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Summary
In this episode, Blake Zealear and host Aaron Kleinerman explore the intricate dynamics of love and leadership. They discuss the importance of honesty, compatibility, and timing in relationships, especially in the context of open and polyamorous connections.
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About the Guest
Blake Zealear — Founder
Blake is an evolutionary guide working at the intersection of men’s work, feminism, sacred sexuality, and new-paradigm relating. He identifies as two-spirit, queer, pansexual, an erotic shapeshifter, and a multitude of other human expressions - and this faceted perspective illuminates his teaching. His multi-disciplinary approach provides the empowerment, permission, and playfulness that enable a liberated reclaiming of his students’ lives. Blake has studied embodiment, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Radical Honesty, Landmark technology, Tantric and Yogic practice, breathwork, shamanic sexuality, esoterics, polarity, non-traditional relationship design, shadow-work, and Spiral Dynamics, among other modalities. He is devoted to the emergence of a new culture of love in our lifetimes, the transmutation of suffering into power, and the ascension of humanity through healing our relationships to ourselves and the Earth.
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Welcome to the Love, Sex, and Leadership Podcast, where insightful dialogues and transformative teachings await. Join Aaron Kleinerman on a journey to explore the intersections of love, sexuality, and leadership. Through candid conversations with experts and live audio teachings, Aaron creates a safe space for self-discovery and empowerment. Embrace your true power, awaken your soul's wisdom, and live an inspired life as a natural, intuitive, and heart-centered leader. Dive into the mysteries of the universe and unlock the secrets to mastering the human experience. Tune in and embark on a path of profound transformation.
Welcome to the Sex, Love and Leadership podcast, where you can discover simple tantric teachings to embody your true power, awaken your soul's wisdom, and live an inspired life as a natural, intuitive, and heart-centered leader. Perspective-wise, like, I'm very much in a more, I would call, monogamous relationship at this point. Blake Zealear is more in an open relationship. I've been in open relationships. Um, I don't know if he's been in— you've had an open relationship? Yeah, for the first half of my adult life. Okay. So yeah, we both have kind of perspectives from both sides. For me, honesty is number one piece, like no matter what. And I say that from like In my last partnership, when I met Natasha, I was in an open relationship. I was in an open relationship, and Natasha and I deepened more together. And in that relationship, we were teaching together. Lovemaking was amazing. Like, we would dance in the heavens. We were sky dancing for sure. And just like incredible. But every time my cock was inside of her, I was like, do not impregnate this woman. But that's what my cock was saying. And another kind of point, I'll be speaking about different things, like the same way you can have a dialogue with your little boy, as you saw, Jaimin, you can have communication from your cock. Because who's ever had the experience that your cock has one mind and your brain has another? So like there's an intelligence there. Lean into it. And like in this case, with this partner, My cock was like, do not impregnate this woman. And I was like, okay, you know, so I'm kind of dancing for this whole relationship in the place of like, I want children, which is very much true in my values. I wanted to deepen with her. We were open. And as we were in this open relationship, like, as time went on, I got more open. She got less open and was like, I want you to choose me and I want to be more monogamous. And I'm like, I would love to be able to do that, but that's not my truth. And that was a very— it was challenging as well as like really deeply rewarding to be able to sit in that dynamic and be 100% honest, because I knew the right things to say in order to please her. I knew what she wanted me to tell her in order to be a good man, to choose her and to be more like, have her be the number one priority. My consciousness knew how to do that. My body was like, don't fucking do that. I didn't know why. I just had to listen to that body. And as time went on, I realized very clearly that by doing that, you know, my relationship with Natasha deepened. And then as when we came together, it was very easy for me to just choose her because I felt fully met. I felt fully met in my feminine, my masculine. I felt I could also show up as now a biological father. So all those pieces were there, and it would have been easy to just say, I'm 80% in this. It's not fully there, but it's great. It's pretty good. Who's been there before? You're like, it's— and that was like, she's an amazing woman. Like, I'm still friends with her. She's now has a new partner in her life, and she's an incredible, incredible woman. And I was just very clear that, like, and it was so hard at the end of that relationship because she was kind of almost breaking down and crying, saying like, Why can't you choose me? That wasn't her exact words, but that was the energy that was coming through. And I'm like, babe, I would love to. If I fully choose you in this moment, there's a part of me that's not going to be in integrity to that. And I didn't— I tried to find ways to communicate it after the fact. I was able to more, and we had a bit of time where we weren't talking, and now we're friends and probably teaching together this next year. Um, but this piece To me, I see a lot of men fall in relationship because you're like, I'm, I'm in and maybe it's the best I can get, so I'm just going to stay. But then what happens? Often your cock will stop not getting hard. You'll start thinking about other things and you're not fully in. Right now in my relationship with her, I've been open. I love having multiple partners. I have zero desire. Like, I can have attraction towards other women and things, but there's no part of me that wants to go have sex with others because I feel fully received. We're also in very much like a baby-making nesting time. So I'm present to that. But I also recognize that because we started open and because that was already on the table, if at any point in our relationship, on the lives of our children and how things— if we want to move towards openness, it feels very like the door is open. And I see what I feel like. And, and Blake Zealear will have a lot to share and open because I feel like you've navigated a lot more than me. Where I see people do open really wrong is they're like, oh, it's not working in monogamy, let's try to open it. Never, I will say never, have I ever seen two people who are like, oh, let's try to fix the relationship by opening it. What a great idea. No, like, you need a strong foundation. And, and, you know, to go deeper in this as well, it's like The— there might be— when I was at that time when I was more like open, I would just be very honest with the individual. I wasn't saying I'm seeking my baby mama, but I'm also just honestly sharing, like, unless I really feel deeply met, like, I'm happy to deepen with a lovership with you, but unless I really feel that on the table, I'm going to continue to have outside connections. It's, uh, as a man, like, you're not here to take breadcrumbs. I'll say that again because I feel like many men into relationship, whether you're open, whether you've been in a relationship for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, there's this place of like, well, it's working okay, so I'm just gonna stay. And like, is that actually what you want to think when you're on your deathbed of like It was okay. Yeah, you know, I didn't actually fucking live it to the deepest well. Or, you know, do you want to feel like, yes, I was fully in? And that doesn't mean when you're fully in, it's always going to be fucking butterflies and, you know, rainbows all the time. It means that you show up and do the work, but track the place of where you're showing up and doing the work and where you're perpetuating a pattern. If the dynamic that you're in, there's a conscious choice to continue to grow on your half and on her half, then beautiful. But if you're wanting to grow and she's staying stuck, stay there for a little bit and keep inviting that invitation of, hey, let's discuss, let's break this down. And also recognize the other thing I see people— I see a lot in open relationships, not all the time, is it becomes more of a process-ship rather than a relation-ship. I like to relate in relationships, not process. So if you're spending 80% of the time processing, just call it fucking what it is, a therapeutic process rather than a relationship. And a lot in this fucking spiritual open tantra community, I see people always in fucking process. And I probably have my own aversion to it right now. I'll name that because I felt like I was in that at times. And I have a lot of joy in my life that generally we're not perfect. We're in a level of just lovemaking and connection and relating together. So, yeah, just some pieces I want to throw out. I want to double-click on the first thing Aaron Kleinerman said. Honesty is everything. Everything. And this applies to your question, Matthias. It applies to your question. It applies to your question. It applies to your question. There's also a great book out there called Radical Honesty. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. It was one of the first ones I found on my journey. Tell the fucking truth. Always. Even if it's not your whole truth. Because the truth is a moving target. Right? Like, it changes and it evolves, and there can be many things that are true at the same time. Like Aaron Kleinerman was just highlighting: I love you, the sex is amazing, I love teaching with you, my cock says don't impregnate you. So something in me is not all the way in to the kind of choosing that you're asking for. Maybe he didn't have the words for it at the time, but this, this works in my world too. Uh, over lunch I was talking with a couple of brothers. They were asking me questions about how I navigate having at this point 6 women in my life. I am as transparent with them upfront before we start really dating, certainly before we have sex. Here's what I'm available for. Here's how often I can see you at most or at best. Here's what I'm available for on the phone at most and at best. Here's the kind of things that I could see us maybe doing one day. And here are the kind of things that I really don't want you to entertain. How does that work for you? And just put my— all my cards on the table. And if they go, you know what, you're sexy, and I would love— in my dream world, we would be something that you're not available for. I'm like, thank you for your honesty. And they'll say, thank you for yours. And we let it go. And that's usually not then a time to put your cock inside of her. That's definitely not. Just want to mention that because that's also where I see, like, when you put a cock inside of her, you're also— you're bringing her into your world. Yeah, recognize that. Yeah, it's kind of already too late. Um, I want to weave this in with what Matthias asked about values and needs alignments and/or misalignments. That can be addressed with radical honesty as well. And what it speaks to is compatibility. Now, I hold that there are 3 things, like a triangle, a triad of pillars that you need to really support a potentially healthy relationship, whether it's monogamous, polyamorous, doesn't matter. Love, of course, compatibility, and timing. Timing. Most people don't consider the timing part or the compatibility part. Because if love is there, why wouldn't we do this? Why wouldn't we keep trying? I love you. We can do this from two different countries. We can do this if I want kids and you don't, or we can do this if I want to have kids in 10 years and you want to have kids tomorrow. There's a timing misalignment, there's a compatibility misalignment, and even if the love feels like a 10 out of 10, you will break yourselves on the misalignment. You'll break your hearts. And so in the, in the name of radical honesty, a lot of what you will find if you practice it robustly are what are called inconvenient truths. Inconvenient truths where it's like, fuck, I hate to admit this, but I have to because my integrity compels me. That X is true for me and Y is true for you. And when I look at that plainly from a calm, grounded, more like objective place, we're not compatible in this way. And it saddens me to name that, but I don't know that throwing more time at it or throwing more sex at it or throwing more travel at it or throwing anything at it is going to change the fact that we fundamentally are not aligned in this way, whether it's the compatibility piece or the timing. So yours could maybe be a little bit of both, you know, like it's a great relationship, but she wants something that you're not actually available for, or her concept of partnership is one— it sounds, you know, I'm just filtering from two sentences that you named, but there are a lot of women out there and a lot of men too who were raised with a set of conditioning around what a partnership is that translates to something like we have to maximize our time together, we have to interweave as many parts of our life as possible. Another version that comes along with our traditional programming about relationships is what I call the— is called the relationship escalator, right? Boy meets girl, there's lots of— boy meets boy, whatever, there's lots of attraction. We develop a little bit of hot and heavy for each other. We fuck like bunnies. Next thing we know, we're dating once a week, twice a week, 3 times a week. Well, then it just makes more financial sense if we move in together. So now we're living together. So now we're together like 24/7. And then the— okay, well, we've been doing that for like a year and a half, 2 years. Like, when are you going to propose? And let's talk about children. And it's like there always needs to be a next thing. And that model of growth to me is not the model of growth that Aaron Kleinerman's talking about. To me, a growth-oriented relationship starts with the individual who is first and foremost committed to themselves, to their own inner union, to their own path, their own awakening. And they are committed to doing the work for themselves because that's what God compels them to do or what life compels them to do. And then if you have a partner who has a similar value, then the relationship will naturally grow and evolve in all sorts of ways that can't necessarily be predicted and don't necessarily fit on that staircase. So if you have a model of relating that has more independence to it, you're like, oh, I want to spend a lot of time with you, but I also want to spend a lot of time without you and a lot of time with my kids and a lot of time on my mission. And that doesn't work for her. Then it doesn't matter how much love there is. I mean, it matters, but it's not going to make the relationship work. Then you end up in another version of a process ship is what a lot of people call a situationship, where it's like, ugh, like, I love this person, but the situation is fucking heavy and it requires us to spend all types of— all kinds of time processing. While we're on this subject of ships, I want to weave in this idea that a relationship very much is like the ship that our love is on board of, and it is traversing through these waters. Mm-hmm. Our relationship is not the love itself. It's the container for the love. Love is independent of the form. I had a partner for 4 and a half years named Lily, a wonderful human being. We were together from like 2015 to 2020. We were living together, cohabitating partners. We were talking about having kids. Turns out she can't have kids. Oh, that was pretty devastating for both of us. But it eventually got to a point that the container of us, like, living together and being, like, primary-ish partners just wasn't working for me. I loved her so much, but the container, the ship, didn't work anymore. And when I found that inconvenient truth, I was able to bring it to her in a way that was very loving because there was so much love between us. I was like, this is not about love. It's really not. This container doesn't work. I want to dissolve this container. I— we can keep our channel of communication open, but I'm not going to keep trying to, like, fit myself into this ship that doesn't fit me anymore. Mm-hmm. And we did exactly that. We dissolved our relationship. We took a bunch of time apart. We talked in that time, and we even grieved together. We cried about it together. It was really sweet. And about a year later, we kind of came back together as friends. And sometime after that, we came back together as lovers as well and actually had the best sex we ever had. And she is now my closest female friend. She is my best female friend. And probably will be from here on out. And the way that we love each other now is vastly better than it was when we were partnered because our expectations of each other are completely different because the ship doesn't carry those expectations. We're in a different ship now. We're in like a best friend, brother, sister, sometimes lovers ship. We don't see each other that much, but I can call her anytime with anything. She's always there for me, and I receive— I receive and give something closer to unconditional love with her now than we ever had when we were partnered. So I want to pass it back to Aaron Kleinerman in a minute, but I'll close with this sentence. Like, the people who show up in your life that you can form loving relationships with, don't try to fit them into your preconceived boxes of what partner or wife or husband or life partner or co-parent, don't try to fit them into your preconceived boxes. Make containers that fit the love, the compatibility, and the timing that is there. Design them, engineer them, because you can have any kind of relationship container you want. The fact that we're trying to choose off the shelf from like what our parents did what my brother did, what, you know, the people on TV are doing, what all of the romance movies say is the normal thing. Fuck all that. That's really old paradigm thinking. Yeah. Let's take a breath. So one of the archetypal pieces I want to name about this shift that Blake Zealear's speaking into is that when two beings are coming together, whether it's in poly or in monogamy, whatever it may be, in that dynamic there's four relationships happening. So really, every time you're with your partner, you're having a foursome. Isn't that kind of fun? Yeah. All right, masculine, feminine, masculine, feminine. Yeah. So I want to speak into these dynamics because this to me, when I started to understand and apply this and see it happening in real time, I could start to change the expectations and the communication in these different relationships. So first relationship, Natasha and I, generally 80% of the time, especially right now, I'm in my masculine, she's in her childbearing, loving, and nurturing mama land. Like, that's our, you know, and, and I'm supporting, I'm the primary provider, I'm taking care of all the finances, she's taking care of supporting with our homes, supporting with the baby. There's a very, you could say, heteronormative frame of how our lives are looking. Now that's one form, that's my masculine relating with her feminine. There's also our masculines relating together, like in the management. And one of the things I'm going to highly recommend, I'm going to speak about specific things are going to change the way you do relating. In my thread, in my phone, I have a thread called Abundance and Love Service. That is a thread I have with Natasha about all the things that we do about abundance and love. That's around our home. So all of the communication we have about our Bali home, about all of the maintenance and things about our Spain home, about stuff that we have going on here That all happens in that thread. So I know when I open that thread, that's basically our bros talking together saying, hey, bro, we got to do this. Let's do this. We got to get this done. Hey, this cost this amount. Take care of that. Do this. Do that. It's a very— Brianna and I have this too. Doing this thread and what that means. Like, I'm— I like— I get appreciative and gratitude for her, bro. Her bro doesn't give me a hard-on. So like, that's like, maybe it turns me on by what he's able to do. And she manages a lot, has an amazing eye for interior design and seeing things and just support. One of our agreements is like, with me providing, is that she's kind of generally helping with managing of our different homes and different things like that. And that is a very clear bro-to-bro relationship. Where this really sunk in deep for me years ago when I was in New Zealand, I studied at a place called Haiden, which is a mystery school connected to a mentor of mine who actually was the initial one that kind of seeded a few different men's embodied trainings that are all happening right now. And from that, his name is Bruce Lyon. I took his teachings and kind of expanded on it into this men's retreat. And speak into more of that another time as well. But I was there at Haydn and I was connecting with this woman and she was beautiful, amazing. We were away on a weekend training, a weekend away with a few friends, and something happened to our friend's car and we were behind. So we both got out of the car and I like, I've rebuilt engines. I know how to deal with mechanics and stuff. So I put up the hood and I was looking at the engine and kind of going through it. All of a sudden I see her literally rolling up her sleeves and looking at the hood with me. And I just had this moment because she also had an understanding of engines and stuff, and it was like, hey bro, like there was a very clear— we were about to go do this task not as lovers, we were doing this task now as two bros meeting this task. And there was such a clarity in that moment of like, okay, this is our masculine and masculine meeting, very clear. Now That might be a place in my relationship, um, that— not the last one before Natasha, before that with Raven, um, when I first met Yuri, that's where I was with amazing, strong, powerful woman. And probably our deepest challenge in this foursome was our masculine and masculine, because her masculine is a fucking firestorm and just is a fucking blow— like, burn. Also, when I first met Jamin, I was with, with her and amazing and strong. And also, like, we would butt heads a lot, and I learned a lot also teaching next to a woman like that. If you want to evolve really quickly in life, you teach with a partner, you live with a partner, and you run a business with a partner. I don't recommend it to anyone, but if you want to have a high evolutionary scale of what you're doing like that, there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and it's very tumultuous. Sure, Blake Zealear can speak into that as well. So tumultuous is a nice word. Tumultuous is a good word. In, in that dynamic, I, my masculine learned a lot. Now, to speak into this dynamic, it's like your masculine has been more in that masculine energy for longer in life. So rather than look at her masculine as like, what the fuck you doing? Why are you competing with me? Think about it looking as how would you mentor a younger brother? How would you mentor and support rather than some younger brother who's obviously trying to compete with you and it's like, see me, see me, see me, which is often the masculine in female bodies because they're not being seen and they're doing this and they get shit done. They're being seen as a woman kind of in that energy, but not necessarily with the same cultivated flow. So I learned in that relationship, especially with Raven, that I, you know, at times I really appreciated the younger brother, and at times I also had to have a big brother approach with how I communicated. That wasn't having power over, because when I tried to have power over him, he fought back like a motherfucker. He fought back hard. And then it would just create conflict in our love and our intimacy, and it would create So I recognized, I'm like, I have to shift this. So instead of trying to fight the younger brother, I started to support it, saying, okay, I hear you, because I realized that he was coming from more competition and I was trying to bring us more to comrades. Difference between competition and comrades. Competition is power over, comrades is power with. So if you're having challenges to— maybe some of you are doing business with or working with your beloved, A, have a separate thread, game changer, and B, when you do get into conflict, recognize that instead of trying to negotiate and communicate with a masculine that's at a same frequency or energetic awareness as your own, look at it more as a younger brother. In some areas, like with Raven, it was like her business sense was better than mine in many ways, and I appreciated that. And we began through the years of being together to find a way where we danced more effectively. Masculine, masculine. Third one, feminine, feminine. So this is where your feminine begins to interact with their feminine. Another very strong example I learned with Raven. First time we, like, we were in that honeymoon phase, couple months in, and then we had our first argument. In that first argument, I was like, I put on my shield. I was like preparing to get hit. I was preparing for the punches because in the relationship too, before that, I would show up at a couple session with a black eye because the woman I was with would come at me fucking swinging. And I remember showing— I was living in LA at the time and I was like so much in my light masculine and she was so much in her dark femme. That we were just like— lovemaking was fucking hot, but everything else was a shit show. So I, you know, that place of having a healthy sister that my feminine could lean into, I didn't even know. So that first argument happened with Raven, and what I witnessed was I was preparing for, like, the shield. She removed herself from the situation. She beat the fuck out of a pillow. She came back to me with a level head, with clarity, and said, this is how I feel, this is what I need, and this is what it's going to provide me with. And I literally had a fucking jaw-dropping moment. I was like, holy shit, I've heard so many female spiritual teachers talking about this. I've never seen it in action. So what happened in that moment? My feminine started to get a healthy imprint of what it means from her big sister. Because all of the crazy Latina women I'd been with before— and there was a long list of them— when shit would get crazy, they would come at me swinging, or they would throw shit at me, or they would blame and shame and condemn. And I was like trying to deflect it, not really knowing how to reflect on it. And I didn't know, like, my feminine was like, what did I do wrong? So I started to get a healthy big sister in that relationship. And from that place, actually, I was able to— what happened in a relationship later is that when I was with a partner and I would see her start to be in blame and shame, I would put a very strong boundary. I say, we have two options here. One, you remove yourself from the situation, you beat the pillow, Take care of what your needs— this isn't about me. I know it's not about me. Recognize it's not about me. And you come back to me and we come into clarity and what we need moving forward. That's one option. Option number two, I'm going to shift gears into, like we did with the line exercise the other day, into Shiva. You can say whatever you need to say, express whatever you need to express. I'm not going to take it personal. I get— get— it's just going to be you on your rave. I am not going into logical comprehension of your emotional body. I'll say that again. Never once is there good logical things that happen when either one of you are emotional. One— three times, actually. Never once is there logical things that move forward when you're both in an emotional state. I see people do this wrong, whether it's poly, whether it's monogamy. When one of you is fucking livid, don't try to figure shit out. Just get to the source of where it's coming from, which might be about you from years ago, or might be about just their own needs and the things that aren't feeling met. So when you can get more to the source of it, and rather than the projection and the blame, that's where you can move forward with life rather than this fucking spiral where it's like Who's done this? And it gets nowhere. All it does is keep spiraling over and over. So in that moment with this, this partner, the last one I was with before Natasha, when I did that with her, she didn't like that. She wanted— she continually tried to fucking process with me while she was upset. And I had to drop stronger and stronger boundaries that I am not open to having this conversation while you're— but I'm not upset. And you can just see the fucking fumes coming out of there. I'm not— nothing upset about me. Just fucking listen to me. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna listen, but don't expect me to now listen and then try to meet you in logic about what's happening. Get to the fucking source. We did this a few times, and she would go finally take yourself to the room. She'd come back to me, and generally she would just want to be held. And I'm like, babe, okay, now we're close. When you're trying to get into understanding and reasoning. That was her way of trying to create safety because that's what she had to do as a child. She wasn't able to feel what was there, so she tried to go through the feeling but get to the understanding of it and was always bypassing the emotional body. But because in my past relationship I had been with a lot of fiery women, I already knew that. And so I was able to navigate into that relationship quite well with Natasha. Now, when she gets upset, she's just so cute. Obviously, it's a little upset. She's like, no, I'm upset, babe. I'm like, okay, what do you need, honey? I'm taking this seriously. She's just so adorable. That's like me. But I'm not getting— I'm not taking it personally. Yeah. Like, this is a really key piece with this emotional part that happens on the feminine-feminine dynamic is that, can you bring it where one of you has enough maturity to recognize that nothing effective is going to happen? So can we either A, take some space right now, or B, maybe just come into loving connection? Yeah. One of the best things you can do when arguments happen— highly recommended, Aaron Kleinerman tip number 4, 5, whatever it is— You're in an argument, you realize nothing's happening. You say, okay, you can either like, let's pause for a second. No, I don't want to pause. Okay, but let's just go to the bedroom. Okay, you put a pillow in front of her, you put a pillow in front of you, and you say, okay, all the things you want to say to me, babe, say to the pillow. I'm going to do the same thing. What do you mean? I want to say to you, just say to the pillow. And you beat the fuck out of the pillow. You do the emotional release. Generally, when you're both doing that together, after 5 or 6 minutes, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, you realize the ridiculousness of what you're upset about, and then you make beautiful love, which is really the gateway, I feel like, to all of this. Like lovemaking is a healing, generating, deepening capacity. Let's take a breath. I have a question for the word feminine. What's that? Because you said feminine and feminine, and you you say feminine relating feminine because in that situation you would also be getting emotional if you would not treat it in that way, or why would you say it's a feminine— I just mean often when there's feminine, when there's a lot of emotions arising, there's a lot of both irrational and intensity of the feminine, and just the need to express. That's kind of what he was modeling. So basically then when, like, I'm just thinking in my situation, like, if I would get hurt then my feminine also wants to be seen. And then you end up just battling. So I'll pick it up there. And I also want to take the contrasexual part that you did, which, which addresses, uh, Mikael's question. So when you and a partner are both upset but neither of you are fully aware that you are in your feminine and in your need and neediness, and the basic need is to express and be seen and heard, I call that the feminine tug of war. And it's like, you hold space for me. No, you hold space for me. No, you hold space for me. No, I have feelings. No, you— I have feelings. I can't listen to your feelings until you listen to mine. Who's been there? Yeah, yeah. That is an unconscious feminine on feminine tug of war. The solution to it, especially as a band, is recognize when that's happening and have the willingness to sit in the intensity and go first. Hold the space. Be willing to be like, okay sweetie, I have feelings too, but right now you clearly need to be witness, so I'm willing to go first. And you might need to go beat the pillow first, because if you try to hold space when you're above like a 4, 5, or 6 in charge, it's not gonna work. You'll collapse. Yeah, you have— can I So, Nat, if you relate to this, you have to also be careful because your stubborn little boy comes in, right? Which is— which for me comes in, it's like, no, and it kind of acts like you're fucking holding space, right? It's like, fine, I'm holding space, go tell me what you're gonna say. I'm in the masculine. Get this over because then I'm gonna— no, yeah, my spine is in the earth. Go! Yeah, go, girl! Yeah, I can hold you. I did it before as well. Yeah, because then you would we talk about the Shiva, that would just like, just like hollow bone. Yeah. Would you do that in that way? Like if you would beat the pillow, you would go into— I mean, we're getting into a granularity now that only you can answer because you know yourself best. So if going to beat the pillow and then standing as Shiva works for you, great, do that. If going to beat the pillow and then coming back and being in more of like an older sister moment, works for you, where you can be like, babe, like, come on, let's just cry together. Like, we're both upset about this. Come on, come here. Like, that could work. Or you could go into, you know, some other form of the masculine where you're holding space, creating safety, loving presence, witnessing without judgment, and showing compassion and being like, yeah, you make sense. I would be pissed off too. I'm sorry that I hurt you. And if you can do that authentically from a grounded place, Usually her shit will dissolve pretty quickly. Yes, pretty quickly. And then you can say, I would love to have some space held for my feelings as well. If now is not a good time, please tell me when it is. But I will feel incomplete with this exchange until I'm witnessed as well. So, and I say this all the time with my partner, and sometimes I have to wait for weeks. Because she is so busy on her fucking mission in her masculine that much of the time she just needs me to be her bro. So this connects with your question and the contrasexual part of the tantra foursome here, right? If 80% of the time— and this is true in my relationship too, right now it's like 90+ percent of the time— I'm in the masculine, she's in the feminine. And when we're in that polarity, it works. I'm not getting everything I want, But it works. What I want more of is for her to be rested, resourced, grounded, and generous enough to say, I would really love to hold space for you. I'm super curious about what's going on in your feminine, in your emotional body, in your wider love life, my polyamorous love life. Like, I'm here, I'm grounded. I'm— please, like, unpack yourself. I really want to know how you're feeling. For me, that fits into my definition of partnership. I don't really want to be in a long-term partnership with somebody who will never do that for me. I happen to be in a moment right now where I'm getting a shortage of that, and it's not great, and it's more circumstantial than anything about the woman that I'm in love with and partnered with. She has overbooked her schedule. So until October, she isn't really available to hold space for my feminine the way that I deeply want. Lucky for me, there's 5 other women in my life who are happy to do so, and dozens of brothers who actually, in a, in a more like clean, simplified, and safe way, that's who I go to first. Because I don't really want to make my girlfriends, my lovers, my therapists either. That's depolarizing for all relationships. They can do it and they're happy to sometimes, but I don't want to lean on them like that. I lean on my brothers for that. And I'll call up one of my bros and be like, dude, can you fucking hold me? I need to just— I need to just be in my feminine and just fucking go. And if I do that with my brothers, 90%, 95% of whatever I needed to process gets processed. And then I could come back to, to Brianna or to any one of my other partners that I might have had some difficulty with, and I can say, here's how I felt, here's what I need, and here's what I want it to look like going forward. So I, I think that addresses your question. Like, it's okay to want that and it's okay to need that. Yeah. Um, and yeah, I want to pivot to polarity because this kind of gets to the question about like open relating with multiple women. Just before you go there, Blake Zealear. Yeah. I think something that is pretty helpful to name, perspective, or present to it, there's a mastery of awareness and then there's a mastery of discernment. Sure. And then there's a mastery of linguistics. Sure. Like what you just modeled there, it's like there's like, I can see what's happening. Yeah. I'm present to what's going on in the dynamic right here. There's discernment. It's this, it's that. And then there's language. To name it, to name it. And that's either naming it internally, or it's like bringing language to it, which then you bring tool and skill. Yeah, to the situation. Sure. And my sense is that that level of mastery is— there's a whole bunch of sub-skill, you know, with that. And then there's— and that's cultivated over time. And the number one way to do that is deepening your inner union. Because the reflection of who you are on the inside is happening on the outside. So if you want to deepen in the relationship you have on the outside, deepen with the relationship you have on the inside. Absolutely. And that's getting to know your own inner feminine and how she wants to be communicated, what she needs, how she feels, what's alive with her. And the more that you deepen with this and what you actually need, As a reminder— need? N-E-E-D. It's a 4-letter word that you're allowed to have. Just say that one more time. Need! How many men have felt like your needs aren't welcome? And why am I even going to bother communicating my needs so she can't meet them? So that's a massive incompatibility in my book. Yes. When, when you, when you know your own needs and then you recognize that those needs aren't being met, then exactly, it's an incompatibility. And that's a contrasexual piece of knowing you're an effeminate. Totally. Yeah. This probably goes into the polarity, but it's in my mind, which is, um, because I'm thinking as a man, to be able to If the majority of the time or the majority of my being likes to be in the masculine to hold, then what I'm hearing and taking a little bit is like, use the tools. Yeah. Because like, I can't completely put all of that on the feminine and on her, on her masculine to meet my feminine because it's like the least practiced. Let's say, of her parts and use the brothers. I'm even thinking like aspecting. Absolutely. Like holding myself on my own feminine therapist. Yeah. Therapist. Yeah. Whenever I have anything really, really important to talk about with my partner, I always do it in aspecting first. And I usually talk it out with at least one brother first. My question is like, also with the experience yesterday in embodying the feminine, when I sense like I don't have the capacity to hold space for the feminine in her right now, because I have to resource myself, do the exercise, do aspecting, whatever, it leaves the gap of like, she wants it now. And I cannot provide it right now because I'm— So I'm gonna be specific because I know your partner. And I'm just wondering, how can you bridge the gap? You bridge the gap by, by giving a reflective mirror that— and this, this is, I would say, I view as the number one issue for female bodies that get into this field that aren't deepening in their own inner union, is there becomes an expectation because if they've read too much David Deida if they've read too many fucking books that say the masculine is always supposed to be the fucking mountain and always supposed to be there. Yes, 90% of the time, this is what's true for me. 90% of the time I can be a fucking mountain, probably even more than that. But in that time that I can't, if she becomes a judgmental bitch and isn't fucking there and she can't turn that energy to hold space for herself, I do not want to be in relationship with that woman. Because it is not my responsibility to be her mountain. I can do that 90% of the time, but if the 10% I don't, she becomes a nagging bitch that just fucking never is relentlessly saying, you can't hold me because of the fucking 5 or 10% of the time I can't. Fuck you. I don't want to be in a relationship with you. I need you to also be in inner union. Inner union means you know your own mountain. You know your own masculine, and if you don't, then it's not a relationship you want. And probably, remember, the partner you've attracted is a direct reflection of your own inner self. So what is that reflecting back to yourself? Is the deepening that's there for your feminine? Yeah, deep breath, deep breath with that. And I would add I would add that if you know you're not resourced, and this is not just for you, it's for all of you, all of us. If you know you're not resourced and capable of holding space for your partner's feminine in a given moment, and you try to force yourself to do it because you should, the results will be worse. Much, much worse than if you just say, no, I'm sorry. I'm not available to hold space for your feelings right now. I'm happy to come back to you once I've resourced myself. And in the meantime, I wish you all the best. Please call a girlfriend. It might piss her off. It might piss her off. But you know what? She will be way more pissed off if you go, okay, babe, I'll hold space for you, go ahead. And then she starts, you need to be the— and then you collapse and blow up into your own chaotic feminine and start throwing shit across the room. I'm speaking as myself here. Historically, I've done this many, many times and I have destroyed relationships, destroyed them, trying to show up in my masculine when it's not available. Last question to that. What do you do when you are centered, but then doing the interaction conflict isn't working. Feeling— you're feeling— I, I actually, like, the feminine comes out, like, wants to come out, but then the masculine's like, no, no, wait, we're here to hold space. But then, like, it creates a conflict, intention. Put it, put it on the shelf. Yeah, like, this is what— like, if I— in same way, like, yes, the other day when you were doing the line exercise and that one of the guys was saying things, were there maybe a couple things that rang true about something that reminds you of in your own life, even though it wasn't about you, but it might have rung true in that situation. Meaning, like, you're holding space and she's saying things and there's a trigger coming up. Just recognize, okay, I have some fuel for— I, I have a trigger here. I'm putting that on the shelf for another time, and I'm just going to be there. And back to what I said before, and I'll say this to all of you, You are not required to be the punching bag for the feminine. That's the other thing I see. It's like the feminine in her wild, chaotic Kali that's ungrounded and not fucking present somehow thinks in spiritual worlds that the masculine is just supposed to be the punching bag for the feminine. What's the old phrase? If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best. Fuck that shit. Fuck that shit. My version of that is, if you're not willing to hold yourself when your shit is really, really up, no one's going to be able to hold you as well as you need, period. Not even the most grounded masculine Shiva fucking god that you can find, because it's a black hole. And I want to add something else to it, because where I thought you were going with your question, I've heard this pop up several times in the last 47 minutes. If someone in— who, who you love or you're in a loving relationship with is absolutely hysterical, like they are losing their fucking emotional shit, and this includes you and me and him, if you are hysterical, you're totally losing your shit, it's not about what's happening in the moment. It's something historical. It's about your parents. It's about your inner child. It's about your the first person who broke your heart, and every man who's broken your heart since, and every woman who's betrayed you since, and the story, and the story, and the story. It's that painful because the unintegrated, unprocessed baggage that you've been carrying through life got triggered, and now you take that whole sack of rocks and you go, "Geez, this is why I can't be with you!" Because she forgot to what? Ask you how your day went? Just one thing. What's the difference between his hysterical, hysterical and doing the emotional release? That's the thing. The hysterical, hysterical, hysterical, hysterical, right? From their history, they are reacting from a trigger and they're being hysterical. The place to take it is into emotional release, to get the steam out, blow off that shit. Because if you're with a smart enough woman who's done half as much work as you have, after she blows her steam off, she'll recognize sooner or later, like, ah, fuck, this isn't about you forgetting to do the dishes or that thing that you said you were going to do. This is totally about my story about men who are out of integrity. And it goes all the way back to my dad, who was emotionally unavailable my whole fucking childhood. And if she's not able to see that, you probably don't want to be in a relationship. That's a massive incompatibility. Just want to name that. Like, and it's not to say that people can't be stuck in their story, but The framework of all of that is relationships are the ultimate spiritual teacher. Yeah, there's nowhere to run, there's nowhere to hide. And so literally imagine like where these billions of beings around the planet, and part of us is just like perfectly connecting with this person, probably to remind us about all the things that we haven't learned to love, honor, and appreciate about our past. A change for me with this. This was years ago. I was living in Singapore. I was doing some government work at the time, and I was out on a second date with a woman. And we were talking and she was sexy. I was kind of doing government work and also yoga teaching at the time. So I was teaching at a yoga studio. She was a yoga teacher. We were sexy. It was yummy. It was beautiful. And I was like, you know, what's your birthday? And she said, I think July 13th. And I was like, amazing. So I'm gonna buy you lunch now, and, um, thank you so much. This has been amazing. I'm just gonna— I'm just gonna end this, this right now because my mom's birthday was July 12th. Yeah, it's July 12th, just like the last 3 partners before that. 10th, 8th, 12th. I've sworn off cancers. It's not happening anymore. And so I was like, amazing, I love you so much, this was great. And I walked out, I walked out of that lunch, and that was like total pattern pattern interrupt. And I never, from that pattern interrupt moment again, attracted a woman in my life with the same birthday around circumnavigating around my mother. So it was recognizing that I kept attracting the same fucking pattern over and over again until I was able to do something different. What's the worst about that? I mean, Freud was right. Freud was right. Like every, every man is attracted to his own mother, every woman her own father. It's the patterns that I was noticing around that weren't patterns that I wanted to keep being in relationship with. Yeah. You've been— you've seen that because you've— because I had had the last 3 partners before that and I knew what the trajectory was going to be. Totally. So I was like, I'm going to trade a new trajectory here because I know where this is going. How many of you have been in the same relationship with the same woman, but she has a different name. Same woman, but different name. Yeah. Different face, different name, but same woman. Same person. Yeah. Oh yeah. And ultimately, sometimes it's not that. Sometimes it's not that. Maybe it's the opportunity for you to heal what you had, you didn't heal before with those previous ones. Well, so this is where I want to pick up on. Right. So. There's a concept in child psychology and psychology in general called having a corrective experience. Corrective. Corrective. A corrective experience. So all of us grew up with some childhood trauma. All of us, no matter how good our parents were and all the ways that we were traumatized in childhood, all the ways that our parents didn't show up. When we become adults, we will carry some scars. We will carry these patterns of suffering and triggers that go with them and all kinds of behavioral modifications that help us avoid or get toward the thing— avoid the things that are— that we hated about our parents and go towards the things we liked. So to create a corrective experience in adulthood for the things that were incomplete in childhood, we are all unconsciously trying to do this all the time. We will try to do it in one of three ways: through our partner selection, We will choose people who are just enough like my parents that they might be able to change the script and make good where my parents did not. Never works. Partner selection or partner behavior, right? We will treat our parents and we will react— sorry, we will treat our partners and we will react to our partners and they will do the same to us in very much the same way that we did with our parents. It's like if your father was absent and then the man in your life is absent, you will respond to him the way you always wanted to talk to your fucking father. And same thing with our mothers. And it doesn't even matter which gender you go into relationships with. Mom and dad kind of blur together into one parental mishap, and we will do all kinds of unconscious shit to try to heal those wounds. This is in many ways one of the great revelations of Tantra. Is that we are attracted to people who have medicine for us, and the medicine for that they have for us might be a corrective experience. But if you and them are not conscious of the karmic, subconscious, invisible shadow drive to have those corrective experiences, you're just going to take all your parental shit out on each other. You'll turn your girlfriend into your mother, your boyfriend into your father, or vice versa. And the relationship will crumble. It's only once you've done enough work that you can see these patterns, the historical nature of all of this, the times when we get hysterical, the ways that we project our parental shit onto our partners. Only when you and your beloved are both aware of those things can you actually use a relationship to heal core childhood wounding. And guys, it takes a lot of fucking work to get there. So in the meantime, no, you're not. You're not. Yeah, you're fucked, basically. Just give up. Start dating the other gender. You know what I mean? No, I just say— Yeah, but in the meantime, just start with the awareness. Start with the awareness that you and your beloved are very, very likely, especially when you're triggered and upset, to be bringing your distant past and putting it onto the other person. Just circling one time back to the shelf. So it's on the shelf and then I do what you ask. Either, hey, I also something that came up for me. My feelings need also to be heard. Yeah. You have to do that now or when will it work for you? Yeah. And if she says no, then go. But make sure you read the book on the shelf. Like, if you put it on the shelf— and this is where, like, you put it on the shelf and then you try to then come to her with needs and requests and desires, but you haven't actually read the book that's on the shelf, then you're not getting clear. So I'll, I'll have to reopen it. It's there. You put it on the shelf because it's a trigger you need to dive into. Yeah, myself. Into yourself. Go read that book first. Do the aspecting and then come back into it. And that formula I said earlier, and then we're going to take a moment, you guys can share with one another with the, I feel I need, this would provide me with. Like, if you can bring that, it's an Alison Armstrong piece. You can bring that into your relationship. It's a fucking game changer. And also have, if you can, you don't need to teach her, but it brings a lot of clarity. I feel— not I feel like you're a dickhead because you didn't do this, or I feel like you're a fucking cunt because you didn't do this. That's a story. I feel sad. End of story. Like, I feel sad is a complete sentence. I need to receive a hug in the morning. I need, or I would like, whatever it might be, something, a yes or no that they can provide you with. And then what? Like, tell them what that would provide— that what that would provide you with. That's a very clear-cut statement that brings— I do this with couples all the time. Yeah, probably 20 to 30% of the one-to-one work I do is with couples. Couples been married for 30 years, 40 years, 10 years. It's like that statement is a game changer because it takes away all the projection and blame that people are used to communicating with. So deep breath in. Can I have 3 minutes? Yeah. For Ryan's question. Yeah. I was taking a pee. What was the statement you asked the couples? I feel I need. This would provide me with. Yeah. I feel I need. Is that the Queen's Code? Yeah. Your keys to the kingdom. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a prompt that works very well. So last thing I want to— I want to come back to Ryan's question about— I believe it was yours— about dating multiple people and like, how do you really open them, hold them, claim them, make them feel like you're fully in it with them at depth while you also have someone else? Yeah, great question. We have highlighted that, you know, need is a 4-letter word that you get to have. Yeah. Wants are different than needs. And many people— men and women were taught to believe that the things that they really want, they really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really wants therefore get elevated to needs? That's not a fact. That's a logical fallacy. It's a trick of the mind. It's a belief. Every woman wants to feel met at depth. They want to feel the energy of claiming. They want to feel your presence. They want to know that you're available to them. They want to know they can rely on you. If you can do all of those things, then that actually could be enough. That could be enough, even if you're not giving them all of your free time. Meet those things. Every, every— I mean, this applies to men too, but every woman wants to be met at depth, like meaning all parts of her are welcome. They want to be held, they want to be witnessed, they want to feel safe, they want to feel penetrated, and they want to know that you're reliable. There's probably others on that list, but I think that's the top 5. You said a good one, available, just now. Reliable. Yeah, did you say available? No, I said reliable. Reliable. There's a thing I want. No. Okay, right. So here's where I'm going with this. Okay, so those things that I just named are— okay. What? It's— it's going to take more than 3 minutes. I'm sorry. All of these things could be described as needs, right? And we can honor that those needs exist. If you can do all those things for a woman in your life and you are meeting all those needs, but it's still not enough, then you're bumping up against the boundary between needs and wants. And she wants something beyond those, those core things that you're providing that you may not be available for. So she may want, you know, 60% of your free time, but you're only available to give her 30. That's an incompatibility. She may want exclusivity, but she's in a poly relationship because you're fucking gorgeous and she doesn't want to turn you down. She may want to have children, but she's afraid to admit that because she knows you'll leave her for this other girl. So she's holding it back, and instead she's asking for more and more and more and more and more because she's not being fully honest about what she really wants. So this is where like my, you know, admittedly high number of poly partners right now is working for me is because the wants and needs are aligned. And when I'm with each of them, we go fucking deep, all in, complete penetration, total holding. I am available for it when we're together. Yeah. And, and, and even occasionally on the phone, like ask for it. Like, I'll show up with the presence, the penetration, the holding, the reliability, the consistency, all of it. We go full in. But they are aware because I was radically honest with them upfront that I'm not available for more than what I can provide in the moments that we're together. But the love that we exchange when we are together is so rich and meets so many of our needs and wants that they are smart enough, and this is why I decided it was okay to put my penis inside of them, because they were able to accept, okay, he is not available for all of this. I can go enjoy all of this with someone else, but he is available for this, and this is awesome. So as long as I'm okay with that, then I'm getting everything I want, and then there's no incompatibility. And the last piece I'll say to this because I found this a lot in open relating, is even if she's saying she's okay with all of that but you feel that she's not, trust your gut. Trust your gut and speak into that. Because I have that often. The woman was like, yeah, I'm okay, I, you know, yeah, I'm totally fine with that. But inside I could feel her fucking dying inside because she wanted more from me. And if I felt that and I knew that, I wouldn't penetrate her because I didn't want to open up that box. Totally. And, and baby steps with that too, right? Like, have the conversation. She says, yeah, I'm okay with that. Okay, great. Let's see what happens after I give you an orgasm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we check in again. Yeah. Okay, just with my fingers and my tongue. Okay, you still okay? All right, let's see what happens after we have sex with a condom. Still doing okay? Yeah. But like, only trust her yes. Don't trust her yes more than you trust your own instincts. We're gonna take a deep breath in Yeah, that little sound.