What I Learned Watching Dawn Almost Break Herself | Infinite Devotion Episode 141
A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog post called Receiving to Give which you can read here: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog/receiving-to-give
and the response to it caught me off guard. My inbox was flooded for days. So many women told me they felt seen in a way they hadn't from anything else I've written, and it was clear I needed to bring my voice to it directly, which is what this episode is. I delivered this episode live, which gave it a special sort of energy.
I've been using the language of doing to get versus receiving to give with women for years, but I realized I'd never actually taught it outside our deeper courses and coaching work. So in this episode I'm breaking it down from the ground up, live, and taking your questions along the way.
I talk about where this language actually came from, which is watching my wife Dawn nearly run herself into the ground for years. She looked disciplined and responsible from the outside, but underneath it she was operating from fear, chasing a standard of perfection she could never let herself reach. I had to stop looking at her behaviors and start paying attention to the woman underneath them.
I get into the real diagnostic question that most women are afraid to ask themselves, which is simply, am I doing this because I want to, or because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't. I talk about what happens when that fear-based doing becomes so normal it starts to feel like responsibility instead of fear, and how that's exactly when a woman loses touch with her own desire, including in the bedroom.
Then I get into what receiving to give actually looks like in practice. Not passivity, not doing nothing, but checking in with yourself before you act so your doing comes from fullness instead of obligation. I talk about why performing feminine embodiment is just the same fear-based pattern wearing new language, and why the real practice is simply noticing, without judgment, when you've overridden your own signal.
I also spend some time talking directly to the men listening, about what it actually looks like to support a woman through this without trying to control or fix her, because force from you just reinforces the same pattern she's already fighting inside herself.
I answer a handful of questions live toward the end, including whether this dynamic shows up differently for men, what to do when you know what you want but can't seem to give it to yourself, and how to let a partner have his reaction to your no without absorbing it as your responsibility to manage.
Next week I'll be back with the other half of this conversation, called Giving to Receive, which turns this same lens on men.
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Dawn of Desire adult content: dawnofdesire.net