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It just hit me lately, how much we as men, myself included, can turn to sex and affection to soothe our souls, and in doing so, deplete our own masculine mojo from its natural beauty and power.
I’ve always craved sex and affection, always figured it was a natural healthy part of intimate relationships, and it is. There’s no inherent problem with sex and affection. Both are awesome when experienced in a healthy dynamic, in a healthy relationship. The problems happen when sex and affection are used to self-soothe your own soul, even when you don’t realise you’re doing it.
In the moment, especially for men, sex and affection can feel great. They can mask the soul ache, the pain, the discomfort, the loneliness, the emptiness you feel because you haven’t tended to your own backyard, your own soul.
The trouble is, they are not solutions for this problem. If a man is to soothe his soul, he needs to come from a deeper place within himself, before he turns to affection and sex to make himself feel good.
By turning to, or grabbing for, or desperately longing for sex and affection, you become like a little boy who needs his Mum. It gets creepy when you’re talking about a 51-year-old man. That was me, as much as I HATE to admit it. I’ve done a lot of work on myself, and figured this was not me. It’s downright UNATTRACTIVE to a healthy woman.
Whilst a man can seem to feel good in the moment during sex and affection, even if his own soul is a mess, for most women, it is repulsive. It turns them off. Granted, after the act, the man goes back to feeling the same as he was before, and quite often worse.
So what I am learning (too often the hard way) to be a man and to get my mojo back is that I need to spend time with myself to go deep into myself. Stop grabbing for the external validation of sex and affection just to make myself feel better, to mask the problem.
I need to go out and take a walk, go for a ride, meditate, listen to music, swim, sit in the question of what is actually troubling me, and learn the art of self-soothing. Learn what’s mine to own, and to release. And I’m not talking about masturbation either, though that can also become an external source of unhealthy self-soothing.
As men’s coach Steve Horsmon has been teaching for a long time, and I didn’t really get it until recently, I need to first come from a place of joy, happiness, contentment, sexual energy, rather than try and ‘get there’, especially with someone else.
I just didn’t know how to do it.
So I’ve committed myself to myself. I’ve downloaded a meditation series, I am going to the gym, I am walking the dog by myself, reading more, doing ‘my own’ thing. I am learning to search within before I go grabbing from without.
I’m learning that to be in a healthy relationship, I first need to be in a healthy relationship with myself.
It’s a long game. It’s challenging. It requires you to ‘show’ up’. It’s not going to be easy, but I simply must do this if I am to grow and be the man I know is within me.
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Photo credit: Pixabay
Good one Steve, well said, and not heard enough yet in the male subculture. Thanks for your sharing and please continue. thanks, Bob