Frequently, we persist in employing ineffective strategies due to a misdiagnosis of the root cause. This misdiagnosis arises because we tend to view issues through a masculine lens, and the motivation for masculine behavior is 180 degrees different from the feminine's. Nowhere do we see this more than in the arena of a woman's power, particularly within the context of relationship.
The assumption is that a woman is at the mercy of this drive for relationship so much so that she is "love addicted" or "loves too much." The woman who would throw it all away for the partner who would only use her, who has their attention split on other women, who would never, not even as a last resort, admit that it is they who is at her mercy. We take the given understanding of woman as powerless and then assign this as the reason for going through such unsavory experiences.
We then employ a whole series of efforts for her to develop counter behaviors or "empowerment." The assumption is that she is powerless and needs to access power, and that when she does, these things will stop happening. There is a cultural addiction to having a savior—the selling of one's soul to get one, the selling of one's values to be with a partner who does not have attention available (holding out through other women or overall inattention), to violating relationships with other women to get a partner or to keep them. Even addiction to the needing of a partner to control her, keep her small, handle her.
But our basic premise is off. She is doing absolutely nothing "for" her partner. They are a tool.
She is not in the least bit powerless. This is not her issue. Although her issue is indeed power; and the terror of it coming into expression, some- thing a man could likely never understand. Which is why the cultural diagnoses determined by a masculine hungry for the power that exists in the feminine makes absolutely no sense. Why would anyone do everything they could to destroy, conceal, funnel off, waste, and kill their own power?
A powerful woman is a woman who has broken free from the masculine notion that she should operate under the radar. That her attractiveness is based in any way on reserving it. A powerful woman has the idea that her power lies in her capacity to light up the world, and so she will advertise as a beacon of Eros with every invitation her expression can make.
This kind of woman may occur as a threat to those women attempting to keep their power dimmed. She will be breaking every rule and be perceived as cheating, rather than as the hope of those women who have been willing to dim their expression to appease. To be big as a woman is to be powerful.
But every woman understands why the self-centered, self-focused, critical, domineering man who is only interested in using up all her power is a rare and sought after commodity in the world. With just one man, she can safely ensure that there is no chance that her power will reach a level where she cannot repress it.
She can put her attention on him, do his bidding, fret over him, drown in her insecurities, sell herself and her friendships out, and rest safe in the knowledge that the more she does this, the more inflated he will get. He will, in fact, get more inflated and more diffident; the more diffident he gets, the more insecure she feels; the more insecure she feels, the more distant the threat of having to face this force inside of her.
They are in the ultimate collusion together; they will do everything in their joint power to keep her from anything that may inadvertently activate her power.
From this perspective, the forces that would activate real power look like the woman's version of threatening: unattractive and boring.
This is not to say that at times of complete depletion she may not for a period of time turn to another type of man, the "good guy," who says a resentful yes that covers his disdain and resentment of the power she has and to which he is beholden. This type of man is perfectly safe, in that she feels safely unsafe in his underlying resentment, at the felt-sense level where power could come out were it to feel safe. It matters little what he does or what he says; his kind actions are what matters, as beneath it all there is an underlying aversion.
She may in fact go back and forth between the two types, convincing herself that she is at the mercy of one and recovering from another. It is the same force with the drama mask. One is wearing the face of indifference and the other is wearing the face of over-attentiveness. But both work equally well to keep her in her homeostatic disempowered state. The key is that in either one, his attention is always on himself.
A man who genuinely focuses on a woman on the terms of her body will likely be perceived as weak when in fact she knows that this kind of focus—rather than the object- or consumer-based focus of the colluding man—would be like a magnifying glass through which the sun of awareness shines. It would ignite a spark that may make the whole powder keg of her power blow.
True sisterhood—not sisterhood about or over a man, and not sisterhood about commiserating—is where sisters reflect what each is capable of. They reflect genuine power, connecting by raising the bar and refusing to accept or play in the collective woman's game of incapability, victimhood, or—the complement to these—competition. True sisterhood is women who use other women as their reason to become better and reveal their power more; women who can demand better from us because they demand it of themselves, and demand it of themselves because they admit their value. For this woman, it is not about discovering her value; it is simply admitting it. A woman must hit bottom on the intoxication of hiding, on the illusion that she will ever find relief in running from her power.
Vulnerability is the true admission of how deeply she wants the woman inside to emerge. Not the desperate theatrics of vulnerability she plays for men, but the admission that no masculine display of power will ever gratify her, including the holding out she does, the restriction, the tightness, the stoicism. This is not a woman's power. A woman's power rests in her admission of how deeply she loves and desires, how much she cares.
In a masculine world, this is weakness; in a woman's world, it is power. Seeing as it is a power that trumps all the artificial forms, it is the only option she truly has—unless she is going to spend her life attempting to secure partners and activities that will drain her, and from this low-powered state, harm the people in her life who would most like to see her powerful and free.
Women have a fundamental notion that if she actually has power, she is like a spirited horse. She thinks that in order to not be too dangerous, she needs to have her spirit broken. Some confused part of the mind believes she is protecting both herself and others from what lies within. And yet it is the case with all horses that the best of the breed are the most spirited. These horses do, however, require the best rider, one who knows how to get the best out of them—not through criticism or control, but in the way any rider gets greatness from a horse: through honor and respect.
There will come a point where, after enough OM, each woman will face herself. It may not be until she is years in. She will feel the power bubbling to the surface and there will be no way to avoid it. More than ever she will feel the draw to the forces that will sabotage this power. It will make no sense to anyone other than the woman who has gone through the rigors to open her own. To her, it will make perfect sense. Chances are she will watch her sister return to her habituated patterns, the price of admission into her power being too great.
But every now and again, a woman will emerge with grace and kindness, and the fall-to-her-knees admission that she would do anything, face anything, for her power. Even if it means coming out of hiding, foregoing cultural expressions of power in service to her own, standing up and holding the weight with other women, facing the persecution. Even if it means giving up the most exalted position in the world—that of woman set on destroying her own power by being willing to get anything for, give anything to, and do anything for a man.
A man who is so far inflated he could never get enough. A man who is the ultimate safety blanket in a world where she is looking to be saved from her own inexpressible power, the death of her tumescent mind, and her emergence into the community of sovereign beings.
