Sex, like other things, couldn’t be fundamentally different for guys and girls. Sure, the act is the same, the fun’s the same, and it’s an (ideally) satisfying experience for both. What could be so different?

Women have sexual needs that are different from guys. For a lot of women, sex provides a connection to their partner. They want the emotional contact, something men don’t often prioritize as a top reason for getting down.

Connection is not a word often associated with a man’s vocabulary; it is, on the other hand, integral to a woman’s. Sexual contact and connection is an expression of greater emotional and relationship intimacy and connection, which a lot of couples don’t have in their everyday lives. For men who find it difficult to understand the needs of women to connect, sex is a vehicle for that intimacy. Using sexual intimacy as a starting point to develop more “global” relationship intimacy is a great step.

Love is interconnected with sex for some women; having sex is an expression of love. This is an important point for guys. Understanding that regular sexual contact for women is a way that you’re expressing your love – or at least interest – in your woman is important for relationship development.

What can I do to boost up my sexual game for the long term, you may ask? Sure, new sex positions and “date night” are helpful. Carving out time for sex is important for many couples, especially busy ones and couples with children.

Here’s 7 suggestions for a deeper sex life with your partner:

• Try enjoying the process of sex – not the goal (orgasm) – and see what happens that’s different.
• Spend one time just asking what she wants. Ask where she likes you to be, what she likes you to do, and generally work on being more present to what she wants from you.
• Work on developing eye contact. Women love this. They’ll get that sense of connection we talked about.
• Talk about your fears of sex, or other past situations that have been troublesome for you. Everyone has holdups and fears around sex – it’s highly vulnerable. Try communicating those to your partner, if you feel comfortable. If your fears create intimacy issues or sexual problems, seek professional help.
• Take care of yourself, so you feel good about yourself first: eat right, manage stress well, get the good sleep you need, and try exercising for better physical, sexual and emotional well-being.
• Don’t let pornography get in the way of intimacy. Talk about it, and don’t let it become the elephant in the room. It may be hurting your relationship in more ways than one.
• Have some fun. Relax your need to perform like the stallion you want to be. Be yourself, and don’t try to aspire to unrealistic expectations of yourself sexually. Ask the right questions, and hopefully, you’ll get the right answers.

If you suspect that the use of pornography is coming between you and your wife or girlfriend, it probably is. It’s not something that’s totally comfortable for guys to talk about with their women, and yet for a lot of couples, it’s the elephant in the room.

Some of the stats on pornography are staggering. More than 70% of men from 18 to 34 visit a pornographic site in a typical month (comScore Media Metrix). This stat especially stood out to me: 70% of all online porn access occurs during the 9-5 workday (Message labs monthly report march 2004).

If we’re that willing to risk our wives leaving us, and our bosses firing us, it must be pretty addictive to get online and surf for porn. But why?

Men are visually-oriented creatures, so there is a natural attraction to porn. From an evolutionary standpoint, men are attracted physically to women who they deem fit to mate with, and the most potentially successful genetic carriers of their DNA.

But in the 21st century, we continue to operate with those outmoded evolutionary responses. On a deep level, we are concerned about survival, but day-to-day, we have much less to worry about than our ancestors did.

We now live in a culture that has stripped sexuality down to the visual basics, and has removed intimacy and emotionality from the equation. In fact, most cultural vehicles — from movies to music to magazines — promote a sort of hypersexuality which continues to erode the other elements needed in healthy and functioning sexuality.

This is where men and emotional intimacy problems come in. Mens’ attraction to visually oriented things (like Internet porn), and combined with emotional withdrawal and avoidance, this creates a perfect storm of relationship problems. Men will retreat to porn as a way to not deal with the emotional intimacy problems that they are experiencing within their relationship. This creates a vicious cycle, because porn use further aggravates the problem is already inherent within a marriage or relationship.

This is a dangerous issue because many spouses may or may not know that their guy is using (or addicted to) porn as a surrogate for their relationship intimacy. Men may not even know that it’s a problem for themselves, but the first step is just to name the problem. Realizing that this is an issue for many guys is just too much; women need to know that this is an issue, and it may be a major contributing factor to the unhealthiness of their relationship as it is now.

Help is out there. Starting a conversation with your spouse or mate is a difficult thing to do, but if you identify your relationship success and intimacy as deeper, stronger values for you and your mate, then you may prioritize those things over continued avoidance and porn use. helping yourself is identifying those values that you hold closest to your heart, and not compromising on the junk food when it becomes a problem for you and her together.

by Doug Glanville (appeared in the New York Times online edition, Sunday, June 7, 2009)

I haven’t spent a lot of time watching “MTV Cribs,” but I know the host likes to check the featured homeowner’s DVD collection for a copy of “Scarface.” Apparently, owning this movie is the key to street credibility (by “MTV Cribs” standards), and it is understood that the homeowner will play it for anyone who sets foot inside.

We all have our favorite movies, and I have some staples of my own in my collection — “A Few Good Men,” “Sixth Sense” — but I would never demand that visitors watch those movies as a rite of passage into my “crib.” However, a few months ago, the executive producer of MLB Productions, who is a friend of mine, sent me a housewarming gift of some classic documentaries about baseball. The jewel of the package was a contemporary piece called “We Are Young,” and if you are ever in my home, expect to sit down and take it all in. (Alternative plan: It will air on MLB Network this coming Friday at 3 p.m. EST.)

I have seen a lot of footage on the life of a baseball player, but this story captures the essence of what a lot of players carry with them at all times: the worry about failure, the need to be driven. At times these forces are couched as inspiration and motivation, at times they come from a convergence of fear and a desire for approval — and this documentary shows that dichotomy, unapologetically and realistically.
I happen to know the family, at least the older son, Dmitri Young. I played most of my career against Dmitri and he was a fun-loving opponent. Always laughing, always having time to chat at first base. From the outside, you would think he didn’t have a care in the world, especially since he was also a stone-cold hitter. But this documentary took me inside his life. I learned about the family dynamic that shaped him.

(more…)

Our culture has taken a real interest in all things spiritual. Eveywhere I look, I can find someone meditating, doing yoga, chanting or promoting something with one of the spiritual arts. I think it’s great that we’ve embraced spirituality in our culture, but mindfulness is different from just “leading a spiritual life.” It’s not so much about “being” spiritual, as it is being present to our lives.

When we are truly present to our lives, we’re aware of our minds and what thoughts they produce. As our actions and behaviors are based on our thoughts, being mindful is not about doing anything special. Mindfulness is about waking up to what is already going on. We don’t need to add anything to our “selves” to be more mindful. We don’t need to spend a lot of money, or enroll in another training program to give us more information. If we are still, and present, we can start to wake up to that which is right under our noses.

Because mindfulness is about being present to what is happening in the now, like Eckhart Tolle says, it’s a “no-brainer”. No brainer in the sense that it doesn’t need our brains to intervene and do anything special. We don’t need to think about, or conceptualize, anything new. Mindfulness is not another concept; it is a direct experience of our awareness, which encompasses our thinking minds. It is greater than our thought process.

Experiencing that presence, we lose the reliance on our thoughts, which is good because we tend to put much stock in them to fix or solve problems that we can’t seem to shuck. I know for me, out of that still place, answers can come forth when my mind is settled down and not as chaotic. The problems that we create are a function of that chaotic mind. The Buddhists call this “monkey mind”, which leaves us prone to confusion, fear, anger, and a host of other problems and negative experiences.

Starting with the breath, being mindful is a matter of experiencing the joy of the present moment. It is about being in your life, not thinking about it or losing yourself in thought patterns about the world. It is a direct experience of life, which is beyond mind and beyond the concepts that we frame the world around.

Another entry point is the body. Experiencing negative feelings in the body, say in the heart, stomach or chest region, is a way to be present to what is. A lot of the time, we avoid the painful emotions and feelings that reside in the body and flee to our minds, where we try to work it out “rationally”. This can be difficult to do, because the mind is responsible for those problems initially.

Relationships are the ultimate awareness experiences, because if we can see our partner as a mirror to our own experiences, and if we can summon the courage to walk through the fire, we can achieve awareness and clarity about the problems we bring into our lives.

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 was having a conversation with my business coach, Marco, and he was talking about this idea, which led me to seek out the article on (gasp!) Oprah.com. It’s interesting, and looks at the reasons behind why men cheat. It’s usually not about the cheating per se, but about a vacancy or an unmet need from within the relationship already. Do you find yourself fantasizing about cheating, or about other women in general? Would you suspect that there is something lacking in your relationship as it is?

See the article here:

http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/relationships/couples/20080827_tows_cheating

I’ve been working with this idea a lot in my sessions, about how men feel unfulfilled or not totally “in” the relationship, and then, on top of that, don’t have or haven’t learned the tools to get what they want or what’s lacking. Sometimes, infidelity or even “checking out” of the relationship has already happened, and then counseling becomes more like a clean up job.

If you suspect that there are some things in your relationship that you are not getting from your girl – sex, love, affection, validation, support, fun, intimacy, communication – maybe these are things that begin to create the problems that lead you to avoid, withdraw, or generally “check out” of your relationship. She probably knows that you’re doing this, and may or may not be saying it in words. Get some help now, before it’s too late for your relationship.

This post is the second in a series on dealing with how pornography affects marriages and relationships. Today’s post is an interview with Leanne Grant, Ph.D., who has worked with women who are affected by online pornography in their marriages.

Jason Fierstein: I am interested in learning about a woman’s perspective on the role of pornography in one’s relationship. Could you help me understand more about this?

Leanne Grant, Ph.D: Men don’t understand, from a woman’s perspective, to imagine their significant other getting off to pictures of the opposite sex and how threatening that feels to a woman. I imagine that any guy who comes home to find their wife or girlfriend to watching nude photos of men would feel threatened. For women, the message of “I’m not good enough” and “my guy is looking elsewhere to be stimulated” instead of with them is what comes up for women. Porn is physiologically stimulating, and is new and novel, so is attracted to the newness or the novelty. 

For women, it triggers a cycle about insecurities about their bodies. No woman can compete with an airbrushed image online. Visually, a woman couldn’t be that perfect, but women become obsessed about trying to become that image. Look at industries such as weight loss, plastic surgery, liposuction, Botox, exercise, cosmetics, and the list goes on and on.

Women get obsessed with trying to compete with the images that their men are watching online. Women think that “I’m not good enough,” and remember the point in their relationship that their man was really into them in the beginning.

Women see their guy looking at porn, and imagine to themselves that “he must be falling in love,” and “what if he is falling in love with somebody else.” The initial spark (during the honeymoon phase) can’t last over time. 

JF: So how does a couple break the cycle?

LG: Women need to talk about their own experience, and men need to talk about their own experiences together. Women are making it more severe in their own minds. 

The work becomes to create that spark again in your own relationship again. Women need to understand that that spark between them and their partner needs to be reignited over and over in a relationship. It doesn’t happen as spontaneously over the course of time as it did when you first start dating someone. It’s learning together how to bring that sense of excitement and novelty into your life.

JF: What happens if that doesn’t happen, though? It’s fairly common to see these things not happen, and for a relationship to get much worse?

LG: If it’s not happening, then you need to take the next step and get some outside help, because there might be something else getting in the way, such as feelings of hurt or resentment that impede your communication and intimacy. In the communication, it is important that you talk about how you feel – both you and your partner.

For example, as a woman, you need to admit that you feel scared to your partner when confronted with this. Men need to be able to communicate about why they are doing it, and what they might be needing. They may not need their wife or girlfriend to look like Scarlett Johannsen, but that they need their wife or girlfriend to talk to them.

Each other needs to be able to to express the feelings that each other has. Once you are able to talk about your feelings about it, it takes the tension out of the relationship, and can bring some playfulness and passion back into our sex life.

JF: So, there might be some positive aspects to talking about pornography in one’s relationship?

LG: Yes. Maybe we can look at pornography as the door to improve or enhance our relationships.

I’ve had a number of calls recently from girls (and a couple guys) who are struggling in their relationships or marriages because online pornography comes between them. Usually, she will find the porn sites that he has gone to, and then be in a state of shock and discomfort, and not know how to initiate a conversation with her guy about this.

Maybe the Internet has made porn so much more readily available for guys, instead of walking into your local 7-11 with fake mustache and trenchcoat to ask for what’s behind the corner. It’s much easier and readily accessible to you, and is a convenient place to go when there are relationship problems.

Pornography may be both taking away something from your relationship, or it may be caused by rifts in it already. It seems as if porn could be a chicken-egg dilemma – which comes first – the problems in your relationship, or the porn? Maybe both.

I think that pornography becomes addictive for men, because as men, we are visually wired by evolution. Using porn creates a certain distance from sex or intimacy, by objectifying the online images that are seen. It takes away from sexual intimacy, and creates distance between the viewer and the images. It has an effect of emotional distance, when you have to get off by images that are parts or representations of people, and not the real people.

The use of porn implies having relationships with exaggerated parts of women, not the women themselves or the relationships with them. Real sex is different, and more complicated. If there are sexual fears or inhibitions, they will necessarily come out within your sexual relationship. Porn doesn’t elicit those fears or inhibitions, and thus it is easier to engage in.

For guys, the use of porn can be a stress reliever, and a way to deal with the build up stress (or other emotions, such as anger) that accumulate and have no other avenue of expression for your guy. In other words, maybe the experiences that he is having have no other outlet other than porn. Guys have been masturbating to porn since the beginning of porn time, and trying to not get caught in their bedrooms by their mothers when they are adolescents. There may be some hidden messages of shame that guys recreate when they use porn, if sex was dirty, shameful or not discussed when they were growing up. 

Problems in your relationship may trigger your guy to use porn. He may already be emotionally avoidant, or may have a hard time in your relationship communicating (especially about sex and sexual intimacy). The sexual motivations of your guy to use porn may or may not speak to the problems that you both are having in your relationship. The problem may lie in something unrelated to sex, but then again, it might not. It’s hard to say without couples counseling for this kind of thing. See my website for some more information on my services to help you deal with this problem: http://phoenixmenscounseling.com/index.html.

The use of porn will surely distance you from him in more than one way. He becomes distant from you through his use of porn, and then when you find out he’s doing it, it becomes really difficult to have the conversation with him.

He won’t bring it up, because he’s probably too scared that you’ll catch him using it. And, it’s an easy thing to want to minimize on his part – “I don’t have a problem. I just use it once in a while.” Classic addictive behavior can ensue: lying, falsifying, denying, making up stories to cover it up or to go use it. Watch out for these signs because it may be affecting your relationship.

The goal is to weave in the fantasies and the sexual communication into your relationship, not leave it to the Internet and to one person alone to be fulfilled. The idea is to deepen and develop your relationship through sex, and communication is the door to get there. Otherwise, sex becomes the most powerful wedge in your relationship. It will quickly drive you both away from each other, if it not dealt with out in the open. It needs to be talked about once his use of porn is identified and admitted. 

- 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

One of the things that I have been thinking about is how we play games to avoid the fear of being rejected by women. I notice this with some friends I have, and with some clients. The one way in which this seems to be most apparent to me is by displaying the opposite behavior: rejecting the woman or potential relationship partner first. 

It happens less that people actually own up to being afraid of rejection, because a lot of the time, they don’t know it’s there. Honestly, I think we’re afraid of the fear. We are afraid that if this person gets to pierce through our facade, they will find someone that they didn’t bargain for, someone less adequate than the initial facade that was show to them through the dating process. Sex is used in this way, to speed up the intimacy process and to bypass the getting to know you process.

Some men that I know reject women after sleeping with them, over and over again. Not only do I feel ashamed as a guy, but feel bad for the female rejectees who are probably relationship-minded and are seeking something else during the act of sex with this person. Women are more intimacy and relationship minded; when we reject them after sex, or soon thereafter, we give them them messages that they are not good enough or unworthy or our affections. In effect, we are displacing (or projecting) our inadequacies onto them through the very act of rejecting them. 

Men have a notoriously difficult time opening up to their feelings, and opening up to fear of rejection is by no means any exception to that rule. It gets transformed into a socially acceptable thing – to bed women and conquer them, which creates an endless cycle of loneliness and misery. It’s very difficult to create a satisfying relationship under these conditions, and a lot of guys are left to do this cycle over and over again.

I can help you with these types of problems if you suspect that you are a guy (or girl) who creates this “rejection cycle” for him (or herself). It’s hard to break this cycle on one’s one, and as a Counselor for Men, I know the inner workings of this cycle to help you break the cycle once and for all. Call me at 602.309.0568 to set up a free consultation to talk about this with me.

- Jason