Michele Christensen 0:07
Hi! Welcome to Sex. Love. Power. I'm your host, Michele Lisenbury Christensen. I'm a relationship and sex coach who's worked for 23 years with executives and business founders who are ambitious in every area of their lives. Through the years, I found that high-performance people often think of their relationship- and sex in particular- as another place to "perform" -to either succeed or fail. And that brings us to today's conversation.
Michele Christensen 0:37
On this episode, we're talking about men who avoid something erotically...or even avoid everything interpersonally erotic with their wives. I work with a lot of men who are wonderful husbands, great friends to their wives, very loving people... and YET, they avoid sex in some way. For some, it's a reluctance to initiate sex. For others it is that they're uncomfortable with their partner coming toward them sexually or taking charge in the bedroom. Some men are very uncomfortable hearing about their partner's preferences or their requests with regard to shared pleasure.
Michele Christensen 1:13
If you're one of those good guys for whom sex is highly charged, and perhaps a really uncomfortable area of life and marriage, or if you're in a relationship with one of these guys, this episode is for you. I want to reduce the pain and turn up the compassion and understanding so that you can both begin to move forward and talk about your dynamics in a different way, and enjoy more pleasure and sweetness and joy together.
Michele Christensen 1:40
I'm going to lay out how a couple gets to this place, what the symptoms are, when you're there, and where to start to address it.
Michele Christensen 1:47
We're going to start by backing up to everybody's training about lovability and goodness and worthiness. What cultural messages did we receive about performative, lovability and sexuality? What did we have to do and what did we have to not do in order to be wanted? Loved? Right and good?
Michele Christensen 2:06
The messages given to children have historically been different based on how that child's gender was identified at birth. For most of us, if we were raised as a little girl, we were taught to be good and pleasing. Girls are immersed in a culture that tells them their objects, that the key to their success and their getting love in this life is to be beautiful, desirable, pleasing, agreeable, attractive, wanted by men. And if they play their cards right, wanted by one man in particular.
Michele Christensen 2:36
Boys conditioning, on the other hand, immerses them in messages that tell them they need to be powerful, and effective, and high achieving. Boys who grow up to be nice men, absorbed messages that achieving a lot and being effective includes pleasing the women in their lives, and the other important people around them.
Michele Christensen 2:56
As our culture has progressed sexually, valuing women's pleasure more, to some degree, at least, these good men have received new and intense pressure with regard to sex... they're under pressure to be pleasing... to, "give" her orgasms... to not be selfish, or brutish, or sexually violent. And I mean, it's good to not be selfish or brutish or sexually violent but men seem to be in this pressure cooker, where there's very little room left to stand, and little room for spontaneous self expression sexually.
Michele Christensen 3:30
So often, the men that I work with are the men they wanted to grow up to be. They're accomplished AND good-hearted. They're tremendously pleasing. They're great at what they do. They're kind to the people around them. They're generous, often to a fault. And they wind up in a dynamic that my mentor Terry Real calls needless and wantless. They become men who have lost touch with what they actually desire.
Michele Christensen 3:54
They're like my client- I'm gonna call him Jeff. Jeff is so committed to pleasing his wife, his children, his employees at work, to being a good guy, that when I asked him, "What do you desire? What matters most to you? What do you really yearn for?" The best Jeff could come up with it first was simply, "I just want everybody to be happy. I want other people to be pleased. That's enough for me."
Michele Christensen 4:19
I pushed him though, to dig deeper, because I don't believe that's how we're wired. I don't believe that anyone's wired to just be a mirror, reflecting back only that which pleases others around them, and getting all their satisfaction from that.
Michele Christensen 4:31
I do believe that good people are rewarded by our generosity. I know that when I can be of service to others, when I can help other people's dreams come true, when I can be kind and present and hold space for those around me...that's really rewarding. I do know that that's part of the path to happiness. So I know that must be true for Jeff and for you also. But that's not all. That's not the whole truth.
Michele Christensen 4:55
There are marching orders written on every heart by the divine. There are Instructions you've been given for what you're to do in this world. And those instructions are written in the language of your desires. If you've lost the ability to see those words written on your heart, that loss is through conditioning that does not serve you.
Michele Christensen 5:16
Because those are marching orders from the divine...Because they are the way the divine wants to bring about the world we all need. By losing touch with what your deepest yearnings are, you're falling short of your work in this world, of the service you're meant to provide. And your desires actually serve the rest of us too.
Michele Christensen 5:37
This episode is about men who are needless and wantless but as you're listening, I know that regardless of your gender, this message is for you.
Michele Christensen 5:44
All of us have gotten into this mixed up wacky relationship with our desires, because all the world's current major religions, and many of the wisdom traditions are a little bit murky on desire. This kind of deep, heartfelt desire I'm talking about is a close cousin of that yawning, bottomless unfulfillable thing I call want. I want, like when I get to Costco, and I'm walking through the aisles, and I'm looking for the things on my list, most of which are organic produce, or Dave's Killer bread...then I see the fuzzy blankets and the Oxo canisters and the Chenille sweaters and I want! I want that I want this, I want that I want this thing in two colors...48 hours later, having purchased those things, I may not be satisfied by any of them.
Michele Christensen 6:31
You know how when you go to a buffet there are those plate dispensers. I think of WANT being like that, when we satisfied the latest one, the next one pops up, you pull one out, then here comes the next one. It's this never ending cycle of wanting more. And that's what the Buddha talked about in the second noble truth: that suffering arises in life because of tanha- thirst, longing or greed... Tahna keeps us on a hamster wheel of chasing, ever dissatisfied. And when the Bible says "the love of money is the root of all evil," Timothy is not saying that money itself is the root of all evil... It's not that having money is problematic. It's that loving, being devoted to... putting our emotional commitment toward GETTING MORE causes a lot of pain. It's the consciousness of lacking of needing something we don't perceive ourselves as having that really makes us perpetually miserable. It's want.
Michele Christensen 7:32
So there's great wisdom in that. Let's talk about brain science for a minute. The brain uses more energy than any other organ-about 20% of our energy without ever moving. Consequently, the brain really kind of maybe feels badly about that, TRIES to be thrifty with its energy use, turning down the light, so to speak, whenever it can. It takes every shortcut that it can think of! And in that conservation of energy, we will often collapse the distinction between a WANT (which deep wisdom tells us leads only to misery) and on the other hand, our hearts desires, our egoic or sensory WANTS and our deepest yearnings are very, very different things. But to an energy conserving brain, they might look like one in the same, and as a result we throw the life-giving desires out with the life depleting wants.
Michele Christensen 8:23
Our soul-level desires are the ways that we most long to feel, inside. They're the ways of living and being and loving and interacting, that are most natural and expansive for us. But when we mistake that deep pulse of wisdom and truth within us for a misery- producing plate-dispenser of wants... We begin to think that those inner nudges are to be IGNORED, ignored in favor of other people, in favor of pleasing, in favor of being dutiful and sacrificing ourselves if we're going to be a good person.
Michele Christensen 8:55
I'm here to uncouple those two things: To help you separate the endless wants that can never be satisfied from the truth of your being, the authentic guidance that lives within you, that's truly the missing owner's manual that teaches other people how to love you well and teaches YOU how to make choices in your life that will actually nourish you and maximize the well-being of you and everyone around you, and all of us living on this planet together.
Michele Christensen 9:21
There's an epidemic happening among good men, of needlessness and wantlessness. It's causing tremendous pain in their marriages, because a man who has pushed down his needs and wants, isn't a very potent man. Desire, having yearnings and being in touch with them, that's what fuels our sexual expression interpersonally. We can't meet and penetrate another person unless we ARE hungry in that divine way. And if every time your hunger starts to take a step forward, you slam the door on its toe to make sure you're not being selfish, that you're not being bad, they're not being predatory, then the person who's monogamous with you... the person who relies on you for all the sexual attention she's allowed-by the terms of your agreement-her sexuality gets truncated. Her only avenue for the exchange of erotic energy-of that tremendous passion and power that's available to us only inside that private playground of eroticism... it's blocked. All of that potential aliveness rushes out of her life, when you ban what you think of as selfishness, as being bad on your part, when you ban your sexual desire.
Michele Christensen 10:32
So there's a huge cost to being good, to being needless and wantless as a nice man in this world. Nice men don't know what to do about that. They don't know what the problem is, they just know that they're playing whack a mole trying to please everybody, trying to be a nice dad and a nice husband, a nice boss. And a nice team member. And then in the bedroom, they feel like they're failing.
Michele Christensen 10:55
Somehow, also wired into male psychology, there seems to be a pattern. Now, I never want to make any argument that might be construed as essentialist about a gender. So please don't hear this as me saying all men are a particular way. But a pattern I've noticed among persons raised male is a commitment to winning. This is an inner narrative that says, "If I'm going to show up for something, I want to succeed at it. And if I can already tell before I go in there that I'm not going to win, I'm not going to go in there at all." Lots of people who aren't male, or have a basically young essence can also relate to life into situations this way. But I think that more yin essence people have a more fluid flowing approach: there's more of a quality of yielding and persevering. The arc of human evolution has definitely taught the non male brain to keep going, to keep trying even when it looks like we're getting our butt kicked. We've been trained-through millennia of tending to babies, of foraging, when men were more often trained by hunting- where it was kill or be killed OR avoid the fight. So those yin essence brains have been taught to not give up. And the yang essence brains have been taught to pick their battles.
Michele Christensen 12:12
Women have been trained by many situations where they perhaps didn't have political power in their societies. Inside their homes, they didn't perhaps have physical power to keep themselves safe, even from violence or unwanted sexuality. So they've learned how to come in from the side. They've learned how to stage a long victorious campaign, even without the appearance of ever winning a single battle.
Michele Christensen 12:37
I say this not to disparage men's stick-tuitiveness. What I'm saying is that when we run into avoidance, I think this is part of the explanation for why. When a man is sexually avoidant, or avoidant of certain experiences in the bedroom, it's simply because he thinks he can't succeed. He's playing NOT TO LOSE.
Michele Christensen 12:58
One of the things I see in my clients, is that men who are happy to do particular things sexually are sometimes highly reactive and resistant if their wives want to do something else. Maybe something outside the playbook,or if they ask that man to do something that he doesn't feel like is in his own experience, or inside his expectations, I notice men avoiding sex entirely. Other men avoiding initiating sex, and then often having a negative response, if their wives initiate sex.
Michele Christensen 13:29
Many men of this really good guy variety will show up for sex in a particular way, but really want to avoid situations where they're in a receiving place. Others have wives who ask them, "Will you please assert yourself more? Will you show me more intensity? I want to be taken by the wrist. Let me know that you feel passionate toward me." And some of these men are deeply resistant to that because they've conflated that with being predatory sexually. Or not being respectful or kind to that wife they adore and respect.
Michele Christensen 13:59
So she's asking for something that she's really hungry for to feel passionately wanted! To feel the fire in his belly toward her, to feel his passionate animal kind of energy coming toward her. Nobody else is going to ravish her: she's monogamous. She wants him to be the one who ravishes her. He has her consent. She's telling him how hungry she is for this. But his internal rule system will not let him do what she's asking for. Because as much as he wants to please her, he associates those behaviors of being a bad man. He absolutely does not want to go there.
Michele Christensen 14:33
I know this dynamic well. And I know it's many permutations. And I want to say to everyone in a relationship where one of you is this kind of nice person who's needless and wantless, regardless of the genders involved: I get it. And I think they're really good and admirable reasons why you have those particular commitments to being good and kind and selfless. Being there for other people and not needing too much, not asking too much. Not expecting other people to yield to you or give in to you, or even give to you. AND yet, even though your hearts in the right place this dynamic, sexually is really painful and depriving for both partners. You're not getting what you need, and neither is your beloved.
Michele Christensen 15:15
I love to help people move out of this because there's so much latent aliveliness, so much pent up joy and sweetness and connection that are available when a partner who's been trapped in this kind of prison built of rules, can begin to behave their way out of it. Beautiful Things blossom inside the relationship. And inside the sense of self, that this truly good guy has. When a good person can really claim both their goodness, and their assertiveness, when they can come to be a penetrating presence in the world WITH all that goodness? That's who we need to have being assertive. If all the really assertive people are assholes, we have a problem in the world. We need good people to be assertive.
Michele Christensen 15:59
I don't want to make this political, but I think we had a great example in the vice presidential debate in the autumn of 2020 when the time rules weren't being followed, and Kamala Harris simply said, "I'm talking." And then, when she was still being talked over, she said, again," I'm talking."
Michele Christensen 16:17
It's a beautiful example of a good person being politely assertive, just standing up for themselves, simply taking up space. So many of us have gotten confused about what is nice, versus what is good. What it means to be kind. And as a result, a lot of unkindness takes place in the name of kindness, in the name of niceness. If we can start to recognize the dynamic: that we're holding back, that we're withholding our passion, that we're disconnected from our authentic desires, that we're swallowing truths in order to be nice, then we can begin to unlock those truths, to bring them forward in ways that are respectful and kind that allow for the unknown...The as -yet-unmapped path to getting more of what we authentically desire, can be charted one step at a time.
Michele Christensen 17:09
So I hope this episode gives you some new perspectives on yourself. I hope it normalizes some of what you and your partner may have been going through. I hope that it helps you feel some hope that the dynamics that you may have been experiencing, are not set in stone. They're not characterological and they don't signify that anybody or anything is broken. They spring from really well-intended places. And there's a clear and pretty straightforward path of action that can move you out of those stuck places. I hope that this conversation between me and you can help bring about a fruitful conversation between the two of you about some of these dynamics. And I hope that you'll just listen to each other.
Michele Christensen 17:48
To do that, take turns, use what I call the duct tape. Just shut yo' mouth, and listen to your beloved. That's not always easy for me. But we can do it. Reflect back what you hear, knowing that you'll have a turn too and then you'll get to say everything you want to say ...Everything you're thinking and feeling and they'll just listen. If you can both do that, and reflect back what each of you hears to the other,you can really help each other feel heard. It might be difficult, it might not feel amazing, right in the moment. But within 48 hours after that sort of conversation, a lot of beautiful things tend to unfold for people who have those conversations. So that's my heartfelt wish for you.
Michele Christensen 18:34
My wish for you and for our community is that you'll come join the conversation over on Conscious Couples’ Circle at society.lisenbury.com is a great place to ask your questions, share your experiences, and join the conversation about creating the love and sex we deeply desire in ways that evolve both of us. It's all happening at Conscious Couples’ Circle. That link is in the show notes at lisenbury.com/episode/016.
Michele Christensen 19:02
If you've enjoyed this or other episodes, what would help me in the podcast immensely is if you would leave a review- particularly in Apple podcasts, but wherever you listen to podcasts, because reviews are a huge help in finding new listeners and growing the positive impact that these conversations can have. So please go leave a review right now with a few words about what the show gives you? I would so appreciate it and you would be making more love in the world.
Michele Christensen 19:28
And hey- have you subscribed to the podcast yet?
Michele Christensen 19:31
You'll want to so you never miss an episode. Please go to Apple podcasts or wherever YOU listen and hit that subscribe button so you always get notifications of new episodes each week.
Michele Christensen 19:42
Thank you so much for listening. I'm Michele Lisenbury Christensen ,this has been sex, love, power. I'll be back here next Thursday with another episode. Until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.