Originally a Facebook post - where you’ll find most of my writing. Send me a Friend Request along with a private message for me to add you on FB, or simply hit the follow button.
Artwork by Roberto Ferri
"I'M SORRY"
A genuine apology and taking-ownership of shortcomings and wrongdoings is so ABSENT in the male collective that when many women see a man who is:
* Virtue signalling to feed his validation addiction
* Craving the love and acceptance of the feminine to soothe the shame he cannot hold himself
* Pretending to be a non-threat in order to obtain closeness
* Seeking to be elevated above other men (which is almost certainly about his father subconsciously) by playing the good boy and throwing all men under the bus
... it works.
Almost every time.
And this is why the smiley, gentle, apologetic Nice Guy has caused so much damage in recent decades.
Many women are so rightly craving an acknowledgement of their collective wounding, and indeed a *genuine* apology, that many a pretending man has used this avenue in order to have their own emotional needs met at her expense.
The truth is, the capacity to offer a genuine agenda-less apology requires so much internal strength, alignment, connection-to-purpose and self-ownership, that as far as I'm concerned, it is a SPIRITUAL endeavour.
Especially when the apology is for crimes that you did not do yourself, but DO live on in you simply because of the body you were born into.
(Read that again. And yes, it applies to other collective wounds)
When I coach men who are in relationship, after we've done all the counselling and embodiment work, one of the most profound moments that has at times completely and permanently changed their relationship is when he's able to stand in his truth and with heart wide-open, feet planted into the ground and without flinching give her an "I'm sorry".
It can be one of the most healing and sexiest things he can do.
And as with all things so powerful, despite being so simple does NOT mean it's easy.
And that's what we're seeing now in the world. This is why men are either collapsed or raging.
Now add to this the fact that many men (of a certain skin tone) are being forced to see another area where apology has been absent and is being called for.
In myself, at the risk of doing my own virtue-signalling, in recent weeks I was so struggling to hold all of what's happening in the world (BLM and some male comedians I like being called out by #metoo) and manage my resistance to feeling my own "I'm sorry", that I got shingles.
After genuinely asking the universe to humble me where I couldn't completely humble myself, it replied by literally infecting my nervous system (that's what shingles is).
The power required for true humility is something we've lost respect for on some level, because we've experienced so little of it.
What is your relationship to apology? Where do you need it? Where have you given it? Was it genuine? Where do you need to give it? Are you resistant to giving it? Where have you received it?
