A balancing act I have been attempting to better encompass for probably the past 3 years is understanding masculinity and integrating nurturing aspects of femininity into my daily practices. How do you continue to create safe spaces for women through masculine practices.
How do you hold space for your partner or your friends who are women without being disagreeable, but more importantly being able to share a perspective that is not intrusive that it gets to mansplaining. One of the practices I have learned through therapy is being able to hold space without offering solutions and listening to create a thinking environment. A part of that being asking questions that allow the person you’re interacting with to process what they are experiencing without concluding everything with your preconceived notions of what the next steps should be.
I have found myself in situations where I do not agree with what is being said and I will often listen to a point that would not invalidate what we’re discussing but much rather lead to more details of the thought process. A difficult part of it is being with a partner that is yet to understand that a generalised approach to inclusivity is better in some aspects.
But they end up seeing your approach as weakness or an inability to act as a man based on how they process their own emotions. Deferring judgement resulted in being gaslit and manipulated about what the outcomes of disagreements were. It was always my fault. There was no accountability on her end or real acknowledgement of taking advantage of playing the victim.
One thing I have learned about life is that there is a clock that is running with or without our knowledge and when it strikes noon, debts will have to be paid. Whether it is a public display of something you have attempted to hide your whole life or no longer having access to the person that was always there for you, we all have to deal with that moment and what comes next at some point. But I have chosen to step back and watch it all unfold from a distance— even though my therapist refers to it as giving someone enough rope to embarrass themselves, I see it as no longer allowing myself to be the one to blame at the end of it all.
