Communication, relationships and sex
Life is relationships …. with our parents, with our community and environment, at work and leisure, with friends and lovers, with our children. Relationships are a main source of learning, pleasure and satisfaction. They are also sometimes a source of deep pain. We men are often accused of being distant or invasive.
Of course we feel needs to relate but can struggle to understand or express these needs and emotions. We do our best to explain but feel misunderstood and unsatisfied, … then we feel that we are somehow also to blame for the misunderstandings and hurt that unfold.
To have healthy relationships we firstly need to get away from the concept of blame.
We all learn our basic styles of communication and relating early in our infancy with our primary carers. We are not responsible for this so are totally innocent in our incapacity to communicate or relate clearly. However we do have a learned neurotic style of relating that we need to become aware of if we want to improve our relationships. What kind of responses did we get when we cried or expressed our needs? What messages did we receive about boys, our emotions, our bodies and our needs? Who responded and how? Did we feel understood and accompanied? When and how did we feel invaded, … by whom? What myths did we learn about how to get love and acceptance? How and when did we feel abandoned, … by whom? How did the adults communicate and relate between themselves?
Our early experiences of these kinds of essential issues will have constructed our roles and ways of relating. For example some of the roles that show up in our groups are: the good boy, the care taker, the practical resolver, the entertainer, the charismatic, the sporty, the bad boy, the intellectual (nerd), the silent stoic, … In childhood we take on these roles and styles as ways of surviving and trying to receive love and acceptance, so we are not to blame for this. Each of these roles will have its set of beliefs, fears, behaviours, …. to support an image of ‘what I have to do to get love and acceptance’. Each role has its strengths and limitations, it can be attractive or irritating, it can communicate or confuse.
Whilst all of these roles, beliefs and behaviours will surely engage some others in some kinds of relationship - a dependence on one role or style of communication will be limiting and can never lead to healthy and fulfilling relationships.
Of course we feel needs to relate but can struggle to understand or express these needs and emotions. We do our best to explain but feel misunderstood and unsatisfied, … then we feel that we are somehow also to blame for the misunderstandings and hurt that unfold.
To have healthy relationships we firstly need to get away from the concept of blame.
We all learn our basic styles of communication and relating early in our infancy with our primary carers. We are not responsible for this so are totally innocent in our incapacity to communicate or relate clearly. However we do have a learned neurotic style of relating that we need to become aware of if we want to improve our relationships. What kind of responses did we get when we cried or expressed our needs? What messages did we receive about boys, our emotions, our bodies and our needs? Who responded and how? Did we feel understood and accompanied? When and how did we feel invaded, … by whom? What myths did we learn about how to get love and acceptance? How and when did we feel abandoned, … by whom? How did the adults communicate and relate between themselves?
Our early experiences of these kinds of essential issues will have constructed our roles and ways of relating. For example some of the roles that show up in our groups are: the good boy, the care taker, the practical resolver, the entertainer, the charismatic, the sporty, the bad boy, the intellectual (nerd), the silent stoic, … In childhood we take on these roles and styles as ways of surviving and trying to receive love and acceptance, so we are not to blame for this. Each of these roles will have its set of beliefs, fears, behaviours, …. to support an image of ‘what I have to do to get love and acceptance’. Each role has its strengths and limitations, it can be attractive or irritating, it can communicate or confuse.
Whilst all of these roles, beliefs and behaviours will surely engage some others in some kinds of relationship - a dependence on one role or style of communication will be limiting and can never lead to healthy and fulfilling relationships.
Sex
The idea that men just think about one thing is not quite accurate but it can guide our exploration. When we are charged up with sexual tension or desire then it certainly takes over, seeming to need discharge as soon as possible, but there is more to this. Prostitutes report that men often want just to talk and be held as much as actual sex. Couples often report that it is the male partner who loses their sexual desire first. In our groups and therapy men themselves talk about this impulse of desire to have sex with any good looking person they see, .... other than their partner.
As we investigate this charge or tension of desire it seems that the prostitutes are quite right, men really need and want intimacy and love but don't know how to find it. This emotional need and tension is projected into sex ... it is easier to find a way of ejaculating (discharge of tension) than it is to find intimacy and love. But sex and ejaculating without the love is usually unsatisfying, there is a pleasurable discharge of tension but then an anti-climax. Since the real need for deep intimacy is not satisfied then this leads to the addiction to sex, repeated unsatisfactory discharges.
Alongside these needs for love, intimacy and discharge of stress we are now in a culture where the pornographic exploitation of women has been normalised. This normalises the concept of women as sex object and receptacle for the discharge of men's needs and tensions. Young men and women grow up imagining that this is normal and what we have to aspire to in our relationships. This is deeply damaging to both women and men leading to perversion of our intimate relationships, dissatisfaction, isolation and violence.
Some other issues around sex that often arise in our men's groups and therapy include:
Co-dependence - mutual destruction
When we relate unconsciously from our learned neurotic style we will find that we repeat the same experiences that we had in infancy and early childhood. We will play the same roles throughout life. It will be what attracts certain kinds of friends and lovers and it will be the same communication style that loses friends and breaks relationships. It does not work for us but we are dependent on this role and its methods. This leads us into unconsciously co-dependent and finally destructive relationships. We don't know how to do it differently - it rules our lives from the unconscious.
In many relationships we have the initial attraction which gradually falls away as we come up against the reality of our neurotic limitations. We expect and hope that the other person should meet our needs and make us happy in all the ways that we do not know how to care for ourselves. We blame them and find that the relationship steadily deteriorates. In my case I took on the role of caring for everyone else, negating my own needs. This seemed to work up to a certain point but since I was negating my own feelings and needs then others could not see or hear me properly, much less care for my needs. I got caught in frustrating co-dependent relationships with people wanting me to be a father/mother figure, to take care of them, whilst I felt abandoned.
Finding Intimacy
Healthy communication and intimacy are about being fully present, knowing ourselves and taking care of ourselves. When we understand the early roles and communication styles we took on in our infancy and early childhood then it is easier to see how these affect our current relationships. The first essential healing relationship is with the 'self', with this infantile role we adopted in all innocence. As we are able to find love and intimacy for this inner hurt child then we are more able to relax into intimacy with others.
The idea that men just think about one thing is not quite accurate but it can guide our exploration. When we are charged up with sexual tension or desire then it certainly takes over, seeming to need discharge as soon as possible, but there is more to this. Prostitutes report that men often want just to talk and be held as much as actual sex. Couples often report that it is the male partner who loses their sexual desire first. In our groups and therapy men themselves talk about this impulse of desire to have sex with any good looking person they see, .... other than their partner.
As we investigate this charge or tension of desire it seems that the prostitutes are quite right, men really need and want intimacy and love but don't know how to find it. This emotional need and tension is projected into sex ... it is easier to find a way of ejaculating (discharge of tension) than it is to find intimacy and love. But sex and ejaculating without the love is usually unsatisfying, there is a pleasurable discharge of tension but then an anti-climax. Since the real need for deep intimacy is not satisfied then this leads to the addiction to sex, repeated unsatisfactory discharges.
Alongside these needs for love, intimacy and discharge of stress we are now in a culture where the pornographic exploitation of women has been normalised. This normalises the concept of women as sex object and receptacle for the discharge of men's needs and tensions. Young men and women grow up imagining that this is normal and what we have to aspire to in our relationships. This is deeply damaging to both women and men leading to perversion of our intimate relationships, dissatisfaction, isolation and violence.
Some other issues around sex that often arise in our men's groups and therapy include:
- Doubts about our virility, size of penis, lack of sexual desire, desire but unable to keep it up, ....
- desire for pornography, prostitutes, under-age girls, ....
- Sex with my partner has become boring. I want to try something different but don't know how to talk about it, ...
- questions and doubts about our sexuality, "am I gay, bi, trans, ....?" I don't know what I am. Am I a failure?
- I love my partner but I'm having an exciting affair, I want to stop but can't, .....
- I want to leave my partner for my lover but we have children and I don't want to lose them ...
- I am the father of daughters .... I don't know how to manage their emerging sexuality
- I am the father of sons .... I don't know how to manage their emerging sexuality
- I still feel guilty about the sexual games we played as children. Am I an abuser?
- Masturbation - should I? is it bad for my health? I can't stop. Letting go of the guilt. Finding a really deep orgasm.
Co-dependence - mutual destruction
When we relate unconsciously from our learned neurotic style we will find that we repeat the same experiences that we had in infancy and early childhood. We will play the same roles throughout life. It will be what attracts certain kinds of friends and lovers and it will be the same communication style that loses friends and breaks relationships. It does not work for us but we are dependent on this role and its methods. This leads us into unconsciously co-dependent and finally destructive relationships. We don't know how to do it differently - it rules our lives from the unconscious.
In many relationships we have the initial attraction which gradually falls away as we come up against the reality of our neurotic limitations. We expect and hope that the other person should meet our needs and make us happy in all the ways that we do not know how to care for ourselves. We blame them and find that the relationship steadily deteriorates. In my case I took on the role of caring for everyone else, negating my own needs. This seemed to work up to a certain point but since I was negating my own feelings and needs then others could not see or hear me properly, much less care for my needs. I got caught in frustrating co-dependent relationships with people wanting me to be a father/mother figure, to take care of them, whilst I felt abandoned.
Finding Intimacy
Healthy communication and intimacy are about being fully present, knowing ourselves and taking care of ourselves. When we understand the early roles and communication styles we took on in our infancy and early childhood then it is easier to see how these affect our current relationships. The first essential healing relationship is with the 'self', with this infantile role we adopted in all innocence. As we are able to find love and intimacy for this inner hurt child then we are more able to relax into intimacy with others.