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The #MeToo movement is empowering women but may be confusing some of us men, especially in the realm of dating and intimacy. How can we be sure we are acting with integrity and respect? How do we know that our words and actions are being taken at face value?
When it comes to dating and relationships, we men wonder about the role we should be playing. Should we be strong and supportive? Sensitive and passive? What’s the real gist of it all? You should be who you really are and stop playing roles.
Men Need to Be Men
I have seen an all-too-common misconception going around that men are either the sexual predators we’ve been hearing about in the news, or the sensitive, new-age guy “SNAG” who is more emotional than his partner. These are two extremes on a continuum and neither is an accurate depiction of what we are as men. Let’s break this down and simplify things.
What this world really needs is more men being true to who you really are. A man who is kind, caring, desires sex, and at the same time be willing to have a woman’s back.
Today, too many men don’t have role models for how to be a true man. The difficulty is rooted in our perception and separation of what is supposedly a man and what supposedly isn’t. The conversation we really need to be having is this: Men are not wrong for being men. We are a needed gift in this world. A true man gets to be everything that he is, where he gets to look in the mirror in the morning and like the person looking back at him. Where he is honoring himself and everything that he is while also honoring everyone around him, especially those with whom he is in a relationship.
Getting Out of Need
What if you no longer had to focus on how wrong you were? What if you didn’t have to fix anything or try to figure out what to improve to have a better relationship?
Oftentimes, we associate intimacy with sex or intimate relationships, yet most of the time, intimacy is not about sex at all. It’s actually about caring, kindness, presence, vulnerability, and generosity that allows you to be with others. The only way to really have intimacy is to be real and transparent; the only way to be transparent is to be yourself.
Intimacy and need are two very different things. Intimacy is about closeness, togetherness, total kindness, and total caring. Need is self-focused and self-appreciating. The elements that create the energy of intimacy are honor, trust, vulnerability, allowance, and gratitude.
In order to invite intimacy into your life and into your relationships, you have to let go of the BS. You have to refrain from putting on a front or trying to be someone you’re not in order to impress others. Try it; try just being real with those around you.
When you realize that putting on a front is actually a total hindrance to your relationships—and you let people see who you really are—you create a space of being and a space of communion with everything and everyone around. In a way, nobody needs to be seen as wrong anymore. Nobody needs to be separated from, and nobody needs to be judged.
Including you, including your body, and including anything else that has any physical and energetic structure. None of it has to be judged or separated anymore.
Getting into Intimacy
It doesn’t matter what the level of that relationship is—whether it’s a friend, family member, co-worker or partner—when you have real, unabashed intimacy, all the need for approval goes away. All the need of having to have someone goes away. All the need of having anyone as a completion of you goes away.
The beautiful part about that is when the need to be fulfilled or completed is gone, then the possibilities can show up in your world with much ease.
You’re invited to a different possibility for your life and the world. One where you can get out of need and into intimacy with you!
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This post has been republished to Medium.
Photo by Drew Hays on Unsplash