Understanding the Masculine and a New Feminine Approach to Love and Leadership
- Brainz Magazine
- Jul 2
- 8 min read
Kasturbai Azcona is a traveling photographer and movement facilitator raising her young kids in the farmlands of Guadalajara, Mexico. She specializes in mobility training and the nervous system, intuitive and creative sequencing, arm balancing, inversions, contortion & more!
In the search for equality, we’ve gained many freedoms as women. But somewhere in that process, many of us lost sight of the beauty in our differences. We began relating to men as if they were versions of ourselves, expecting them to feel, think, and respond the way we or our sisters might. When they didn’t, we labeled them distant, stubborn, avoidant, or worse.
But men aren’t wired like women. Their focus, motivation, and emotional processing are different, not better or worse, just different. Biologically, psychologically, and instinctively, men are designed to track one thing at a time. Their purpose is often internally driven. Women, on the other hand, are more externally responsive, multitasking, and attuned to subtleties and shifts in their environment. This isn’t a flaw in either system. It’s a reflection of how we’ve survived and thrived for generations.
When we forget these differences, communication breaks down. We search for emotional depth in a system designed for direction. We ask for tenderness in moments when they’re wired for action. And often, without realizing it, we start to chip away at the strength and stability we once admired in them.
This is where my journey began. Through the work of Alison A. Armstrong, author of The Queen’s Code, I started to understand the masculine not as a problem to fix but a language to learn. Her writing revealed blind spots in how I spoke, reacted, and led within my own home. This article is a reflection on the learning of love, leadership, and the power of speaking to the men in our lives in a way that honors who they truly are.
Instincts and expectations
As women, our instincts often come from a deep place of care and connection. We’re wired to track emotion, to read between the lines, to multitask and anticipate needs before they’re spoken. But when we bring those instincts into our conversations with men, without understanding how different their internal wiring is, we often create more confusion than connection.
Take something as simple as asking a question. Many women, myself included, will ask something, not hear a response right away, and assume the man didn’t hear, didn’t understand, or doesn’t want to answer. So we rephrase. We repeat. We ask again. What we don’t realize is that in doing so, we’ve interrupted his commitment to finding the answer. We’ve broken his focus, and sometimes, unknowingly, we’ve chipped away at his sense of competence.
Men are single-focused. When we ask a question, their attention turns inward like a hunter tracking an answer. And that takes time. Our instinct may be to fill the silence, to multitask, to ask another version of the same question, or worse, to start answering for him. But that instinct doesn’t serve the relationship. What serves the relationship is the pause. The waiting. The silence. The trust that he’s in there, thinking, and he will speak when he’s ready.
Interrupting that process may not seem like a big deal. But over time, it becomes emasculating. It sends the message that we don’t believe they know. That we don’t think they’re capable. And that message, repeated enough times, can erode closeness, intimacy, and respect.
I’ve seen this pattern in my own home, not just with my husband but with my sons. I have two boys under the age of ten, and I’ve caught myself constantly asking how they’re feeling, if they’re okay, if they need anything. My instinct is to nurture, to check in, to serve. But that instinct, when overused, doesn’t create safety. It creates insecurity. It teaches them to question their own stability and emotions. Sometimes the most loving thing I can do is stop asking. Let them be. Let them come to me if they need something. Let them learn their own strength without me constantly offering to carry it for them.
Our instincts are powerful. But without understanding the masculine, they can easily become projections. And our expectations that men should respond the way women do can get in the way of the natural synergy that exists when both partners feel seen for how they’re built. When women begin to understand the masculine mind, and men feel respected for who they are rather than corrected for who they’re not, something shifts. There’s more ease. More respect. More space for each person to rise in their own role.
The first shift is in the awareness of how we speak to men, and how we truly listen. The next is choosing to practice something different, even when it feels unnatural at first. That’s where real partnership begins.
Words that build or bruise
One of the most foundational instincts in the masculine is the desire to provide. Not just in the sense of bringing home a paycheck, but in creating impact and offering something that makes life better for those they love. When a man sees that what he gave changed your experience for the better, something in him softens, strengthens, and rises.
Men are wired for results. Their brains are built for single focus, driven by internal purpose. They’re not naturally attuned to multitasking or emotional nuance the way women often are. Women track many things at once, juggling unspoken needs and subtle cues. This contrast isn’t a flaw, it’s design. It’s how we’ve evolved to complement each other. But when we don’t understand this, it’s easy to misread each other. We assume he doesn’t care, or isn’t paying attention, when really, he’s just focused. Locked in. Committed to the one thing he’s hunting.
What I’ve learned over time is that men don’t just want to complete tasks. They want to know that what they’ve done has meaning. They want to feel the effect of their effort. And they thrive when they’re allowed to provide something that is truly received. For many women, receiving can be challenging. We’ve been taught to do it all, to not ask for help, to not need anything. But I’ve had to learn to open myself up to that. To name what I want, and then let myself receive it without guilt.
I see this with my husband and my sons. When I tell them what something gave me, not just that it was “nice” or “helpful,” but what it allowed me to feel or do, I can feel the shift in them. There’s pride. Ease. Even joy. And I’ve realized that allowing them to provide doesn’t diminish my strength. It deepens our bond. It creates a rhythm where we both get to show up fully, me in my fullness and them in theirs.
Our words can build or bruise. When we learn to speak in a way that honors the masculine instinct to provide, not just with gratitude but with clarity and trust, we create space for both partners to rise. He provides what you need. You offer the appreciation and reflection he’s built to thrive on. It’s not manipulation. It’s alignment. And it starts with how we speak.
Re-patterning the feminine voice
Re-patterning the feminine voice isn’t about being quiet. It’s about being clear. It’s about unlearning the ways we’ve been taught to demand, control, or over-explain, and remembering how to express our needs in a way that can actually be received. When we speak from clarity, not chaos or urgency, men can hear us. When we name what we need and why it matters, we offer them the opportunity to provide, and that is what their nervous system is wired to do.
This means pausing. Breathing. Leaving space between the question and the answer. Not rushing to fill the silence. Not assuming they didn’t hear us or don’t care. It also means learning how to receive. Because when we can receive what they offer, when we can feel into how it changed us and reflect that back, it creates a loop of trust. A feedback loop that strengthens the partnership, rather than wears it down.
Re-patterning the feminine voice also means letting go of the idea that we must do everything on our own. That needing something makes us weak. That softness makes us less powerful. In truth, it’s the opposite. The queen doesn’t grind herself into the ground. She knows what she needs, she asks for it with intention, and she surrounds herself with those who rise with her, including her king.
We live in a culture that often celebrates independence over intimacy, control over connection. A culture that teaches women to be “boss babes” who don’t need a man. But that mindset, while empowering in some ways, can be deeply exhausting. Many of us are burnt out from trying to be everything. What if real strength comes from collaboration? From honoring the dance between masculine and feminine? From recognizing that we can’t have a king without a queen and that a queen becomes who she is through devotion to her own needs, her own truth, and the quality of her communication.
This is the new feminine leadership. Not through domination. Not through perfection. But through presence, clarity, and trust. It begins in how we speak. And even more, in how we choose to listen.
Raising sons in a world that doesn’t understand men
And when your sons are white, that tension gets even louder. I know how that might sound because being white comes with privilege, access, and protection in many parts of the world. But that’s only one side of the coin. The other side is that the world doesn’t separate history from personhood. It often doesn’t see the individual boy, only the weight of what boys who looked like him have done. And that’s a heavy thing to grow up under, too. Especially for sensitive, loving children who are still learning who they are.
We’re lucky in some ways. My boys go to a Waldorf school outside of Guadalajara. Their classrooms are the agave fields. They walk past cows, chickens, and a donkey on their way to math and music. They build things with their hands. They move their bodies. They breathe fresh air. And still, I know one day they’ll leave that bubble. They’ll step into a world that might not see them clearly. A world that might project guilt, shame, or suspicion onto them for simply being boys. For being white. For being wired the way they’re wired.
So what can I do? I show them. Not by preaching. But by how I live. The way I speak to their dad becomes the template for how they’ll expect to be spoken to. The way my husband holds me becomes the imprint of how they’ll learn to hold the feminine with strength, with steadiness, with love. They’re watching us. All the time. Watching how we handle conflict. Watching how we speak. Watching how we forgive, ask, give, and receive.
Their dad is their guide, yes. But so am I. And together, in our relationship, we are teaching them what masculine and feminine partnership looks like. Not perfection, but presence. Not control, but care. Every moment of respect, softness, directness, and patience is a lesson. They are learning the language of polarity not in theory, but in the air they breathe at home.
I don’t want to raise boys who are afraid of being men. I want to raise boys who become men we can trust, not because they’ve been tamed, but because they’ve been understood.
A new way forward
Understanding the masculine is not about fixing men. It’s about remembering who we are in relation to them. When we stop speaking at odds with their nature, when we trust what they’re built to offer, we create more than harmony, we create partnership. And it begins at home. In the way we listen. In the way we speak. In the way we honor the roles we were born to rise in.
This is the heart of Understanding the Masculine: A New Feminine Approach to Love and Leadership. It’s not about going backward. It’s not a return to the past. It’s a return to respect. And from there, we begin to build a new kind of leadership, one that many of us never imagined possible. One rooted in polarity, sustained by love, and woven through with deep understanding. A partnership where both voices rise, and both roles are sacred.
Read more from Kasturbai L Azcona
Kasturbai L Azcona, Movement Instructor & Photographer
Kasturbai is a certified yoga teacher and fitness instructor for English and Spanish speakers around the world. She teaches with intention for hypermobile yogis and advocates for strength within flexibility. She is also a traveling photographer who documents retreats and events of all kinds!
