A woman's ability to be receptive without it being a performance has a lot to do with her mother

We talk so much about a woman’s receptivity - receptive to love, to men, to money, and to God - and most of that energy is focused on her relationship with a man and the masculine.

But there’s another domino in the line we can’t ignore…her relationship with and modeling from her mother.

A woman’s relationship to men is downstream of the modeling she witnessed in her mother.

1. The mother is where receptivity was first modeled, or it wasn’t.
Before a woman ever enters romance with a man, she’s already absorbed a template for what happens in a female body when someone or something tries to give to her. She learned this by feeling her mother’s energy more than her mother’s words.

If she watched her mother graciously receive from her father, from life, from God, or whether she watched her mother perform receptivity while running the household from a clenched, controlling, exhausted place - that is what she will unconsciously model.

If mother never accepted help, pushed away those who tried to help, always said, “you didn’t have to”, or “I’ll just do it myself”, or rushed to reciprocate, then the model a little girl adopted was that it was stronger, more honorable, or more proper to not receive,

It is a maternal receptivity template. It tells a woman what is right, good, and safe about receiving.

That template is what she brings into every relationship afterward.

2. If receptivity wasn’t modeled, a woman learns to perform femininity instead of feel it.

She learned that there was benefit to looking feminine in a gorgeous dress, to pretending to be feminine by being coy, but never got to truly see and feel what it was like to be safe embodying the feminine.

She may have become a world-class flirt with a lot of grit underneath or effective in the art of seduction, ready to deliver a zinger to a man who she feels is beneath her…but she never quite feels safe and cherished with a man because her femininity has remained a costume.

When the femininity is fake, the nervous system underneath is in overdrive or in perpetual activation.

When a man feels fake femininity or a woman’s high-alert nervous system, he may not say anything, but there is a pretty good chance he will either fall away gradually or ghost her abruptly. A man can feel when he is not being received, which to him feels like he can’t win. A man usually doesn’t stay in a situation where he can’t win - much to her dismay and confusion.

To her, it feels like she made all the right moves.

And yet, a man’s intuition will tell him something is off, and he will make his exit.

Which leads us to #3.

3. When a woman has never had a felt sense of the safety of her femininity, she will default to the masculine/yang role within her relationships, and this is like a deathblow to her relating with masculine men.

When a woman is in the yang (or more masculine), instead of yin (or more feminine role) in the relationship, she will be the one managing, chasing, and over-processing every conversation, instead of resting in herself and receiving what he brings to her.

At first, she will think this is wise, that she is making things easier for him, but it ends up backfiring.

Maybe this is what she saw her mother do with her father. Maybe this is what she did as the oldest daughter with her siblings to show her love and care.

It also creates a low-grade alarm in her body of always being “on,” called sympathetic dominance. Sympathetic dominance is a system that is in fight or flight for the majority of every day instead of being able to rest and regulate. Think high adrenaline, like a mouse scurrying around to look for safety but never finding it. If a woman is in sympathetic dominance for most of her life, having been taught that the feminine is weak and receiving is dangerous, she will most certainly be depleted of her Yin essence - required for the health of her feminine hormones.

Yin is nourishing; it is fluids; it is cooling and calming - the perfect complement to a masculine man she so deeply desires.

She can’t be the Yang-dominant woman and the Yin-receiving woman at the same time.

This is where the most intelligent, the most educated, the most “my mother was super-strict and controlling” women run into the most trouble. They literally have never been shown any other way.

Shifting from yang to yin, from sympathetic dominance to receptive, is a legit paradigm shift for the women who are used to running the world.

Most women don’t realize this is a problem until midlife when everything pivots, and now they crave a softer existence and a masculine man.

Her body holds memory of her mother’s aggression and control. Her mind thinks that is the way to run her life to stay secure and independent. But the reality is - that may have worked for her mother, but it won’t work for her.

And no amount of “communicate better with men” makes any difference because the answer is all in the energy.

My advice to the strongest, most strategic, most “boss-babe” women is usually this, “Stop focusing on what he is doing and start focusing on the truth of what it feels like to be around you.”

This can sting - I get that. But somebody had to let you know. The truth is kind and compassionate. I want you have the experience you desire and if your energy is charging forward, darlin, receptivity is going to evade you.

Take a minute and bring all the “charging ahead” energy back to yourself. Feel yourself return to your heart, your gut, your hips. Start here. Reach out to me when you are ready for more.

In Love,

Dr. S

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