Sex, Love & Everything In Between
Welcome to the Sex, Love & Everything in between podcast, a show devoted to helping modern days couples create & experience epic sex & deeeeep intimacy. Join Sex & Relationship Coach, Meg O, and her husband, Leadership Coach, Jacob O’Neill as they take you on a real, raw & unfiltered behind the scenes look into their relationship & sex life. From navigating conflict + communicating with an open heart to having the best orgasms of your life + the glory of anal sex …Yep, you’ll truly be joining Meg & Jacob on a journey into sex, love & EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN. WARNING: Things get hot, steamy & explicit in this podcast. Listen at your own risk.
Sex, Love & Everything In Between
Ep 91: From Corporate to Tantra w/ Anthea Balfour
“I can have it all and nothing. I can be it all and nothing.”
It’s not about controlling the moment; it’s about surrendering to the tension and letting it transform you.
In this episode of Sex, Love & Everything in Between, Jacob gets raw and real with the incredible Anthea Balfour, a somatic psychotherapist and tantric healer, diving into the space where masculine strength meets vulnerability.
Anthea shares how Tantra and shadow work guide us into meeting the scariest parts of ourselves—our deepest fears, desires, and vulnerabilities—and how integrating this helps us heal and create true intimacy with ourselves and others. Through her work, Anthea has witnessed men and women transform their relationship to power, pleasure, and emotional integrity.
They also riff off on:
•Understanding why men struggle to hold space without trying to fix or perform
•The power of Tantra in helping us embrace our shadows and cultivate emotional and energetic integrity
•How men can heal their fear of power and sex through the support of women
•Breaking free from routine and stepping into true discipline—without losing your edge
•How women can invite men into deeper connection without emasculating them
•The fear women secretly harbor around strong men and how we can heal it
•Building emotional integrity that actually fortifies your love life
and many more...
⚡ Loved this episode? Make sure to subscribe and leave us a review! We love hearing your thoughts and experiences.
⚡ Let’s stay connected:
- Follow Meg: @the.meg.o
- Follow Jacob: @thejacoboneill
⚡ Connect with Anthea:
- The O Room: matryarch.com/anthea
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_theantheabalfour
⚡ Grab our relationship freebie: https://meg-oneill.com/relationship-freebie
⚡ Join DESIRE DATE: https://meg-oneill.com/desire-date
⚡ Join TGOM - https://www.theembodiedmaninstitute.com/tgom-2024
Jacob & Meg also coach individuals & couples—slide into their DMs for more info!
I can have it all and nothing. I can be it all and nothing. I just feel that resonance in your body like it's like a percolating kettle, you know? And so we have to allow for the body to be open and expansive, to be able to hold tension. Most of the time, we tend to close off and contract when we hold when we try and hold tension, but that's actually when we end up going into polarity.
Jacob O'Neill:Yo, yo, yo. Lovers, welcome, welcome, welcome to sex, love and everything in between. We're the O'Neills. You're here with Megan Jacob,
Meg O'Neill:and this is the place we have really uncensored conversations about sex, intimacy and relationships. We're super excited you're here. Enjoy this episode.
Jacob O'Neill:Hey, lovers, Yo Yo Yo Yo yo yo, welcome, welcome. Welcome to this episode. Once again, Meg is not with me today. She is taking another break. I'm interviewing another guest, and in my usual fashion, I want to introduce this person in a way that is unique and personal to me. This is the wonderful Anthea Balfour, and I got to go on a podcast with you recently, probably like a month ago, I think it was, and it didn't really feel like a podcast. It felt like she was looking deeply into all of the parts of me that had not felt loved for a while, and I experienced this really deep, nourishing healing around just the part of me that is a man and that really wants to do good in the world, and some of the ways that you spoke and reflected things back to me was just, it was just incredibly nourishing, and it's stuff that I receive in my relationship with Meg, and that's sacred, because we're lovers, and we've been doing it for 10 years, but to jump on and and to experience that level of intimacy with another woman that's platonic, but I could feel your your devotional heart in that moment, and I was just like tearing up and crying on the podcast, feeling such a Yeah, I was really I'm not someone who has been known for his receivership capacity when it comes to love, but I really felt safe with you, and I really felt like I could trust you, and that's something that I'm continually learning as a man, is to trust women and to allow their love in. So it was an incredible podcast to come along, and I really wanted to share you with our audience and really bring you on to speak to some of these things that we were sharing about, and go a little deeper with your work, because I believe in the current landscape, it's so so needed to have someone who is willing to traverse the depths and do it in a way that is not necessarily too reckless, but actually has a reverence for what it is that we're co creating as men, women and As humans as a collective,
Unknown:yeah, yeah. Thank you, darling. That's quite the introduction. And hey, Jacob and Meg's community, thanks for receiving me. This is so cool. Yeah, it was, it was wonderful. I don't know if you know this, but, um, like, I think I mentioned before, like, I've followed you with Meg work since 2017 and so it's, it's really lovely to have seen how you guys have grown as a couple over the last, yeah, seven years, and kind of become aware of the work that you do. And, yeah, what I really loved, and what really brought my attention to you and Meg in particular, was the fact that you were a couple doing the work together in in community. Obviously, there's kind of there's the men's work and there's the women's work. And rarely do you actually see the co creation of us working together, and you and Meg are one of the first couples that I'd seen in the sort of personal development space that were doing it together, and, you know, we've, we're seeing the fruits of your labor now, both procreation and creatively. So it's really beautiful.
Jacob O'Neill:Yeah, thank you. That that is, like, it's something that I'm really proud of, and also something that I had to manage early on in my relationship with Meg, was we started to do a lot of the work together, and then I had to find ways that I was doing the work for myself, not just doing it for our relationship or for her. My people pleaser had a cheeky little way of sneaking in at times, but, um, yeah, Drew wild, shared your content with me, and I resonated really deeply with it. But then it was like we were sort of just journeying alongside each other. And it wasn't till, like, the last couple of months, besides a couple of Facebook comments on each other's posts, that we've really landed in this space. And I think it is I always, I always like, Oh, why? Why didn't that? Why didn't these conversations happen early? And I don't think I was ready to have them. But I also think now I. What's going on in the world. It's really, really time for us to be speaking and collaborating and you as a mentor for both men and women in the realms of like embodied leadership, which I think is like those two words together just hold such weight and the responsibility of embodied leadership. I think that's, well, I know that that's something that's really, really needed across the board. Yeah,
Unknown:like, I think I shared with you, like, my background is pretty eclectic in that I come from a therapeutic background as a somatic psychotherapist and sexologist and and I started my complementary medicine and functional nutritional therapy actually on the Gold Coast about a decade ago, and it was so my background had always been corporate previous to that, and so I'd come from like a world of financial management, public relations, marketing, communications, all of the very hard, stoic, masculine space, there was, like, you know, no room for error. And I loved it in that world, like I had my parameters, that I could move in and and then I can't even recall what happened. I may have had some sort of spiritual experience, but I decided that that world was not for me, and so I started. I was already studying functional nutritional medicine at the time, and then I qualified. And actually what happened was I ended up getting made redundant on a new contract that I was at for this financial services agency. And it was there that I started working with women, first of all, in a very, very different way, working with them through their relationship to food. And I decided that I'd study Ayurvedic medicine, which led me to Tantra. And it was really through my so I was initiated through the left hand path of Tantra, which ultimately is what we would now, I guess, collectively understand as Shadow Work. And I'm so sorry. It's okay. Do not disturb. Okay. What we'd now collectively understand is shadow work, but the left hand path of Tantra, in a very sound bitey way, is meeting all of the scary parts of yourself in the most messed up and disruptive way possible. So are you into Harry Potter. Love any, for any, any
Jacob O'Neill:mythical thing,
Unknown:all in so, you know, you know the wardrobe that where they have to, like, I can't remember what it's called now, but the wardrobe they have to open Yes, and then their worst fears comes out of the wardrobe. Yes. That's basically the left hand path of Tantra is so my teacher, Sultan, I love you, Sultan. Hello, and he and he met me in a very messy time of my life, so I hadn't had a complete identity crisis. My husband and I had just separated our assets. I was on my own for the first time since being a teenager, probably, and I just decided to move from the Gold Coast to Brisbane, and I literally bumped into him having a cigarette. And just like, I don't know who I am anyway, and he was there, and His English is not his first language, his Pakistani and and I was crying, and I don't even know what I was saying, but he was like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna sing to you, and I'm just gonna. And I was like, Cool. And for weeks, he would just sit with me and say various things, and I'd pick up some stuff, and then I'd go and I would research, which led me to Tantra, which led me to studying somatic sexology, but through working with women as a functional nutritional therapist and understanding our relationship to food, and leading me into tantric medicine, And the tantric scientist was really understanding that all of all of our shadows, all of these hidden aspects of ourselves, are just as just part of our in our inherent nature, trying to find ways to get out so, trying To find ways for expression, ways to be transmuted. And so, yeah, doing shadow work ultimately became my bread and butter as a therapist. And so started off in archetypical work and and interestingly from from working with women in the nutritional space. And helping them build a healthy relationship to food and self image. I opened a holistic health practice called the O room on the Gold Coast. But actually, because of the connotations of the O room, I ended up getting a lot of mail.
Jacob O'Neill:Yeah, I get that. I can see how that would attract
Unknown:Yeah. And because of, because it was the first health practice that was actually pleasure centered. And I so I was very naive, because I was like, I've learned all these tantric practices. And I really, I went and studied clinically so that I could actually practice and share the knowledge, you know, in a in a more clinical way. But I actually couldn't advertise, because I was refused to be secretive about the fact that we're talking about sexual energy and sexual transmutation and men's sexual health and women's sexual health. And I, in fact, my sort of the premise was sex as medicine, and understanding our sexual energy and men and women being complimentary opposites was going to be healing to each other, and we needed to understand that. So I was very naive, and so I couldn't I couldn't advertise anywhere, so I had to literally advertise on Lecanto, which is a bit like Craigslist, and so I ended up getting but I realized that's exactly where I needed to be. And you know, that was seven years ago, and from where I was seven years ago, and the clients and the men that came to me, to the men that come to me now and that I work with now and and seeing like just this kind of arc, this flourishing of the masculine men deeply desire to to be with women, to know women, and they are so deeply afraid of us, and and just seeing the growth in the masculine like I shared with you earlier, I feel like there's this tenderness now between all of us in in really wanting to get to know ourselves, get to know each other, and again, not in the sense of commercially, what we've been taught or told men and women is or Are or supposed to be, but just who we are in front of each other. And, you know, that's, that's the work for me now, and that's the work, both professionally and personally, is, is to, can I be with you? You know, as a man, can I be with you as a woman? Like, who are we to each other? You know, what does connection really, really mean? And, yeah, I think that's what, what the work, you know, that's what shadow work has led me to, what really, deeply understanding erotic intelligence and our own erotic innocence like this is what I really feel like right now for men and women, like we're playing with each other in, you know, the most beautiful, innocent way, and also, like, there's this fierceness that is coming through in the masculine. You know, I love the work that you're bringing out, Jacob, because it's reflecting on what I'm understanding and seeing energetically in the in the realms of the masculine, of this, this real fierceness coming through. But of course, having sat with you personally, to I know the tenderness that actually is the foundation to that fierce front facing representation that you, that you bring out in your work. And I'm like, This is what it is. This is what it is. And, yeah, it's just really beautiful.
Jacob O'Neill:Thank you for sharing all of that. That's that's really beautiful to hear that your journey in the ark and how men sort of found you and and really the importance of the the fierceness of the masculine. But what that for me, the range of like having the fierceness kind of gives me, gives me this, this ability to reach into the tenderness as well. And when you're speaking about these ways of our shadow, wanting to express itself, what I've found is the more I get to know the shadow aspects of self, and I find safe and appropriate places to build those channels of expression, the more I'm able to do it in a in a way that is fierce yet loving. And it's a in the past, it either had to be fierce or loving, yeah, and I really had these like this or that, whereas it's like, it's me holding the tension between the fierceness and the love and actually making sure that they stay there, is that acknowledgement of they are connected.
Unknown:I love that. I love that you use that word intention too, because, you know, I'm obsessed with language. So to be in to be intentional is to be in tension, right? And so, and this is the thing, and this is why we tend to go into polar. Charities, because it's actually hard to hold tension. Yep, it's actually hard to hold that resonance of this and that. Like, how do we hold both? Like, try it, try this and that, whether it's I can have it all and nothing, I can be it all and nothing. I just feel that resonance in your body, like it's like a percolating kettle, you know? And so we have to allow for the body to be open and expansive, to be able to hold tension. Most of the time, we tend to close off and contract when we hold when we try and hold tension, but that's actually when we end up going into polarity. But absolutely right, like, I like to call it straddling the extremes, and, you know, and this is ultimately what I I get called witchy or shamanic a lot in public, but just For the sake of what I'm saying. So. So, you know, in shamanic medicine, you know, we call it the middle path, or the Middle Way, and and this is what I really speak to, when I'm talking about straddling the extremes and so. And again, in Tantra, we call it totality, or non duality. So we break down the world of polarity, and we really embrace the the understanding and the acknowledgement that we are all and we are nothing all at once, right? And this is what intention is, is is being all and nothing all at once. And you know, this is where there's ecstasy, and this is where there's agony, and this is where there's the bliss, and this is where, you know, the Divine Comedy, ultimately, yes, but, but, you know, holding that tension. I think that's, you know, what we're talking about, like, just the collective, like, we're in that tension now. We're in that we're in that midpoint of like, oh, what? Like, what's going to happen next, you know? And that's for us to decide. Yeah,
Jacob O'Neill:I haven't, I don't know if I should be like, yeah. A lot of my work has come through ceremonies with the plants. And there was one particular ceremony where I got, I got shown the hilarity of the two truths, and the two truths were, it's all here for you, but none of it's yours. Yeah, yeah. And I remember, and then, like for me, polarity was a really strong guiding force in rebalancing and calibrating a lot of the guilt and shame I held around the destruction that men had done and had and continue to do. I'm not saying that we were out of the woods yet with that, and I then had to cultivate this, this fierceness always got almost coaxed it out of my body. Hey, like, it's okay to come back out. Like, literally, go in, find it, and then, like, teach it that it's okay. And then, like, almost create the structural integrity for it to have a place to be.
Unknown:You know, again, your languaging, yeah, because I call it energetic integrity. But ultimately, like, you're speaking to the body's structural integrity. That's your nervous system integrity, and it enables the capacity for energetic integrity. If you don't have the nervous system capacity, you do not have the capacity for energetic integrity. And you know the dynamic that you were just speaking to, you know, I call it hedonic adaptation. And this is ultimately about hedonism, and this is about our so in what I've experienced within the masculine, like you were saying, is that ultimately, the fear of their own sex and their own power and their own strength, because most men have had and seen and even experienced the shadow of that power, that sex, that strength, and they've either seen it perpetrated or expressed through the masculine or being perpetrated against women. And so in that it kind of reverberates as a fear towards women as well, in the sense of, I don't want to be that man towards women. And do women hate me as a man because of the things that they've experienced? And so one of the things that I really learned early on in my work in Tantra and working with men is their fear of their sex, their fear of their power, the fear of their their fierceness, and they overcompensate this with what I call the nice guy epidemic. You know, they just want to be good guys, and they want to be nice guys, and actually that they're just scared, but And rightly so, because they have yet. They had yet to be taught how to be a man, how to how to feel confident, solid, safe within their own sex, within their own power, within their own strength. And so, of course, some woman would never be able to feel safe in that context. But yeah. Um, yeah, I don't know where I was going with that. Yeah,
Jacob O'Neill:that's all like, let really, because I, I definitely was the nice guy, like, that was definitely I'd, I'd learnt that that part of me was wrong. I remember getting caught watching porn when I was 10, and my mom said it was disgusting. My dad told me, You shouldn't be watching that shit, mate. I then, then another part of it was, like, it got exposed to the rest of my family, and my grandparents are questioning me about you were watching porn, yeah? And like, I'm 12 or 13, and I was like, I literally Googled boobs and sex on Google, back in the Google Images, this before, before the epidemic of, you know, all of the high quality, yeah, like I was, I was, like, my curiosity and the my sex was moving through my body, or the sexual energy, and I didn't know how to where to go, what to do with it. And like, for me, my sexuality, like a lot of the work, even the medicine work, led me to, like this deeper, these deeper, darker places of myself, which were really access points to my sexuality, and that I remember when Meg, kind of found her, found her way through sexual liberation and self pleasure and all of these things, I then had to not match her, but then I had to go on my own little journey of like, what does pleasure mean to me? And what does pleasure mean to me, alongside her pleasure in our relationship, and how do we dance in this, this, this, these experiences that we're having. And I read a book called tantric sex for men, and the thing that I took most from it, which is probably something that I need right now in my life, which is to it's like, it's all about, can you relax into the pleasure, rather than almost like tension, to hold on to it and try to, like, withhold, withhold, withholder and then release it. And what
Unknown:is your definition of pleasure? For me,
Jacob O'Neill:when you said that, it was like pleasures, it's, it's, it's for soft people. It's for people that it's instantly, instantly harden when you say pleasure, yeah, instantly, I'm like, No, I don't do pleasure, yeah. And
Unknown:how many men are there? Like, I don't do pleasure, yeah,
Jacob O'Neill:I don't. I don't,
Unknown:I don't. Like even women. Actually, I remember dinner with some girlfriends years and years and years ago, and someone said making love. And one of the girls are like, Oh, the fuck are you talking about making love, like you fuck you don't make love. And I was like, you know, I was like, that's really curious. But again, that's our relationship to our own sense of eroticism when, again, like I said, you harden it pleasure.
Jacob O'Neill:And even with the second part that just came out, that was the initial hardening. But the second part right now, if I was to be honest with you, and this is very alive in my relationship right now with Meg is like, I just don't have time for it. That's the actual that's the belief that's that's there, and I do Harden, and I think that comes into, like, actually, not just pleasure, but pleasure equals, like, relaxation. It equals nourishment, it equals revitalization. And they're all the things that I found hardest to consciously give myself without some form of sickness or some form of fracture in my physical, mental or emotional health. Yeah,
Unknown:and yeah just really moves me to hear you speak to that. Because, again, it's something that that comes up so often for men. You know, pretty much all the men that I've worked with this kind of essentially not allowed to rest unless I've earned it, or I'm sick or I've worked really hard. And I remember with my with my partner, when we first met, we accidentally ended up in a group therapy session together. We thought we were going to some kind of workshop. It was actually a group therapy session, but it was, it was really amazing, because I can't remember what the question was, but anyway, he said that he wasn't fun. And I laughed, because he's, like, the most fun man I've ever met. And I was like, Why do you think you're not fun? And he, you know, he had said that, you know, because I'm like, you're always planning things for us, like he's got me doing things I would never even dream of doing, and that, you know, I'm like, and he's like, oh, yeah, I do that because I think I'm not fun, and it's really interesting. You know, how men see themselves, or how you might see yourself you know as yourself in relation to your partner, in relation to those around you. But I think one of the things that men have really been indoctrinated to believe is that their pleasure is not their own. Like I think as women, we can claim our pleasure like we deserve to feel good we're worth it. Maybelline been telling us for decades that, you know, we're worth it, but, but what? What messaging have men been given around their pleasure? Very little. It's secret, it's private, it's naughty. Maybe, I
Jacob O'Neill:think even when you're talking about the maybe, like, I think it's like, I'm thinking of all the beer ads, like, pleasure was a cold beer at the end of a hard day's work. Yeah, right. You earned, you earned it for a hard earned thirst, like that was the culture that I grew up without actually a lot of tagline, yes, for a hard earned thirst, you need to, you need to be a fresh cold beer. And the best cold beer is Vic Victoria bitter. But that's, you know, when you talk about pleasure. I think this is a cool conversation, and I'd love to know more about you know what you've experienced or what you've seen in male clients, without giving away everyone's names and information, but like, what are some of the common threads? Because for me, it's like, Yeah, my pleasure comes after the hard work. My pleasure comes after the suffering. Once I've done once I've earned it, then I can have it. And that's translated into sex massively for me, and it's something that I'm constantly calibrating, is where I can't enjoy it until I know that Meg's gotten off, till she's orgasm. And
Unknown:it's so funny, because as women like you know we know this, and then it suddenly it doesn't even feel about us anymore. Because I'm like, you're only trying to please me so that you can get off. It gets becomes this murky situation, you know? And one of the things that terms of like sexuality and sexual expression, that just seems very, very like my background is academic, first and foremost, then clinical, then tantric, right? So, and I just prefaced that so that I'm speaking across the board for the masculine, not necessarily specific clients or anything like that. But what, what just seems to be really apparent is guilt, blame and shame when it comes to sexual experience. For men, sexual guilt seems to be like a huge thing, whether it's men have engaged in porn too much, or porn they felt a shame about observing, or because their partner isn't happy about them watching porn. One of the things that when I had the O room, and I had men calling me up. One of the things I found really profound was, first of all, because the room was just out the front, it wasn't some, we didn't have a neon sign saying open in the window. It was they were like, oh, like, what is this like? What's this about? And I'm like, Oh, we're, you know, we are a holistic health practice, pleasure centered. So this is very much about understanding your pleasure as a man or a woman. Blah, blah, blah, oh, you know, is there happy endings? I'm like, No, we don't do happy endings. We do breath work. I teach you and explains you about linger, massage, about your body, about the prostrate, all of the things. And they're like, Oh, okay. Like, really. Like, so the guys, they come in, hat down, like, really suss, but when they walk out, like, hat off, they've sat, they've had a cup of tea with me, and just this shame around experiencing your own pleasure. And I'm and 99.9% of men, I'm like, Are you going to speak to your partner about this? Oh, God no, no. She'd totally freak out if, if I was to tell her that I've come and done this and that that was, that was something that made me feel so sad, and really, kind of, I kind of went on a bit of a crusade of, like, as women, we have to take responsibility for our sexual sexuality, right? There is, I think it's quite commonly known that we are the stronger sex, the fairer sex, or whatever, in the sense that, because we are literal incubators for human beings, we do have a stronger, bigger energy capacity. But that's that's not, that's not to overpower men, that's actually to match their strength. Like I always say, the only thing that rivals a man's strength is a woman's rightful expression of her sexuality. But the thing is, we have been infantilized as women. So we get, give, get given permission to be overtly and hypersexual without any responsibility. So men are there like a frightened cat, kittens, kittens. They're like frightened kittens, because there's just stunning women everywhere all the time. Everywhere you look, you know, we're just women are just stunning and but men are like, Oh my god, I can't look, you know, I can't have this natural feelings and expressions of seeing women everywhere, and then you get the men that do look or do say something, and this is obviously not speaking to men that are being vulgar and disrespectful, but men that are just appreciating women and, you know, and then they get vilified for that. And so men just retreat further and further into the shadow, into the guilt, blame and shame. Oh, I shouldn't have felt that. Shouldn't have looked at that. Shouldn't have seen that. And from a tantric perspective, and everything from Tantra begins with our five senses, you know, so they start to disconnect from what they hear, and so they get into their logical mind. They disconnect from what they feel, whether that's touch or sense. Insulation, disconnect from what they taste. And so men start to disconnect from, ultimately, their intuition, their their own sort of Compass, their own internal compass, and they have to then go to the logical mind. And that's, that's such a shame. And I think there's the, you know, there's a big in the space that we're in now, there's such a great opportunity for us as women to to not only deeply like further empower ourselves and reach a deeper understanding of our sexual energy and our sexual expression and the role we actually have, but how we can actually do that now, together with men and really kind of out, yeah, like, I'm trying not to sound too spiritual.
Jacob O'Neill:Don't go too spiritual. Don't do it. I'm not gonna love it. You have to listen to valan, because Elan went there. He went deep. We were talking about every I was like, I had to hold on, because it was like we were going there. But I'm like, okay,
Unknown:but really, like, you know, I deeply believe that we are here to to to to feed each other. We're here to hold each other. And again, like with my partner and I, we have gone to the absolute depths, to the point where I'm like, we're not getting back from this. And every time we get back from it, it's a new, deeper, more innocent level of intimacy and and I think maybe as I'm getting older and understanding everything else is just fluff, when it's just you and another human being, when it's just you and your partner, there are moments, you know, there are moments you and Meg have experienced and shared that will never be articulated to anybody but the Two of you, and that's what they could between you and and Meg, and your experience together and the collective eroticism that you two share. And everybody has those moments between the people that they love as moments that they will never be able to articulate other than with those that they shared that moment with. And I think that's, that's where the magic is in terms of what we collaborate with and bring into fruition. You know, just like with the gathering of men and like the retreats that I host, like for me, my deepest desire is to get people to just experience that, that that feeling, that moment of like, this is, this is what love is. This is what intimacy is. If it's you're this way inclined, this is what a spiritual experience might feel like. You know, it's no different, really. And ultimately, to when you go to a concert and everybody's chanting and singing together, right? And you'd like, I live for those moments. Oh, you live for it's stunning, and you don't forget those moments and again, whether it's like in a ecstatic, ecstatic and bliss like that, or even in those moments of grief, when you're with someone that's just lost a loved one, or they've just heard some news, and you're just there with them, it's all the same. It's all the same Eros. It's all the same energy and intimacy that we are moving on the spectrum of. And again, the tension between, you know, our ecstasy and our pleasure and our grief and our pain, the tension is here, and it's a lot to hold. It's a lot to hold. And says, like, Okay, I'm gonna just go drink a beer, hard and cold beer.
Jacob O'Neill:Definitely, I It's funny. You say that because, um, we Meg had her, she did her first in person thing for ages. She's been online, online. She's like, I'm gonna do some in person stuff. I'm ready. And she held a beautiful thing. And I feel a similar depth in your devotion to the work around this, coming home to each other, between men and women and this, like, real we love each other, and we really want what's best for each other. And if we can find that place, we can really go there. And that's the That, to me, is like, you know, the polarity and the passion and then the depth of intimacy, oh yeah, I'm here for that.
Unknown:And that's to me anyway, that's, that's just what it's that's just what it's all about. Like, you know, I just, I have this funny thing of, like, we're all like, God's pretending to be human, yeah? And, you know? And so when the masks can, when our human comes off, when the masks comes off, and we have our glimpses of the gods in each of us, like, I'm like, oh, that's when we really get to play. That's when the innocence really comes through. And when you have like, in person events, like with the retreats and the gathering of men and things like that, I guess you would know as a visit. The taste like you, even as a facilitator, you get to see things in people that they probably wouldn't even be able to to see in themselves. That's definitely what I love. Facilitating retreats is like I get to see the movement of the Eros throughout the days, as people are shifting and changing, and the things that are happening. I get to ask, almost like being a bit of a conductor. And all you know of the orchestra, which I love, because, of course, you know energy is what is conducted and, and we get to see that. And, yeah, I'm, I have, I have a very I'm, I've got fingers in all sorts of parts, like I was saying, like, when you ask me, What do I do? It really depends on who you're talking to. But beyond all of those labels, like to everyone, I really try and just be human and and, and then beyond being human, I'm just like, I swear to God, it's my dharma just to be in love with life. Yeah,
Jacob O'Neill:can I love this life? Like, like, like, never before? Yeah, the thing with that I love, and I just, like, circle back to claimed was, like, I got to go and do a thing called Megan. I call it the healing your relationship to the masculine. I go and I hold the field of the masculine and give women the space to speak and express and be with the hurt, to be with the need, the yearn, the ache, and then to be with the honoring that they want to be able to they inevitably find through revealing the hurt and the yearn. And what I took from that was this deep, deeper level of reverence and understanding of like, Oh my goodness. Like, there is so much available to us when we take the time to be with each other, to be with, I think, before earlier on in the podcast, to be with this. And that's one of the, the couple of the questions that Meg and I have in our sort of vocabulary is, what am I making this mean? And can I be with this? Yeah, and I, can I be with this? And, you know, a lot of the stuff that got shared was harrowing, and it was, and I was, there was a the word that keeps coming to it was stunning. It was stunning to witness these women in their grief, in their harrowing distress, and not need to change or fix it or process it for them, and just be there. But after it, I literally had to go and buy a beer, and I had to, like, that felt that was big, that was and I was like, I went and I literally was like, I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna have a beer, and I'm just thinking, wow, like the the the pleasure piece that you're speaking to. I'm like, wow. Like, the for me, the work that we're doing is especially for me, the work that I'm doing and what I'm zooming out now, from just working with men to feeling this pool to like, create ceremony and spaces for this healing between us both is, oh, like, I need to honor myself within that ceremony as well. I need to find ways to be nourishing myself after or having the you know, integration seems to be a huge thing that I haven't really landed very well personally.
Unknown:And I think you wouldn't be alone. I think, I think most men and women came to me when I first started the O room is because they'd actually been on these like massive plant journeys or deep healing ceremonies, and the integration bit got completely missed out for whatever reason. And, you know, I don't exercise at all, but what I what I did learn when I had a personal trainer was, you know, when your muscles are growing and they're tearing, those rest days are really, really important. And this is what integration is as well. Is is, you know, your nervous system capacity. Because ultimately, what's happening like, you know, with plant medicine, for example, your body is being flooded with oxytocin, so you suddenly feel so open and expanded. That is prep for the depths that you're about to fall into. Get
Jacob O'Neill:ready. Get
Unknown:ready. And I know, and like I was saying, like, the last plant medicine ceremony that I sat and I was like, Oh, this is taking a bit longer. And I was like, oh, it's taking very long. I was like, Okay, I died. I died in that one, and I like and really, really understood, you know that the more open we become, the deeper we go and say integration is so important, as you were talking about structural integrity, you know? And again, I've seen, I've seen the spectrum of people being deeply traumatized because they haven't, they haven't integrated properly. And and that is about, it's about Rec. This is all happening on a deep cellular level. And we, you know, we must really understand that. And I think that a lot of times we we can see. People's experiences, and it's really profound, and I want to have that experience and which is really beautiful, but to also understand that plant medicine is a tool, and it isn't. It is a medicine, and it's a very intelligent medicine. I don't know if I'm allowed to mention the Can I mention? Oh, yeah, so like, so Ayahuasca is what I facilitated in and sat and with Aya, in particular, with the Shipibo people, it's known as the vine of death. So I and so it's the mother plant. And she, she, she lays the ground for you, and she holds you. And so you have to be, you have to be willing to let go or be dragged. Yes, you know, and I think that so on a biophysical level, what happens with Ayahuasca is so your body gets flooded with oxytocin. And because the body's so flooded with oxytocin, it's really, really open, and this is where all the healing then gets happened, because you're no longer in contraction, so all of the things that you've been repressing and hiding, it all comes up. But of course, it all gets absorbed in that oxytocin. So you're not you're not traumatized, essentially. But what does then happen is there's kind of a void or a space where all that blockages and trauma and shadows or whatever you want to call it was and that needs to be acknowledged and observed and understood. And I think a lot of times when people are either like consistently like plant medicine after plant medicine, before really understanding their lessons, before integrating they were, they regress right back. And it gets, it can be really dangerous. And I get, get a bit of a bit of an auntie about it, and just like, you know, gotta be, gotta be careful, you gotta be safe and but ultimately, so that you actually get the lesson of the medicine. And, you know, I think it's such a powerful tool for people. I love ceremony. I think that I think everybody should sit at least one time.
Jacob O'Neill:I totally agree, and I like what you're saying. For me, integration is almost like making like honoring the sacredness of what you've just experienced. And I use this word, it's not the it still doesn't feel like the right word. But for me, it's fortification of the expansion that I've experienced. And quite often, I can see people have heart opening completely, mind altering, like I am now this. I let go of everything, and it's almost like there's this. What I see happen at times is like there's this. I'm now complete with that. I'm complete with that old way. It's like, this is we're human. We have a relationship with the world. We're going to continually grow, evolve, die, re, be reborn in many different ways. But for me, like the the journeys that I've done, ironically, like ayahuasca, gave me a connection to the dark feminine. Yes,
Unknown:well, she is the dark, which I is the Dark Mother, which was,
Jacob O'Neill:like, talk about, like, fucked up shit. Like, I've had some incredibly pleasurable experience working with Ayahuasca. I felt like I felt like a dirty little whore man, like it was the weirdest, and I don't say that, like that, like you feel like, uncomfortable saying because I'm a man and I'm responsible, and I do masculine. I love the dead little whore in a man. Yeah. And it was, it was bizarre to actually be in such a place of openness, where my stories couldn't stop me from receiving the depth of pleasure in those moments. Crazy for me, because I worked so heavily with with wachuma, with San Pedro, and had such incredibly beautiful fortification of my structure, my structure, yeah, the big cactus. And I learned so much about myself through that. And then this whole other part of me came online through my journeys with the beautiful Ayahuasca. And I was like, ah, but the lessons and the understanding came through me, being sitting in the void and being with the contemplation of what I experienced, rather than being like, let me have another go at that.
Unknown:Yeah. And this is the journey of the masculine. Is sitting in the void, is being with what is, as she said, and this is where men fight themselves, you know, like you were saying, not fixing, not doing, not finding a list to go and mark off, not reaching for the thing that I can say, I've accomplished that. I've done that to just find some time to sit in the void. And this is where men fortify their internal feminine, their intuition, their creative capacity, yeah, their erotic intelligence. And of course, it is expressed so differently to the feminine. And, but it's stunning because, and women know this, women know when they're in the presence of a man that's deeply integrated in his feminine he just has a different resonance. And, and I again, and you know, you're one of those men. I'm surrounded by those men, and I get a lot of comments about me being a bit of a masculine enabler, and I'm deeply devotional devoted to the masculine. I have two boys, so it's absolutely my dharma to be devotional to the masculine. But also, you know, as women, we I think we've been kind of given this sort of idea that we have to con if we want men to be men like, we have to beat them into submission and we have to tell them what to do, because if we don't tell them what to do, then what are we how are they going to be the men that we want them to be? And it's like, actually, when I stepped back as a mother, as a lover, and just observed the men in my life, and watched my nervous system crumble to pieces as I realized how petrified I was. I was in the context of strong men. Give me a weak man, any day, any day. I'm like, Oh yeah, that's fine, you know, but a strong man, I could not, I could not deal with it. And I feel like that was, that's this collective shadow of women, of like we're actually very much afraid of strong men, because a strong man's going to say no to us, okay, a strong man is going to tell us what to do, and we're going to have to submit if he's a safe man, right?
Jacob O'Neill:Love that. I love that. That that final piece, because I've been, I've been really sitting with I've been stewing since our conversation. I've been like, how do, how do I determine a strong and safe man? What is the and I sit in that void quite a lot myself. I'm a very contemplative man. Creates me. I'm very vigilant then, and I'm very attuned energetically, which can sometimes make me a bit it can really affect my ability to be present if I'm around a lot of people. So not everything's got a shadow. But the piece that I really find is a disciplined man isn't always a safe man in the fact that if he hasn't been initiated into the depths of his like if he hasn't actually done the shadow revealing work, the initiatory work, the rites of passage, into his responsibility, his sacred duty that comes with the strength. You can discipline day in, day out, and you can practice over the parts of you that are that are broken and hurt and wounded. And I know a lot of guys that are incredibly disciplined, but they lack the safety because they are a victim of their own kind of the discipline is a glorified control of their own parts of themselves that they're scared to actually let out.
Unknown:Are you open to me challenging you on the word discipline?
Jacob O'Neill:That's the word discipline doesn't feel right, so that's why I'm like trying. I would love to be challenged on that, because I feel a little biased, because I don't like discipline.
Unknown:Well, interestingly, I love the word discipline because it means disciple, disciple, so to be a student of something, okay, and so the dynamic you're describing is actually routine, and men love routine, and they feel safe in routine. Yes, okay, so a routine man, a man that can tick off the boxes and do the things. He's up at 5am blah blah. He's in bed by nine. He's done his gym workout. Yeah, that's a routine man, and men in their 24 hour cycle are good at being routine. In fact, they're not very good at being outside of their routine. Yes, a disciplined man is very different, because a different a disciplined man is a student of something. And when you're a student, when you're learning, there is no there's not necessarily routine, there is not necessarily one plus one equals two, which makes men very uncomfortable if one plus one doesn't equal two. Oh, yeah, right, because we got to check those boxes, right? We got things to do, we've got money to earn, we've got houses to build and people to save. So the disciplined man comes with discernment, because he has learned to navigate the uncertainties of being a student like you say the initiatory path. The initiate is the student. He's listening, he's learning. He's feeling his way the routine man is a man that's living by what I call painting by numbers, right? If I do this, then this happens and this happens, but most men know they followed all the rules in the world, and they still haven't got what they want.
Jacob O'Neill:Yes, yes, totally.
Unknown:And so I think that men can fall into the trap of of well, I've done all the things, and therefore she should respect me, and she should love me. And but routine doesn't mean that you're safe. Routine means you're predictable. And this is. Also again, routine just means you're familiar. Routine means I know exactly what you're going to do when you walk into the door. I know exactly what you're going to say, and I can be safe in that, but that doesn't make you a safe man. It means I feel safe in the predictability and the familiarity of our dynamic. I don't think any man is safe. I don't think any man should be safe.
Jacob O'Neill:I love that you've changed my whole you've changed me. I was I was angry. I was angry at discipline, and now I can. When you said disciple, I was like, Oh, I like that. But, um, routine,
Unknown:you guys search me. Well, yeah, the
Jacob O'Neill:more, because I hate morning routines, and I hate the the rigidity of it, and I'm a very much a don't put me in a box.
Unknown:Are you Pisces? No, I'm
Jacob O'Neill:Capricorn. Okay. Oh, okay, yeah, which is bizarre. I was a Hector. I was so routine. Yeah, earthy, you
Unknown:might there's a lot of water in your chart. Okay, anyway,
Jacob O'Neill:but I am. I used to be a routine person. I used to be very I used to be so structured, and I never and I realized that I was deeply unhappy in
Unknown:that routine keeps men safe. That doesn't mean they are safe, for example, right? It means it keeps them in their head where there's they're safe to think because, like the way men's minds work is it's categorical, everything belongs in its box. So they've got their work box, they've got their lover box, their friend box, and so routine enables them to stay in those boxes. The minute it's out, they're like, oh shit, what box am I supposed to be in? And then real feelings start to come up, okay? I
Jacob O'Neill:do have places where I'm very routine. Like, if someone stacks the dishwasher wrong, it's on. I have my okay, we're revealing a few things.
Unknown:I completely resonate with you. 100% Yeah, 100% I have some very weird OCD foibles. You
Jacob O'Neill:ask me, where anything that I own is, I can tell you exactly where to get it from the house. I'm very particular in my own right. So, yeah, sorry to anyone that I've judged around routine. I've got my own shadow. I'm human.
Unknown:All the things in your houses, you bad man, you Is that how you express your dirty little Hall? Yeah,
Jacob O'Neill:very routine, very so submissive. The I wanted to come back to the safe piece, because one thing that I said to Meg, because I I'm very clear on the wild man in me. I'm very clear on who he is, and I refuse to ever put him in a cage ever again, because it was the thing that it crushed me going and putting him in that cage. And I said, if I said this to me, I said, If I ever stop doing things that make you think I'm a little bit fucking crazy, I'm pretty sure this relationship wouldn't work as good as it does. Yeah, I'm gonna get a head tattoo before our baby's born. I want to, I want to get a hawk on the back of my head. And I'm just like, so turned on by getting this tattoo. I love that. Like they're one of the fastest birds, and they're like, just fierce, yeah, and they're so aerodynamic. And I just, I love the eagle, and I love the Condor, and I love the hummingbird, and they've all, they've all been influenced, though, by certain other people telling me what they are, whereas the Hawk is just your own. It's yeah, it's got this energy to it that I've felt. And I don't know why I love it, but I love it, but and I also like to go and do crazy shit, like I want to do. I want to run across there's this race in Morocco, and I've got a five year goal of being able to fly first class with my wife, Megan, out, you know, whether we have one or two children by then. And I have this vision of me, of them dropping me off at the start of this six marathons in six days across the Sahara Desert? Yeah. And I just imagine them saying bye to me, hop them, hopping on a plane, flying and staying in this five star hotel that where Meg, just like impure decadence, and I've run across this desert and like, I arrive, which maybe I'm just in, maybe I'm just a masochist. Is that the right word
Unknown:depends? Yeah, is it gonna be painful?
Jacob O'Neill:There's something about the suffering and but then, like, being received, yeah,
Unknown:I think, and I think this is, this is a natural part of the masculine, you know, you know, I find, like, If a man hasn't claimed his need to compete, he won't make a lot of money. Yes, like, because, and this is just, this is just a masculine what's the word? It's just an inherent compuls Like, it's compulsion in a man. Because, if we're just talking about just, you know, the fight or flight response, the hunter gatherer aspect, you know, men have evolved to go out and hunt and gather that I believe this is just an antheorism. This is this is just my opinion, but I think that that energy still has to go somewhere. And I think in today's society, where where men put most of their energies in the work that they do, therefore competition is going to be. Huge Yes, and so, and I think that, and I think again, in healthy male relationships, you see that camaraderie, you see that ability to compete with each other and actually enjoy that healthy competition. And I see the shadow of that in men that are that either they don't throw their hat in in the ring at all, and they're just there on the sidelines, pointing and judging and all of the things, yeah, or they, they are really down on themselves. And, you know, they become emotionally impotent or and that becomes really sad. And I think if we as women start to actually, and this is like this, where I speak to like in terms of men being safe or unsafe the minute we I think, I think few things first, I think that we're always somehow trying to get life or relationships to be binary. It's this, and it's that if I do this, this will be the outcome, you know, if I'm submissive, then he's gonna pay for my dinner. I don't know whatever the hell it might be, but just this idea that love is binary, relationship is binary, intimacy is binary, that's that's not true. Of course, it's not true. We're not binary as humans. Yeah, and, and I don't even mean that in any political sense. I just mean like we are multi dimensional, multifaceted, complex human beings, yes. So the idea that the most intimate dynamics of our life is going to be this, like, if you know, you know her love language, then everything's going to be okay. Well, that's immature,
Jacob O'Neill:yeah. We call that weaponizing formulas like the love language, the attachment styles, the polarity, the three stages of relating. They're all incredible frameworks. But if you use them in a, in a, in a mathematical sense, you're going to, you're going to have a pretty basic time. It's going to be so basic. And you're going to, I think you're going to end up not really getting to where you're not
Unknown:wanting to go, get to being intimate with someone you're not going to meet intimacy because, and again, we, I mean, I've seen this of like, okay, as long as I check the boxes for men, I've checked all her boxes, and I buy her flowers on a Friday and I and she's still not happy because she can't feel you.
Jacob O'Neill:That's the most brutal thing to hear like that's kind of, I don't know whether it's the trigger for when I when Meg finally had enough. She's like, I can't feel you. I'm like, but I'm doing all the
Unknown:things and there, though, because what the fuck does it mean when someone says I can't feel you? What does it actually mean? So I'll speak for myself as a woman when I'm when I when I'm saying that to anyone, when I can't feel you, it's like there's a dissonance between us. We're not, we're not, we're not vibing. The vibe check is off, yes, right? It's when, when, when, when I'm saying I can't feel you. Deeper than that, though, is I'd love to connect with you. Yes, there's a desire, there's a desire to connect like, I can't feel you. Yes, you've given me flowers, but there is a bloody canyon between us. Yes, you know, yeah, we're with each other every day. But where's the presence?
Jacob O'Neill:What do you feel that when? When, for instance, in your own experience, or what you've experienced working with people. I think this is kind of a really nice sort of closing it down into some actual sort of practicality things for guys listening. I know for me what it means when Meg says I can't feel you normally, it's that I'm I'm withholding or not willing to reveal a vulnerability. There's something there that I'm scared to share her, because if I do, I feel like I'm going to be wrong, rejected, abandoned, or told that I'm bad. That's essentially for me as a man. But what do you feel? Is there anything that you see in men when, when a woman can't feel him, even though he's doing all the right things? What is the general sense that you've kind of found in men when they when they aren't really bringing their feeling to a space, but they're ticking the boxes.
Unknown:Yeah, I think, I think, I think that's also quite nuanced, even that's quite flippant two minutes ago. Go general. But, yeah, I think that. I think there's a few things, but generally men, men long to be nurtured. They want to be nourished. They want to be respected. They want to be felt. And more often than not, we as women are coming at them from a parental space, dare I say it, and so they immediately regress into little boys. So I'm not going to tell you then, if you're going to be like this, I'm not going to say the thing then and and then, you know, usually their partner is like, trying to coax it out of them. You never talk to me or and he retreats to his man cave. And he has to retreat to his man cave because a few things about men and women, which I find really, really interesting, is that, first of all. We experience time differently and we experience sound differently, yes, and the other thing to that is the tone of a woman's voice actually is a stress response to men because of their eardrums and the way they hear sound. So like, I really love when people talk about like women nagging and men saying, it's not that that's just the language that they've used, but it's actually this stress response in their inner ear that causes the nerve, the sympathetic nervous system, to go into a fight or flight response. And so just understanding, like just using different tones and intonations with each with each other, really, really changes the way you the vibe check, right? And and the other thing, I think, as well in understanding that, is when a man closes off again, like you said, he's he's probably scared of rejection and abandonment. And the other the last thing, though, is he's scared of being castrated. He's actually scared of penetrating the field. He might be very, very like, sure of himself, confident, but that a point in which where he has to go in and penetrate. He's like, Oh no, like, I've had my dick chopped off so many times. Why would I do that? And you know, I think that again, as women, we don't realize this. My ex husband, you know, he said it to me often, and it was I had to humble myself. Oh, God, I really should do that was terribly critical, terribly critical. And it was only after we split up that he was like, I was too afraid to say things to you in case you had something counter to say about that. I was like, oh, fuck, it's so little Yeah, of just like, just listening, or just shutting my mouth, one of my very, very, very old this is probably gonna be super inappropriate, but I'm gonna say, anyway, I
Jacob O'Neill:think we can go there one
Unknown:of my very, very old friends, like she was actually the lover of my eldest son's father. At the time, ex lover. We became friends anyway, and she was like Anthea. The best advice I can give you about men is to know and to shut your mouth and open your legs. And although that's totally inappropriate, and I don't subscribe to that at all, what I did take away from that is is for us as women to take a pause, right because, again, our data processing is different. Our left and right hemispheres are closer together than men's, for example, and so we can, we can jump from intellectual information to emotional information very, very quickly, whereas men take time to process emotional information. And so, so women just taking a pause and allowing to process your own emotions, will allow him to process his emotions as well. And then the other really easy kind of communication technique is it's a transactional communication technique, which is speaking to men via their data processing so they data process logically, which is the thinking space. So what do you think about that? And you know, for men speaking to women, how they process, which is the emotional space. So how do you feel about that? You know, darling, I want to go for a beer with the boys. How do you feel about that? Oh, darling. I feel really sad about that. What do you think about that? You know, and whilst it's that does seem very transactional, because it is we're speaking to the way that actually feels feels right on our nervous system, right? Because, yeah, triggering simply is when our nervous system feels like, I can't deal with this. Yeah. So if we're using language that is actually soothing to the nervous system, we can have really powerful conversations that doesn't have to that doesn't have to end in tears in a bad way.
Jacob O'Neill:Yeah, it's almost learning the subtle differences in language to be able to love each other better 100%
Unknown:like, like my partners, I'm like, oh, like, we have this thing. It's like, do you want five minutes? And we'll go low in bed or, like, especially when we're both really busy, like, we'll stop, like, do you want five minutes? And, you know, seven years, and it's, do you want five minutes? And it's just just to kind of get back in resonance with each other. You know, we all have our default settings, and especially when we're under stress, we go back to default settings. We're human. That's just what happens. You know, life is life, and it be laughing right now, and it's busy, and so having having a space for you, you know, if you're in a couple. Um, having, having your five minutes, whatever that might look like, together, to just reconnect and recalibrate, recalibrate and get back in resonance with each other. I think is really, really powerful. But yeah, you can never communicate enough. That's what I'm saying every time I'm like, do you want five minutes? Is like? Is it going to be a talking five minutes or just,
Jacob O'Neill:yeah, yeah, yeah. That's I was thinking that. I was like, Is it five minutes of just, like, laying down and, yeah, it's funny. You say that be there because, like, I have a I've had to become better at asking for what I need. And it's a two way street. But I love the way that you're speaking to it from a woman's perspective, because I've always been like, the man needs to do this, this, this and this. But for me, the thing that can actually soften the tonality, thing that's a huge thing for me. I'm just learning from you. But a hand, like a hand, they could ground, some grounding touch before words are spoken, actually allows me to feel a little deeper, rather than be in my reactivity 100% like, physical touch is huge for me, yeah, and it has to be nourishing, light, fine touches is, like, too much. I freak out. I'm like, Oh, what is that? But if it's a grounding touch, or I get hands on the shoulders and just birthing me, yeah, hey, my love what? And then, and then the dialog opens. It's like, okay, I'm available,
Unknown:yeah. And again, just because of those differences in in time data and data processing, and even the way in which we take in language, you know, just as a woman, like if you want to have a conversation with your partner of just saying, hey, like, I would like to talk about x. When would you like to talk about that? Because, again, especially if we're anxious attachers, we want to talk about
Jacob O'Neill:everything now, alive in space.
Unknown:We want to pacify that anxiety now, yes. And again, if men are, if you're a man that finds it hard to process your emotions really quickly, that's going to be really overwhelming. And most men want to meet their partner's need immediately, so they're in conflict in meeting their own need. Of like, I don't know how to have this conversation. I don't even know what word you just use. I don't even know I'm feeling right now to share. I really want to meet your needs, and so, so just asking for a time to have those conversations, that was my biggest flex in maturing as a woman, was honestly, of like, knowing when to have the conversation. Like, if he's just come in and I've had a busy day and Angela, I'm like, I'm gonna wait. So I'd actually write down the things I wanted to talk to him about until it was appropriate time to talk to him about them. And I think that's, that's really, really, really, massive, yeah,
Jacob O'Neill:that's, that's, that is a beautiful like, it's not, I can't talk to him about this ever which is almost like abandoning your needs. It's like, hey, my nervous system is capable of holding this. And I'm going to make sure I write them down so when the right time presents itself, or when I communicate, I want to speak about these, and we both set a time that we agree upon that there is an invitation and an actual choice made by both of us to step in. And that's you learn that through long term relating, it becomes part of the how
Unknown:you relate with each other, and you know, and with that, you know, then you know, when you're out of resonance, you know, like something is up, because the baseline of the relationship is such that You are doing a little dance together, and, you know, whose moves are what, and and so you also then feel like, Oh, that's not a step that we usually do, or that's a new step that we that we usually you know, that's a new step that I haven't learned yet. And you you kind of get to meet each other as you're evolving. Those steps doesn't become threats in the relationship. They become inquiries when you when you become better communicators with each other. Just one last thing I want to say, and this is about emotional reasoning in men, right? So most men think they're very logical beings, okay? But most men are emotional reasoners. So that we all make our we all make our decisions from an emotional space. But what men are really good at, because they're much better at processing logical information, is that they turn their emotions into into intellect or intelligence gathering. Yes, and so it sounds so like and most women I've spoken to about this where, you know, she's losing her mind, and he's there very cool, calm and collected, like, you know, and she's like, I don't understand why he's just said something completely out of pocket, and he's just cool as a daisy. And I'm so triggered, and because men are really good at intellectualizing their emotions, so I guess just as. Public Service Announcement that if you consider yourself very intellectual and not particularly emotional as a man, I would ask yourself whether you're, in fact, emotional reasoning. And again, for women, you know, so much space to actually come out of your emotions and into your intellect and into your reason. Yeah,
Jacob O'Neill:yeah. They get to coexist. They get to be both. You know, we draw on both of them. I think that once again, it's like the two, the tension, yes,
Unknown:every time it comes back to that straddling the extremes and
Jacob O'Neill:yes, this has been such a nourishing conversation for me, and learning a little more about myself and learning I love how much you love words, and I love the I think that is such a I don't know whether that fee you know Meg. Meg's very similar in that, and I'm learning so many I'm learning to respect and love words more and love what they mean, and be able to use vocabulary to articulate how I am feeling and what is going on for me. So that's, yeah, that's, that's what I'm taking away from this, some of that, yeah, and the tone, the tone thing as well. Like, wow. Like, yeah, the sound of a woman's voice can be alarming to me. Like, oh, something's wrong, so I get to communicate and work with that as well.
Unknown:Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Jacob, I really appreciate being here. And, yeah, having this conversation has been super fun, and I've really enjoyed listening to you share.
Jacob O'Neill:Thank you. I really feel there's like such a I'm learning the I was so heavy on the men's work men, you know, men are here to serve men. And I think there is a there is a necessity for that. Men need to go out and be in these spaces and rub shoulders and learn about manhood. But there's this other. There's this whole other dynamic that has come online for me, which is around coming home and learning how to be with women, be and be with a woman, and be with the the the intricacies of a relationship? Yeah, I
Unknown:think that's really where the profound healing for men and women happen, is in those co creative spaces. We are each other's, you know, complementary opposites, and so we will trigger each other, but we also have the antidote to that trigger. Yes,
Jacob O'Neill:I love it. Thank you so much. It's been so good. I'm sure there'll be more conversations down the line. I feel like we'll we'll be having a few more of these somewhere along, maybe season three, whenever that happens next year. I'm going to put all of Anthony's details down below. Is there anything that you want to shout out or pitch to the community right now. Love each
Unknown:other. Yeah, and for men, I don't do therapeutic mentoring as a whole, but my books are open for men still, if they if they do want some space to be held or bums to be spanked, let me check. But yeah, but otherwise, I for women, and I've done this really deliberately as I do business mentoring, and we have the bad bitch economics that I teach, and it's really understanding how to to really integrate your masculine so that you can can really feel good and feel liberated in business. So my my two words are providence and liberation. And I believe that when we receive the masculine, the men in our lives, and we receive our internal masculine, we inherently get divine providence and divine liberation. And so if you are a woman starting in business, or you're wanting to transition or change, or you just want someone to talk to about how the hell you're doing business, I'm also your chick.
Jacob O'Neill:How good. How good. Thank you so much for being here. Bless up beautiful humans. I hope you enjoyed this episode. We'll see you next week. Big Love. Peace, yo, yo, yo. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of sex, love and everything in between. Now if you'd like to stay connected with Meg and I, you can head on over to Instagram and follow me at the Jacob O'Neill, and where can people find you lover, at
Meg O'Neill:B dot, Meg, dot. O amazing.
Jacob O'Neill:And yeah, guys, check out the show notes for all other information in regards to what we've got coming up. And yeah, we're super, super grateful that you guys for taking the time to listen in to this podcast. If you do have any topics or any questions like I said, hit us up on Instagram, and we'll see what we can do. Apart from that, have a beautiful, beautiful rest of your day.
Unknown:Thanks for being here. Big, big.
Jacob O'Neill:Love you.
