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For decades, many of the teachings I have heard on the topic of sex have revolved around the idea that “men need sex to connect and women need to connect to have sex.” This, along with biological statistics of different arousal times, and seemingly opposing ages of when men and women are in their prime, has continued to promote an almost futile belief in our abilities to truly get along and be fulfilled with each other.
There are countless studies that show how necessary physical contact and emotional connections are to our well-being, and yet we live in a society that makes those things increasingly difficult to attain. On top of that, there can be so much shame and guilt associated with sex, based on arbitrary moral implications, and the absence of any sort of deep education and instruction, that our collective divide just widens. If you are reading this and thinking, “that’s not me, I am completely satisfied and so are my partners,” then great! And if this resonates, and you want to know more, read on.
I have been fortunate to know many great teachers within the sexual empowerment community and have spent more than 30 years exploring this topic on my own, and the unfortunate truth is that most of us humans here, on this planet, know very little about how we function and feel hopeless in regards to changing that. Instead of being an expression of intimacy, creativity, union, partnership and greater potential, sex has become a tool to get-off, release stress and of course, make babies. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with getting off, releasing stress, and making babies, however, there is more available if you so desire that. The majority of women I speak with say that they desire more. From the men, I generally hear a resigned sense of, “this is good enough.” There is nothing “wrong” with men because of this, by the way; in my experience, this speaks more to societal and cultural programming—the idea that men just need food and sex to be good, which is true at a base level. Many of us, however, desire and are capable of more.
Women have goddess circles, yoni eggs, embodiment retreats and self-love practices that are encouraged and considered “normal.” Men, on the other hand, have . . . porn.
Men are taught that a woman’s entire body and her mind are erogenous zones. Yet, for the most part, we are taught that a man’s genitals are the only place he requires attention. Fortunately for me, I discovered a sensual massage video tape hidden in my dad’s dresser drawer long before I watched my first pornographic movie. I saw men and women giving and receiving pleasure with an intimate massage.
Another element of my “education” came from having been raised in a house where my grandmother and mother both watched the soap opera, “Days of Our Lives.” Admittedly, I got hooked on the show, and as a result, watched example after example of romance and seduction—albeit, most of the storylines demonstrated seduction being used for manipulative purposes, but it was something that many women were tuning in to be entertained.
While all of this served me in my intimate relationships with women, I still had an inner-conflict in attempting to “do what women wanted,” versus “doing it the way men are ‘supposed’ to.” Even though I tended to focus on my partners’ pleasure more than my own, my lack of connection to myself and my own deeper sense of masculinity, had me not show up fully and powerfully. As a result, experiences would end up being unfulfilling for me because I was so focused on “doing a job” and measuring my success based on her response, that I was rarely feeling any kind of pleasure. What I did not yet know was that some self-exploration needed to occur, and that integrating it with what I already knew, especially if approached from a place of “being,” was going to make the difference.
I believe most of us men look for the “thing” that works and we stick with it; we look for techniques to trigger those “pleasure spots” on a woman that we know exist. Once we find those spots, or discover something she really likes, we keep doing those same things over and over again; which can not only get boring for both, but also does not allow for the fact that we are living, breathing creatures who do not always feel that same way from day to day or moment to moment. The opposite approach is also problematic, in which we think we have to keep changing it up, switching positions and impress her with our acrobatics, to the point where she cannot even get into a flow. What are we supposed to do then? Consider that, it is not about “doing” anything, it is about “who you are being.”
Are you being present?
Are you being intentional?
Are you being sensual?
Are you being powerful?
From this place of being, where is your focus?
Are you focused on you?
Are you focused on your partner?
Or are you focused on what is being created by your merger? The merger of not only your bodies, but of your energy, your breath, and your focus.
How do you become present, intentional, sensual and powerful? By getting in touch, literally and figuratively, with yourself. Not in the ways we are used to, however, but in ways that become a practice of exploration. There are many studies that link the excessive use of porn to problems in the bedroom. I am not a “porn is evil” kind of guy as I think there is a time and place for everything and that watching videos can help us discover what we like and don’t like. It is well-documented that some of the negative side-effects include creating unreasonable expectations of how sex is “supposed” to go, unreasonable expectations for how we are “supposed” to look and some very potentially harmful depictions of what is pleasurable—and this does not even take into consideration the videos that depict torture and humiliation. Consider that when we masturbate to these images repetitively, we begin to associate our arousal and performance with what we are viewing, thus programming ourselves to only be turned on by specific scenarios—and not turned on by real-life partners.
Setting porn aside, we also tend to masturbate in ways that desensitize us, causing more issues. From my experience though, it is not that we masturbate, it is how we masturbate that makes the difference. Most men I speak with have had the same approach that I did for years: our main focus was on our orgasm, and the quicker the better. Because we tend to want to get to that point quickly, and because much of what we see in porn is hard and fast, our self-pleasure has required a whole lot of friction—which not only desensitizes us physically, but is not usually the most pleasurable approach for our partners. Of course, there is a time and place for everything, and I am not saying “hard and fast” is bad, but performance issues can arise when this is the only way one believes they can experience and maintain arousal, and get to the point of orgasm.
What is the solution? Slow down and take some real time for yourself. Get interested in how you feel and what your body feels like in the spaces in-between feeling turned-on and your orgasm. And breathe. As we begin to take time to discover what else feels good to us, as we explore our own bodies and find other areas we like to feel touched, and as we learn to direct our breath into those areas, we become present. When we can bring that presence to our partners, they experience more of us by who we are being, not by what we are doing.
What if you slowed down with your partner, made your sex more of a meditation together and got into the flow of how you are moving and feeling together? This is the space of blowing her mind, and yours. This is the space where you may even discover your deeper sense of purpose in the world.
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