Drawn In
When I was primarily drawn to and skilled with interactions with men who wanted to share sexual energy with me, I was fielding sexual attention from men in every interaction.
This is what it means to be looking at men from a lens of them being a potential-partner. Sexual energy is in that mix, and I DO engage with men with whom it is present and I ignore men with whom sexual energy is not present, because this excludes them from the "potential partner" category.
When I put the potential partner category away, or move it several layers back, when I orient my attention to receiving *something of value to my life* when I interact with men, I give attention to men with whom sexual energy is not in the mix.
For me, personally, this has meant BEAUTIFUL relationships with my friends' husbands, my lover's father, my married older neighbor, and several friends I have met around town. We meet from a ground of platonic love, contextual love, informational exchange, play, cameraderie, fascinating conversation. We meet from a stance of mutual service, exchanging labor and food.
When I HAD the devotional partnership of my dreams, it generated energy which left me wanting to be of service to my community. That is when I began to ask myself:
Am I skilled in interacting with men without any sexual or romantic energy?
Do I know how to be in interactions with men which are completely devoid of sexual and romantic energy?
This is where leakage within the family, sexual energy from male family members, or even the absence of solid father and brother figures has left many women with no understanding of platonic love from men, what it feels like, what it looks like, and how to receive it, how to play with it. It has left us wary of trusting that an ongoing interaction with any man will STAY platonic.
This is an alienation from our village.
We were meant to have loving fatherly and brotherly connection all around us. We were meant to know how to roughhouse and snuggle and be in silence. We were meant to have an embodied open-emptiness, where the door is open and NO ONE COMES IN.
The door is open specifically BECAUSE no one will come in.
We disarm because there is a sentinel at the gate, and it is a very different disarmament than welcoming and receiving and exchanging pleasure.
Platonic relationships were meant to serve our sense (and our reality!) of protection provided by the masculine, and being starved of this protection has left us feeling surrounded by threats and hungry for assurance of safety closest-in.
But we were meant to have a gate, and we will notice, when we look rightly, we have one already. This is the established-safety which is what we specifically welcome someone through when they're so aligned with what's safe we want to bring them inside the safest place.
Without understanding this established-safety, we seek from the outside someone who will come to establish our sense of safety after we have welcomed them closest-in. The question is "what will be safe?" rather than "what matches this safety?"
Almost all of us, when we look, can see a man who has always stood outside of that gate, and never even implied he might want to come in.
At least one man in our life has held a sacred post, always ready to show us "this is where and how a man stands who loves and values YOU. This is how it feels to be with a man who never sees you as an object of lust."
Tune into this frequency. That love and admiration. That kid pretending to be asleep so someone will carry her inside. She is as real, as yours, as you, as the one afraid to close her eyes. These ones are equally aware, equally attuned, the one to safety, the other to threat.
The threat seems so important, but I swear to you, the safety is in the safety. The safety will NEVER COME from meeting the threat.
Grief is what comes from meeting the threat, and it is SACRED, oh yes, go there any time you like.
But going to threat when you say you want safety IS the madness you feel.
Go to safety when you want safety. Choose it instead of remaining in wanting for it. Choose safety when you have the option for thrill.
Safety is more subtle, because safety isn't trying to fuck you.
That is the point.
