“Women – can’t live with them, can’t live without them!”
An old English saying, if I’m correct – though I’m sure it’s universal in use! Usually said in a jokey manner but with a massive dollop of reality, by men. However, I am not one of them.
I never set out to manifest a life where I was constantly surrounded by women. However that has been my situation for the past summer – and they have been the best months of my life.
I’m now into my 6th month on the island of Koh Samui, Thailand, spending time at a yoga resort. You might have noticed that the majority of my vlogs involve women.
People often take digs at me about the fact most of my blog interviews and social media posts are with women, or I spend so much time with them. Most seem to suggest I am just looking to hook up with women constantly, a sexual agenda.
It’s time I spoke out to set a few things straight – and also give away a few insights into what I’ve learned being around so many women and how other men might be able to manifest the same into their life.
Yes, I love women.
But not the way most observers believe! More accurately, I love the female spirit. To me, it’s the most beautiful thing on the planet.
I don’t love women in purely sexual terms. I don’t enjoy their company because I’m trying to get notches on bedposts. When many men say they love women they really mean women’s bodies.
But I enjoy their femininity, their essence. Whilst I also like to spend time with men, I rarely feel as though I NEED to be around them – but I certainly get that craving for female company, feminine energy.
Why?
Because if you think this world is fucked up now, it would be a million times worse without that feminine radiance and a million times better if it was allowed to reveal and revel in its full glory.
I’m neither a womaniser nor a feminist – simply a man who comes alive when the true gentle, graceful, tactile, open, nurturant strength of a woman, blossoms in my presence.
I am a lover of beauty, and women, for me, personify beauty. It’s a pity so many men can’t see it the same way, instead seeing a sexual object, an inferior gender or something so mysterious and emotional and irrational (even infuriating), that they can’t be understood.
So yes, you will hopefully see me with a lot of women in my life and I won’t apologise for finding many of them physically alluring – I am an unashamedly masculine entity, first and foremost. But you’d be savagely judgmental to think this is all it’s about.
WHAT I’VE LEARNED: The Masculine and the Feminine
I have gained so much spending 6 months at Vikasa Yoga Resort which has about a 75% ratio (at a guess!) of females. My appreciation of the opposite sex was always high but it’s now catapulted through the roof to the stars and beyond thanks to wonderful women like the ones in these pics.
But even in a yoga resort, I’ve come across some antiquated views. One woman (yes, WOMAN!) once said to me she thought men were stronger because they held their emotions in. It shocked me to hear it anywhere, never mind Vikasa, because if anything, it should be the other way around!
Having the courage to be open with emotions is an immense feminine strength. As someone who suppressed what he was going through for years with anxiety, I probably added years to my suffering largely because of the belief it was a weakness to reveal my pain.
Have I become more “feminine” during my time at Vikasa? If anything, I’ve become more masculine. Because the beauty and openness of the women I’ve met has drawn out that more grounded, lower energy, almost giving me greater permission to be who I am – a man.
I’ve realised that feminine energy actually thrives alongside masculine energy, as long as it isn’t the destructive version which has created such a messed up planet. As a man, I don’t need to suppress my masculinity (as current generations have been told), but to express it freely in a way that compliments and respects the divine feminine.
There is a huge difference between being an aggressive, “alpha male” (whatever that means!), swinging his dick around, fighting to be the loudest, “strongest” person in the room and a confident, self-assured, grounded man, a quiet leader, respectful of others, providing a safe space to allow the feminine to breathe and germinate, unfettered.
Since I’ve come to Thailand, I have become more open, more giving, more tactile, more loving – feminine traits! But I’ve also become more grounded, more sexual, more direct, more relaxed and have slowed down and lowered my energy – more masculine traits. The combination of the two, I believe, is what draws more women into my life.
These are just my opinions and I certainly don’t profess to know it all about women from 6 months in their constant company (especially as I went years where I’d be lucky to meet double figures in an entire year!) but I’ve always been observant, a great listener and sensitive. That sensitivity is no doubt part of the reason I have struggled through life with anxiety but I’ve started to embrace it more recently and now see that (along with those other skills) it has allowed me to very easily get along with the opposite sex and learn from them.
Serena Williams Sexism Row
It also helps that I’ve spent the last decade watching women’s tennis. It has given me a great insight into the sexism which exists among the general public, something which I think many men still are blind to.
One of the reasons I love professional tennis is that the women’s game is as high quality as the men’s – I actually prefer it. More excitement, ups and downs and at the moment, way more open in terms of competitiveness. This is why women are able to command audiences and prize fees which are on a par with the men.
Yet incredulously, we still have a debate within the game about equal pay and whether women should play best of 5 sets at the major events like the men (women play best of 3, though it must be stressed, in 95% of tournaments, the men also play best of 3).
And as Serena Williams pointed out so vociferously in the recent US Open Final, sexism is rife even today – from tennis spectators as well as those within the game. There is no sport in the world where double standards are so glaringly obvious than in tennis.
This is partly because female tennis stars get paid more and are higher profile than in any other sport, so that sexism is more clearly seen.
But it’s still quite disturbing to see the way for example, in a men’s match, when there are many breaks of serve, commentators and fans will often say what an exciting, topsy-turvy match is unfolding. Yet in the women’s game, you are more likely to see derogatory comments about how mentally weak the players are or how rubbish their serves are because they can’t hold.
I’ve spent 10 years watching matches every single week, so I know this to be true. Although this is largely a subconscious viewpoint, there is a significant proportion of people who genuinely believe that women are inferior mentally when it comes to tennis – emotionally unstable, weak when the pressure is on and temperamental.
My ten years of experience can attest that this isn’t true, it’s just that because of old stereotypes about female emotions and male “strength,” the first sign of any weakness in a woman is immediately put down to her gender.
However, a woman shows a hint of power, authority, toughness, outspokenness, she is often labelled as aggressive, rude, a bitch – but the same qualities in a man generally (unless he does something particularly outrageous) are lauded.
Serena Williams was predictably lambasted by many people for her outbursts against the umpire (and rightly so in my opinion) and was also wrong to say his decisions were based on sexism. However, she was right in saying that in general, the men are treated differently to the women and get away with far more.
That’s because sexism is endemic in society not just sport. It will never disappear until those underlying social biases are eradicated.
How to Manifest Women into Your Life
What I’ve learned is that women don’t hate men. They don’t hate masculinity. In fact, they are rooting for us! They WANT masculine men in their life! But there needs to be a balance – a bit of yin to the yang.
If you are a guy who wants to manifest women into his life, how do you do it? The same way you manifest anything into your life – get onto the same frequency! Become someone who loves women – become someone who loves being around women and more importantly, who women like being around.
Because I’m telling you now, most men don’t seem to really like being around women unless sex is involved.
I love being around women but if it was truly in a sleazy, man-on-the-prowl way, do you really think they’d be comfortable enough to have photos taken with me? To stay in my presence for more than 10 minutes?
If a woman doesn’t feel safe around you, she’ll never stick around. Men rarely understand this because they don’t often have to worry about personal safety – yet for a woman it’s part of her every day life. If you aren’t comfortable around women, by being nervous, not knowing what to say, acting “cool” and not being natural, women pick up on those things and will feel awkward, will not trust or feel safe in your company.
It’s the same with sexism. If you don’t at least empathise with the female struggle against sexism, acknowledge that it exists, and then do your bit to make them feel comfortable around you as a man, then you are missing a fundamental element in having women in your life.
Finally, if you do not appreciate beauty, TRUE beauty, which is the feminine spirit, not some “hot” girl in a bikini, then you will struggle to get women in your life. Any woman can wear a short skirt, flash some cleavage and get a man’s attention. If that’s the kind of women you want in your life, that’s cool – but it’s not what I want to manifest.
“Hot” women are not the same as beautiful women and I want to surround myself with beautiful women. Women of grace and substance and strength and all those timeless qualities that can appear lost in today’s highly sexualised and materialistic world.
At Vikasa, all I seem to meet are beautiful women. Did I mean that to happen? No. I didn’t sit down and visualise this. But I did want it to happen, even though I couldn’t ever envisage how it would! Now that it has, I’ve realised it’s because of the way I’ve changed as a person.
You can say I got lucky, being at a yoga resort but I don’t believe in luck. We create our own reality based on our thoughts and actions which in turn, affect our vibration, our energy – and it is this that attracts what we have in our life. I still had to be a man who women are comfortable being around and I know for sure that most men in my situation would not be able to instill this comfort.
Can Men & Women Just Be Friends?
I’ve also learned that part of the reason people look at me with all these women and think I’m some sort of lothario, is down to culture. I already knew that nations like Thailand, which are quite conservative still, tend to view inter-relationships between men and women always with a sexual bent. In other words, men and women can’t be platonic friends! If a woman spends any amount of significant time with a man, it is assumed they must be interested in something more.
What I didn’t realise, and has profoundly surprised me, was that this even extends to what are supposedly the most liberal countries in the world – Canada and the USA. Several North Americans I’ve met in my time abroad have told me that men and women tend to socialise only within their own gender and that it’s rare for true platonic relationships to develop. This concept is totally alien to me as a British man because in the UK, hanging out with friends of the opposite sex who we are not romantically engaged with, is considered normal.
I always roll my eyes at any kind of debate which starts up over the age old “Can men and women just be friends?” I find the idea that we are even discussing this in the 21st century absolutely ludicrous.
That said, I am still a sexual being and fully admit I would love to have taken things into more romantic territory with one or two of the women I’ve become friends with. But here’s the crucial thing; I don’t hide it from them! I don’t pretend to be their friend whilst secretly trying to sneak my way into their bedroom – which is what most men and supposed “nice guys” try to do.
If I’m interested, I let them know – what they do with that afterwards, is up to them. But I also make it clear that whatever they choose, I’m cool. It doesn’t bother me either way. I don’t start sulking or playing the sympathy card or guilt tripping them or ditching them as a friend.
If I like a woman, it’s never purely about looks, therefore, I must enjoy their company – so why would I not want to continue being around them? Only a beaten ego would make an issue out of this but as I don’t look at a woman not wanting to be more than friends as a rejection, my ego remains in tact – and so does the friendship.
But let there be no doubt – if I like you romantically, you will know about it! And I think that honesty is respected by women, rather than the silly games little boys play to protect their fragile egos.
Men
I should also state I’ve met many amazing men too, within this yoga space. Some of those who take a dig at me tend to only see what they want to see and are incorrect in saying I only spend time with women. But I can’t deny, I am enjoying being around them so much.
I may well be caught in a little yoga bubble of positivity and consciousness and love and openness that doesn’t extend to other women, out in the “real” world. But now that I have a taste of it, I will do everything in my power to get these type of people in my life forever, no matter where I am.
And that is something I WILL try to consciously manifest!
This post is dedicated to all the goddesses I’ve met in Koh Samui this summer. You have enriched my life in ways I never thought possible.
Please leave a comment below, share this post on social media or hit “like” if you enjoyed it. Thank you!!
Comments