Why You’re Struggling to Surrender — And How to Let Go
Hustle culture keeps us locked in masculine energy, making it hard to soften and receive. Here’s why surrender feels impossible — and ways to shift into your divine feminine with ease.
Sex and Style is written by Certified Sexologist and Somatic Sex Coach Sarah Ward. This is intended as general advice. If you’d like a personalized guidance, I’d be honored to connect in a discovery session.
Before we dive in, here’s a note on language: I use terms like Divine Feminine in this piece, and while it sounds gendered, doesn’t refer to gender, but to universal energies we all hold, regardless of your gender identity. This piece explores the ways we access and embody these energies in our daily lives.
While much of this piece speaks to the experience of women navigating a world built around masculine structures, the insights apply to anyone who struggles to access softness, receptivity, and surrender — regardless of their gender identity. If you don’t resonate with the terms “feminine” and “masculine,” feel free to replace them with “yin” and “yang,” “receptive” and “active,” or other language that feels right for you.
My goal is for this to be a resource that feels expansive and applicable, no matter where you find yourself on the gender spectrum.
As a cis-gendered woman, I live in a masculine world. (In case you’re unfamiliar with the term cisgender, it means that my body parts match my gender identity.)
This isn’t a Barbie world, unlike what the hit song Barbie World by Aqua leads us to believe.
Let’s break down what this means biologically.
Men’s bodies reset every 24 hours — they ride the wave of all four seasons in a single day: morning is spring, midday is summer, evening is fall, and night is winter.
Although women move through all four seasons in a 28-day cycle:
Winter (Menstruation, generally 3-7 days): The sacred pause, rest and reflection
Spring (Follicular Phase, day 1 to 14): Creativity, playfulness, energy rising
Summer (Ovulation, generally at day 14): Magnetic energy, self expression, radiance
Fall (Luteal Phase, day 14 to 28): Time to slow down, conserve energy, prepare
The patriarchal world isn’t built for women’s natural rhythms. It’s built for the 24-hour cycle — rise, grind, repeat. So women learn to push through their limits, ignoring their body’s cues and inevitably, burning out. No wonder we feel exhausted, out of sync with our bodies — because we are.
It’s like speaking a language that isn’t our natural tongue. All the while, advocating for equal pay and gender equality. (In a world that was plunged back several decades overnight, cool cool 😬)
“Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backward and in high heels.” – Ann Richards
When a woman menstruates, she still goes to work. She still functions. Could a man bleed for a week and not die?
Hard no.
Now, before you head to the comments to duke this one out, let me level set: this isn’t a piece about the battle of the sexes. It’s a piece about why women struggle to tap into their divine feminine.
The feminine is the flowing river.
The masculine is the bank that holds it.
There have been times that I have felt that sweet surrender of leaning into the masculine and allowing myself to be held, to release control and be in my flow. That feeling of containment is exquisite. (Perhaps not unlike how a penis feels when held exquisitely inside the sheath of a vagina. Penis owners, share your thoughts!)
Getting to that place takes time, effort, safety, and connection. It doesn’t just happen in the blink of an eye.
During the day, we expect women to embody their masculine traits in the world. The problem is when we’re in a constant output of masculine energy — leading, organizing, strategizing, and getting shit done — we can get stuck there. Everyone knows the to-do list never ends, it just keeps on multiplying.
Our bodies weren’t designed to live in this constant state of output. Looking back in human history, our early hunter / gatherer ancestors worked about four hours per day (!!), and then spent the rest of the waking day resting, exploring, having sex and raising families.
Compare that to today, where we don’t just rise and grind, we wear stress like a badge of honor. This chronic stress rewires our brains, keeping us stuck in survival mode and blocks our access to pleasure, play, and flow. Being connected and receptive with a lover isn’t possible when we’re stuck in a survival loop. Survival is the very antithesis to surrender.
Stress is the cock block to the pleasure and sex we crave.
Stress is doing more harm than you know: it hijacks your brain. When you’re stressed, your body shifts into survival mode, and the control moves from your prefrontal cortex (the center of decision-making and communication) to your lizard brain, the amygdala (the fear and threat center). That’s where fight, flight, and freeze responses take over.
And while the amygdala plays a role in sexual arousal, if you’re in a stress response, pleasure is the last thing on your brain’s priority list. Sex is lower on the list than survival.
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To make it through the day, many women are essentially masking—to borrow a term from the neurodivergent community. Just as neurodivergent folks suppress natural traits to conform to neurotypical expectations, women often override their cyclical nature and feminine energy to function in a world designed around the 24-hour masculine cycle. Is it any surprise she doesn’t melt into Aphrodite the moment she walks through the door?
If I’ve been running non-stop from meeting to meeting, to classes, to shopping for groceries and getting sexy for a date night — without stopping to transition my energy at the end of the day — chances are that when I greet my lover, I’m still reeling from the day and staunchly in my masculine. I haven’t sloughed it off or softened into my feminine.
Instead of meeting him like a lusty starlet on the cover of a Harlequinn romance novel, throwing myself into his arms to be ravaged, I may show up:
Judgmental of the way he used his time during the day
Critical of his decisions in leading his business and team
Telling him what he needs to do better
Is that hot?
Unless you have a kink surrounding powerful women and degradation, probably not. (Hey — I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum!)
When it comes to polarity, me being firmly in my assertive masculine energy is polarizing and may send him into receptive feminine energy.
Sidebar: While this example is about a cis-gender, heterosexual couple, polarity exists in same gender couples, too, and with gender non-conforming people.
How to surrender
For me to surrender into my feminine, I need the following:
A buffer. I need a transition buffer between my work and my life. The constant running doesn’t serve me in getting off the merry-go-round.
To feel embodied. I need to feel my body. Cultivating your felt sense helps you to be embodied.
To discharge energy. I need to discharge any nervous or intense energy that was built up during the day. I highly recommend the Mama Gena Swamping exercise that I outline here! Turn on a song and just let your body moooove.
A slow burn. As someone who has more responsive desire than spontaneous desire (more on that here), I need a slow burn to warm up my body. Not unlike boiling water, it takes time.
The feminine divine is subtle. She is the voice of inner knowing, the undercurrent. Unless you’re listening and attuned to this channel, you could miss it.
So if you’re entrenched in hustle culture and checking off the boxes on your to-do list, you run the risk of missing it entirely. If we’re not careful, we could live an entire life without this life-giving connection to the feminine divine.
What makes it possible for me to surrender with my partner?
Presence
Connection
Patience
Emotional support
Holding space for things to unfold as they do
Surrender looks different for everyone, and I’d love to hear from you.
What helps you soften into your feminine energy?
What shifts your body from doing to feeling?
And for partners—what do you do to help them surrender and release?
PS: A big thank you to one of my paid subscribers for sliding into my DMs and posing some thought-provoking questions that initiated this post!
Thirsty for more?
wrote a terrific piece about wanting vs. being wanted that explores core erotic themes and what turns us on as erotic beings. I had the privilege of weighing in on some fantasies of mine and how a parting gift from leaving religion is how I get turned on by kinky things. Check it out!👇🏼
Sex and Style is written by Certified Sexologist, Somatic Sex and Style Coach, Sarah Ward. She has spent the last 20 years studying human sexuality and minted it in 2021, certifying in the VITA™ Methodology with Layla Martin, and as an Erotic Blueprints™ Coach with Jaiya. For a personalized approach to pleasure, schedule a free call with Sarah.
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Great essay! Really resonated with me. I think my transition is to nap after work. But I want to do more art or dancing.
The "slow burn" resonated with me - but also what you write about the masking and cycle.
It's good to hear I am not alone with this - I have always worked in male dominated fields and felt like the odd one out.
On the other hand the surrender has become so much easier since I live my life in a lesbian relationship (multiple to be precise) and we can explore and change our polarities. It is still hard for me to let myself fall completely but when it happens, it is so so good.
I have lived half my life with people who wanted me to be "the man" (I'm a trans woman) - so I feel this deeply. "Aligning with my body" is a new experience for me and it is interesting to read that cis women, too, have different levels of this alignment.