Episode 91 - UNDERSTANDING & HEALING THE MASCULINE with Daphne Rose Kingma

Transcript

Francesca Gentille

: Welcome to Sex, Tantra and

Kama

Sutra: Bringing You The Soul of Sex. I’m your host

Francesca Gentille

, and with me today is Daphne Rose Kingma. Daphne is a therapist who provides coaching by phone nationwide, but what really drew me to her is that I’ve considered her a spiritual mentor before I even met her because of her fabulous, fabulous books and the insights that she brings. She’s a woman who deeply and truly understands men and is the author of the book The Men We Never Knew: How To Deepen Your Relationship With The Man You Love. She is also a definitive guide in the, in the ending and transitioning of relationships in her book Coming Apart. And also one of my other personal favorites, a definitive guide of the spiritual meaning of our changing relationships in our world today, the way that relationships are reforming so quickly and redesigning, and that’s a book called The Future of Love.

Francesca Gentille

: I am just so delighted to have you with us here today. Welcome Daphne.

Daphne Rose Kingma: Thank you Francesca. It’s an incredible joy to be with you.

Francesca Gentille

: And there’s so many things that we could talk about for hours and hours, but one little half an hour for now. And what I’m wanting to invite in for us and for our listening audience, male and female, is that part about the men we never knew and these, this in a sense, this shifting of the dynamic in the last, you know, fifty, a hundred years for women has created a shifting for men and there’s a suffering in that that most women don’t know and I think even most men don’t know.

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yeah. There’s, there is – I appreciate that word – there is such a suffering in that. It’s like we’ve been so focused as women on the galloping forward - you know, we’re going to take our place, we’re going to get equality, we’re going to have our intellect and our talent honored in the marketplace, etcetera – that we’ve kind of lost track of the incredible losses that have come along with that; the loss of the, you know, the sort of beautiful dynamism and polarity between men and women that, you know, that’s always been a biological imperitive, but it was expressed in many ways. And we need to renew that now, that needs to be lifted up to a much higher level that’s in keeping with all of the changes that have happened. And men, just to say a few more words, I mean so many men that I speak with just feel like they don’t know where to rest their identity, they don’t know how to be with a woman - whether to open a car door for her, whether she’s going to slam it in their face if they do – how to be these, you know, the quintessence of the male energy as a protector, as a provider, as a, you know, sponsor of the fragility and sensitivity, you know, intuitive power of a woman. So there’s a tremendous amount of pain and confusion right now.

Francesca Gentille

: I want to have a little bit of a vision before we go more into how do we get here and how do we get out…

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yes.

Francesca Gentille

: I want to have the vision that what I’m imagining that you and I align on is the vision is instead of losing courtesy that happened in the 70’s where it became so confusing, like, we can’t open, you know, you can’t open a door for a woman, you can’t help her on with her coat, you can’t pay for a meal, she’ll be insulted, that perhaps a new vision is the raising, like you said, the raising up of courtesy, so that whoever gets to the door first opens it, who if someone’s carrying packages the other person will open the door because that person’s carrying packages. If someone just got, you know, a bonus then maybe that person wants to pay for the meal, that it’s more about how, in a loving generous way, how can we be of service, of adoration, of devotion to one another, rather than lets pick a fight over being in devotion somehow makes somebody less than.

Daphne: Rose Kingma: Yes, exactly. But I think one of the critical things, you know, the dynamic between men and women – and I’d love to hear from your, our male listeners, you know, - is there, there is a certain reverence in honoring for each gender for the other and that itself has gotten very, very mixed up, so in this new season of manhood and womanhood, what is it that a man needs to receive from a woman and what is it that a woman needs to receive from a man. And I think, you know, yes, of course there’s a democracy of cooperation and kindness, but there’s also how do we revel in the difference between the genders. How do we celebrate that there is this profound difference between men and women? We used to have very staked out ways of doing that; the guy, you know, went out in the world and brought home the money and the woman was tied to the house and did all that and there was a lot of hell and all of that. There was a lot of hell, there was a lot of glory. But, you know, we’ve turned a somersault and so we need to find a new way to do that, and I think it’s really, you know, it’s on an interior level and that’s where I think – this is what I’ve noticed in the works that I’m doing with people – this is where, you know, this is where men and women need coaching, and I think men have really done a beautiful job of connecting with one another, you know, through all the men’s work thing, but I think women aren’t knowing how to nurture a new, you know, evolved male identity.

Francesca Gentille

: I want to point out something, that there was a bubble in the, I think the late 80’s, early 90’s around the men’s movement…

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yeah.

Francesca Gentille

: And then that bubble came up to the surface and then dissipated…

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yeah.

Francesca Gentille

: And it’s time for a new arising of men also healing the community of men, because you and I have both worked with a lot of men and so many men still carry this discomfort around other men, this sense of “I don’t know if I can really trust other men with my feelings, with things that are vulnerable. I don’t know if there’s a way to be with men other than competitive or hierarchical.” So there’s still, you know, I notice a lot in my clients that my, some of the best male clients have no male friends…

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yes.

Francesca Gentille

: The feel very disassociated from other men.

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yes, and I think that part of that, that is certainly true, and in some ways women have to be the bridge to facilitate that at times, because, you know, it’s just like when a man has a broken relationship with his father, if his mother doesn’t honor his other attempts to bond with men he’s going to be lost forever, so women need to be not the resting place for that but a bridge for that. And I think, I just think, I think men are sort of like a leaf going around in a circle in a stream; it’s like “Well how can I get moving in a direction again?”, and part of that direction is what they do, you know, when they’re able to do it with one another and part of it needs to be facilitated by a woman who understands maleness in its wholeness, which is that it’s partly a response to the feminine, but it’s also partly, you know, engagement with other men. I think many women want to keep men to themselves, you know; okay, “Here’s like, I’m going to nail him down and, you know, that’s it”, as opposed to saying, you know, in the days of old, in the days of Robin Hood and Maid Maryanne, you know, the woman was aware that the man needed to live his warrior identity and his power identity and he, you know, in the company of other men, and that was part of what defined him as a man. She didn’t say, “Okay, now you got me, you know, put down your bows and arrows and come home.”

Francesca Gentille

: That’s a really important point. And I also want to say to those that, those people who carry, there are some women who carry a lot of yang energy or the masculine energy…

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yes.

Francesca Gentille

: And there are some men who carry a lot of the yin or more feminine energy. And whichever energy you carry to, there’s a roll that you’re called to. So when we carry a lot of yang we’re called to that warrior, that hunter, that protector…

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yes, yes.

Francesca Gentille

: When we carry a lot of yin we’re called to that hearth, that creativity, that home, and we both carry both, and there’s something that Daphne’s pointing to about how we honor that in one another…

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yes.

Francesca Gentille

: and how we nurture it versus how do we entrap it, to say, “Oh, you know, you’re my warrior now” or “You’re my little honey bunny now. You’re my little creative, you know, honey bunny and you need to be chained to the, you know, kitchen table.” Is that, you know, there’s something that you’re pointing to about how we can nourish one another and there’s been, you know, more of the focus on how can we nourish to have a career, how can we nourish them to get out of the house, how can we make sure that they’re more fulfilled at a multifaceted level. And what I hear you pointing to is that men also need that kind of encouragement or people who carry a lot of yang, because they’ll be deeply in a work/protector/provider kind of roll, and they also need that encouragement…

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yes.

Francesca Gentille

: to go out and be in community, to go and bond in that deep fraternity/ sorority in some way.

Daphne Rose Kingma: Well of course as we’re saying all this Francesca, what I’m feeling is the exquisite paradox of it all, because on the one hand we have to really be mindful of these, if you will, gender identities, of there is something profoundly different between the male and the feminine, and that we need to, we need to keep appreciating and honoring that, while at the same time there is this other level, this other layer which is just the beauty of knowing one another, to know that person who is a man who has highly developed feminine characteristics and honor him in that totality to know the woman who’s got a lot of young energy and to honor her in that. And so it’s both the sort of, you know, gender response of this, but it’s also the particularity of really coming into this surrendered willingness to know another human being. And that’s an incredible, you know, that means that we have to drop our prejudices, drop our trips, work through our own emotional issues and say “Show me who you are. I want to know that. And lets be, you know, lets be present”, and of course that is the journey of relationship.

Francesca Gentille

: Lets talk more about some of the steps of that. I also want to go back in time a little bit and represence for our listening audience what happened. You know there we were in the 1920’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, with some fairly distinct roles – those got shifted of course during World War 2 for a while but returned in full force in the 50’s – and, you know, where were we, what happened, kind of a little map of where we are now and some more about how do we come into that intimacy, that courageously vulnerable intimacy, after we come back from a break and a word from our fabulous sponsors, who we encourage you to support because they help great shows like this keep coming to you. And we’ll be right back.

Francesca Gentille

: Welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You The Soul of Sex, speaking with the fabulous Daphne Rose Kingma, my spiritual and personal mentor and inspiration, author of books I think that could change your life; The Men We Never Knew, How To Deepen Your Relationship With The Man You Love, The Coming Apart, and also The Future of Love. And we’re talking about this journey of the male/female, masculine/feminine, both the archetypes of those and the gender fluidity of those and how we, how we got here and how we, how we actually partner in a deep way. Could you tell us a little bit about how we got here? Like, what happened?

Daphne Rose Kingma: How we got here; well we, you know, it’s, first it was based on biology, men were stronger they had to go out and do all the things, women had to stay at home in the hearth and as you pointed out things, you know, there has been seasons of changes with the second World War, when women went into the workplace and that sort of got retracted again. I think then women who had, you know, on an evolutionary had a taste of “Hey, there’s more to us than just baking bread, mopping floors”, you know, woke up and said there’s a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of us that isn’t happening when men are doing all but going out and doing everything, so there was an awakening of the, you know, the male energy in women and that challenged men a lot, like “What are we supposed to do now?” I think we know, you and I Francesca, know many men who are awakening to their interior lives, their emotional selves, their feelings, what are they going to do with that and how they’re not just all providers and protectors. But we’re standing at this really interesting cusp where women have integrated a lot of their male energy, a few men have integrated some of their feminine energy and come to claim what they’re feeling. But now we’re at this moment where, you know, I believe personally that, you know, if men in a large, much larger proportion don’t come to the place of integrating their feeling selves we’re really heading on a road to disaster. I mean I think the call is it’s not to feminize men, but it’s to create an arena in which men can claim that they too are feeling beings. And since women have always been entitled to this arena, we can be very beautiful shepherds, but we have to be very conscious shepherdesses, I guess is the word, you know. But to not say “Okay, you know, come along and feel like a woman” or “Now that you do have feelings, you know, what kind of a wimp are you?” It’s a very delicate sacred undertaking. And I emphasize the word ‘sacred’; it really means that we provide this space for a man to connect with the fact that he is also a feeling being, and then we understand that he may enact that in a very different way that we as women do.

Francesca Gentille

: I think that’s so important, this sense of people who carry a lot of yang energy, a lot of masculine energy – we talked about this in other shows – their brains are literally patterned where their emotions are in one part of the brain. So the way they access it is different, it takes longer…

Daphne Rose Kingma: Right.

Francesca Gentille

: And they’re there longer when they get there. So it’s actually more sensitive for people who carry this kind of brain pattern where the feminine brain patterning has very easy access to emotions and a fluidity in and out of them.

Daphne Rose Kingma: Exactly.

Francesca Gentille

: There’s this, one of the things that I think is key that women don’t always know and men don’t always know is that women, women, we’re not allowed power, overt power out in the workplace, and that was a constraint for them. But what men were disallowed was a sense of their own emotional life.

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yes. Yes.

Francesca Gentille

: And then that men, we often like oh, once again they have the power and they have the control, but statistically they were also dying, percentage wise, so much more often than we are through the very, you know… Yes, we can say that maybe men create wars, but there’s also times where literally they’re protecting and defending us and they’re dying in that role and we’re, we’re not in those armies, we’re not in those front lines.

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yes. And, you know, I just want to obviously chime in there that, you know, the number of suicides in the Military is just astronomical. You know we send those guys out there thinking they don’t have a feeling bone in their body. I mean that’s kind of the myth; “Okay, there they go. They’re young and strong”, and bam, you know. But they are scared to death, they are scared to the point of choosing their own death because it is so unbearable what they’re going through. And that is, you know, I mean that’s true in civilian life too that men are dying quicker sooner, you know, than women. So this is the huge thing; it is the frontier I believe that we stand on in terms of, you know, evolving our emotional and spiritual consciousness to make a way for the courageous men who have the impulse to do it on their own, but also for women to really hold a place where this can be accomplished.

Francesca Gentille

: I want to talk more about how we do that; how do we, as the men who are listening, how do they invite women into a partnership that supports them to be come forward, to heal, to integrate, to be more vibrantly themselves? And for the women that are listening, how do we invite men into a partnership with us and gently be a guardian of their process, where in many cases we still feel like we’re still depleted and, you know, we’re still fighting against a glass ceiling. So we’ll be talking more about that when we come back from a break and a word from our sponsors. We’ll be right back.

Francesca Gentille

: Welcome back to Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You The Soul of Sex, speaking with Daphne Rose Kingma about the journey of that deep intimate partnership through some of the suffering that men have been carrying and how do we, you know, along with what women have been carrying, which we’ve had a lot of media about over the last 50 years, but now looking at what men carry and the, how do we do this Daphne? How can men, how can men invite that? How can women?

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yes. I think one thing that always comes up for women is “Oh you mean I’ve got one more chore to do? I have ten thousands chores and here’s one more”, but what I would say to the women of the world is as you create this space for men, realize that you will be the recipient of the rewards of it, you know. If we’re not going to create this space for men, we’re never going to have the kind of man that we want to be present with us emotionally. So I want to give just a couple of guidelines. The very first thing is how can we invite people into this relationship; well first of all, invite them into the relationship, but you know, for women that’s just changing whatever thinking you have that’s in denial of the fact that men have feelings, you know. It’s like just because we can’t see the ten million, you know, wireless connections in the sky, we know they’re there even though we can’t see them; we know them because we use our cell phones. So it’s like change what you think about men, start thinking of them as beings who do have feelings even though they do have a hard time getting connected with them. Secondly, in your engagements, you know, leave some space. Women are such talkers; we feel up all the airtime. I’ve done workshops for men only many times and the men say, “What are we all doing here together with one woman? Why aren’t there other women here?” And the other man chimed up and said, “You know, if the women were here they would be doing all the talking.” So the second thing is, women that we need to do is create space and listen as opposed to talk because you will discover amazing things about the men in your life. Third is take it one step further which is inquire and don’t criticize. Women so often feel like we’re going to get a man’s attention by saying, “You didn’t do this right. Why didn’t you do that? And when are you going to do that? You always do that”, instead of saying “What’s going on with you when”… blah, blah, blah. And, you know, I’ve seen this with men in workshops when women say, “What are you feeling?”, you know, I remember a man saying just point blank, “I have no idea what to say to you. So we need to create a lot of space, we need to invite the man to connect with his feelings, and if he says “I don’t know”, we can either wait and say “It looks to me like”…blah, blah, blah… “If you’d like to talk about that I’d like to”, and realize that a man may have to go away, you know. He may have to hike up the mountain to get the answer. He may have to, you know, go to the other room, so… But I think our tendency so much has been to criticize as opposed to inquire. And then finally, you know, these men of feeling that we want to engage with, they have sorrows and they have tears, and so we need to realize that when a man has a breakdown of some kind it doesn’t mean he’s not a man. It means that he is partaking of this humanity in the same way that we do, and there’s a, you know, they’re just sacred privilege involved when we’re in that moment with a man. And so, you know, again, I think it’s often hard for women to wait, but to just, to be present, to be your nurturing, you know, nurturing divine presence to the man who wants to be able to feel something and wants to be able to feel it without having to get it over with or be ashamed of it or… And I think one of the most profound moments I had along this line was working with a Vietnam veteran who had, I mean he was, he looked like the toughest guy on the planet, you know; rode motorcycles, wore leather jackets, had, you know, fourteen pieces of steel on his key ring. And, you know, when asked “What is it that you really want from a woman?”, this warrior said, “I need a place where I can fail”, you know, “to not be on all the time”. So we need to remember that men are human beings too, you know. We’re not, we’re not the only creatures who feel and can, there’s a lot of spaciousness that we can offer to the discovery of these amazing beings that we share the planet and our lives with.

Francesca Gentille

: I would also say to women if this is, to our women listeners, if they’re listening to this and saying “No, no, not one more thing”, that that’s an invitation to make sure that we’re getting the nourishment that we need…

Daphne Rose Kingma: Exactly.

Francesca Gentille

: from our community of women. I’ve just started to have women’s gatherings, women’s gatherings of magnificent ease where we go to a place that has a hot tub or a pool and we give each other pedicures and we just, we, you know, (unintelligible) and we just go deep into that feminine energy so that we’re not expecting our men to be better women. We’re…

Daphne Rose Kingman: Yeah, yeah.

Francesca Gentille

: letting our need for the feminine be met in other women so that we can come home full of ourselves in the best way to be that sacred space holder.

Daphne Rose Kingma: That’s right.

Francesca Gentille

: How about for our men? If they want to invite one another into something more deep, more rich, more authentic, do you have any suggestions for them as well?

Daphne Rose Kingma: Well I think that I know a number of men that I work with are now again in men’s group and they find that there’s a, you know, a challenge to authenticities that they can receive from another man that’s very different from that with which they receive from a woman. So I think the time and the place is right for men to connect with one another in these forums, you know, not just through the sports events and the, you know… but to really make themselves available. And you know, if that sort of thing isn’t available in your community, be the leader; part of the male identity is male leadership, and it’s a great invitation for a man to create the community of male support that he needs.

Francesca Gentille

: And there are some great programs across the country; there’s The Man Kind Project, a wonderful, wonderful…

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yes, fabulous. And Boys To Men is another one; I don’t know if that’s available everywhere, but that’s a beautiful, beautiful process of men, you know, initiating boys. It’s just so powerful and gorgeous, both for the, you know, for the elder men and the younger men, and it’s a ceremony, it’s a rite of passage ceremony that’s been missing in the male world in our culture for a very long time, so… You know, these things, each person who’s listening with a full heart and wide consciousness can be an initiator of some of these changes.

Francesca Gentille

: I love that you say that, that we can remind ourselves to be the change; “If I don’t have this in my community, I can create this in my community…

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yes, exactly.

Francesca Gentille

: I can create this in my church. I can create this in my Y, you know, my YMCA. I can create this. All I need is a vision.” And male or female, if you’re listeing to this show, you are the people of vision…

Daphne Rose Kingma: Yes.

Francesca Gentille

: And you can be an and already are the difference wherever you go. Daphne I want to thank you. Our time has gone so quickly…

Daphne Rose Kingma: I know.

Francesca Gentille

: and I want to have you back. I want to talk more about the future of love, which we kind of almost dipped on in a way when we’re talking about this. And how would people get a hold of you? How would they find your books, get, you know, coaching with you, how would they find you?

Daphne Rose Kingma: You can reach me and write me directly through my website, which is www.daphnekingma.com, d-a-p-h-n-e, k-i-n-g-m-a. I have two names so they’re challenging to spell. And, yes, and anybody who write to me I’d like to give you a few notes from the book, The Men We Never Knew, as a path of inspiration for you. Let us carry this work forward together because it’s so needed. I think, you know, it was more than fifteen years ago that I wrote that book; it was so ahead of its time, you know, and many pioneers picked it up, but now it’s really time. It is so time now for it to continue and deepen.

Francesca Gentille

: And thank you for being our cultural pioneer, our light bringer into the, into the future. And if you want to hear more about Daphne, see her beautiful picture, her website, more about her services, also get in contact with me, my beautiful picture, my website and my coaching services, you can do that at www.personallifemedia.com. That’s www.personallifemedia.com, Sex, Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You The Soul of Sex.