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The urge to procreate, now here’s a powerful energy. It’s in everything alive, irrepressibly pushing to become newer versions of Life. Nature’s desire brings our awareness to our bodies, our imaginations, other bodies. The push to connect, to make more life happens in everything from bugs to flowers to whales. Creation uses all living forms to make more and more. You have to use it because it is what you are. Creation.
What does this have to do with you and your son’s sexual identity? This isn’t about whether or your son is gay, trans, masculine, a hunk, a nerd, tall, handsome. It’s about growing his self-appreciation without sexual activity as a standard.
While boys and teens are figuring out their place in the world, nature’s drive to procreate can confuse the issue of conceiving and raising children with self-worth. The confusion doesn’t happen by itself. Our sons are learning from us and all the other males and females in their lives.
What value do you hold for yourself apart from your sexuality? How do you value the sexual urge in your sons’eyes?
The societal ego uses sex drive to stimulate thoughts, feelings, and hormones in every imaginable medium. In all these advertisements sexual activity is assumed to be proof of our importance. Your son is being taught by society that he is not good enough unless he is being sexual.
Sexual success can be a dangerous way for men to seek value. Beyond pregnancy and STDs looms the specter of identity confusion. Our sons are in peril of taking sexual success into marriage as a standard that ruins relationships.
If she chooses me, I’m important. When she doesn’t choose me, I’m no longer valuable. I’ve lost my identity. She’s selfish, unfair.
Because sex can become THE most important identity activity in a man’s life, it’s important for fathers to balance the issue with their words and actions.
In human males, an interest in sex can arise at any time. We don’t have the clear signs which animals in nature experience, that mating season is happening, and then it’s over. This steady drive for sexual acceptance is part of a larger male process, self-identification. Our sons’ identities are dancing with a culture invested in them believing that without sex they are worthless.
Self-image, who we are, what we are, what we’re supposed to be, is learned. Subtly as we grew from boys to men, we absorbed and accepted sexual union—from kissing to intercourse—as a way of proving we were ‘manly’. Bragging about sexual activities can be a very clear claim to power for males. This question I’m asking likely challenges your own sex-dependent value. How comfortable are you prepared to be when your partner is inevitably not interested?
Fathers, Sons, and the Power of Sex
Your interest in being a good father is strong enough to weather misusing the creative urge. Ask yourself now, “Do I want my son’s self-confidence to depend on whether he has sex when he desires it?” Or is there something bigger, better.
What do you want your son to teach your grandsons?
The integrity and self-value in you is why you’re still reading this. Take a breath in and out and let your awareness of this integrity be your focus. Feel the power of your ability to choose your own identity, to choose for yourself which values you use in your life and family.
Dads and Moms and Sex
Considering our sexual identity is important because it strongly influences our relationships and the politics of sexual intimacy with our partners. As bearers of sacred masculine energy, we run the risk of letting sexual accomplishment become more important than loving our wives, which in turn means loving sex more than we love our children. This can take place inside or outside our homes.
You don’t have to go out looking for another partner to endanger your own self-image. You can do it right at home. If you don’t monitor your thoughts and feelings, a word or touch or media ad can easily lead to conflict.
New fathers, get ready.
When the first child arrives can be a difficult time for fathers. Mothers with new children face demands for attention, physical and emotional, which haven’t been there before. Soon fathers feel a shift out of the center of their wives’ attention. The habit of feeling good about yourself because you have had sexual contact is going to be challenged.
Is my sexual satisfaction more important than my children’s emotional health?
When our mental self-valuing centers on sexual connections as more important than our emotional connections with our children, trouble is sure to follow. Resentment of a new baby, which can happen very easily, will be felt by your spouse as a threat.
The pleasure which draws us to sex, physical and emotional, can be a confusing experience unless we find other ways to feel connected. Do we as fathers drop our commitment to being our families’ protectors and providers because our wives aren’t interested in sex?
Men are taught to be tough from the time we are boys. Here’s the acid test. The next time you are lost in lust and she isn’t, do something for her. Pay attention to that demanding energy and look for a way to give yourself to her rather than getting her to give herself to you.
This lesson of giving ourselves, valuing ourselves beyond our sexual urges is a way of teaching our sons to be good fathers. We can show them how to let go of a future only we desire, and share compassion with their mothers.
All this leads back to your son’s sexual identity. Is he, will he depend on sex for his value? Are you living tenderness and intimacy without sex? Will your grandchildren grow in an environment where the sacred mystery of sex is just one of the countless ways of valuing ourselves in the world?
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