A Man’s Longing for the Feminine and the Journey to Fulfillment
Welcome to this month’s Musical Monday Musings, where I take a song from the soundtrack of my life and explore the truths it reveals about the journey of becoming a man, husband, father, and human being.
Music doesn’t just entertain—it penetrates. It sneaks past our intellect and slices straight into the hidden places. The places we often don’t know how to name or express. For me, two songs have done that more than most:
“Wild Flower” by The Cult and “Desert Rose” by Sting.
They spoke directly into the ache I carried for most of my life—a deep, consuming longing for the feminine. Not just sexually, but emotionally, spiritually, and energetically. It took me decades to understand what that ache really was, where it came from, and how I kept misunderstanding it.
This is the story of that longing—the shame it carried, the journey it demanded, and the freedom I eventually found on the other side.
The Ache Awakens Early: Chasing Crushes and Beauty
I didn’t know it at the time, but this ache had been with me from the very beginning.
I had my first crush–a big one–in first grade on my first grade teacher, Ms. Wrightson. She was the first woman I think I noticed in an “that” kind of way. She wore an anklet and dressed nicely, and to my little first-grade self, she was exotic and felt otherworldly. I mean… I don’t remember much of anything else from the first grade, but I remember her! It seems like from then on, in every grade, I was “falling in love” like this with someone. It became my favorite part of the new school years. New year, new girls. I don’t know where people get the idea that boys think girls are gross. Not me! I was always fixated on someone. I don’t remember a single school year from first grade to senior year where I didn’t have at least one girl I silently obsessed over. It was so evident that my dad would routinely say to me, “son, you know… you don’t have to fall in love with every girl you meet.” which, looking back, was among the more profound things he’s ever said to me.
I wasn’t just interested in dating or having a girlfriend, per se—I was interested in her. In the feelings she stirred. The butterflies. The magnetic pull. The otherness. The sense that something about her could complete something in me.
Looking back, I see it wasn’t about the girls themselves. It was about what they represented. Beauty. Aliveness. Mystery. Emotional intensity. Spiritual union. My Lover archetype had been increasingly enlivened since I was six years old—and not long after puberty, it began starving.
First Love and the Ache of Wild Flower
That ache exploded in my first real relationship as a teenager. It was unexpected and just kinda happened. It took me by surprise, especially as an awkward, lanky kid who was quite unsure of himself.
And that’s when I discovered “Wild Flower” by The Cult. It was like someone had stepped inside my life and written a soundtrack for it. It felt less like a love song and more like a field report. The Cult wasn’t singing to me. They were singing for me and what I was feeling.
“Hey you, you’re a wild honey child
I’m out of control…”
“I’m a wolf child, girl
Howlin’ for you…”“My heart beats faster
And I’m overpowered…”
Those lyrics captured everything I felt. The way she overwhelmed me. The way I lost myself in her presence. She was radiant, electric, untamed. She was the wild flower, and I couldn’t get enough.
It wasn’t just infatuation. It was intoxication.
She felt mythical—like she had dropped from another realm. I didn’t know it then, but I wasn’t really seeing her. I was projecting every unmet emotional need, every trace of beauty and transcendence, onto her.
And when the relationship ended, I fell apart. I experienced the full range of emotions from despair to fury and rage at the new guy. I even broke my hand punching said guy in the head, and I still carry the misaligned bone in my hand as a memorial to those immature places.
But even hitting the guy and watching her move on and me moving on myself… that didn’t make the ache go away. It just lost its container. I thought the longing was about her, but over time, I realized it wasn’t. It was about something much larger.
Marriage and the Ache That Stayed
When I got married at twenty, I was full of hope. I loved my wife, and I truly believed this was it—my chance to finally satisfy the ache I’d carried since childhood.
But as the years went by, something terrifying happened: the ache didn’t disappear.
And that nearly broke me.
I felt ashamed. How could I still feel this longing when I was married? How could I still crave more when I had what I was told would be enough?
I turned to older men in my church for wisdom. I was hoping for compassion. Perspective. Maybe even guidance. Instead, I got dismissal:
“Not sure what to tell you.”
“I can’t relate.”
“That’s just how it is.”
“You just need to focus on your wife.”
“You’re being selfish.”
“That’s lust—plain and simple.”
But it wasn’t lust. At least not in the way they meant. It was longing. A deep ache to feel beauty, mystery, passion, aliveness, and connection. Something that felt spiritual, even sacred.
Instead of healing the ache, those conversations added a new layer: shame. And with shame came self-doubt. Maybe I was broken. Maybe no other man felt this way. Maybe there really was something wrong with me. Maybe dad’s words about falling in love with every woman meant something was wrong with me?
The Frustration of Crushes and the Fire of Desert Rose
The ache didn’t diminish as the years passed—it got more complicated.
Crushes would return. Internal desires and interests for women who weren’t my wife would stir unexpectedly. These weren’t really about sex, though that was certainly a dimension of those longings. This was deeper. It was about feeling seen. Feeling connected. Feeling the presence of that feminine radiance that had always pulled at me.
It was confusing. Frustrating. Agonizing. Shaming.
That’s when “Desert Rose” by Sting found me.
“I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand…”
It felt like Sting had stepped inside my soul. That line captured my entire internal landscape. My life felt like a desert—dry, brittle, sun-scorched. And I was dreaming of gardens. Dreaming of softness. Dreaming of something that would bring me back to life.
“I dream of fire
Those dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire…”I dream of fire
These dreams that tie two hearts that will never die
Near the flames
The shadows play in the shape of the man’s desire““This desert rose
Whose shadow bears the secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this“
The fire wasn’t inspiring anymore—it was desperate. By the time I hit my late 30s and early 40s, the ache felt like an emergency. Time was running out. I was terrified I’d never experience the deep connection I craved.
Cheb Mami’s Arabic vocals evoked even more intensity. I didn’t know the meaning of these Arabic words at the time, only that they were otherworldly. It’s not a surprise they hit me the way they did. Roughly translated, he is singing, “As if she is in my dream. As if she is in my dream. I am in love with her. I am in love with her.” This is totally how I was feeling.
The Precipice: A Dangerous Friendship
Then came a friendship that shook everything.
It wasn’t an affair—but emotionally, it was complicated and close. It stirred up everything I’d been trying to suppress. This friend seemed to radiate so many of the qualities I’d longed for, and being near her felt intoxicating and terrifying all at once. It was like getting too close to a flame I couldn’t resist but knew I couldn’t touch.
It felt like walking a razor’s edge.
We both had values that kept us grounded, and I’m grateful for that. But the ache it stirred wouldn’t be ignored. It wasn’t going away—it was growing. Intensifying. I found myself gripped by a haunting question:
What if I die without ever tasting the connection I’ve longed for my whole life?
That thought terrified me.
But it also cracked something open.
For the first time, I was willing to admit just how deep the longing really was.
I stopped trying to dismiss it, or suppress it, or spiritualize it away.
And I began to wonder if maybe—just maybe—the longing wasn’t a curse at all.
Maybe it wasn’t there to torture me.
Maybe it was there to lead me.
To invite me somewhere I hadn’t been willing to go before.
So I began searching. Not for another woman—but for the meaning behind the ache.
For the truth it had been trying to show me all along.
And that’s when I finally saw it:
The longing wasn’t really about her.
It wasn’t about any woman.
It never had been.
It was about something I hadn’t yet discovered inside myself.
The Addicted Lover and the Mirror of King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover
Around this same time—when I was in my early forties—I was introduced to the King, Warrior, Magician, Lover framework by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. That was when I finally began to make sense of what had been driving me.
The ache I’d felt all my life was the Lover archetype—fully alive but wounded and unintegrated.
The Lover is the part of us that seeks intimacy, beauty, ecstasy, and emotional depth. It’s a sacred part of a man’s soul—but when wounded or unmet, it becomes distorted. And in me, it had become the Addicted Lover.
The Addicted Lover is never full. He’s always searching. Always reaching. Always believing that “just one more” will finally do it. One more woman. One more experience. One more high. But the fix never lasts.
That realization was pivotal. I stopped hating the part of me that longed—I started healing it. The Addicted Lover wasn’t a curse. He was a wounded guide, pointing me toward something deeper- not found in a woman, but in wholeness.
The Golden-Haired Lady: A Reflection Within
That journey brought me to another symbol I’d carried for decades: the Golden-Haired Lady.
She’s in all the myths. The songs. The stories. She’s the perfect woman—radiant, intuitive, otherworldly. Robert Bly writes about her in Iron John. In Genesis, she shows up as Eve—drawn from Adam’s side while he is put to sleep.
Wait… his side?
Like… she came from within him?
That phrase hit me like a revelation.
I had spent most of my life looking for the feminine out there—chasing the golden-haired lady across daydreams, memories, and projections—when suddenly, I was faced with a new and far more unsettling invitation:
What if I wasn’t meant to find her outside of me at all?
What if she could only truly be found by becoming more of myself?
That was a disorienting thought at first. But it began to make deep sense.
Because how could I even name the qualities I longed for—grace, beauty, openness, flow—if I didn’t already carry a native awareness of them inside me?
The Golden-Haired Lady isn’t a specific woman.
She’s a projection of the qualities we sense deeply—perhaps archetypally—but have not yet honored as part of the human experience we carry within us.
She’s not calling us to feminize ourselves.
She’s calling us to become more whole.
And for me, that didn’t mean collapsing my masculinity to balance things out. It meant deepening into it. Becoming more steady, more clear, more devoted, more present. Because the more I did, the more those feminine qualities I admired began to emerge in the woman beside me.
Not because I found her.
But because I wooed her forward by becoming someone she could safely unfold with.
The Masculine Unlocks the Feminine
Here’s what I eventually learned:
The feminine isn’t something we chase or capture.
She’s not something we control or possess.
She’s something we create space for.
And that space?
It’s created by the mature masculine.
When I stood firm, my wife relaxed.
When I led with integrity, she trusted.
When I cultivated strength and presence, she opened.
Not because I found her in someone else.
But because I created the environment for her to show up in herself.
What I once projected outward—what I used to try to chase down or extract—I now see as something far more relational, far more reciprocal. It turns out that the more I inhabit the truest version of me, the more her deepest beauty rises in response.
And it works the other way, too.
The more she rests into her feminine openness, the more my own strength and rooted masculinity is invited to come forth—not from effort or performance, but from being met.
We’re not fixing each other.
We’re calling each other out—out of hiding, out of performance, out of fantasy—into something more real.
More human.
More divine.
The wild flower blossomed—not in memory, not in fantasy—but in the woman I was already walking with.
And the fragrance?
Richer, deeper, and more grounded than anything I imagined as a teenager.
When “The Answer Is Within” Sounds Like a Terrible Deal
I wish I could tell you that once I saw the ache was about something inside me, I felt immediate relief.
I didn’t.
What I felt was a big, fat internal “Boo!”
And right behind it, a deflated “Oh come on. Not fair.”
Because here’s the truth:
The Addicted Lover adores what it’s addicted to.
It lives for the rush, the fantasy, the projection.
It loves scanning the room for beauty, sensing the magnetic pull of feminine energy, imagining the “what if” in every passing glance or poetic moment.
Telling that part of me the answer was “inside”?
It felt like telling a man dying of thirst to enjoy the memory of water.
Even after everything—the longing, the shame, the disappointment—I didn’t want to let go of the ache.
It felt like the only part of me that was still fully alive.
It gave color and texture to a world that had started to feel dull.
So when I heard men say things like, “You don’t need a woman to complete you,” or “You have to find the feminine within,” I honestly wanted to walk out of the room.
It sounded like a consolation prize.
Like spiritual bypassing.
Like a neutered life with no more fire.
But here’s what I want you to hear if you’re feeling that, too:
You’re not crazy.
You’re not broken.
You’re not a lost cause.
You’re just a man with a wide-open Lover… and no container for him yet.
You’re a man whose soul remembers something real—even if your mind is still chasing it in all the wrong places.
And you can’t just kill that part of yourself.
You shouldn’t. It’s sacred.
But you do need to begin transforming it—slowly, steadily—so it stops running the show.
That resistance you feel when you hear that the answer is within?
That’s not a sign of weakness.
It’s a sign of how much the Lover in you still wants to be fully alive.
And the good news?
He can be.
Just not in the way you thought.
What Are You Searching For?
If you’ve felt this longing—you’re not alone. And you’re not broken.
But you won’t resolve it by chasing the golden-haired lady in all the wrong places.
The longing isn’t something to be ashamed of. But it’s also not something you can fix externally.
The journey begins with clearing the soil—the shame, the fear, the judgment that keeps you stuck.
When you do, you’ll discover the feminine isn’t something you find.
She’s something you prepare space for.
I help men walk this journey because I’ve walked it myself. And if you’re ready, we can walk it together.
The flower is waiting to bloom.
You just have to prepare the soil.
A Way Out of the Ache
If a man stays stuck in this pattern—romanticizing the feminine, chasing the memory of emotional highs, projecting his longing onto every woman who stirs something in him—there are only a few outcomes.
And none of them end well.
He either becomes deeply resentful—trapped in a marriage that feels lifeless, wondering why the woman he once adored no longer lights him up. He resents her for not being what he imagined. He resents himself for feeling that way. And the resentment becomes a slow acid that eats away at love, connection, and desire.
Or…
He becomes a fantasizer—escaping into pornography, emotional affairs, secret obsessions, or a quiet inner life of erotic longing that his partner never knows about. He might not physically cheat, but he lives like he’s always searching—every room he walks into, scanning for the Golden-Haired Lady. Every woman becomes a possibility, a symbol, a distraction.
Or…
He eventually crosses the line—into infidelity, into philandering, into chasing the feminine in more overt, destructive ways. He may convince himself it’s about freedom, or unmet needs, or that he deserves it. But the truth is, he’s still a boy running from pain—using women as mirrors to avoid facing himself.
And in every version of that story?
He remains disconnected.
From his partner.
From his children.
From the feminine.
And most of all—from himself.
Because no woman—not one—can ever give him what he refuses to find within.
The only real way out?
He has to go inward.
He has to stop chasing the echo of that first emotional high and start facing the ache that never left.
He has to stop projecting the Golden-Haired Lady onto strangers and start recovering the pieces of himself he’s been giving away since the first grade.
He has to take the journey he was probably meant to take long before marriage—before the ache hardened into fantasy, before the shame calcified into silence, before he confused emotional chemistry for emotional maturity.
He has to walk through the fire.
Not to be destroyed by it.
But to be refined by it.
To become the kind of man who no longer needs to chase the feminine—because he’s finally become the man who can hold it.
And when that happens?
The ache isn’t gone.
It’s transformed.
That haunting sense of she’s out there somewhere fades.
The feeling of time is running out disappears.
The crushes, the emotional entanglements, the internal pull toward fantasy—gone.
Not because women stop being beautiful.
But because beauty no longer equals need.
You see it. You honor it. You respect it.
But there’s no grasping. No craving. No reaching for more.
Because when the ache has been answered from within,
every passing rose or wild flower is no longer a temptation or test—
just a reflection of something you’ve already made peace with.
The ache becomes appreciation.
The hunger becomes presence.
And the man?
He finally comes home to himself.
Before You Chase the Feeling Again…
Stop.
And ask yourself:
What if the ache isn’t your enemy… but your invitation?
What if the Golden-Haired Woman isn’t out there?
What if she’s a mirror—pointing you back to something unclaimed inside yourself?
If you’ve ever longed for more…
More depth. More intimacy. More beauty.
And found yourself frustrated, ashamed, or addicted instead…
This guide is for you.
It’s not a quick fix.
It’s not another five tips to rekindle passion.
It’s a call to become the kind of man who no longer needs to chase the feminine—because he’s finally become the man who can hold her.
Download the free guide:
“The Longing That Won’t Leave: Transforming Longing into Leadership and Fantasy into Fulfillment“
It’s not the whole journey—but it’s the first honest step.
And the man you’re becoming?
He’s already waiting for you to take it.
⬇️ Grab the guide below and start now.
P.S. A Note for the Women Who’ve Lived This
If you’re a woman reading this, chances are you haven’t just read this story—you’ve lived it.
You’ve loved a man who seemed to be reaching for something… but not quite reaching for you.
You’ve felt the ache in him, even when he couldn’t name it. The emptiness. The restlessness. The way he looked at you like he was searching for someone—or something—that wasn’t you.
And it hurt. Deeply.
Not because he cheated. But because his heart wasn’t fully here.
Because you could feel that no matter how much you gave, it still didn’t reach that place in him.
And that’s a kind of heartbreak that’s hard to name.
You may have taken it personally.
Most women do.
You started wondering what was wrong with you.
Why you weren’t enough. Why he seemed always just slightly disappointed. Why he idealized you one moment and pulled away the next.
You probably tried everything—being more emotional, less emotional, more sexual, more understanding, more beautiful, more patient.
But nothing worked. Because you were trying to fix something that wasn’t yours to fix.
That ache in him wasn’t calling him toward you.
It was pulling him away—into fantasy, into comparison, into emotional withdrawal. And slowly, painfully, you started to feel like a stand-in in someone else’s love story.
That’s the tragedy of the unintegrated Lover in a man:
It doesn’t just torment him. It breaks the heart of the woman who loves him.
But here’s the truth: this isn’t about you not being enough.
It’s about him not having faced himself.
And until he does, you’ll always feel like you’re competing with a ghost. A memory. A woman who doesn’t exist, but somehow holds more emotional power in his world than you do.
That’s why his journey matters.
Because when he finally stops running from the ache and starts facing it—really facing it—he begins to see you for the first time.
Not as a symbol.
Not as a fantasy.
But as a real woman. Deserving of presence, devotion, and love.
And when that happens—when his eyes finally land and stay—you’ll feel something you may not even have words for:
He’s choosing you. Not because you changed…
But because he finally woke up to reality.
If this is something you’ve been living in silence, and it’s touched deep wounds of your own…
If you’re exhausted, confused, or unsure how much longer you can hold on…
There’s a place for you to be seen, supported, and strengthened.
I created the RISE community for women like you—women who are navigating this very dynamic with their partners and need a space of truth, clarity, and dignity.
You don’t have to carry this alone.
👉 Learn more about RISE: https://rise.masterful.men
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