of 'gender energy', is just another type of behavior based on a different set of rules. Please reread what you have written and note how many times you say that a woman 'must" do (or not do) something because of energy rules.

live long and prosper,
RichM

I have a lot of compassion for those, alien or human, that can’t feel that there are “spirits in the trees and rocks”, as well as sacred essential male and female energies. I always thought Kahil Gibran came from a key place when he talked about how imagination can see the greater reality. Because I think that deep images are not only about relaying what is literal, they can also be more about soul language, a way to express what we intuitively sense--like the spiritual elements around us one might feel but not “see”. I personally can’t imagine a life without sensing things like the “spirits in the trees and rocks” as one that would feel very good at all, I think it would feel pretty empty and scary, as if God was just up there in the sky detached rather than also down here with us and around us.

So if that was the aliens’ experience of things then I can understand why they left. Then again I am an INFJ, which are considered the “mystics” as their personality archetype. I’m guessing you are a vastly different personality type. I was sharing a quote from John Eldredge a bit ago about how maleness and femaleness reflects two different aspects of God’s heart. And that’s how I feel about archetypes, including the archetypes we reflect through our various deeper personalities/approaches to life, they each reflect a prism of God’s heart (when I say “we” I do not include the demonic there, or when humans are influenced thus and enter the realm of evil).

From where I am standing, life without opening to the sacred on earth can drive even humans here over the edge, and often does, so I wouldn’t be surprised that without a sacred element embraced the aliens could run into this too. That edge of inner fear or despair we can find ourselves at then is just as invisible but real as the “spirits in the trees and rocks”, it’s that infamous “quiet desperation". Hopefully the aliens will find their right place, one compatible where they can open to the sacredness around them and feel they are not alone. I think God has many ways, and places, through which to reach us.

To respond to the rest of your comment…A woman being true to her comfort cues is following her inner sense of balance; it doesn’t take accounting to know when you are being harmfully drained or rather fulfilled, it takes intuition. We are not machines.
And if you will read my posts more closely you will find that I believe each woman’s comfort cues lead her to what is personally supportive. I was using DeeMarie for instance as an example, her comfort cues lead her to needing to receive rather violent behavior from her partner to pull forth her surrender, whereas my comfort cues would be harmed by that and need cherishing to pull forth mine.

Feeling into universals actually leads you to what is personal. I think admitting that female energy is comfort cues based brings the real freedom for a woman to embrace her own personal comfort cues. I think you are confusing archetypes, which is where I am coming from, with stereotypes. Stereotypes are frozen, mechanical. Archetypes are alive and dynamic and interactive and become personal to you, like the example of female energy being comfort cues based leading to one finding their own personal comfort cues. A stereotype instead is frozen, a cookie cutter, impersonal, and that has never been where I have been coming from. Perhaps it is your more mechanistic (I’m assuming) way of seeing the world that would cause you to interpret what I am saying this way.

To use a couple of your examples to illustrate archetypal vs stereotypical a bit more...I think the chinese views of "wood contained fire" is from a deeper archetypal place (picture the feeling of amber in a tree, that firey warmth), whereas the practice of footbinding was from a stereotypical place, more just a societal norm then.

Seeing things as sacred rather than mechanistic at their core, and thus seeking archetypes rather than stereotypes, is why I am drawn to fairy tales so much. Because the good ones, they are not frozen but alive, they are interactive with your soul and personally speak to you (Jung’s active imagination process is a way to see this), because they come from an archetypal place.

I gave you the area of sexuality since you wanted something simple and “easily observable” when you asked your original question, and that was something both observable and deeply archetypal. But I think if I were on the other side of things, wanting to learn about an alien culture, I personally would especially gravitate towards their ancient stories (or their equivalent) to learn, the ones that have stood the test of time; and also the themes of their species that seem to keep coming up again and again subtly somehow in their images and metaphors even when cultural norms of various times try to bury them, the ones that when buried still pop back up through their children’s instincts or through their subcultures. And I think that could show the deeper archetypes that were there hidden, even if they were not “visible”, like seeds growing in the dark.

A plant is a good image for archetypes I feel. The basics of the seed it grows from is from a more constant place, its roots... but the nuances of how the plant might further evolve from that place are still dynamic. That's not the same thing as being rootless and random. Its dynamically archetypal.

All this talk about Snow White made me think of this wonderful TV comedy which was shown in the UK about fifteen years ago. The show was not a success, they only made one series, but I loved it, I thought it was hilarious.

The plot was that Snow White and the Prince (Eric) had married and had two sons. Meanwhile, the Wicked Queen was not really dead and came back to get her revenge. She put a spell on Snow White, Eric, their two sons and one of the dwarves, and they all went to sleep for a thousand years (the wicked queen got caught by it too). They all wake up in present-day America.

The humour came from these innocent fairy-tale characters trying to cope with the complexities of modern life. Because Snow and Eric are kind, honest, upright etc they have great difficulty understanding the modern world (the wicked stepmother naturally does better, her exchanges with her magic mirror, who is very rude, are great).

Two passages in particular have stuck in my mind. Eric suggests to Snow that they let the Wicked Queen babysit their two sons so that they can get on with their work. "Eric, when I was sixteen she left me to die in the forest" snow points out "Yes, but the teen years are hard on everyone" he replies.

In another episode Eric has bought Snow a second-hand car for her anniversary present. Naturally, it turns out that the dealer has sold him a dud. ERic bashes his head on the car trying to fix it, and when Snow tries to kiss him he snaps "Not now, I've got a headache". Snow is complaining to their next-door neighbour about her anniversary being ruined. "It's not fair, I'm supposed to be living happily ever after" she protests. "Aren't we all, dear" the nieghbour replies. "Yes, but I had it in writing" Snow wails.

Yes, I think that's a good idea too! The line about the squirrels is great, but sadly I missed the early episodes of The Charmings. It was shown over here on children's TV on saturday mornings, and I just happened to catch an episode by chance when my oldest son was watching it. I have the last seven episodes on video, I still think they're very funny whenever I re-watch them.

I suppose the show was too whimsical for most people, or they just didn't find it funny, I don't know, but I thought it was hilarious. Another line from it I thought was funny was when Snow is reading a book on child psychology "It says here you should never yell at your children when they're angry" she says. Eric looks puzzled "Why would I want to yell at them when I'm NOT angry?" he asks. And once when he loses his temper and says "Oh, fee, fi, fo , fum" "Eric, don't swear" she says, shocked, putting her hands over the children's ears. It was full of things I thought were funny, but obviously didn't appeal to the public at large.

In an earlier comment on this thread I write slightingly of Leonardo diCaprio in 'Titanic', which I detested. Well, I've just watched him in 'The Aviator' and he was terrific. An excellent performance in an excellent film. Kpet me fascinated throughout. Likewise Cate Blanchett, who I disliked instensely in 'Elizabeth' (another film I loathed) is first-rate as Katherine Hepburn. Both of them surpassed themselves. I forgive them both for their previous rubbish films. Tonight they were both wonderful.

I certainly agree with you about the skewered heroism in the film. I remeber reading an article once that gave the percentages of survivors from each class: In First Class 98% of the women and 33% of the men survived: in Second Class 88% of the women and 8% of the men, and in Steerage 46% of the women and 16% of the men. so the highest percentage of fatalities was among second-class men. As I recall, the second class didn't get a look in at all in 'Titanic'.

I just didn't warm to Rose or Jack, they both seemed very improbable characters to me, especially Rose, who is supposed to be a very young girl, and seemed to me quite unbelievable as a young girl of her class and period. The best film ever made about the Titanic is 'A Night to Remember' which I find much more moving. One of my favourite bits is where the woman runs back into her cabin before going to the lifeboat, she ignores the boxes of valuable jewels open on her dressing table, and instead snatches up her lucky toy pig.

I must say, I am quite in agreement with this article. I never put much thought into the meaning of the words "serve" and "obey." But the substance of what you've communicated is something I've felt for a long time.

I've long had an interest in submitting to a man. But I never told anyone, least of all the men I've been with in the past. Something just didn't seem right about them. Although I had a desire to submit, that desire would never be directed toward someone soley because he was a man. I was always taught to give my respect according to who deserves it, and that is not determined by age, sex, race, religion, etc.

As such, I sought a man who was worthy of my obedience and submission. Some criteria you listed are exactly what I've looked for: provision, protection, and trustworthiness. And isn't it amazing how many people (both men and women) have become quick to label a woman who desires these things as a "gold-digger"? It is as though expecting even the most basic provisions to be provided by a man has become something taboo.

That point goes hand-in-hand with something else you said, which I found especially poignant:

...the modern woman is no longer cherished;
rather, she promises to be a cherisher.

All I could think while reading that (and this entire article, really) was "exactly!" I hadn't found the words to express the qualms I've been having with modern society's approach to relationships. But apparently you did it for me, because your words resonated through me.

Many women today seem burnt out on their relationships. Some are exhausted and don't want to give to their men because frankly, their men are not living up to their end of the bargain. Others continually give and give to their men, and in the end they wind up feeling "spent" and "used." I put those words in quotes because I've heard those exact words used by women, and I've used them myself in past relationships.

A woman can only give for so long to a man who does not prove his worthiness. She will soon feel like a fool. When I say "worthiness" I am not suggesting that the man should bend over backwards and do all things the way the woman wishes. No, what I am suggesting is that he be a commanding presence, one who can be trusted to love and care for her by whatever means necessary.

This is also the reason why I don't feel that all aspects feminism are incompatible with female submission. Feminism has become so abstract, and is interpreted in so many different ways, that surely a woman's desire for a "worthy man" could be included under that tent. For women, it is a great loss to settle for men who rely on women to be providers. And the most valuable choice she has is her ability to choose the man she wishes to obey. I only wish more women would come to see this, and thus choose more wisely.

~HollyCakes

Hi Again Hollycakes,

Something has really stayed with me from your comment:

"I sought a man who was worthy of my obedience and submission. Some criteria you listed are exactly what I've looked for: provision, protection, and trustworthiness. And isn't it amazing how many people (both men and women) have become quick to label a woman who desires these things as a "gold-digger"? It is as though expecting even the most basic provisions to be provided by a man has become something taboo."

Now you've said what I couldn't find the words to say...thank you Hollycakes!

I keep thinking about that verse about a good wife being so precious she is worth even more than rubies (a really misunderstood verse (Proverbs 31), she is so well provided for and her husband has such a noble character that as a result he is worthy of "being known in the gates"; and she also has plently of helpers in the home, she is far indeed from the workaholic "superwoman" most see her as). She is provided for, protected, cherished, supported--and seen as worth more than rubies.

Todays men are typically so clueless about this worth that they even balk about offering their gold from their end. Which means they certainly don't see us as above rubies, and definitely dont treat us that way. Makes me sick to my stomach. And so does that word "gold digger", it always has. When I hear it I hear : "You are so worthless to me that I don't want to care for you and make sure you are happy and safe. Male energy is meant to impart but you arent worth that imparting". Some provide and protect and cherishing!

Anyway, I've been taking heart from that verse about being worth more than rubies. Nice to know somebody thinks we are : )

~~Under His Wing

Whew! Under His Wings, you are a prolific writer! I can’t imagine all the hours you spent composing all those posts... This subject must REALLY be important to you! Louise, Pat and others, I really appreciate the counter viewpoints you presented, and Rich, it was nice to see a man’s perspective.

Let me see if I have your respective perspectives straight:

Under His Wing, my understanding of your perspective is that it is ALWAYS the man’s responsibility to be the servant-leader; through his example of serving, leading, cherishing, deeply caring for, and meeting the needs of the wife, the wife responds by loving, responding to, and obeying the husband. The husband gets his needs fulfilled when the wife responds to his masculinity with feminine submissiveness and obedient service. However, unless the man initiates correctly, the woman will feel ‘unfeminine’ in her response and will not be comfortable ‘serving’ him. It just would not FEEL right to her; therefore, she shouldn’t have to do anything that contradicts her own comfort levels.

The counterpoint to this is that sometimes the woman must serve without first being served. The man doesn’t always serve perfectly, and the woman doesn’t always respond perfectly even when he does it right. Therefore, sometimes (maybe most times in some relationships) the woman must reach beyond her comfort (feminine) zone and initiate serving. In fact, if she fails to do so, the family may not survive. After all, a wife should not just sit around idly and let her family starve or wear dirty rags because she is not ‘comfortable’ at the time serving their needs.

If I have these perspectives summarized correctly (please correct any misconceptions!), my response is this: Both are at least partially right! I agree with Under His Wings that this may well be the relationship ideal; however, I also recognize that we live in an imperfect world where neither husband nor wife are going to act/react perfectly 100 percent of the time. Therefore, out of necessity, the woman will need to be the servant-initiator at times, even though she may very well prefer to be the responder to the husband’s service to her.

Part of being mature is to recognize that we have responsibilities to others that necessitate self-sacrifice. I believe that the Bible acknowledges this when it talks about the wife winning over her non-Christian husband (or in this case her imperfectly leading/initiating husband) through her submissiveness, righteous attitude, and chaste conduct/conversation (1 Pet 3:1-2, NKJV). Note that the original Greek word for ‘conduct’ contains in its meaning to behave oneself and to busy oneself. This implies that she is in way serving him since it’s hard to influence someone by your ‘conduct’ or ‘behavior’ unless you are doing something. Furthermore, since the purpose of this behavior is to “win him over,” she is presumably doing her best to please him through self-initiated service. Naturally this also includes submissive service in response to his leading as well.

Similarly, Proverbs 31 lists numerous ways that the woman serves the man and her household. Even though it implies that the husband approves of her actions, here also the Bible does not specify that the husband initiated first. Although I agree with you, Under His wings, that many of her acts of service may well be in response to a loving, initiating husband, it is also conceivable that they are self-initiated.

In addition, part of the Bible’s definition of “loving your neighbor” includes sacrificial service to others. The Bible is very clear that we are to serve one another out of love for that person, not just when they ‘earn’ it by serving us first (see Galatians 5:13-14 and 1 Corinthians 13). The original Greek word for serving means to be a slave to or be in bondage to someone. This certainly contains connotations of performing actions that are not always lovingly initiated.

In fact, even when we are being treated unfairly (or in this case not being served correctly) and when we might be tempted to get revenge, we are to repay evil with good deeds/service (see Romans 12: 17-21). I don’t believe that these verses were meant for men only!

Note, however, that these examples do not negate the ideal marital relationship where the man initiates by loving his wife as Christ loves the church, and the wife responds by honoring and obeying him as head of the household (Ephesians 5:21-33). It’s just that we don’t live in an ideal world.

I realize that it is often difficult and uncomfortable for the wife to be the initiator. But there do exist circumstances where the wife needs to initiate. I also understand that serving others would probably feel more natural to her if the husband leads her into it, thereby making it a ‘feminine’ response. Unfortunately none of our relationships is perfect. In many cases, the husband is absent emotionally or physically, or is non-existent. But we still need to survive the best we can in this imperfect world, taking care of the responsibilities set before us. I don’t believe it is possible for all of our feminine service responses to be directly linked to our husband’s leadership. For example, the single woman can still show loving care and service to others even though she lacks a human husband’s instigation (think of Mother Teresa, for instance).

Perhaps it is easier to envision this type of service as a feminine response to Christ’s masculine cherishing of us, his bride. The man is to love and cherish the woman as Christ loves and cherishes the church. This is our ultimate relationship example. Therefore, it seems fitting that when our husbands lack servant-leadership qualities, or when we have no husband, we can turn to Christ as our initiator instead. In that way we can always feel that our feminine natures are submissively responding to ‘someone’ and not just unilaterally initiating on our own.

As a final thought, here is an analogy that illustrates the interconnectedness of the husband and wife.

The Woman is the Garden, Man is the Gardener

The metaphor of the man being the gardener and the woman being the garden is a beautiful one and possibly represents the ideal husband/wife relationship standard. As the man lovingly and thoughtfully plants, weeds, fertilizes and prunes the plants in his feminine garden, he is rewarded with her response of ‘food’ for his body and soul and beauty for his eyes to feast upon, giving him back energy in return. (My husband is a gardener and finds nothing more satisfying than a productive, beautiful garden that his patient, attentive efforts have produced!)

But as every gardener knows, he must have patience in abundance since plant growth cannot be rushed – it happens as a natural result of the combination of care (service and discipline), water (communication) and sunshine (attentiveness to her needs and fun times shared together).

In addition, it requires constant vigilance to keep the garden weed-free. Sometimes the root of the weed remains even when its exposed growth is removed. One example of this is when there is incomplete chastisement, thereby leaving behind resentment, disappointment or bitterness, and ultimately disrespect. Occasionally the weeds are so intertwined with the plants that it takes extra tenderness to disentangle, as is the case when a woman’s emotions get confused and mixed up during PMS or menopause, or when hurts and scars from past abuse need to be untangled from her heart so that she can be healed.

At other times, the plants grow in the wrong direction or produce too much vegetation and not enough fruit, wasting energy. This can happen when we serve inefficiently or ineffectively, or when we take off on our own ‘lark’ without her husband’s approval or input.

When these types of ‘maintenance issues’ surface, the husband must lovingly and attentively redirect the growth, dig up weed roots, plant new seeds, apply water and fertilizer, and prune superfluous vegetation by applying the Taken In Hand principles so eloquently expressed throughout this wonderful website! The result will be having her energy redirected onto prioritized activities, being freed from her emotional baggage, feeling wonderfully cared for, and giving back obedience, submission, and a bounty of beautiful ‘fruit’ for her husband to enjoy.

It is this metaphor of a woman as the garden tended by man, the gardener, that I believe epitomizes Under His Wings’ perspective of the male/female relationship dynamic. A garden cannot weed or care for itself. It requires the loving hand of the gardener. The gardener initiates through his masculine service to her, and the garden naturally responds to his care through feminine submission and obedience. Thus it becomes a symbiotic relationship: he serves, cherishes and nurtures the garden; she produces the ‘fruit’ which becomes his sustenance and delight.

- Kristianna 6/26/06

[Note to Editor: I considered making the analogy its own article, but don’t know how to do that.... So if you care to, by all means do!]

Under His Wing, thank you so much for your encouraging response to my post. I have to admit that I was hesitant to submit it, not having had much experience doing this sort of thing before.... (It took me almost two weeks and multiple editions!) So your positive response is heartwarming.

Thank you also for taking the time to share your thought-provoking insights with us. I’m glad they help you sort out your own feelings and desires - I hope you will be encouraged to continue to visit and contribute to this site.

What makes this site so wonderful is that while we may not agree on everything, there is common ground in many areas, and the give and take of ideas inspires us to re-evaluate our own positions and ideas.

I agree with you that when we read others' accounts of “coming with their surrender directly to Him [Christ], feeling their providence and provision and initiation directly from Him,” it inspires us to do the same. It is much easier to surrender our sacrificial service to Christ than to any mortal man: He is the only one who cherishes us completely, unselfishly and perfectly, always being motivated by what is the best for us. If only our responses could be equally perfect!

May you feel cherished and loved in all your relationships. God bless.

- Kristianna

Hello Again Kristianna,

Boy do I understand about needing a long time to write and making multiple editions! The kind editor of this site was so patient with me through the many changes made to this article before it felt finished (thank you the boss!), so believe me I understand. And if it took you two years rather than two weeks to put to page that lovely garden analogy it would have been well worth it. That image has really stayed with me, like a seed has been planted, a healing seed. Because you truly do have a rare gift. Your images are so simple and yet so rich, and that is what helps them take such root. It's a gift that I would love to aspire to.

It's true the give and take of ideas here has really been helpful. Sometimes its not just discovering like minds but also seeing the contrast that helps you sort your feelings and beliefs, and this site has some of both. And coupled with the give and take/exchange, there really was a gift given here, for which I am grateful. I can't help but also say that this thread was kind of a difficult experience for me though. It made me end some real denial, I can no longer pretend not to see how *so* very much in the minority I am, both in mainstream culture and even in alternative culture like this. And many people think that shouldn't matter, that old "toughen up"/"don't care what anyone else thinks"/"rugged individualism" mentality. But that isn't who I am, on some level accepatance really does matter to me, it is part of vulnerability and vulnerabilty is at the core of who I am when it comes down to it.

It's like your moving analogy of the garden, those plants do not thrive by toughing it out and pretending they do not need the gardener. And in our close relationships that is intensely the case, but even in our small relationships like chatting and such there is some bit of that, that...impact. Focus is the only thing I find that helps, not denying the impact of those who judge you but at the same time focusing so much more on the sun, or the gardener, that your garden really needs, and opening most to that impact. And how I love what you said about our Savior ( I just love that word!), that "He is the only one who cherishes us completely, unselfishly and perfectly, always being motivated by what is the best for us. If only our responses could be equally perfect!"

And our responses won't be equally perfect. Maybe that is why we are meant to be "giving back" from having been blessed rather than pretending we can give from a void. Maybe that is why the deepest comfort, despite the fear, can be admitting our vulnerability and need and weakness and not wearing a mask there anymore. It's pretty vulnerable to admit you need saving, need rescue, need a gardener. But how can your hero enter your fairy tale and rescue you if you pretend you don't need him with all your heart?

I still feel the image that was behind the article. That of the couple on horseback, both riding upon his horse, with him leading the reins, and thus with him serving and her obeying. And now it is coupled with the image of that man as the wise gardener and that woman as the rose who admits she can only thrive through his (or His) loving protection, direction and care.

I really do look forward to any writing you might do. And I'd love for us to exchange addresses to our online journal (blog) sites if you wanted (I don't want to post mine publically here, but perhaps we could exchange addresses through the boss?)

May you too "feel cherished and loved in all your relationships" Kristianna, and

May His Face Shine Upon You, Under His Wing