WHAT WOMEN NEED

“Women need three things,” the seminar leader explained. “They need romance, security, and fun. Like the song says, ‘girls just wanna have fun.’ And men just need a game to play.” She briefly explored a few details and moved on to the next topic.

If the voice in my head had a body, it was jumping up and down, waving its arms and yelling, “Is that all you’re going to say about that?!'”

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I embarked on a conversational quest that day. And the next couple of decades were marked by hundreds of chats with women from various nations, cultures, ethnicities, ages, sexual preferences, and social statuses.

What that seminar leader shared rang true to all of them with little to add. However, the points on the list shifted in priority and attention. 

Granting that there’s an overlap of masculine and feminine traits in each person, women need three things against one thing men need. 

SECURITY – There seemed to be no preference between fun and romance, but for all women I talked to, security was paramount. Women are willing to sacrifice fun, romance, and sometimes dignity in exchange for even a short-term future of security.

Women are also assigned the highest charge on the planet – to bear and nurture every human that ever lived. But unfortunately, the cost of that task is often enormous. Giving birth is a brush with death. According to the World Health Organization, a woman dies every two minutes from pregnancy and childbirth. And the rest of the mothers that escape death are consumed with the demands of protecting their newborns from danger or starvation. So it makes sense that a woman’s DNA contains a genetic code that desires security above all else.

ROMANCE AND FUN are necessary perks for a happy life. “Fun” is celebrated by playfulness, laughter, and general lightheartedness. A romantic movie or book can temporarily satisfy a particular thirst, but women require more. They need active evidence of being cherished and adored.

I often observe couples to find proof of the woman’s happiness and study the man’s actions and moods that contribute to her fulfillment and inner beauty. I also see frustrated or sad wives and notice how their husbands have much to do with it.

ADMONISHMENT

Men, don’t pass up the opportunity to learn from this principle. Some of you already know this secret and are actively making your honeymoon last “until death do us part.” Your woman needs security, romance, and fun. She looks to you to provide most of it. If you’re not doing your part, she’ll be tempted to look elsewhere, if you know what I mean.

WHAT MEN NEED

In the same conversations, I mention that men need only one thing and ask the woman to guess what it is. The most common answer is “sex”. Unfortunately, if art imitates life, there is overwhelming evidence to support this claim. Many advertisements promise men that women will eagerly flock to them if they drink the right beer or apply the right cologne or body spray.

Sex could indeed be part of the equation, but it’s not what men really need. Simply put, men need a game to play.

Many highly educated thought leaders say that men need only adventure, and on the surface, it’s logical. Most pioneers and explorers throughout history have been men. But under the adventure is a structure of order. There are rules, goals, risks, and rewards. Look at how men in the west have turned casual romance into game or sports terms. “He’s a player.” “You got game.” “Did you score?” “She’s on the rebound,” “I got to second base,” “I struck out,” or “I hit a home run!”

But playing the cosmic game is rarely a sport. Instead, men often choose to walk on that fine line between life and death.

Forbes Magazine reports that men are ten times more likely than women to be killed at work. And it’s not that they all have the same jobs and men die more often. Firefighters, police, paramedics, skyscraper or bridge builders, and other careers that include the present possibility of death are heavily sided toward men.

Believe it or not, even those jobs are part of the game. Of course, winning is a bonus but not a crucial outcome. Playing is. And the game must have a clear objective and evidence of winning and losing, success and failure, or life and death.

THE TRUE GAME-MASTERS

Many women I talked to seemed deflated at this point. After all, the “game” context doesn’t clearly honor the need for security. However, the cosmic masculine can never embark on an adventure or participate in “the game” without the cosmic feminine’s permission. Whether it is the explorer penetrating mother nature’s dark, chaotic, and dangerous unknown or the valiant knight fighting for a maiden’s attention, the feminine sets the rules of consent and reward.

That’s why women have been the gatekeeper of mate selection throughout history. Men embrace the risk of rejection to ask for a date or propose marriage, knowing that whatever answer awaits is worth every ounce of energy and every moment of consideration.

ADVICE

Women, like it or not, you determine the game’s rules. So if your man is not at least in the pursuit of giving you security, romance, and fun, it’s possible that you left that out of the rule book. And don’t forget that saying “no” is your closest ally and clarifies boundaries for your security. “No” also heightens the stakes of the game and inspires the masculine champion to ascend to the next level of presentation and approach in the face of challenge.

Yet, my heart breaks for the women I’ve met that wrote in their rule book permitting men to abuse them. The trade-off could be a twisted sense of security or abject fear of loneliness. And all too common is the fear of more intense abuse or being killed. Even worse is the devastation of rape. All the rules are shattered, and it sometimes requires years of healing and therapy to regain the kind of independence that allows rewriting rules. If this is you, please take a deep breath, muster every ounce of courage inside you and reach out for help. There are many resources at your fingertips on your smartphone.

THE NECESSITY OF REDEMPTION

The overwhelming evidence that the masculine desires the feminine’s love is undeniable. Our lyrics, poetry, and stories are rife with romantic conviction and willingness to sacrifice everything to win true love and happily ever after. Yet, the feminine is often more or different than just a female character. The feminine can also be a culture, family, group, generation, or an entire planet. 

The story’s heroic and sacrificial masculine can also be more than a male character. The selfless hero archetype can be a woman, team, or ideal. If the storyteller truly honors the listener’s demands, then redemption by the archetypal masculine resurrecting the feminine with something akin to true love’s first kiss is necessary to the plot.

Genesis One is the first chapter of the Bible. It describes events that could easily be interpreted as redemptive. Every day of creation was an act of something from nothing and order from chaos. Even the phrase “there was evening, and there was morning” is redemptive. Evening is an obscure mixture of day and night when visually recognizing objects is not easy. And there is morning when it is clear, new, and vivid. This brilliant symbolism encapsulates the transformation of each “day”. 

PSYCHEDELIC EDEN THEOLOGY 101

In the six days of creation, the Creator gave each day’s assignment an A, except for the sixth and last day, which received an A+ because that’s when God created humans.

Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God, he created them; male and female, he created them.”

Theologians and Bible scholars have studied God’s mysterious nature for thousands of years. And unfortunately, many died knowing less than when they began.

Here’s a shortcut. First, God’s image is not a human physical body. Second, humans are a spirit or consciousness in God’s image. So, the more we learn about ourselves, the more we can learn about God.

Does that mean we are also gods? The answer is “no” and “yes”.

THE BAD NEWS:

Unlike God’s righteousness, our righteousness – the Biblical term closest to the word “identity” – is like a diseased victim, oozing fluids from infected sores all over our body. And according to Isaiah 64:6, our active pursuit of personal identity is like the stained, filthy, and stinky rags we use to cover the sores and absorb body fluids. We’re not kidding anyone, especially God the Creator.

THE GOOD NEWS:

1. We think and dream outside of time and space, recalling memories and applying them to the future. In this sense, we are symbolically eternal.

2. Consciousness precedes all invention, music, art, and manipulation of matter for usefulness. Before creation, there is consciousness.

3. We create and impact results in time-space using language.

4. Like God, we are also a trinity which I’ll explain later.

So, if these aspects of God are part of us, what about us can reflect God’s nature?

Here’s the most obvious answer. God, outside of time and space, wants true love and is willing to fight and sacrifice for it at the risk of rejection. The Divine Masculine wants a Divine Feminine that will choose him above all else to be her Husband.

Accordingly, God created Adam and Eve and mapped his story onto them. Individually, they were masculine and feminine, but collectively, they symbolized the divine feminine with free will to choose.

Genesis Two is the account of Adam and Eve. Notice that Adam was created first. He was put in the Garden of Eden to care for and cultivate it as a reflection of what God did to the earth in the previous chapter. Adam participated in creation by naming each living creature. The naming made them real. After that, God declared that it was not good for man to be alone in the same sense that God’s motive in creating humankind was also not being alone in Genesis One.

Similar to how God waited until the end to create humans, Adam also had much to do before Eve came along. God put Adam in a deep sleep at the appropriate time and formed Eve from one of Adam’s ribs, possibly the one closest to his heart. It was a reflection of creating humankind in his own image to be the collective Divine Feminine. The priceless human feminine, Eve, emerged from Adam, the human masculine, during a symbolic death.

If the Divine Feminine is at the top of the cosmic value hierarchy, then the woman is at the top of the earthly value hierarchy. Consequently, the feminine in various forms is every story’s most valuable character.

“BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?”

God also warned of an inevitable and consequential death upon partaking in the knowledge of good and evil. Fear and entitlement killed the Divine Feminine in the Garden of Eden. The results were shame, denial of responsibility, exile from paradise, and separation from the Divine Masculine Creator.

Yet, the cosmic narrative reveals a second Adam in the story of Jesus, who made different choices. He is the virtuous and humble sacrificial hero archetype in our favorite stories. Symbolic of the first Adam, the prolonged deep sleep or death of this Adam resulted in the resurrection of a new Eve, the Divine Feminine, who would never be alone again. And new hope for all humanity arose with her.

The lifeless princess on a bed of stone deep in the dark, forbidden forest received true love’s first kiss, forever dispelling the evil curse. A magnificent wedding would one day reunite the Divine Masculine and his Bride for a cosmic happily ever after.

This is why “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1.