The difference between a man and a woman

As I am sitting here writing this article on Father's Day, I am looking into myself - am I going to write about male and female (the relative polarities) or about genders - man and woman. My heart calls to write about man and woman, the gender of which we decided to take, in today's world, for this lifetime. I have started to feel in myself more and more the difference, and with that difference, also feel the urge to take more responsibility as a man. One part of taking the responsibility to be a man is to initiate and lead.

The first step forward is to start bringing clarity for myself, and for that, research is needed. So I started asking men and women around me, what is a man? What is a woman? What makes us different? So, without any filters, this is what I will present in this article the answers I was given.

From the mens’ circle I held, men were like-minded that men are simple creatures - men tell what they think, and from that they also make decisions. Two things: being a simple creature and making decisions seem to go hand in hand, and once a decision is made, it is time for action. From that, you can also deduce that if a man wants to take more actions, then he also needs to make more decisions. A decision seems to be one key difference - many women said that when a man makes a decision, it is when they feel the safest in a relationship, it is when they feel they can relax and be a woman.

From that, we come to safety - it seems that men need a lot less safety than women. It can mainfest in many forms but for me the most revealing was the tone, the voice - if a man gets yelled at or someone raises their tone on them, men do not feel threatened, men do not feel unsafe, but on the other hand for women it seems that is quite the key on how current situation will go forward, even smaller raise in tone level can bring up safety question for women.

Men are providers, containers, protectors - this I have heard so many times from men that I have lost count. This is what they want to be from the deepest of their hearts, and on the other hand, from women, I have heard how they want to be soft, see things "just happen" around them, and allow their natural cycle to flow.

In communication, there seems to be one key difference, and this again has been coming up over the years. If you want a successful relationship, this must be taken into account. Men do not tell everything they have in mind, while women seem to mostly tell everything, but that is not yet the difference. The difference is how man processes things and how woman processes things. Most men need to go inside, to take the time off and to be in silence to understand what is going on with them, while with women, they need to talk it out, to understand what is happening.

There is this one aphorism from Toltec teachings I would like to end with: "Locked within the secret of gender lie the keys to evolution. The man or woman who has mastered the secret of gender has unlimited power at his or her command.”

With warmth,

Siim