Containment in a relationship with a woman
EMBRACING THE FEMININE ENERGY
Preparing the stage.
The relationships between men and women tend to be complex, so before we begin discussing this topic, we need to clarify a few things.
Many women associate the word “containment” with restraint and lack of freedom or feeling limited and controlled. Such control, or rather oppression, has existed for centuries, but I am not referring here to that kind of controlling and oppressive containment.
Nowadays, this association is mainly due to bad experiences during upbringing or youth, and to some extent, to distorted social indoctrination in this era of !sexual equality”. Within the sexual liberation that our society has experienced in recent decades, there lies much confusion and misunderstanding.
Containment is also necessary in a homosexual relationship, and in a whole range of sophisticated relationships of the modern era, but power dynamics and role definitions are different, and obviously, that has little to do with gender. In this article, we will only focus on the relationship between a man and a woman, leaving homosexual relationships for another time.
Before continuing, I must confess that, on a personal level, I have not been aware of the importance of containment for much of my life. In my desire to live equality within a space where a woman feels free and respected, I tried to avoid conditioning or limiting her world, and I was not aware of what “positive containment” meant and the importance it has for a woman to feel completely secure that the man is 100% present in the relationship with her. When I look back, from this new perspective, I realize that I have not been able to properly create that space of containment.
There is a lot of confusion, among both men and women, about what containment is and how to provide or receive it. In a relationship between a man and a woman, it is essential for the man to provide containment to the woman with whom he shares his love life. It’s also important for the woman to provide containment to the man, but it’s a different kind of containment, and we’re not going to discuss here what women need to do or avoid, but rather what men can or should do in a relationship with a woman. Unfortunately, most men do not know how to contain, and those who do place themselves in a position of power, from which they impose and dominate, especially those who do not know how to embrace the woman’s emotional world.
I am aware that the narrative of this article challenges some current beliefs about gender equality, so I anticipate that it will be controversial since, by going against the current and questioning that narrative, it connects us with the battle between freedom and oppression within the backdrop of the tragic human history. Therefore, I hope that the reader can keep an open mind and try to temporarily set aside personal reactiveness to this type of topic.
Fortunately, in our current Western society, almost all of us are free to maintain any type of relationship and live it as we agree. The question is whether we are open to being honest with ourselves and asking a simple question: “Is what I am doing in my relationship with my partner really working?” The honest answer is usually “no,” and the main invisible reason is that men, in general, do not know how to provide the kind of containment that women need, and women do not know where to position themselves to receive it.
Introduction
The first thing we should know is that men and women are different. This simply means that men and women are not the same, which is manifested physically in a different biological structure. Therefore, if we continue to focus on making men and women identical, the consequence will be more problems, more frustrations, and more conflicts. In reality, we will not be able to create true harmony in our relationships until we are willing to accept that men and women are different. This is a very important fact, and many people who fight for equality mistakenly focus on “gender equality” and try to establish equality of power, value, or any other form of equality, trying to prove that men and women are “equal,” which is a lost battle because we are not actually equal.
This is the main message of this article:
Women need “containment” in a relationship to feel good in that relationship.
What exactly is containment and how can it be provided to a woman?
There are different types of women whose behaviors or words suggest that they don’t actually need containment. Some women may act as if they don’t need containment from a man because they get it from other people, or because they have had to learn to contain themselves. There are also women who resist containment because they associate it with feeling limited and controlled, perhaps due to certain difficult situations they have experienced. And many others may seem not to need containment because they have simply learned to adapt to that space of “independence” and believe they can compensate for the lack of containment in their lives by relying on themselves. However, even if they don’t admit it, in their daily lives, they don’t feel content and often feel tense and anxious.
When you observe many women who strongly resist the containment that a attentive and balanced man can offer them, and analyze their childhood upbringing or youth, what you can see are traumatic experiences related to what they associate with containment. In general, they have had bad experiences regarding feeling controlled and lacking freedom. They may even feel that every time they receive containment from a man, it is like being weak or not being worthy enough. As a result, they exhibit behaviors that have their roots in the lack of containment. They may say or imply that they don’t need containment, but their behavior will not reflect the echo of their words.
A healthy relationship between divine masculine energy and divine feminine energy.
An enlightened Buddha could embody the feminine-masculine polarity in an almost perfect internal balance, in this earthly dance of incarnated beings. However, at the current level of human consciousness, I don’t believe this possibility is reached by many living humans. Although all human beings possess the essence of both energies, the vast majority of us basically vibrate with one of the two polarities and need to “connect” with the other polarity to feel complete.
For a woman to be and fully express her femininity, masculine energy must create a protected space where her femininity can flourish and allow herself to be soft, open, and receptive.
When a woman rejects this masculine containment, she contracts, becomes rigid, and enters a defensive state, developing coping mechanisms instead of a natural state of femininity. The reality is that the feminine cannot “fully blossom” without the appropriate containment of the masculine and ends up taking on roles that affect her physical, mental, and emotional well-being. When this “masculine container” doesn’t exist, the woman has to adapt and tends to become masculine, and when this happens, it has a negative impact not only on her mind and emotions but also on her health. This reality leads to a distortion of the polarity that, besides being unhealthy for her, is the main reason for many of the problems in the relationship between men and women today.
Delving into Containment.
Containing a woman means actively creating a safe space for her well-being. Balanced masculine energy acts as a container in which the feminine can grow and flourish freely.
To create this feeling of unity, masculine energy must take “positive possession” of the feminine energy.
This concept of ownership or possession carries a strong negative connotation for the vast majority of people, but it essentially means fully embracing the feminine essence of the woman.
A clear example is the role that both men and women play in numerous dances, both traditional and contemporary, in which the man ‘leads’ and the woman allows herself to be led and “directed”. When the man knows how to lead the dance, she feels relaxed and free, fully enjoying the movement of the dance. Another illustrative moment occurs during lovemaking, when a woman may say “I am yours” or “Take me”. Such spontaneous expressions stem from a deep feeling that seeks unity with the beloved, and at those moments, the woman genuinely desires to be positively contained/possessed, which has nothing to do with wanting to feel limited, oppressed, or controlled.
It’s important to clarify that there is a big difference between a woman saying “I am yours” in a moment of amorous ecstasy, and a man saying “you are mine,” in that or any other moment.
Thousands of years of stories.
For millennia, society has shown women what it means to be owned, but here we are essentially talking about the opposite of being oppressed and controlled. When a man takes a woman as part of himself and embraces her with that level of ownership, she truly becomes part of him (while he also becomes part of her), in such a way that he could never really hurt her without also hurting himself. Therefore, “positive ownership” is really the best way for a woman to remain genuinely secure in her relationship with her man, because the ultimate desire of a balanced man is to please the woman he loves, which makes the woman feel happy and fulfilled in the relationship.
Many men who don’t know what it means to provide containment for a woman would benefit from understanding that it essentially involves protecting and defending her. When a man does not know how to do this, the woman basically has to “defend and protect herself.” When a man does not provide the necessary containment for a woman, she ends up feeling like she has to do it all herself and, ultimately, will feel completely alone and insecure in life. Therefore, to be able to defend and protect herself, she has no choice but to provide for and take care of herself without help. This will make her become controlling, anxious, cold, bitter, angry, resentful, more masculine, and less soft, even if she tries and manages to appear otherwise.
If a man wants to provide containment for a woman, he cannot expect her to defend and protect herself. He must find ways to defend her in any situation, not only at the physical level but also mentally and emotionally. A sad reality is that many men take better care of their inanimate possessions (cars, motorcycles,…) than the woman with whom they share their life. Unfortunately, women have historically been treated almost as objects in service to the needs of men. Phrases like “due obedience” still resonate in the ears of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers as their sexual “duty”.
How to provide containment for a woman so she feels genuinely and positively owned and defended.
There are several ways in which a man can positively contribute to a woman’s well-being, from physically protecting her and emotionally caring for her to creating a supportive environment for her growth, as well as taking proactive actions in various aspects of her life, including assuming financial and logistical responsibility, all aimed at nurturing a committed and healthy relationship.
Some examples:
Emotional Support During Stress: A woman might be going through a tough time at work. She appreciates when her partner listens attentively and offers supportive solutions without interrupting or giving unsolicited advice. She feels emotionally contained, knowing that there’s a space where she feels safe to express herself. Many men overlook that women need to verbalize much more than men to be able to calm their minds about what concerns them.
Security and Protection: While walking through a poorly lit parking lot late at night, she may instinctively move closer to her man. This doesn’t mean that she can’t walk by herself, but because the sense of security and containment he provides makes her feel better.
Decision Making as a Couple: When facing an important decision, like a possible job change, she values her partner’s opinion and dialogue, weighing the pros and cons together. She feels that her perspective is considered fairly within a dialogue where her opinion is highly valued.
Open Emotional Expression: She feels that she can freely express her feelings and vulnerabilities because she knows that her partner won’t use them against her later on. She feels emotionally contained and secure, which allows for an even deeper emotional connection with her partner.
Natural for Men.
Containment is something natural for the masculine world; it’s like their second nature, and the minute he decides to create a containment space for the woman, he doesn’t need to tell himself how to do it.
To provide proper containment to women in general, a man will need to try to understand women as much as possible, and to provide containment to the woman in his life, he will have to strive to understand her as best he can.
Women are very similar in many aspects, but they are also very different. Therefore, it’s important to strive to understand women in general and especially the woman with whom we share our live.
Positive containment has absolutely nothing to do with controlling, oppressing, limiting, or demeaning. If a man adds any of these things to a woman’s life, he is actually not providing her with containment, but rather the opposite. These things are not really providing well-being to the woman, and therefore are not in harmony with positive possession.
Many of us continue to “struggle” with this reality because we didn’t have great examples while growing up. It’s like trying to assemble IKEA furniture without the manual. Many men have trouble providing containment because they never received containment as children. They didn’t have the opportunity to learn by example or were never taught how to do it. In reality, it’s a developmental trauma, and for this reason, many men are not fully adults, and many tend to relate with women who give them containment and love. In these cases, the woman not only does not receive the containment she needs but feels obligated to give it to the man, perhaps hoping that the man will mature and finally provide it to her.
We can’t help but compensate as adults in various ways for the shortcomings of a limited development from our childhood. It’s frustrating for a woman, but men who have never received containment or have been taught how to contain are walking lost trying to figure it out, and subconsciously tend to seek “reverse polarity” relationships. The only solution to this reality is to try to be increasingly aware of it, and hope that more parents provide containment to their children so that when they grow up, they can provide containment, like true men, to the women in their lives.
Final Reflection.
Providing containment in a relationship is not something that just makes a woman feel good; it also makes a man feel good in that relationship. When a man has had a healthy growth, he loves the feeling of providing containment to the women who are a part of his life. In fact, it gives him a lot of self-confidence, as well as a tremendous sense of value and purpose.
I want to thank all the men who take the initiative and have the courage to enter into a new space of awareness, not just for themselves, but for the benefit of those around them; and to all the women who, overcoming fears and beliefs, dare to show themselves vulnerable and to explore the different levels of reality in the fascinating feminine world.
@AngelPrimal
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