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I was having a laugh on the internet today, depending on where I go and how people perceive me, I either become their subjective example of a raging feminist who hates men….. or a misogynist that blames women for everything. I can sometimes manage to meet both expectations on the same day.

So blame, let’s talk about blame. Personally I think blame and shame have no place in marriage, I think those are just weapons of destruction that cause too much harm and eventual distrust. However, there’s a secret behind blame, whoever picks up the blame, also picks up the power. When you take responsibility for something, it is now in your hands. When you blame someone else, you are handing off your own power.

So what do I “blame” women for? Romance, as in, women have the ability to unleash the power of the female brain, to cultivate and create romance in our own lives. Romance has a great deal to do with desire and attraction, which tends to create happy marriages and happy women.

It’s kind of sad, depressing really, but I learned about this from working with abused women. Women tend to stay with abusive men for a variety of reasons, but what always baffled me where the attraction cues, the “he’s so dreamy” aspect, and I was often left staring at this scrawny, sorry excuse for a man, who was violent and treats her horribly. But he loves me and he’s sorry and I just can’t help it, I’m attracted…

It took me a while to catch on, but what women often do is cultivate a fantasy around such men, one that can take on a sexual quality and become rather addictive. Always trying to find the silver lining in a cloud or to pull a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, I soon began to wonder how much control do women have over our own desires and cues? Could the power of the female brain be used for some purpose that actually benefits women, that could contribute to our joy rather than our bondage?

It turns out the answer is yes, that although women are often trapped in strongholds, acting sub-consciously, that desire and attraction are often falsely perceived as nothing more than pheromones and biology, it actually all begins in our thoughts and minds. We are surprisingly flexible, too. I don’t wish to disparage the fair sex or to imply that we’re shallow or something, but you can take a rather ordinary man and place him in a nice car with a pair of sunglasses, and suddenly women start seeing him in a whole new light. What changed? Simply our perceptions, our imagination, our thoughts.

Don’t worry, when it comes to biology men can be very shallow too. It’s okay, we’re all  wonderfully and fearfully made.

Often I read some tragic tales from women so unhappy in marriage, or resigned, doomed to forever live with a man they are no longer attracted to,  and men feeling rejected and disrespected, men who often need to communicate sexually and now feel shut out. I don’t wish to ” blame” anyone here, as in adding to their shame, but without fail, every single time, I can see a woman who does not cultivate romance, that is unaware of her own attraction signals. Often there is resentment, anger, unresolved issues, that have caused her to shutdown. She totally blames him and in the process hands all of her own power away.

I don’t think a lot of women understand this. I know I did not. I used to sort of be on autopilot, hubby would not do something I had asked him to do, I’d grow resentful, he’d complain, I’d feel like I was expected to be his mother, he’d start to feel like a little kid, total attraction killers. All men and women are a bit different, but for the most part, women in maternal mode are not in sexual mode, and men being treated like children do not feel like real men. I know a fair amount about romance…mostly because I was so good at killing it.

It’s a shame that we live in a culture that puts the responsibility for romance on men, because while there are some great poets and romanticists in the world, for the most part, men are not the best mind readers, nor are they the ones who understand women’s brains the best. Seriously, here we are thousands of years later and men still do not really  understand us.We do not always understand ourselves.

To do farther damage, within the culture there are often unrealistic expectations around defining what is romantic, which often exploits women’s need for perfection, sets men up for failure, and actually creates the precise opposite of attraction. I mean, I love my husband dearly but if he ever showed up in a tux bearing roses and diamonds for a moonlight dinner, I just might flee in terror. That is so not him, that would ring false to me, that would mess with my head. That would totally blow the fantasy and kill the romance.

So how do we go about cultivating romance? Piece of cake! No, I jest here, it’s actually very challenging. It requires one to capture their thoughts, to take control of what is often going on sub-consciously, and to speak things into existence. One must pay close attention to what is being said or thought about one’s husband, so I hate the man, he forgot to take out the garbage again, doesn’t cut it. We also have to let go of expectations, relinquish maternal need for control, and speak positive words over him.

There are multiple other things that I will leave up to people’s imaginations, but at the heart of the matter is that women actually control our own attraction cues, the desire we will feel towards our husbands, the amount of romance we experience in our lives, and how much happiness we will create for ourselves, and by extension, for our husbands too.

sleeping beauty

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