Teasing and humour are essential if you want to sneak past a woman’s defences and share in her inner secrets. If you have a way with banter, comedy or wit, share your secrets on the Discord. My own humour is far too tied into my insight and life experience for me to share adequately, and bleeds with my own hard-won ironic self-acceptance. One of the best compliments I ever received was that I was “so cheeky, so mischievous, but never in a way that tears anything down. Only in a way that teases things up.”
There is one easy way I can talk about teasing, humour and masks, though, and it is this: steal her embodiment.
These are things I was naturally starting to do, and some concepts I learned from theatre and psychodrama explained to me their power. Try these out for yourself:
1. Mirroring. Very simply, whatever physical posture and tone of voice she takes, mirror it back to her with your whole being. Especially if this means you take thirty seconds to be falsely camp. As she sees herself and her behaviour, recognition happens, and the pattern often stops. She sees her own mask. Laughter often ensues.
2. Role Reversal. Whatever energy your girl often throws at you, take on that role before she gets a chance, or spontaneously play it until she gets self-recognition. My girlfriend used to stick her tongue out to me when I tried to take control, and she’d act like a brat. I actually got irritated by her childishness. But when I embody these behaviours first, she’s got no choice but to embody the responsibility role that I was getting tired of taking. I embodied Bratula, and she feels compassion each time she sees it! It’s personality switch-a-roo.
3. Doubling. When someone is feeling an emotion or stuck in their head, you steal the voice that you imagine is grinding away in their brain, and either a) you make a caricature out of their internal conversation, or b) you playfully try to really get that conversation right. This tends to crack her open either because she feels seen that you could voice a feeling she couldn’t… or because the parody is too damned funny.
4. Soliloquy. Fancy term for a personal speech. Sometimes I’ll embody my lover’s mask, role, or way of being as if I were on stage, talking to a crowd, or presenting myself. I will give a speech or a moment of sacred theatre as if I was her, performing her role for a large audience, with all the silliness of it.
5. Prod for Masks, Aggression and Archetypes. If she’s a little stuck in something and you want to coax her deeper, I like to poke and prod for what’s under the surface. Or just to name the mask that presents. “Is this Superbitch 5000?”, I might ask, or “hello Princess!” I might exclaim. “Is this your Kali energy?” I might taunt if she’s starting to boil with rage, “let her out! Let her out!” I might taunt with encouragement. Ease and delight is essential here. Tread carefully. This can be explosive. She might not like being called “smothering mother”. And “slut” and “whore” are only ever to be whispered out of earshot of anyone else. “Bad girl” can be used more liberally, but really lacks the creativity for it to be personal or evocative. It penetrates more when I am idiosyncratic with my teasing.
These are actually psychologically refined ways of helping another person get self-awareness: as soon as she sees or hears her blindspots as portrayed in your behaviour, something shifts in her. She becomes self aware; the mask loosens. Yet at the same time, it’s all fun and theatre – a rolling, roving way to be crazy in your self-expression, and bring joy and colour.
Young children are especially good to play this with. Why not practice these with all your brothers on this course?
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The most important thing about masks is to remember they are protecting something. If nothing was at stake, that your woman had no core fears, she would let it all down and be a more authentic self. Yet in life there are consequences. We are anxious, scared, controlling. And we are only now becoming culturally aware – at the beginning of the 21st century, and even then only in small pockets – of the taboos that have restrained our characters, our intimacy, and our lives.
To look at her masks is cold observation. To judge her for her masks is mean. To become curious, to see, to feel the vulnerability – and aggression – beyond her masks, is empathy. To see the quality of her Presence is insight: recognition.
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