Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: How do you get back the spark in your relationship? That's a really great question and apparently I've been living under a rock. There is a very large movement of people who believe masculine and feminine energy is integral to pleasure and sensuality.
In case you're like me and don't know, the masculine and feminine don't refer to gender, rather how a person's energy expresses traits of the two energetic polarities, which, to be honest, is not my thing. And I don't understand this. That's the reason I'm bringing on my guest, Danielle Epstein, because she is going to break this down and teach us how to decode our sexuality.
That way you can walk away from this podcast understanding yourself and your partner better and of course your improve your sex Life. Hi, I'm Dr. Trina Reed, sexologist and welcome to the Pursuit of Pleasure podcast where we do a deep dive into what makes women in long term relationships excited to have sex. Thank you for subscribing to my YouTube channel. And if you want a deep, soul quenching, mind blowing sex life, please check out my free masterclass workbook and video now. Full disclosure, I am a healthy skeptic of this masculine feminine energy.
Interestingly, I've been told my entire life that I have a lot of masculine energy and maybe that's why I'm a skeptic. But also I'm a big believer in you don't know what you don't know. And it's inherently wrong to push an idea to the side just because I don't understand it.
Especially if my gap in knowledge impedes you from connecting at a deeper level with your partner. So today I am the student and Danielle is our teacher. That said, I have been a meditator for over 10 years and I know firsthand the benefits of mindfulness meditation. And in fact, a growing body of research coming out of the Sexuality Health Laboratory at the University of British Columbia shows the effectiveness of mindfulness on a woman's sexual pleasure. So if this piques your interest, check out the mindfulness meditation website and get a free seven day trial, which I'll tell you a little bit more about at the end of this video. And this is one of the reasons that I'm doing this podcast, because it seems to me that the masculine and feminine energy is adjacent to meditation and how it can help with women's sexual pleasure. So I am certainly willing to give this a try.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Try.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Now, before we get into the interview with Danielle, I wanted to give you a little background with what masculine and Feminine energy has to say about sexuality. So energies play a much bigger role in our lives and relationships than we think. Our sexuality is shaped by our early life experiences, our deep desires and our needs, and how that reflects on our personality, our expansion path and our compatibility with others.
Your sexuality reflects your deepest traumas and desires. Sexual energy is creative energy tied to what you most want but feel powerless to attain. By analyzing what arouses you and its emotional roots, you can uncover hidden wounds and unmet needs. This awareness can guide your healing, improve relationships, and help you consciously shape your life. On Danielle's website, the Intimate Instinct, she says there is a direct correlation between how well you balance your masculine feminine energy and how strong your intimacy is. Today's constantly stimulating world has derailed our intimacy, sexuality and natural instincts. And the result has been a clear deterioration of the quality of our relationships.
That's a great quote. So Danielle Epstein is a passionate advocate for understanding the psychological and neuroscience behind human connection. Her life's mission is to empower people to explore and deepen their sexuality, intimacy and relationships. Through science based insights and relatable truths about human behavior, Danielle helps individuals uncover profound truths about themselves, the opposite gender, and the keys to cultivating extraordinary intimacy. As the founder and CEO of the Intimate Instinct, Danielle leads a vibrant community.
She has a woman's discussion group to foster meaningful conversations, self discovery and personal growth.
So without further ado, I'm really excited for you to hear what Danielle had to say in our interview. Welcome, Danielle. I'm so excited to have you here. I'm so excited to learn from you because I know nothing about this and I'm a little bit of an skeptic and I feel like this might be something that I'm missing to tell women and teach women. And you know, I want you to convince me, not convince me, but I want you to take me through this idea of what is the masculine feminine dynamic really about and why does it matter?
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to talk about this. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart.
The topic of masculinity and femininity is really misunderstood in my opinion. There are a lot of misperceptions and myths that I'm hoping I'll bust with you today.
So the, the first thing that I want to say about it is if there's one thing you could take away from it. Masculine and feminine energy are just energies. Just that. They're not labels, they're not stereotypes, they're not the same thing as Gender masculinity is not male. Femininity is not female.
Um, they're just energies. And in that sense, they show up in how we act, how we communicate, how we carry ourselves throughout the world in our values and our attitudes. All genders have both masculine and feminine energy, and we actually switch between these two energetic states thousands of times a day without really noticing it. So what are these energies?
Masculine energy is an energy of competitiveness, protection, defensive, but like, in a healthy way, if you will, like protecting your loved ones. It is an energy of being goal oriented and driven and very focused.
Feminine energy is a little bit different, or actually a lot of it different. It's all about emotional expression, creativity, nurturing, warmth, caretaking, intuition, and being empathetic, expressive, connected to people's emotions. There are times when it makes sense to be in your masculine. Like, for example, as women, if we're at work, we're often in our masculine energy. And then there are times when it makes sense to be more in your feminine energy. Like, for example, if we're hanging out with our kids, and if we're raising our children, we don't want to be as much in a masculine state, and we want to be more in a feminine state in order to connect with them.
So we switch between these energies, we all the time. And polarity, which is sort of like the other word that you often hear about when we talk about masculinity and femininity, is the magnetic attraction between these two ends of the spectrum.
And when there's strong polarity, it creates strong attraction, strong desire, really good communication between two people in a relationship, and it makes the relationship more enjoyable, more effortless.
But the same is true in the reverse as well, when there's weaker polarity, meaning that, you know, both people are sort of occupying that same energetic space. You don't have one person really in their masculine and one person really in their feminine. So when there's weak polarity, when everybody's operating in the same space, tension goes up. So you have more bickering, more arguing, you're not as grateful or appreciative of your partner.
This is when, like, things like cheating can happen. If it's really extreme, you just start to feel more like roommates than you do like lovers. And so that's, in my mind, the concept about masculinity and femininity, what you really should know, and one of the things that I believe with my whole body and soul, is that masculinity and femininity is not this fluffy, abstract, fruity Spiritual concept. I actually believe that there's a lot of grounding in some science behind it, and that's a lot of what I teach with the women that I work with.
[00:09:20] Speaker A: So can you give me a concrete example of, you know, how this works with masculine or feminine energy?
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll give you a person to think about.
And she is a really, really solid example of healthy, divine feminine energy and just how powerful it can be. I want you to think of Princess Diana. She went against the grain, right? Everybody else in.
In the royal family, much more masculine, much more stoic, much more sturdy, much more, you know, stable, protected, much more, you know, like, focused on just being royal.
She was much more empathetic, nurturing, caretaking. She saw things that they didn't. She connected with people, and she just had this magnetism about her that made the entire world fall in love with her. And that speaks to the power of femininity.
And that's one of the biggest misconceptions about it, that it's submissive and weak and oppressed, and it's all about women in the kitchen. Like, no, that's not true at all.
Really strong feminine energy is actually extremely intoxicating because it makes you feel so cared for. It is so warm and nurturing and. And that's exactly what Princess Diana embodied.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: That's a great example. And I never thought about it in that way, so.
But bringing this back to couples and their sensuality and sexuality, and let's say you've been a couple for 15, 20 years and you've established your roles and you.
The habits are there. You know what I'm saying? So. So here's this couple, and they want to inject some masculine feminine energy. So can you give us, first of all, for this couple, can you give us your definition of what intimacy means within this masculine, feminine framework?
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Yes.
So intimacy to me, is the result of interactions that make you feel close and connected with someone, and interactions that give you a sense of belonging, that make you feel seen, valued, understood. And masculinity and femininity is what powers those interactions.
So both masculinity and femininity. I really hate these words, but these are the words that this topic uses. Both masculinity or femininity can be divine, wounded, or toxic.
And I want you to think of divine as, like, I want to energy. It's really authentic. And when you're in that space, you feel really good about what you're doing. You feel really exhilarated, wounded. Energy is more like, I have to energy you're acting out of fear, out of trauma, out of a need to protect yourself. And so you do it because you have to, but not because you want to.
And then toxic energy is what it sounds like. You are conditioned to think a certain way or to be a certain way.
Divine masculinity and divine femininity is what creates that polarity. One attracts the other and vice versa. And when both people are in their divine states, it creates a really positive spiral because the interactions between those two people are really good. And that positive spiral leads to really strong intimacy.
When one or both people are in a wounded or toxic state, it creates a really negative spiral, which leads to really bad, really weakened intimacy. I'll tell you a very short personal story.
The reason why I actually got into all of this is because my last relationship totally blew up. My partner cheated on me and left me totally upside down in my world.
And for the life of me, I couldn't understand why that happened. And eventually, once I learned about this topic and I reflected backwards, I realized it's because we were stuck in this really negative spiral where both of us, us were sort of in a wounded or toxic state. And it created a lot of tension, which destroyed the intimacy.
So getting back to what is intimacy and how is it created? Masculine energy is safe and supportive and strong when done right.
And feminine energy, it's very shy. I like to almost use the metaphor of like a clamshell. Feminine energy is very shy. It's very vulnerable, and it only comes out when it feels really safe to do so, physically and emotionally, emotionally. So when you have really healthy, stable masculine energy, that feminine energy feels a lot more comfortable coming out. When that comes out, she brings the. The creativity, the warmth, the nurturing to a conversation or to an interaction. And that softens the masculine. The masculine is always very cold, very hard, very strong, very sturdy, and enjoys.
Relies on the feminine to be pulled into his softness a little bit. And that's what creates really positive interactions, which leads to really strong intimacy.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: It's interesting you say that because many sex therapists, they. One of the first things they work on with couples is making sure that the woman feels safe within her relationship, to open up and be vulnerable. And so I think what you're saying matches with other modalities as well.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I am a big believer that we all experience divine, wounded and toxic. We all experience masculinity and femininity. We're just not trained how to recognize it and how to identify it, how to talk about it. It's Very subconsciously taught.
And unless you go out of your way to learn about it, you don't. So we talk about things like safety, but we don't talk about where safety comes from. We don't talk about what safety is. And I believe that the root of that is masculinity and femininity. We're just now labeling it and talking about it.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: Just to add on to this, how does the masculine and feminine help to create a deeper sense of vulnerability, sex, and intimacy between this couple who's been together for 15 to 20 years?
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Yeah, so what I typically see with couples who have been together for a long time is that over time, maybe when they started, like, they both were on opposite ends of that pole, they had really strong polarity, right? That's when you have the honeymoon phase. Everything is great. The sex is great, the communication is great. Everybody's loving everything.
But what happens over time is work gets in the way, kids get in the way, financial pressure gets in the way.
Your partner does something that loses a little bit of your trust or, you know, your honesty or whatever. And step by step, it's a very slow, very gradual process. They lose their polarity. And 15, 20, 30 years in, they're in the middle of this spectrum, which I like to call the tension zone, where that tension takes place.
So there are things you can do to. To bring it back and start to increase the polarity. But obviously, even better than that is learning what not to do and how to stay in this zone all along and not move towards the. This tension zone.
So let's talk about the first scenario, right? You're in this tension zone. What can you do to start creating or reintroducing polarity again? Right?
One of the best things that the masculine can do.
Show up, be consistent, take initiative, provide that feeling of safety, structure, support, predictability, which goes hand in hand with being consistent.
What are some of the things that the feminine can do? Also be really present. That matters, you know, no matter who you are or what we're talking about. Presence matters, Right? But the feminine. Be soft, be nurturing. Don't be nitpicky, don't be naggy.
Find ways of communicating that aren't like that, and be appreciative, be grateful. Those are really big things that fuel masculine energy.
So what ends up happening when couples are moving closer and closer like this is they are both making mistakes in their behaviors with their energies that reinforce the other one. So, like, for example, you know, the. The man will say, who? And I just say man, because Men are typically the masculine ones, but it doesn't have to be that way. But the man will say, yeah, I'll take out the trash, no worries. And then he doesn't do it. And she loses one little increment of, I can trust you and I can depend on you. And she does it herself. And she steps into this space of hyper independence, and she takes it on herself, which then makes her a little bit less trusting, which makes her clamshell close up a little bit, right? And then the next time he says, you know, yeah, give me five minutes.
I'll change over the laundry in five minutes. Right? Once again, it doesn't happen.
So the masculine follow through on what you say you're going to do. Create that consistency, create that predictability, take accountability, take responsibility, be reliable, dependent. That's some of the best things you can do as the masculine.
When the masculine starts to do those things, the feminine has to appreciate it, has to recognize it. The masculine, I like to think of it as almost like a dog with a bone. Like, all it wants is like a praise and a pat on the head. Good job, boy. Right? Like, that's all the masculine wants in order to keep doing what it's doing.
And it's really easy to say, thank you so much for taking the garbage out. I appreciated that.
That takes so little effort, but has such a big impact.
Obviously, don't fake appreciation or gratitude. It has to be authentic because these energies can tell, right?
So that's kind of when you're in the middle and you need to figure out how to reintroduce polarity. That's how you do it. Stop. As women, we so often fall into this trap of becoming a mother. We nag, we remind, we nitpick, we criticize. And we, as women, have to really stop doing that. There are better ways of communicating what you need to communicate. And simultaneously, if the men start doing what they say they'll do, and if they start doing it with quality and care and whatever, then there's going to be less to nitpick, and things will get better.
Now, let's say you're a couple who's at the ends of the spectrum. Like, maybe you're in a relatively new relationship, things are going really well. How do you stay there? Well, it's the same thing, right? Like, if you're at that end of the spectrum, the things you're doing that are going well. Like, you're going out on dates, you're being really present with each other, the man is planning the date, and the woman is following his lead and enjoying it.
The man comes home from work, and the woman is done with her workday, and they reconnect, and she helps him transition home and helps him leave the stress of the day behind him, and he helps her transition away from her stress, and they take intentional time to make that transition from work life to home life and from working to parenting. Right. Like, those are some of the most important things you can do. Find these quality touch points throughout the day that allow you to keep your masculinity and femininity alive.
Because if you don't designate time to working on these things, they naturally weaken over time.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: No, absolutely. I absolutely agree. And, you know, something that I often say is, you know, relationships are like plants. If you leave a plant in a shadowy corner and don't water it, it's going to die. And if you don't pay attention to your relationship, even if it's just little, small, like what you were saying, you know, small, small connection points during your day, you know, it's. It's easy to do. It doesn't take a lot of time, but it does take some intention. So I really like what you have to say.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: Exactly. And even with plants, I love that metaphor, too.
Even if one plant needs one thing, a different plant, if you give it the same treatment, will not do well. Right. So, like, each plant needs its own thing. And so you need to know your partner and understand what your partner or plant needs, and they need to know yours. Right?
[00:21:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
I just think it's, you know, something I talk about a lot is just being very intentional. And I think intention. People get intimidated by the word being intentional with your partner and yourself. But it doesn't have to be overwhelming. It's just remembering, you know, I think it's. I think a better word would be habits. Just get into the good habit of doing these things. You know, you can call it habits, you can call it intention, but it's, you know, the same thing. So something that I do is I speak primarily to women. I speak to couples as well. But, you know, so I would like for us to now take the focus off of couples and put it on to just women.
So what could a woman do right this second, as soon as she gets off this podcast, to discover and foster loving herself and having a fulfilling relationship with herself and, you know, her partner as well?
[00:22:48] Speaker B: I think there are a lot of things you can do. I think it's tough to do anything, like, super quick and super fast. Right. Like, this is working on yourself and Working on your relationships, which takes time and commitment and consistency.
One of the easier things to do, and I think it's very important, is surround yourself with like minded women.
It's so easy, not just as women in general, to surround yourself with people who don't enrich you and help you grow and better you.
So I would say surround yourself with people who have similar values, who have met certain goals that you're trying to meet because they will help you get there.
So choosing the right friends, choosing the right family, being very intentional about your community and your network is really important. You can also decide to be feminine, right? Like we make choices, thousands of choices every day within one interaction, there are dozens of choices, right?
So make choices from a divine feminine place and that will automatically start helping. If you are with a partner, that will automatically start calling out the masculine qualities that you really want to see.
So choose to be feminine, embrace your femininity, spend time with your body alone. Whether that's self pleasure, whether it's moisturizing, I don't care what it is. Take time to transition from a masculine space to a feminine space. This is really important, especially for women. I talk about this a lot in my group is that we as women have a much bigger gap to close. When we're outside of the house, we are expected to be masculine.
Society wants high achieving, competitive, you know, successful, powerful women inside the house. More often than not, we want to be soft and our family and our partner also want us to be that way. Men have a much smaller gap to close. They're masculine outside the house, they're masculine inside the house. So they don't have to make nearly as much of a transition.
Women have a huge gap to close at the end of the day. So take time for yourself to make that transition I think is really important.
I like to, I like to, it's sort of a joke. I like to compare transitioning masculine and feminine energy very similar to like getting a boner or getting turned on as a woman. Like you can get a boner real fast. It's really fast to transition into masculine energy.
It takes a lot of time to warm up as a woman and it takes a lot of time to ease into your femininity.
So take that time, make that transition really intentionally and thoughtfully.
Then I would say the next big thing is decide who you want to be like, what your values are, what you allow society to influence you on and what you don't, and having boundaries that don't let things through.
I was conditioned my entire life to Believing that masculinity was superior, that being high achieving, high earning successful was the pinnacle of happiness.
And age 25, 26, when my ex cheated on me. And I was miserable at my job and I was committed to a house that I didn't like, but I had to stay in my job to pay for it. Like, I was absolutely miserable. And I was way too young to be that miserable.
And it's because I was living my entire life under this belief that I should be masculine and I was not embracing my feminine need.
So if it's a value of yours, not all women want to be feminine. If it's a value of yours that you are that way, make those choices. Surround yourself with people that encourage those choices. Align your work goals and your lifestyle with those choices. That's obviously, you know, a much longer term piece of advice that takes a lot of time to figure out what that is and make those choices and changes. But nonetheless, something I recommend that you do.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: You know, I think my favorite thing that you said that really resonated with me is that, you know, the boner thing where it's like automatic and then slow moving. Because for me, that makes a lot of sense. I've never framed it that way. So it's really easy to get into our masculine and it takes a while to get into our feminine. But I also feel like, as you said, once we embrace our feminine energy, it's so powerful. I feel like a lot of women might not be used to that power. And it's scary. And I don't mean that in a condescending way. I mean that sincerely. Like, when we step into our full power, it's like, oh my gosh, I had no idea that I could be this powerful. And you know, and then she retreats back because it totally just doesn't matter.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: Because this sort of energy is very unfamiliar for us. Right. Again, we've all been societally conditioned to be in this masculine space and to leave this feminine space behind. So it's really unfamiliar to us. And anything unfamiliar is scary. Doesn't matter what it is.
So even if it's a good thing. And so, yes, when we, when we experience the power of this energy for the first time, it's like, whoa, I didn't know I could be like that. What is this feeling? It's weird.
And you have to learn to get comfortable with it. Which is partly why I say surround yourself with women who are in that experience who can help you. Like under, like recalibrate deprogram. Right.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: I feel I Feel like in my own experience with working with women, getting them in groups and getting them to open up, suddenly when, when women start opening up in groups, like, magic happens. And I know that you've seen that too, but it's true. Yeah, absolutely. I've seen it with my eyes a thousand times. So you're absolutely right. Get with strong women who, you know, naturally raise you up and then suddenly it's not so scary.
[00:28:54] Speaker B: Exactly. And there's anthropological or like biological reasons why that is. Right. Think back to hunter gatherer times. A lot of the men would go hunt, be gone for a little while. The women who were the ones who were all left at home with the kids to raise.
So women rely on networking and building community with other women to.
Because there's power in numbers, right. Like if she stayed home with her kids alone, she'd actually be quite vulnerable. But by staying home with other women and their kids, and now as a big community, we're not nearly as vulnerable to whatever pressure is around us. Right. So there's biological and anthropological reasons why women need support and community more than men. And one other interesting thing about this, there's a hormone called oxytocin, which I like to call it like the ooey gooey hormone. It really helps you feel connected and bonded with someone.
Well, women make two to three times more of it than men. Like, we are naturally much more bigger oxytocin producers than men are.
And one of the things that releases oxytocin is socializing with friends.
So, you know, oxytocin is a hormone that makes us feel really good. And we as women, our systems are designed to rely on oxytocin quite a bit. Well, socializing gives us that, so it feels very natural.
And you know, there's all sorts of studies that show how women use more words every day as young girls. We learn to speak earlier, we typically have bigger vocabularies sooner.
Women are more oriented. There's something called the mirror neuron system, which means that women are much more in tune with other people's emotions and reading nonverbal cues like body language or eye contact.
Women are designed to be more social, more networked, more community based than men are. And there's so much power that comes from surrounding yourself with other high quality, high value women.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: Absolutely. I second that.
So this has been fascinating and I really appreciate you sharing your insights and you know, can you tell listeners how to. How they can find out more about you?
[00:31:20] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So my company, the Intimate Instinct, the website that the exact same the intimate instinct.com I run a women's group just. Just about every week online where we talk all about masculinity and femininity, hormones, brain differences, and how it impacts sexuality, intimacy and relationships. So if you're interested in joining a cohort, you can sign up. I start new cohorts about every three months.
I'm terrible on social media because it feels very inauthentic and impersonal to me, but I do have accounts. So the Intimate Instinct on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube.
Yeah, great. You can find out about me.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: And do you have a. Anything you want to give away?
[00:32:04] Speaker B: I do want to offer 10% off to all of your followers on their first ever group. So the code for that will be pop 10. And I'll make sure that we put that in the comments below.
And then I'll also have two free resources that you can access if you'd like. One of them is about the five biggest myths and misconceptions about masculinity and femininity. We touched on some of them today, but that resource goes into more details. And the other one, which I think is a really valuable resource, is the top 10 signs that you might be out of touch with your feminine energy.
So what? It's almost. It's not a quiz, but you can almost think of it as one.
What, like, do I resonate with any of these things? If yes, I might need to work on my feminine energy a little bit.
[00:32:50] Speaker A: Good. And they can find that on your website?
[00:32:53] Speaker B: They can find it on my website. Or I can also send you the links and we can include them in the footnotes. Great.
[00:32:58] Speaker A: Well, thank you. It's been a delight. And just in case people want to know, we're doing a second podcast with Danielle. So if this is interesting to you, then make sure to look for the second podcast because we're diving into sensuality. So thank you so much, Danielle.
Of course.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: Thank you for having me.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: A lot of fun.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Bye.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: Wow, that was really informative and insightful. So please make sure to check out Danielle's website, the Intimate Instinct, to see how you can join her women's discussion group. And lucky you. Danielle and I did two podcasts. In the second podcast, we discussed how women can tap into her skill, sensuality, by understanding her masculine and feminine energy. And it was super interesting. So the link will be in the description. You can always double up and combine masculine feminine energies with mindful meditation because you deserve to start your sensual journey right this moment.
Mindfulness meditation offers a seven day free trial and there is a ton of value that you can access.
A library of over 2000 guided meditations, gratitude practices, breathing exercises, podcasts, music playlists, sleep content and more.
You have nothing to lose and your sexual mojo to gain, which to me seems like a no brainer. So please check out my mindfulness meditation video and my affiliate link in the description. It doesn't cost you any extra and helps support my work.
Bottom line, women should feel empowered in their relationship to ask for her sensual needs to be met by balancing out your energies, which takes the two of you figuring it out together. I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments on how you feel about balancing masculine and feminine energies.
Please check out my free masterclass workbook and video links will be in the description. And thank you for liking and subscribing to my YouTube channel. Your support helps grow women's sexual pleasure because even though your sex will never be perfect, you can create a sex life that is perfect for you because you deserve a deep, soul quenching, mind blowing sex life.
