Do You Need A Masculine/Feminine Cleanse?
A Commitment To Healing Heartbreak, Knowing Your Worth, & Loving Yourself Unconditionally
What Is a Masculine Cleanse?
I first learned about this concept in 2020. I was a little over a month out from one of my most devastating breakups. I went on seven dates in ten days and I felt worse than ever. My old tactic of immediately jumping into a new relationship was no longer working. I was being called to a new way of healing—actually sitting with my heartbreak. As I read over relationship coach John Wineland’s masculine (or feminine) cleanse, it felt extreme, but that’s what I needed. I had been running from the painful feelings of heartbreak my entire life. So I knew it was time to be alone.
A masculine—or feminine cleanse—is an opportunity to remove external sources of validation to learn how to resource it from within.
As outlined by John Wineland, you cease all unnecessary contact with the opposite sex—no dating, no flirting, and no physical contact. He encourages informing anyone you engage with regularly of your undertaking and the boundaries that will be in place as a result. For casual encounters, he says to “keep it light and polite”, for example, provide a simple “Thank you” to the bank teller, grocery cashier, or coffee barista—no extra conversation, no lingering gaze, no flirtatious smile.
I’m a natural flirt, so this felt daunting, but I knew I needed it. I recognized that flirting is a way I receive validation.
What A Masculine Cleanse Is Not
Closing your heart. This is an opportunity to expand your capacity for love. If you have a lot of anger around the opposite sex or beliefs that there are no good men/women, etc.—the cleanse is a great opportunity to address these blocks.
Making flirting, dating, sex, or men/women “wrong”. The intention isn’t to make engaging with the opposite sex a bad thing. It is to notice how you use them to feel worthy, validated, or loved.
Another way to obsess over the opposite sex. While a cleanse can result in finding a healthy relationship, it is not the purpose. Reconnecting to or learning to love yourself is.
A place for perfection. If you slip in some way, do not beat yourself up. Use it as an opportunity to understand yourself more deeply—what was happening before the slip? What were you seeking to feed? How can you provide this for yourself?
A Masculine/Feminine Cleanse Is For You If:
You’re Going Through a Breakup—Society teaches us to distract away from our feelings when our heart is hurting, but moving through the painful emotions is a natural process to grieving the loss of a relationship so we can keep our hearts open.
You’re Attracting Unavailable/Toxic/Inappropriate Partners—It’s easy to see what’s wrong with the people we date once we recognize they’re “wrong” for us, but there’s one common denominator in each of those scenarios—you. A cleanse is the perfect opportunity to look at your relationship patterns so you can change them.
You Jump From Relationship to Relationship—This is a common coping mechanism, but it robs us of the opportunity to allow our hearts to truly heal, learn what we gained from our prior relationships, and have the time and space to discover who we are on the other side of it.
You Seek Love/Validation From the Opposite Sex—We know when we aren’t loving ourselves. In relation to dating, this can look like dating people who you know are not good for you, sleeping around, or sleeping with people you later regret.
You Keep Getting Caught in the Anxious/Avoidant Trap—If you find yourself in relationships where you either feel like you’re too needy or you feel triggered by your partner’s desire for more closeness, you’re playing out childhood wounding by trying to get the love you didn’t receive from one or more of your caregivers from your partner. This is a topic with a lot of depth. This article provides a helpful overview.
What You Will Learn/Receive From a Cleanse
Understanding Your Relationship Patterns—Most people repeat unhealthy patterns from relationship to relationship without ever pausing to see them. Our patterns stem from childhood and, left unchecked, they run our love lives. A cleanse provides the opportunity to identify and change these.
How to Heal from Heartbreak—If you find yourself suppressing, avoiding, or trying to run away from your feelings during or after a breakup, a cleanse provides a safe container to be with your feelings. This helps you heal not only from the heartbreak or your last relationship, but also expands your capacity to be with and love yourself, which helps you in every relationship going forward.
To Love Yourself—The only person you’ll be in a relationship with for the rest of your life is you. Our culture focuses so much on romantic relationships, but cultivating a loving relationship with yourself is one of the most important things you can do.
Self-Validation—It’s easy to look to our partners for validation, but this is one of the most common ways to feel insecure in a relationship. When we learn to validate ourselves, our relationships thrive because we’re no longer placing the pressure on our partners to do this for us.
What You Actually Want in a Partner—When we’re constantly dating, we lose sight of what we want because we’re so focused on what the other person wants. If we aren’t clear on our standards, we wind up with people who don’t meet them. A cleanse supports you in getting clear on what you actually want in a partner.
How to Do a Masculine/Feminine Cleanse
Decide your length of time. 90 days is a good start. I did my first cleanse for 9 months, but I really needed that time. Some people go a year or more.
Write out your intentions for the cleanse and a commitment statement that you sign and date.
Inform friends, family, or anyone of the opposite sex that you engage with regularly about your boundaries.
Work with a coach, therapist, or somatic practitioner who can help you identify your blind spots and unpack your trauma responses. (I highly recommend somatic therapy as our trauma gets stored in our bodies and needs to be released through body-based practices. Talk therapy is great, but trauma is pre-verbal. It needs to be moved out of the body in order to be fully released.) If you are unable to afford therapy, consider an accountability buddy or a support group.
Find an embodiment practice, to support you in resourcing from within. You can find some of my favorite practices in the here.
Set aside time every day for self-care
Plan dates with yourself
Keep a journal and record your feelings, thoughts, and patterns that arise during the cleanse.
As you approach the end date of your cleanse, reevaluate your readiness to begin flirting, dating, or getting physical with the opposite sex.
Be honest, compassionate, loving, and kind with yourself.
Would you do a masculine or feminine cleanse? What would your motivation be?
If you feel heartbroken, unworthy, unlovable, or ashamed of your dating patterns—You Are Not Alone.
Leave a comment or message me directly if you would be interested in joining a support group and receiving resources such as building a self-care schedule, reflection and check-in questions, date ideas, book/podcast suggestions, and more.
Love Always,
Becca