Here’s a little video on some ideas about the role of pornography in men’s lives, as related to their romantic relationships. I hope you like it. Comments? Questions? What do you think?

Men, Pornography and Relationships

Fields dominated by men are among those that have seen the biggest job losses in this downturn. Yet compared with years ago, many are taking their unemployment in stride.
By Catherine Holahan
MSN Money

There’s a gender gap in this recession, and this time men are on the losing side of it.
The unemployment rate for men is nearly 2 full percentage points higher, at 8.8%, than the rate for women. Before the recession, the jobless rate was virtually the same for both genders: 4.5% for men and 4.6% for women in November 2007.
But now, more than two-thirds of those looking for full-time work are men, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Nearly 70% of the extended layoffs in the final quarter of 2008 affected men.
Men have borne the brunt of job reductions because male-dominated industries are facing the severest contractions, according to the Labor Department.
Construction: One in five workers in this field is unemployed, and more than 95% of those out of work are men, according to the department’s March employment report.
Manufacturing: That same data show that manufacturing jobs — of which nearly 80% are held by men — declined 4.5% from the fourth quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of this year.
Finance: The largely male financial industry cut 260,110 jobs in 2008, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

And there are few signs that these industries are done shrinking: Just last week, banking giant UBS said it would lay off 500 financial advisers.
Meanwhile, industries with predominantly female work forces, such as health care and education, are growing. While nearly every other major industry was laying off workers, education and health services actually added about 8,000 jobs in February and March.
Reflections on the Depression era
The last time the U.S. dealt with such a large gender gap in unemployment was during the Great Depression. During that time, suicide rates for men hit an all-time high, as many unemployed men felt their sense of purpose and identity undermined by their inability to fulfill their traditional provider role. The suicide rate peaked at 17 per 100,000 population during the Depression. It is now around 11 per 100,000 and hasn’t increased in recent years.
But there’s reason to believe that men have become much more resilient about job losses. In the 70 years since the Depression, the male identity has become less tied to that of sole family provider. That’s partly due to the large number of women who help support their families. More than 40% of households now have two wage-earners.
“The idea of being a provider is the bedrock experience of American masculinity . . . but the fact that most of these men are in two-career couples will mute some of the possible depressing elements of their unemployment,” says Michael Kimmel, an author and sociologist at New York state’s Stony Brook University.
Changing attitudes toward family life and employment are also mitigating the disappointment associated with a job loss. Whereas before identity was closely tied to career or a role in the home, Kimmel says, now both men and women have a broader idea of what defines them. Jobs, family roles, hobbies and talents all now contribute to self-identity.

Today’s men are more resilient
The day Bjorn Eriksen was laid off, he went straight to a bar. A portfolio manager for Washington Mutual, Eriksen saw the cuts coming long before the official announcement in January. Still, the warning didn’t erase the shock of actually receiving the news. Eriksen, 27, hadn’t lost just a high-powered banking job. He had lost everything that went along with it: the influence, the status, the salary.
But Eriksen didn’t go to the pub to wallow in self-pity or shame. He went to talk about his newfound joblessness with other unemployed friends and former co-workers. A few days later, he found himself hanging out in a Seattle coffee shop, again chatting with other unemployed guys about their situations.
“I think some of the stigma is gone,” says Eriksen, who admits he was initially concerned that he would be viewed as a guy who couldn’t take care of himself, let alone provide for a family or take a woman out to someplace nice. “If you meet someone who is unemployed, you have something to immediately talk about. . . . It’s almost like a little club.”

Read the rest of the article here:

There’s plenty of reasons to be commitment phobic if you’re a guy: afraid of losing your freedom, wanting to hold onto youth and your wildness, fear of intimacy, not wanting to have children, and on and on.

For evey guy, there might be new reason not to commit. Some guys I have talked to about fear of commitment talk about the fact that they are in a relationship that’s not really for them to begin with. I know that guys sometimes have very good reasons for not wanting to commit. It’s possible that the relationship is not fulfilling to them in some way, but that they have quieted and suppresed their voice of dissent, the voice that is telling them that their relationship is not really what they want.

Guys are afraid of devastating their woman if they break up with her. This may seem like care, and I’m sure it truly is, but not breaking up with someone because you’re “too afraid to crush” your woman by ending the relationship is not doing justice to her, or themself. Real care for your mate is being honest with yourself and with her.

Men are also afraid that if they get into a relationship, that things are going to be so different, because they’ll lose their voice and lose their old, former self. This doesn’t have to be the case. Nobody ever said that because you get married, you give yourself up to boring and complacent. You can if you want to, but it’s a choice. Usually, the mental fantasy of how it will be when “we’re married” is an excuse to become phobic of being in a relationship.

Some guys purely don’t want to grow up. They want to go out, drink, carouse with women, and do what they want to do. Most of the time, unless your girlfriend or fiancee is o.k. with you staying out all night and stumbling home drunk, sleeping with other women, and doing whatever the hell you want to do, it’s hard to be a guy that wants to have his cake and eat it, too. It’s selfish, and irresponsible, and doesn’t create a satisfying relationship for either party.

I am going into the studio in the next couple of weeks to record “The Guy’s Airbag: A Relationship Pre-Crash Course.” Here the gist:

What if you had an airbag for your relationship? What if when things went really wrong, or even as a safety measure against a crash, you had solid skills and tools designed to help you ? I picked this title because I want to help you prevent a fatal relationship. I see them all the time.

All too often, men and couples come to counseling after they’ve been through what amounts to an auto accident in their marriage or relationship, and never had the skills and tools to know how to keep it alive.

Maybe the relationship is on life support, or maybe an affair has damaged a marriage to the point of irreconcilable differences.  Everything seems to be held together by a string, and it didn’t used to be this way. 

Worse, I see men start new relationships with the same faulty thinking that got them into trouble the first time. Maybe you know somebody like this. Maybe this is about you.

So, is it true? Is your self-critic running your life? 

I’ve found that one of the biggest problems that smart, successful men deal with is their own self-critic. Guys with loud self critics never feel satisfied, need to feel in control most of the time, and in their hearts, don’t feel good enough or like they measure up to others’ standards. Even though they have accomplished a lot in their lives and in their professions, they still somehow feel like they fall short.

The self-critic is critical of self and others, always strives for perfection and unreasonable accomplishment, and is never at ease and satisfied with itself. It needs to keep pushing, and getting to “more.”

Consequently, it can be the source of a lot of stress, anger and insecurity, which will inevitably create problems on the job, in relationships, and in our own skin. It is the epicenter of a lot of the problems that you may be experiencing.

So, how can I help you to quiet this overly aggressive self-critic? Together, we’ll:

• Learn about your unique self-critic, and see how it works and runs parts of your life
• Figure out how to stop feeling less successful than other people
• Learn how to still accomplish and get stuff done, without the loud self-critic making it worse
• Understand the role of anger in your self-critic, and use it to better transform your critic
• Feel more in control, and stop feeling out of control
• Get less feedback from your woman about being controlling of her and the things that she does
• Create easier and deeper relationships for yourself

I invite you to make an appointment with me to work on your self-critic. Call me now at 602.309.0568.

- Jason

(This article I wrote also appears in the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix, October 10th edition)

Every good general has a battle plan, and, if you’re like my former self, you’ve spent enough time alone waiting for the right date to come around. My friend Jay used to call me the hardest-working dater he knew. (Now I have bestowed that title on him.)

Although I really wasn’t sure how to feel about that honor, I did learn volumes about the dating process, and about myself, in the experiences that I had before I found success. Although there are forces that are sometimes beyond our control (the mysterious and cosmic powers of chemistry, for example), there are things that you can do in preparation for getting a date to improve your chances of finding the partner that you want.

What is essential to consider is this: Do you know exactly who you are looking for? Could you write a fictional profile of the woman that you are looking for, down to the name of her dog and her favorite flavor of ice cream? This may seem extreme, but until you have honed and refined your ideal mate, you widen the gap and allow for a lot of ambiguity and indecision to flow in. What you’re doing is creating the idea of your mate in your mind. Take some time to consider this invitation to create a profile of the woman you want. Identify her personality traits, values, physical features, professional aspirations and hobbies or interests - everything that you can think of. I’ll bet that when you put your ideas on paper, you’ll find out much more than you thought you would, and the results may surprise you.

Second, how is your networking “presence”? Do you set yourself up to meet as many ideal women as you can? The Internet - whether that’s JDate, Match.com or any other Web site - can be a great tool, but if that’s the only place you’re looking, you’re limiting yourself. Once you have done the first step of writing your profile, you’ll familiarize yourself with the places and settings where your ideal date will be, whether that’s at a film club, at Papago Park doing some hiking or at a yoga class. (Hint: Guys, go do yoga right now - if you’re not already. You’ll get a great workout, find tranquillity and meet women all at once).

Third, and this is important because it’s the hardest, how will you convey interest in her when you meet her socially? Will you walk the plank and take the risk of approaching her when you find her?

I will share with you my philosophy about kamikaze dating: Act fearless and summon the strength to go over to her even though your fear tells you not to (the girls without the wedding bands, of course). Your kamikaze mantra will become this: “There is nothing that I can say or do now that will kill me,” to borrow from Friedrich Nietzsche.

Unless you are a total bumbling idiot and drool or speak incoherently, she will appreciate your summoning the strength to go over to her, even if she doesn’t show interest back. Let me ask you this way: Do you want to live with the regret of not approaching her and the fantasy of “what if it did happen?” What could you be missing out on because you colluded with the fear inside of yourself instead of taking the risk?

For those less brazen souls, be everywhere you can where there is the possibility of meeting someone special. Don’t be shy if you really want it, and if you want it, you need to place yourself where you have better odds. Being at home obviously lowers the odds quite a bit more than being out where your date will be.

Next article, we’ll talk about how to create success while on “The Date” itself, and how to get her interested in you and on your side in no time. Stay tuned.

For the guys, I want to help communicate for you those things that are creating fighting and problems in your relationship. For the girls, I want to help you understand your guy, and what he is needing, as to give you an insider’s edge. Here goes.

1. Wants to be loved: You’re not too different from her, I know. This idea doesn’t run rampant in our culture, which says that we need sex, beer and football, which is crazy. I know that you need to know that you are loved, special and important to her, and that she communicates this to you.

2. To be admired: I know you want her to think highly of you. Remember why you tried out for your high school baseball team in the first place? Yes, it was to impress the girls. As adults, we still have that same need to impress our women. We want to know that she is admiring and swooning at us and our achievements and accomplishments, whether that’s being a good dad, employee or husband. So important.

3. Sex with you: Ladies, yes, he does want to have sex with you, and why should this even be on the list. A no-brainer. But, he also needs intimacy and affection from you, in the same way that you do, too. Guys are emotional beings, and don’t let any article form MSN or the like tell you that that is not the case.

4. Validation: A little different from admiration, validation is needed by guys to know that they are doing right by you. That’s it. I think that guys fear angering their partners, so a little verbal validation will help keep your relationship on track and show him when he’s doing a good job. Plus, it’s a great behavioral modification tool, so he’ll know when he does good and when he doesn’t do so good.

So, these are some things that guys do want, whether or not they are said. We’re not just limited to strictly what the media has to say about us. Believe it or not, we’re quite dynamic and emotional beings. And, no, this conversation doesn’t go past this blog post. I promise.

Check out this related post on why men cheat:

http://phoenixmenscounseling.com/blog/2008/09/30/why-men-cheat/

Jason

So you aren’t sure if you want this relationship. OK. Maybe it’s been really great for a while, and now you’re just not sure. You know you’re confused, that’s for sure. And you think you want to stay with this girl, but, damn, there comes the confusion again. OK. You’re sure that that you want it now – the times got good again! Oh, wait, uhh, maybe it’s going bad again…. you just have no idea, and you are driving both of you crazy.

Here’s what I think: something else is going on (you’re thinking, yes, Jason, of course it is). Here’s some (oversimplified) explanations that might point you in the right direction and help lower your immediate confusion. These tips/ideas are by no means a quick fix, and understanding where you are stuck will take some time and work to unravel (preferably in men’s counseling). But, it’s a beginning to bring your sanity back.

One: maybe you’re afraid to commit to her. The stereotype that men are afraid to commit in an intimate relationship has some truth, and, although I shy away from stereotypes (especially about me), this one may have some truth to it. Is this you? You may not know the answer to this, except to know that when you get closer in your relationships, you freak out and either directly (or more likely, indirectly) “plug out” or “check out” of your relationship.

Two: you do really know what you want, and it’s not with her. Except you’re too afraid to be alone, and the mere idea of being with the loneliness could keep you in your relationship, even though you don’t want to be in it at all. It’s “sustained comfort,” and you can have this is you want. But it’s fear that is motivating you, and you’re not taking responsibility for your own happiness, and not allowing your beloved the chance to get on with her life and meet someone else.

Three: You’re scared of not meeting someone again (or someone like her). It took you this long to meet her, and the idea that it will take you all that time again is really overwhelming to you.

Four: You have messages from the past about saving your relationship, or not being a kind of person that ends a relationship. The thought of it is incompatible with your idealized image of yourself. You don’t see yourself as someone to end this relationship, help it, or make it grow. You stay trapped in the relationship, and in indecision.

Taken further, some guys then stay stuck in the relationship, and then do stupid stuff and push their girl away, so that she is forced into ending it. And then you don’t look like the bad guy, because she ended it. If you’re doing this, get in here right now and see me. That’s just passive-aggressive behavior, and you need some help communicating yourself clearly and directly.

So, these are some ways that guys stay in relationships, and really don’t want to be there. Let’s talk if one of these things defines the way you do relationships.

- Jason