Do men really need to "integrate their inner feminine?"
An important principle for men's maturation, or a misguided teaching up for revision?
In my recent conversation with men's sexuality coach & author Jakob Kaergaard (podcast launches tomorrow; teaser below), we briefly touched upon the idea that men need to integrate their inner feminine.
This idea is firmly established in culture by now, and can be traced back to alchemical teachings on the hieros gamos (sacred marriage) as well as Carl Jung's profound corpus of wisdom.
As with so many ideas in this time of revelation, it is now up for revision in a growing part of the population, including women who feel unmet by 21st century men – frustrated that their would-be partners have become “too feminine” – and men who feel that “integrating their inner feminine” didn’t work out for them.
Were these men integrating their feminine incorrectly or was the idea itself a genuinely ill-fitting one for them?
As Jakob himself said in my conversation with him, we can spend a lot of time philosophising on what “integrating the inner feminine” means, though he still believes the idea is important.
While I do not question the importance of men integrating the qualities typically seen as “feminine”, I wonder if the very idea of “integrating our feminine” comes from a low-res image of masculinity which legitimately believes that qualities such as receptivity are not part of the masculine experience.
If so, I’d like to ask – what little boy wasn’t receptive?
What innocent baby boy didn’t have flow?
What I’m proposing is that what we call a man’s inner feminine could just as easily be seen as a man’s boyish innocence, and that this may indeed be a lot more helpful.
By thinking of “integrating our feminine” instead as “reclaiming innocence”, we are moving from a conversation in which a man pursues women as the answer to his problems to a conversation of parenting his inner boy, thus bringing him out of the oedipal realm and into the realm of men.
May those of us who are masculine men thus find ourselves at ease with qualities like receptivity and flow without having to compete with women on how overtly we can act them out.
Something worth thinking about.
My interview with the always inspiring Jakob Kaergaard goes live on YouTube by EOD tomorrow May 4.
Note: Part #3 of Making love in the time of the apocalypse is in progress, and should be launched in June.