Soul Lessons: The Mate

Be a Wild Woman

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"...The mate for the wildish woman is the one who has a soulful tenacity and endurance, one who can send his own instinctual nature to peek under the tent of a woman's sould-life and comprehend what he sees and hears there. The good match is the man who keeps returning to try to understand, who does not let himself b e deterred by the sideshows on the road..." --"Women Who Run With the Wolves" by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

This story unravels an old, old secret about women, and it is this:

To win the wildish woman's heart, a mate would understand her natural duality through and through. The man's instinctual self, his dog-self (as in the story Manawee), must be the one to see the two natures, to name the two natures of the feminine.

If a woman hides one side or favors one side too much, she lives a very lopsided life doesn't give access to her entire power. This is not good. (Paraquoting most of this from the book ... in and out, sorry not officially quoting or using quote marks.) It's necessary to develop both sides.

Both sides of the feminine ...are one, her civilized self, the one that goes to work 9-5 and comes home, takes care of the baby, and makes dinner, does dishes, and then goes to bed .. to get up and do it all over again. If she lived alone in the psyche .. without the wild woman, the wild nature self, this woman will become all lopsided and bitching at her family that she does all the work, and to pick that coat up right now ... but with the wild woman inside, there comes a time when this woman just needs to go outside and sit under a tree ... and perhaps start writing a magazine article idea that occurs to her, sketch some pictures for it (sound familiar Irisa?). This is the wild woman nature, and the family needs to know and love this side of her as well ... or else theyâll never know the full woman, and sheâll never be able to let her wild woman out to play with them, she'll have to keep her hidden away in a closet for when theyâre not home ... and wild woman will come out to play less and less, and be hidden away more and more.

Itâs very important for us to lead a balanced life ... for our family to know and love our wild side as they do our civilized side. This is the deep knowing, and we have to have faith that our lover will accept this side of our feminine, that if he is to really love us, heâll need to know we have more than just one very civilized aspect to our nature. And that, we often sneak out on full moon's and howl and jump just to let wild woman have some fun :).

"If one overlooks a womanâs dual nature and takes a woman at face value, one is in for a big surprise, for when the woman's wildish nature rises from her depths and begins to assert itself, she often has interests, feelings, and ideas which are quite different from those she expressed before."



From my own experience as well as from watching those around me, i feel that one big reason why so many relationships fail, is lack of self-knowledge. We think we are made a certain set way, and we look for our opposite: if we are loud and disorganised, we look for a steady influence; if we are soft and timid, we want someone who will protect us, encourage our wildside. Problem with this is, they will; and when our Îdark sideâ starts to emerge, meeting our mateâs, we clash...

I was the soft-spoken type who wanted to learn how to sing. I chose an extrovert as my mate, and he helped me, up to a point... until i caught up with him. When i started getting to know myself, gettign in touch with my wildish nature, then i'd start singing, which was my dream; and all of a sudden out of nowhere i'd feel like yodeling, howling, screaming,... whatever the mood of the moment. And i'd try it, but he'd get all uncomfortable, self-conscious, like... wait a minute, thereâs only room for one loud person in this room... where's that soft-spoken little nymph i chose for my bride? Where's my audience? Gone. Finito. Because then i'd be tired of doing all the listening... i'd get wild-MAD... all that pent up energy i'd been gathering to put into a howl, would get stuck... sigh, it would go out anyway, only not in such harmonious tones anymore. What i'd been needing was encouragement.. for my first howls, i needed to hear things like "beautiful" and "louder" and "more"... and i didn't hear these things, but their opposite... he wanted me lopsided, he loved a part of me, not the whole of me, and so after all those years, i dropped him by the side of the road. I'd be his friend these days still, except that i can't help noticing that, when we talk on the phone, he still talks always a few decibels louder than me.

Another interesting point is - why did it take me so many years to drop him? The image of the little dog, distracted from his errand by a bone on the side of the road, comes to mind. I too was too busy chewing on my bone desires to heed the voice of my instinct... the desire to teach someone who didnât want to learn. The desire to spend a lifetime with the same person (still scared of my dark side... of things like "divorceâ" and "death"). The desire to give my kids their dad, even when he did not want to be their dad. The desire, which i call a death-wish, to have a mate no matter what. I guess that when i finally dropped him, it was not because he had changed (he remained the same) but because my desires had bundled up into a bone which was too big for me to chew. I couldnât even lift it from the side of the road anymore. Too large, tough, not tasty. Not fun. So large in fact that by then it took over most of the horizon... until idâ think things like... remove the bone, there goes the sky... remove my mate and there goes my life. It was as if a tiger had chased me to the edge of a precipice, so i hardly had a choice... rather than dying under the claw, i chose to jump.

I spent a few very painful months falling, falling, dizzy, lack of breath, my eyes closed tight.. until i noticed a little breeze... opened a corner of my eye, there was a beatiful view! and the sky was all there, and there were other fellow freefallers, many of which even squeezed my hand in solidarity. And i didnâ' hit the hard ground yet. I am still freefalling, learning to do a few daring dance steps and still howling! and it's good, so i figure, if I meet a fellow free-faller who is equally in touch with themselves, who is willing to join and make thunder, that can only be a bonus.



I was listening to "How to Love a Woman" by Estes this week, and she tells the Manawee story there also. What struck me was the dual nature of women (men have a dual nature too) and how oneâs love should respond to that. She says the lover should always ask the question twice: how do you feel on the surface about such-and-such, and then how do you feel inside. The answers can be completely different, and I know this is true for me. On the surface, I may give you the "correct" answer, the one you are expecting. On the inside, I may feel completely different, but not voice that as my first answer.

The little dog in Manawee teaches us that we need to be vigilant, to avoid distractions, in learning our partnerâs true names. I can get caught up in outside distractions that pull me away from the deep work of discovering who this person is who is in my arms. When we content ourselves with a surface knowing of our lovers, we are lessening our chances of building something deep and meaningful that can withstand time and the cycles of life/death/life.

I like the image of the little dog running back and forth between the two sisters (the dual nature) and the potential lover (the man). The dog is the messenger of the psyche: faithful, persevering, and loyal. She seeks out the information and tries to bring it back. I think as potential lovers, we must also be true to our wild nature. If we are conscious and present in our own lives, we are closer to the little messenger who is trying to bring us what we need to know. We can make the journey back shorter, with less distractions and hazards, if we are in the moment.

As always, the predator needs to be watched for. The predator tells me that my new lover is going to dump me. That I am not good enough. That once my lover finds out who I really am, it will be over. The predator does not want me to know my loverâs dual nature. If it can keep me ignorant and frightened, it can scare love away. Only by living close to my instinctual nature can I see through the lies and the fear. With Wild Woman leading the way, I can stride into the psychic village, with the little dog riding high on my shoulder, and speak the two names of the one I love.



I could sense he had the feminine inside, yet he always kept this and many secrets from me (he was ashamed to cry). And he hardly ever showed interest in my masculine aspect. It was not by accident that my career started taking off less than a year after we separated. Silly of him, because he took it all on his shoulders and got premature grey hair from financial worries.

When i was little and my whole family hung out together, i used to get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach... like claustrophobia... later i realised it was fear of intimacy, based on shyness (my father never touched very much). I worked and worked on this throughout my own intimate relationship, till i lost fear of most anything the other had to reveal - realising that to love someone is an inner capacity... it does not really spring from that someone. They may be love-ly yet i may not be able to love them. My only mistake back then was to think that this fear of intimacy applied only to me... when these days, i know it applies to everyone, in varying degrees. My ex had a huge problem with it.



This is so beautiful. This makes each of us responsible for our own feelings. That our love comes from us. It is not so much drawn out by the other as springing from our own inner capacity to respond with love.