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See the Inner Matriarch page for more information on the characteristics of these two destructive selves and to learn how to identify them at work inside you.

Characteristics of the inner patriarch

The overriding characteristic of the inner patriarch is that when he sets up his house inside a woman's inner village his overriding loyalty is not to her but to the men around her and to maintaining their power and control over all women, including the way women think and feel and what they make of their lives. He unconditionally supports the dominance of the male hierarchy and the patriarchal lifestyle. Typically, when you listen to the inner patriarch you will notice him taking the side of another man or another patriarch living nearby in another person's inner village, in preference to the woman in whose village he has set up his house.

So, like the inner matriarch he is different from other Protector Inner selves in the Inner Village, in that he does not seem to be concerned with the well-being of the female selves and the wounded female inner child in your village. He will do nothing to assist in empowering other female selves who live there. Rather he will do everything he can to keep them from feeling any sense of power, awareness or ability.

In a way it's as though he is carrying within him a deep-seated almost cellular fear, a fear that goes back more than 60,000 years to the earliest days of civilisation when females were regarded as having more power than males. (Because of their perceived superior ability to connect spiritually to the sky and the earth and their ability to bear children.) Typically his attitude is that his fear is justifiable and provides a reason to continuing to disempower all women and to maintain control over females and ensure that all their lives women will continue to adhere to male rules and male systems. This is the inner patriarch's way of reducing his fear. The fact that a wounded inner child is a female is sufficient reason to stir the fear of her innate power and this is spurs the inner patriarch into action.

He knows just where to apply his sword

The Inner Patriarch is also an expert in knowing where to apply his sword to inflict the worst pain and create the most destructive disharmony intended to wreck a relationship.

Example: Jill’s new partner Jack is very non-judgemental and proud of it. Jill likes this side of Jack. He is particularly irritated by people who make unfounded judgements about him. Suddenly one day when Jill is in a bad mood her inner matriarch comes out and says to Jack “You are so fixed in your ways, I don’t think we are well suited.”

Jack’s response to Jill’s matriarch attack is not to address the matriarch herself but to attack Jill (who until a minute before he cared about very deeply). That’s how you know it’s his inner Patriarch who has jumped into the fight. The patriarch replies, “That’s insulting! How can you make a judgement about me without any evidence?”.

Jill’s inner child will feel the pain of Jack’s remark, but in fact something a bit more complex will be going on as we will explain later. It’s actually Jill’s inner patriarch who will apply the most hurtful slash of his sword to injure her already wounded inner child, “Little Jill”

Remember that one of the central aims of both the inner patriarch and the inner matriarch is to prevent all men and all women from enjoying close, positive, grown-up, intimate and peaceful relationships where they can each grow in self awareness and self empowerment as an outcome of the relationship.

In this example the relationship is unlikely to succeed unless Jack and Jill become very aware of their four relationship saboteurs (two inner patriarchs and two inner matriarchs) and can step back and notice when they have taken over and what they are destroying. If both Jack and Jill can just move into self-awareness they will be able to separate themselves from the four toxic battlers and get back to the point where grown-up Jill and Jack were looking when the relationship again.

See the Inner Matriarch  page for a comparison of what is happening for Jack in the same situation and more information on the characteristics of these two destructive characters and to learn how to identify them at work inside you.

See Dealing with Toxic Inner Matriarch and Toxic Inner Patriarch

Learn how you can deal  with your Inner Matriarch by minimising her power over you for ever!

Learn how you can deal  with your Inner Patriarch by minimising his power over you for ever!