{{contact.first_name}},
It is quite common for women to say that they have outgrown the man they were/are with. That he just doesn't grow at the same rate or, more often, he just stays stagnant.
There are a few ways people try to make sense of this.
Some question whether it even makes sense to hold a man to the same standard of growth as a woman. Others say that a man’s growth looks entirely different, and that a woman’s framing of growth may not even apply to him. Another common one is that a woman should simply stay on her own path, continue growing, and trust that the man will meet her there in his own timing, without needing to push, drag, or prompt him.
All of these are, at the very least, attempts to navigate a very real issue.
For me, I am seeing something else however.
The error exists BEFORE the man and woman even reach the point of the woman "outgrowing" the man.
Before the frustration.
And before the visible split in development prioritization.
I propose that the man was actually never able to reach her in the first place and her outgrowing him was always going to happen... as naturally as night turns into day.
I have been getting even more particular about what words mean; trying to define them to convey to the best of my ability the energetic reality of a dynamic. Really, the difference between something being effective vs not often sits inside of a word that hasn't been defined precisely enough.
So when I say "reach", I mean something very specific. It does not mean attraction, engagement, or chemistry.
Those can all exist without a woman ever being reached.
When I say reach, I am speaking about a man’s ability to meet you at the depth and capacity you are actually operating from.
And what determines this, from what I can extract from my current vantage point, is how much life someone has faced, processed, and integrated.
I believe this is what drives depth and capacity in you. And what drives this energetic/relational ability to penetrate and reach in him.
A man reaching you at your level of depth/capacity has to at the very least been faced with a range and depth of life experiences, processed, and integrated many of them on par with you and ideally gotten beyond this point allowing him to see you, move you, engage you, penetrate you, and take you beyond this point.
This is less about you and him going through the same experiences or even about a person having endless experiences. It is more about the range/depth of what was experienced and what/how much was extracted, processed, and integrated from them.
To be as precise as possible:
Range being how much of life he has touched… different situations, different people, different emotional realities.
Depth being how deeply he has gone into those experiences instead of skimming across them.
And then processing and integration… meaning he has fully felt what happened, understood it accurately, and allowed it to update or refine how he moves in the world within integrity.
It is interesting because I've seen this try to be defined in this polarity sense of a man having to be older, have more money, have more experience, be more capable, be more competent, have a greater purpose and such but this seems to me now like aftereffects of the man facing, processing, and integrating more life than the woman. This then tends to give way to things like more competence, capability, being older, having more experience or resources, etc but doesn't actually make it a prerequisite.
Especially because you can be older without having either faced, processed, or integrated as much life as someone younger.
And that can be applied to all of the factors across the board.
A man can have endless experiences but if he hasn’t processed or integrated them, his ability to reach a woman who has faced, processed, and integrated most of her experiences is like non existent.
From where I stand now, it is my proposition that whoever has metabolized/processed and integrated more of the life they have eaten, will be outgrowing the other.
This can be observed early on through reachability.
I’m sure you have been able to observe this in real life.
You can be sitting across from a man who is successful, competent, experienced, even impressive on paper… and still feel that he cannot reach you.
Conversations stay on the surface.
He doesn’t quite reach you where you are.
There is a subtle feeling that you are beyond where he can engage.
This can prompt you to start adjusting.
You simplify yourself, carry more of the connection, try to bridge the gap, etc.
Inside IRL, we refine this very quickly, because women often think the solution is to give it more time, to be more patient, or to grow alongside him. But when a man cannot reach you, no amount of time reorganizes that. The question becomes whether you are recognizing reach early, or compensating for its absence.
Has the man actually reached you? Can he reach you? Another way to frame that question then is has the man faced, processed, and integrated as much as or more life than you?
The man who has is able to reach you at your depth and capacity.
And if he has eaten, processed/metabolized, and integrated more life than you, he is able to reach you and take you further.
The dynamic is then actually not oriented around you growing on your own and the man maybe reaching you on his own time, some day, until you grow again and then the cycle continues. But it actually orients around, because you are reached to begin with, you accomodating the man, your growth actually being initiated by him (because he is further than you thus taking you further) and his growth further initiating your growth.
This makes it very difficult to grow apart inside of this dynamic.
I also think instead of optimizing for the surface result of getting with a man that has more experience or is competent or has more resources or even a greater purpose, it is more important to “ensure” that those come FROM his facing, processing, and integrating life.
In this dynamic, the woman feels both reached, covered, and initiated in a way that is unprecedented.
The man in his facing, processing, and integrating really covers the full spatial extent of his life and beingness; translating into this deep trusting she has for him and in turning to him in his living proof and success in overcoming a portion of the world.
This is a deeper look into what makes a man “exceptional” in my eyes. Because while the collective likes to orient around the external factors of a man, which could be decent indicators, but not exclusively so of the exemplary substance of the man who has integrated, processed/metabolized, and eaten more life.
I get replies from many of you speaking on the experience of outgrowing the man you were with.
So...
