Do you consider yourself to be a sexual person?
Has sexuality or the idea of being a sexual being changed for you as a midlife woman?
Would you like to reclaim your sexuality?
Or are you finished with having sex?
Are you relieved to feel less pressure to be sexual now that your reproductive years are drawing to a close?
Whatever your answers to these questions, please know that they are all 100% valid and allowed.
In today’s blog, I will be exploring our relationship with one of the most complicated Feminine Archetypes, The Lover.
Read my blogs in this series on the fascinating Female Archetypes. Discover the Maiden, the Mother, the Huntress.
Who Is The Lover Archetype?
The Lover is a woman who is playful and confident with her erotic and creative energy. The Lover Archetype is connected to our sexuality, sensuality, body image and our emotions. This archetype is a transformative, provocative force in a woman’s life.
Filled with love and self-love the Lover, continually seeks to connect with others to acquire a deep intimacy. A woman who identifies with the Lover has a deep desire to procreate and to create. Her motivation in life is to have fun and enjoy the beauty of life. She naturally indulges her natural drive for pleasurable experiences. The Lover is deeply connected to the divine feminine energies of acceptance and receiving.
A woman who is in touch with the Lover Archetype loves her body and the pleasure it gives her. She holds a great passion for life, magnetically drawing others towards her. The Lover relishes being the centre of attention.
The Lover Archetype is connected to how we feel about our bodies. Because the Lover is about receiving she is tied to our ability to receive wealth, pleasure and abundance for ourselves. When we embody the Lover Archetype we attract these things into our lives. Women who embody the Lover Archetype have a profound emotional need for both freedom and connection. The strengths of the Lover Archetype are built from her passionate and creative nature. This is in addition to her ability to seduce and arouse sexual attraction and passion in others.
The Lover craves to live in the moment, enjoy life and appreciates all it has to offer. Embodying the Lover Archetype is not about having lots of sex unless you want to. Embracing the Lover is about reclaiming your sexuality, sensuality and your body as yours. Activating the Lover ignites your birthright to attract joy, love, creativity, abundance and pleasure into your life for yourself.
Do you want to be to find out more about the Lover Archetype? Buy my book.
The Lover Archetype In Popular Culture
Women in our popular culture who have a strong Lover connection are Marilyn Monroe, Sharon Stone’s character Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct and Samantha in Sex and the City.
There are so many mixed messages a woman will receive from the culture around her about what it means to be a sexual being. This messaging leads to conflict and confusion around female sexuality within ourselves.
Our Herstory, culture and religion have a huge influence on how we view sex and our right to receive pleasure. Many women have been taught as they have grown up that a woman’s sexuality is about pleasing someone else. We have to give ourselves to someone else. After all, that is what ‘good girls’ do.
As supermodel Jerry Hall said;
My mother always said, ‘to keep a man happy, you had to be a cook in the kitchen, a maid in the living room and a whore in the bedroom.
Jerry Hall
Do you want to be to find out more about the Lover Archetype? Buy my book.
Goddesses And The Lover Archetype.
The Goddesses who represent the Lover are Pravati the Hindu Goddess of love, the Greek Goddess Aphrodite (Goddess of love and fertility) or her Roman counterpart Venus.
Aphrodite was famous for her many affairs with both mortals and gods. She was the mother of Eros, (Cupid). Aphrodite was what was known as an Alchemical Goddess. She had the power to transform and cast spells that caused mortals to fall in love and conceive new life.
According to Dr Jean Shinoda Bolen;
Whomever or whatever Aphrodite imbues with beauty is irresistible. A magnetic attraction results, ‘chemistry’ happens between the two, and they desire union above all else. They feel a powerful urge to get closer, to have intercourse, to consummate – or ‘know’ each other.
Dr Jean Shinoda Bolen
When we turn on the Lover Archetype in ourselves this can inspire in us deep creativity, healing self-love, inspiration, magic and beauty.
Do you want to be to find out more about the Lover Archetype? Buy my book.
The Shadow Lover Archetype
During our womanly initiation to the Lover, many women disconnect from this archetype. None of us gets to womanhood whole as sexual beings. All of us have wounds to heal.
Because of past sexual trauma, sexual shaming and cultural programming, many women either suppress their Lover. We shut her down, as we move into the Wounded Lover. On the other extreme, we may engage in seemingly overtly sexual behaviour which does very little to honour and nurture the woman we are. This reinforces the idea of Lover as the Temptress – a wanton woman intent on stealing other women’s men for her pleasure. The cultural stigma that goes hand in hand with the Lover is often at the root of the Sister Wound. (The distrust or dis-ease we feel about relationships with other women.)
The Fragile Lover
One side of the Shadow Lover Archetype is the Fragile Lover. When we identify with the Fragile Lover we may appear to be overtly sexual. We may use our sexuality to shame others or to manipulate them to get what we want. A woman who identifies with the Fragile Lover echoes self-destructive patterns such as indulging in many casual relationships. When we embody the Fragile lover we may repeat patterns of sexual infidelity or we use our sexuality transactionally. These, often destructive patterns stem from wounds in our past that we have yet to heal.
The Fragile Lover sees herself as a receptacle for the lust of others. She will objectify her body to please others. The Fragile Lover has been taught through her past wounding that her looks and sexuality are her only ‘currency’. The Fragile Lover fears aging as she perceives the ‘currency’ as dwindling as she gets older. She appears confident and self-assured but the Fragile Lover needs to feel loved and wanted to feel significant and worthy. Her sense of self-worth is tied to her popularity. When she feels as if the attention is no longer on her, she yearns to have control and will attract drama and attention to boost her vanity and fragile self-esteem.
Do you want to be to find out more about the Lover Archetype? Buy my book.
The Repressed Lover
Due to pressures from cultural and societal norms along with trauma wounds, many women have buried or repressed their Lover. This is particularly prevalent during the childbearing and child-rearing years when women often reassign the sexual parts of their bodies to mothering duties. Many mothers become overstimulated and ‘touched out’ and come to see the act of sex as a chore. They can view sex as one more way they have to ‘give’ to others. This can stop women from honouring their sexuality and viewing it as an act of ‘receiving’. This can allow them to become disconnected from their bodies, their cycles, their emotions, their sensuality and their sexuality.
I believe many women are still trapped in the puritan, patriarchal thinking of our mothers and their mothers before them. What we learn about our Lover is very much an unhealed mother wound. We are taught that sex and sensuality are purely an act of giving, and pleasing others, in our culture’s expectation
Tanya Valentin – When She Wakes She Will Move Mountains
that women should all be Maidens or Mothers, and sex is something we only do with others and for others but never for ourselves.
The Lover Archetype is not just a woman’s sexual self, she is also a woman’s ability to experience joy and pleasure in life as well as being connected to her creative self. When we disconnect from our Lover, joy, pleasure, and creativity dwindle away and eventually die. When we deny our Lover energy, we withhold the ability to be able to receive love from others and ourselves. This can also hinder our ability to let go of the previous hurt, enjoy pleasurable experiences, appreciate beauty, have fun, play and be in the moment.
Do you want to be to find out more about the Lover Archetype? Buy my book.
The Art Of Receiving
As mentioned previously, a way that the Repressed Lover can manifest herself in a woman’s life is through her ability to receive. Many women limit themselves in what or how much they allow themselves to receive.
This can be true in our lives, whether it is in allowing someone to do something for us, opening ourselves up to money, career opportunities, the abundance we deserve, receiving pleasure in the bedroom, or being able to accept a compliment.
The majority of women who feel stuck or as if they are living their lives with little joy, excitement, and purpose, are joyless and uninspired in their sex lives too. They have severed their connection to the Lover and have difficulty receiving.
“So many of us were taught to keep a lid on anything and everything outrageous. To just turn it off. We turn off our life force, turn off our feelings, turn off our sensuality, and as a consequence, we turn off our power.”
Regena Thomashauer, Pussy: A Reclamation
If this is a problem for you, the best way to balance this wounded or shadowed energy is to learn at the feet of the Lover. The woman with a healthy embodiment of the Lover knows that receiving is her birthright and she actively seeks this out to receive this for herself.
Do you want to be to find out more about the Lover Archetype? Buy my book.
Healing The Wounded Lover
If you read this blog and identified with the Fragile Lover of the Repressed Lover then chances are that you have wounds that need healing and beliefs that you need to examine and unlearn.
If you would like to know how to embody more healthy Lover qualities then buy my book – When She Wakes She Will Move Mountains – Click Here To Buy Your Copy Now
