A RELATIVELY new consideration for many of us is the other-sex aspects of our personalities. For so long, men and women had to fit the stereotype for their gender or suffer harsh judgment from their parents and peers. To compensate for imagined flaws in their sexual identities, they developed extravagant postures as swaggering, macho males or helpless, fainthearted females. The more each exaggerated, the more desperately dependent and ruthlessly manipulative they became with one another. On their own, both Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara are incomplete. Whatever the cost, they must have each other.
Once we learn to accept that each of us has both masculine and feminine traits, we can relax both within ourselves and in our relationships with the opposite sex. For some of us, this acceptance is a very difficult core change. But at the end of the passage to acceptance of ourselves, our reward is personal freedom. What a relief to acknowledge that masculine men can be both tough and tender, and that feminine women can be both soft and strong.
If you feel you have something to prove, you probably also feel
there’s something to hide.