Something is shifting. Not just here and there, but across an entire generation. Women are waking up and men are stumbling behind. This is an observation, not a judgement. Women are sensing a force that was buried for a long time. And many couples suddenly find themselves at a crossroads no one expected. Or perhaps no one dared to speak about.
It is a tremor with deeper roots and more facets than we may realise.
This is a long read, so feel free to make a cup of tea first.
The Awakening of Women
For many women, a major transformation is beginning often around midlife, perimenopause or menopause. A wonderful and at the same time challenging phase that demands radical honesty. For decades they have kept everything running smoothly: already in childhood as emotional support for their parents, later as organisers, mediators, comforters and caretakers for their partners and families. They carried the mental load, the emotional load and often the financial one too.
More than a few became lover, mother and bank to a man whose potential they saw and whose transformation they hoped for. Others were the attractive young partner of a significantly older man. Intelligent, gifted and admired, yet never truly seen in a relationship that often had less to do with love than with stage performance. A role that inevitably begins to crumble the moment a woman starts to recognise herself.
Women of the 70s, 80s and 90s overfunctioned. Not out of weakness, but because of conditioning. Not from naivety, but as a survival strategy.
And with hormonal change comes not only a physical shift, but a soul-level awakening. An inner revolution. A remembering. And a growing intolerance for anything untrue. Women suddenly sense the imbalances in their relationships and recognise patterns and dynamics they explained away for decades. Roles fall away that they can no longer carry and that they never should have carried in the first place. This happens even if they don’t consciously intend it.
A Unique Generation of Women
These women belong to a powerful generation unlike any before. They survived things they themselves would not have labelled as trauma for a long time: dysfunctional parents and divorces, narcissistic mothers, volatile fathers, emotional neglect, incompetent teachers, questionable medical authorities, performance pressure, objectification of women and sexualisation of almost every aspect of life, toxic relationships and responsibilities that were never theirs to hold.
They are the girls of the 70s, the divas of the 80s and the explorers of the 90s. The ones who fixed cassette tapes with a pencil and danced in gay clubs until dawn because that was the place where freedom and authenticity felt tangible. They went out to dance, not to be hit on. Women who got their driving licence at 18, earned their first salary at 20 and moved into their first flat at 21. Women who travelled alone, sought the world, explored cultures, carried the world in their hearts and always had a sense that their lives were meant to be bigger than what they had been taught in school.
They are brave, yet for a long time were far too gullible. They believed in the good. In love. In the potential of their partners. In society’s narratives: house, child, dog, yoga, career. All at once please. In “I can manage this” and “Just a moment more.” In “I’ll just hold on a little longer.” In “I find a solution.”
Now, with perimenopause, the urge to please falls away, the pressure to behave and even the sexual performance script lose their grip. What no longer works or what never worked become crystal clear. These women remember who they once were: bold, alive, intentional and confident. And their hormonal change is not an ending, but the starting point of a soul-level revolution, a kind of rebirth.
These women want no power games, no revenge, no strategising, no theatrics, no melodrama. No more BS. They want truth, depth, resonance, maturity, peace, fairness, attentiveness, genuine connection and joyful beingness.
And they know: All of this is possible, but not with a partner who cannot or will not grow with them.
And the Men? What’s Going On There?
A great deal. But much of it happens in silence, because men of the 70s, 80s and 90s were rarely taught how to be emotionally present, vulnerable or communicative.
Their fathers were often physically and emotionally absent and not exactly role models who showed their children (sons and daughters alike) what an emotionally mature man looks like. Boys were raised with “real men don’t cry”, “pull yourself together” and “needing help is weakness”, and with the belief that psychotherapy was something shameful. Others were neglected under the guise of anti-authoritarian parenting, or completely overindulged without boundaries, consequences or structure.
Men learnt to manage their problems and their feelings (instead of feeling the feelings). They learnt to consume relationships, not co-create it. Their fathers did not do it and their mothers did not require it from their husbands.
While women developed mentally, emotionally and spiritually, many men remained stuck. They let themselves be cared for and emotionally regulated. Their partners became the secretary, who remembers all birthdays and buys the right gifts, the therapist with endless patience for vague discussions, passive-aggressive dynamics and emotional outbursts and the mother who shops, cooks, washes and cleans. Men aged in years but remained boys in adult bodies. They ran in the hamster wheel of achieving instead of pausing, checking their values and taking responsibility.
This is exaggerated of course, but the overall picture is recognisable, isn’t it?
The Cultural Backdrop – Myth and Reality
What we witness today – in the West as well as here in India – is not an individual failure. It is a collective dynamic.
In the West, war trauma, distant fathers, silence, harshness and performance pressure shaped several generations of men. In India, patriarchal structures, rigid role expectations and the assumption that the woman “does everything at home” while the man “gets everything done at home” created similar distortions.
Although India appears patriarchal today, women in the pre-Vedic and early Vedic periods held high social standing. They were teachers, philosophers and spiritual authorities. It was the institutionalisation of priesthood (Brahmanism), later the Muslim invasions (with increased seclusion of women and veiling practices) and British colonialism (which weakened communal systems and reinforced hierarchical control) that restricted women’s freedom and education so severely. A deep cultural contradiction emerged: worship the goddess, control the woman. On one side the most powerful goddesses in the world, on the other the devaluation of daughters, the overload of women and daily sexism.
In Germany the story unfolded similarly. In many pre-Christian and early medieval cultures of Central Europe, women held influence and respect: as healers, herbalists, mediators, leaders of the household and the land. With Christianisation, religious power structures (the church), later the bourgeois family model and industrialisation, women were systematically reduced to care, morality and obedience. Two world wars, fatherlessness and unhealed trauma shaped men who were emotionally numb and women who constantly had to adapt.
In the 60s and 70s a wave of cultural openness emerged, influenced by the hippie movement, early women’s rights, access to education, economic independence, self-help books and spiritual impulses from India. Above all, women used these spaces for development while men largely remained in their traditional behaviour patterns. To this day, women fill retreats, holistic education programmes, yoga classes and therapy seminars in Germany. Men rarely.
Why Women End Up Doing Everything
Women generally possess a broad intuitive awareness. They read atmospheres, sense energy, anticipate dynamics and keep the bigger picture in view. It’s almost in their DNA and society has demanded it.
Many women were made responsible for almost everything from childhood onwards. They learnt: if I function and take care of things, I am loved. To survive and to keep the family system going, they had to forget themselves. A pattern they carried unconsciously into adult relationships: overfunctioning and overgiving.
This runs against the feminine principle of receiving. Our natural capacity to receive and create from sovereignty was lost through role expectations, cultural norms, overfunctioning and the resulting self-alienation and exhaustion. Nothing against caring, but it’s all a matter of balance.
Now, women in midlife begin to reclaim themselves.
A Global Shift
Something big and unstoppable is happening right now among women born in the 70s and 80s. They are realigning with their truth and soul compass. Patterns of co-dependency and trauma bonding are cracking open. Old concepts and constructs are crumbling. New light enters through these women. They awaken because their soul is calling and nudging. Time for changes – within and without.
For many men this is a shock. Some run away, others freeze. Some open and grow at last. Others lose women they took for granted for decades.
What is happening is not a crisis. It is a reorganisation and an invitation.
For women to finally be themselves.
For men to finally grow up.
For relationships to exist on soul level.
The Dilemma of Men
If a boy is never mirrored, never held, never seen or affirmed emotionally by the parents and educators, his inner architecture will be incomplete. And many men today face a real dilemma: even if they want to grow, they often lack the foundation because their neural networks for feeling, bonding, empathy, conscience, self-regulation and responsibility never fully developed.
This is not personal failure. It is the result of decades of emotional undernourishment in our culture. A sobering reality check.
Is there hope? Yes. But not through wishful thinking or intellectual understanding. Growth is possible through honest introspection, clear intention, sincere inner work, spiritual practice, intuitive awareness, the neuroplastic capacity of the brain, epigenetic healing and grace. And it takes time.
Sadly, many men only open when they lose their partner. And often not even then.
And the most painful truth of our generation?
Women believed for a long time that men would change.
Men believed for a long time that women would never leave them.
Both were mistaken.
But only one side has woken up.
What Now?
What happens when millions of women simultaneously wake up from overadaptation, stagnation and overload and reclaim their life force? This is not only an individual phenomenon but a societal one. I believe it will become dramatically visible over the next decade.
For many years a vast amount of their life energy flowed into regulating male instability, holding families and systems together, suppressing their own needs and agreeing to perform and keep silent. Their attention and energy were tied up and misdirected. Now, in midlife, more and more women are freeing exactly these forces. It’s epic, explosive and promising. When women awaken, the world order shifts. Not through battle, but through awareness and integrity.
Men are invited to wake up too. The women’s energetic shift confronts them with themselves in any case. And those who open up will grow.
My work is not only for women. If you are a man willing to look within, take responsibility and clear your inner landscape, I am here to support you with respect, depth and at your pace. If this resonates with you, you are welcome.