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Men often don’t know how to ask for what they really want with a woman, especially when it comes to sex and erotic intimacy. We don’t even know what we really want in the first place because we have so much shame about our desires, and we’ve never been shown how to directly ask in an honorable way. Virtually no one role-models this in our culture.
Because of our shame and programming, we are accustomed to asking for what we think we get rather than asking for what we really want. The fallout of that pattern is that we can never get what we really want. You’ll miss 100% of the goals that you don’t try to make! If we never ask for what we want, it’s just never going to happen. Period.
They [women] intuitively know that he really wants something else, but he doesn’t have the courage—the integrity—to be honest and forthright about his desires.
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As such, we end up living lives based on what we think we can get—which invariably results in lives of mediocre satisfaction and impotent authenticity. We don’t know our true selves, and the people in our lives can’t know the true “me” either.
Women pick up on it. A quintessential example is when a man likes a woman and wants to solicit her, but being ashamed and not knowing how to solicit without offending her he asks for something like “do you want a shoulder massage” rather than “do you want to make out with me.” Women call it “creepy” when a guy asks them if they want a massage. They intuitively know that he really wants something else, but he doesn’t have the courage—the integrity—to be honest and forthright about his desires.
That binds us in chains and poisons our relationships. No wonder almost every woman on earth has a #metoo story and billions of men watch porn. If men can’t ask for what they really want, they have no hope of ever actually satisfying their own desires! That lack of satisfaction in his life is a gateway to resentment, jealousy, hate, and their infinite manifestations as abusive patterns in a relationship.
For me, it was wanting to have a sexual threesome with my wife. I was ashamed of my fantasy. In my wildest dreams, I never thought that she would be up for it. So I ended up in an unhealthy pattern of watching threesome porn alone—living out my fantasy virtually. That built up a resentment in me because I wasn’t able to get what I really wanted in my marriage, and it deprived my wife of really knowing that side of my erotic self and of the option to say yes or no to the idea!
As I built the courage to ask for what I wanted, I also learned how to do it in a way that didn’t pressure her, yet at the same time showed her what was really going on inside of me. That built deeper understanding between us and opened the door to the possibility of my fantasy becoming a reality.
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Learning to ask for what you want demonstrates integrity, but we also need to be able to leave room to hear a “no”. You can’t have one without the other. Both skills are required. It’s about learning to make true invitations rather than veiled demands. It’s about re-training ourselves to take a “no” not as rejection–not meaning that we asked for the wrong thing, but as useful information to navigate our world–taking it as redirection instead of rejection.
The “no” doesn’t me she doesn’t like us or that we asked for the wrong thing. It doesn’t mean that all options are off the table for the rest of the future. It just means that she’s taking care of herself right now. She’s an adult, and would you really want to be in a relationship with someone who isn’t mature enough to take care of themselves anyway?
If we only accept a “hell yes” when we make an invitation, then we are assured that both of us are truly 100% into the invitation.
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It’s about retraining ourselves to say “thank you for taking care of yourself” when someone tells us a “no”. It’s about developing and holding standards where we take anemic “yeses”, “maybes” and silence as a “no” for our own sense of self-worth because we don’t want to do something with someone who isn’t a “hell yes” to doing that thing with us! When we give ourselves permission to simply ask for what we want, we give ourselves the chance to actually build the life of our dreams.
It’s alchemical self-revelation. It builds character to be able to hear a “no” and not take it personally, and when we say “thank you for taking care of yourself” and then drop it that demonstrates to her that we are trustworthy. We aren’t pushing. We aren’t guilting. We aren’t moping or pestering. We just demonstrate our ability to be transparent and authentic without pressure. That shows that we are worthy of trust and empowers her to make up her own mind.
That is the path towards true intimacy of equals. If we only accept a “hell yes” when we make an invitation, then we are assured that both of us are truly 100% into the invitation. No guesswork. Gone are the doubts, “is she really into this?” and “did she just say yes because she feels trapped/obligated/some other emotion?” It allows us to fully and deeply relax into the activity with joyous abandon. In that special space, we can truly experience the lost joy of play and revelry that we experienced as a child.
It’s simple to remember with this little rhyme: “No more guesses, only nos and hell yeses.”
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So give yourself permission to own your desires. Investigate them. Let yourself feel what you really want in your heart of hearts. Then give yourself permission to ask for that, but make sure that you leave her room to say “no”. If she says “no”, then say “thank you for taking care of yourself”, and mean it! You can always follow up and say “if there is anything else or any variation of that that you would be a ‘yes’ to, then please let me know, but otherwise I’ll drop it.”
If you want more help learning these skills then I recommend that you go to a Boundaries & Consent workshop or a Cuddle Party where these skills are taught and practiced in a safe space with a skilled facilitator. Alternatively, you could listen to one of my free online workshop recordings or “how to bring up the hard stuff” tool on my website (see bio below).
Whatever way you do it, learning these skills revolutionizes your ability to achieve satisfaction in your relationships and sex life, and that is a way forward into a better world where fewer women will have a #metoo story to share because you won’t be adding to the problem.
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Photo credit: Getty Images
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Powerful article! Thank you for sharing, Kris!