My Husband Totally Mislead Me!

It took me about a year into dating my now husband to figure out that he didn't agree with me. Like...at all.

For a year, I thought I was dating this great guy that was on the same page as me--but NOPE!

You see...I'd talk about stuff...things that were important to me; things that I believed in; outrage I felt about certain issues...you name it. And Scott would be listening intently and interject with a, "Mm hmm" every now and then.

Mm hmm means YES. Right people?! Mm hmm.

TURNS OUT NOT SO MUCH FOR MY HUBBY.

I don't remember what happened to make me realize it, but at some point I caught on that his "Mm hmm" was a way to avoid conflict! Yup. Like so many of us, my husband was (and still can be) conflict avoidant.

(Side note--as annoying as that was, it's also great because I was already a year in and deeply in love so there was no going back for me--if he had expressed all his disagreement early on I'm not sure what would have happened!)

I thought we had cleared up this misleading "Mm hmm" issue years ago.
But the other day, as I was going on and on about the Masculine and the Feminine and how the Feminine is degraded in our culture etc etc he interrupted me,

"..." Well. I don't remember exactly what he said but whatever it was, he made it clear that he thought when I was talking about gender. And of course my response was,

"All this time and I thought you knew what I was talking about!"

But nope.

It made me realize that perhaps YOU, don't know what I'm talking about! So let me clarify.

When I talk about the Masculine and the Feminine, I am speaking in archetypes. And when I say "archetype" I mean: a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches (thanks, Dictionary.com!)

WE ALL HAVE THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE INSIDE OF US! Every single human has these archetypes within.

Think yin and yang symbol.

In our culture the some of the traits we attribute to the Masculine are:

• Taking action

• Methodical/logical thought

• Assertion

• Ambition

• Courage

• Direction

• Extroversion

• Excitement

• Conquest/control

• Individual oriented

• Rigid

• Ego Centered
  

Some of the traits we attribute to the Feminine are:

• Compasion

• Receptivity

• Intuition

• Introspection

• Flow

• Emotional

• Creative

• Peacefulness

• Group oriented

• Feeling centered

This is not an exhaustive list. However--I hope you can see that we all have these traits within us. Yes--depending on who we are, some traits are stronger than others. But they are all there for us to access.

And perhaps you can see how many of the traits of the Feminine are degraded in our cluture.

So when I talk about being out of balance, it is these traits I'm talking about. We have been flying with one wing. We need both. The world needs both. Humanity needs both. Every individual needs both.

I hope this clears some things up for you! HAPPY SUNDAY!

Love,

Elijah

P.S. My husband TOTALLY GETS it now. At least I think he does...