Sexual Polarity: Opposites attract
Sexual chemistry. We know it when we feel it. There are sparks, flutters and we have an inexorable draw to the energy of another. It feeds us.
In the busy lives of modern couples, that passion can sometimes disappear and we are left wondering where it went. David Deida, an innovative spirituality/sexuality teacher based in California, noticed a pattern in the lives of couples he was working with. In their search for equality, they essentially became more and more like each other - women taking on more masculine traits and men more feminine ones. They had very balanced and equitable relationships but they didn't want to have sex anymore. He concluded after seeing the pattern enough, that even if they shared household chores, childrearing and income earning, it was crucial for each of them to cultivate their individual essences; that at a deep core level, each sex craved and was nourished by the opposing quality inherent in the other sex.
Deida calls this concept of the interplay between masculine and feminine energies ‘polarity,’ likening good sexual chemistry to a magnetic pull. A strong positive attracts a negative, and subsequently, the very feminine sizzles with the very masculine.
To illustrate: an extremely feminine woman is less likely to be sexually attracted to an effeminate, soft, overly sensitive man – two positive charges repel one another. However, a man who is very physical, who oozes raw power and strength and can easily take command of a situation, will probably fire her up completely. A man can still have a heart full of heart - his loving ought to be strong, courageous and, at times, fierce. As well, a woman may still be fully adept in the world, very focused and driven, perhaps running her own company and a force to be reckoned with. There ought to be an intimate space though where they both come together and shift gears. He drops more solidly into his masculine energy and she into her feminine. As she opens, she’ll want to feel that her man can at least match her and at times even surpass her – that his masculine energy is stronger than hers.
This sense of a woman wanting to feel the strength in a man is echoed in Dr. Robin Baker's Sperm Wars. He describes how a woman tests the strength of her prospective mate during courtship. Once she is satisfied that he could dominate her, take her, she relents. If a man fails the test, she discards him as a possibility. From a biologist's perspective, Baker suggests that she is testing his strength to ensure the fortitude of her offspring.
In couples where the sexual charge seems to have been lost, it’s important to take stock on a number of levels: intimacy and quality time definitely open up the space to create desire. It’s also worth contemplating on the idea of polarity to see where each person sits on the scale of masculine/feminine energy. It’s not that women can’t be commanding leaders in the world, and that men can’t be soft and loving. There is something to be said though, for each to slide into the essences of themselves and be open to receiving the opposing quality in the other.
