The pro-porn argument lacks any valid weight, “Hey man, nothing’s wrong with masturbating to hot women, what’s your problem?” Right.

I have nothing against sexuality, masturbation, or sexual aliveness. But porn has co-opted our sexuality and is now dictating the rules of how men and women are supposed to be with each other intimately. And, if I’m not paying attention, porn will teach my son an incredibly narrow form of sexuality.

In my own life, porn was a big distraction. A distraction away from my feelings, my body, and my experience. Along with other “checking out” behaviors, it served to relieve me temporarily from my suffering. Quickly, shame and guilt would settle in, as would more behaviors to hide it all. I was never an “addict.” I never paid for sites or spent hours online. I would get in, get out, then hide. Even still, it felt like shit.

It wasn’t until I was able to talk openly with my male friends about it, that I began to gain some power, control, and choice around the matter.  Through my connections to my male friends, the shame virtually went away and we discovered that nearly 100% of the time, we surfed to avoid something, typically discomfort, pain, or unwanted feelings.

The cost? It took me away from the very thing I wanted — intimacy with Self and other. And that’s what I’d argue it’s doing to the male psyche.

I see male clients who eventually get to their “porn issue” which they have often underestimated as having any impact on their life. Surfing porn in guy culture is very common which is its main justifying argument as to why a man can keep giving himself permission to use. “Hey honey, all guys do it, it’s biology, it’s normal.”

But sooner or later a man will begin to feel the internal or external cost of his porn behavior. It might start out with a lowered sex drive for his partner or wife. Some men will begin to experience some kind of sexual dysfunction such as premature ejaculation, delayed ejaculation, or erectile dysfunction. For other men, it furthers their sense of isolation and moves them further from what they claim they want—more love. For others still, it destroys their marriage and leaves them feeling even more alone. Porn use can have some women feeling pissed, alone and longing for a real man to show up.

One of my former clients shares that he has a really hard time connecting with his real girlfriend’s real body. Another man shares that sex feels dirty, wet, sweaty, and the parts don’t look the same as the videos. He reminds me that actors on a screen have trained him, over and over. So when the real thing comes along, he is challenged. Another guy struggles to get hard and stay hard. His partner is feeling the impact and wondering how to navigate it all. One man prefers the online stuff because the “real thing” is too complicated. Still another man hides his porn use from his wife because it might be a deal breaker.

What is your experience? Comment below please.

Outside my personal opinion and experience is growing research that suggests more porn = more men suffering.  Here are several examples:

*According to Psychology Today, it’s a growing problem for men and their rates of sexual dysfunction are increasing.

*According to this amazing site: http://yourbrainonporn.com/ there is significant impact on the brain and how men train their brain through porn (This site is AMAZING and full of solid resources).

*If you don’t want to spend a ton of time on the above site, the site’s author Gary Wilson wrote a good piece for The Good Men Project’s called: How Porn Can Ruin Your Sex Life and Your Marriage.

*Here’s a good one from Naomi Wolf summing up some of the research on how porn is impacting the male brain called Is Porn Driving Men Crazy?

*Here’s a scary one about the developing adolescent brain. So vulnerable to addiction and heavy porn use. The cost of porn on the adolescent brain.

*Then there’s an interesting project called the Social Cost of Pornography where a group collaborates to publish what looks like a solid book on the subject. http://www.socialcostsofpornography.org

*I found this great article in the Washington Post called The Cost of Growing Up on Porn. The author even finds “research” suggesting that contrary to popular belief, porn isn’t hurting men at all.  He debunks it and reminds us that porn is indeed hurting a lot of us.

*And lastly, since parents (specifically Dads) are or unable or unwilling to educate their sons, most teen boys are learning about sex through porn. The average age boys are exposed to hard core porn is 11. Many get exposed at 8. Once again, we can find the roots of this growing problem in the good ‘ol boy code and bro code. It’s no surprise then that when we don’t teach boys about sex, they’ll learn about it somewhere else.

So, could porn really be killing the male sex drive? For some men, yup. Does Porn have the potential to leave embodied women starving for men who can relate to their real bodies in real time? Probably. Is porn training men to be less and less available lovers? Most likely.

When men are in pain, disconnected from their bodies, and stressed out in their lives, porn offers instant, easy, ongoing relief. Porn is also one of the most accessible, seductive distractions to take a man out of his center. Men and adolescent boys who have rarely ‘worked on themselves’ hardly stand a chance against porn. With few effective tools to engage this fight, a man will often loose. What will he loose? His center, which is the core of his integrity. Shame will fill the void. He will be run by shame and instead of owning it, will posture over it like Beowulf until he chooses to face it.

What is the cost to women? To our children? What happens when we let a money making machine teach us about the most sacred and beautiful part of who we are?

Finally, now that we can begin to see the problem, how will we each address it in our own bodies, homes, and communities?

For men who struggle with porn and are willing to do something about it, I have three simple, but unconventional recommendations amid the hundreds of options out there. I understand this is a very complicated issue and healing this will be different for every man.

1. To start off, Your Brain on Porn offers what appears to be an awesome “rebooting” program to help men wean themselves off porn and begin the journey. But this is only the start. A man must be willing and committed to getting his center back. Like Beowulf, he must choose to slay the dragon he co-created.
2. Connection to Self. In order to get back in his integrity, he will have to occupy his body and learn the way of embodiment. When men are in their bodies and connected to themselves, their heart, and anchored in their center, porn doesn’t stand a chance. Stay tuned for a tele series with me and David Cates as we expand further upon this and offer practices to support.
3. Relationship. When we prefer intimacy on a screen over real human touch, we have certainly gone astray, but given our tech culture and our conditioning, it’s understandable. I’m with Gabor Mate in seeing addiction as a relationship issue, not a biological one. The way out of porn use then, is through relationship. This can mean groups, therapy, attachment work, etc. Bottom line? Very intimate, sensory, real, raw relationships with other real human beings is the way out.

1. What is underneath your porn behavior?

2. What would you have to feel and experience if you stopped jerking off to porn or even fantasy?

3. How can you not only stay in touch with your sexuality in a conscious way without porn, but how can you increase your sexual energy and use it for good?

4. What are the ways in which you let your culture dictate what is sexy, attractive, and a “turn on” to you? What are you going to do about that?

Here is Marc:

Men, let’s face it: We ALL have SOME charge with Pornography. I am not one for making grand sweeping statements like that, but I know that I am definitely not the only guy who tries to innocently peek inside the Adult Stores when the door casually swings open, and I am definitely not the only one who flicks back to the previous channel whilst channel surfing if I think I just saw a tit. However big or small, I am prepared to go on record to say that at least 90% of men have a charge with pornography.

For a little over a decade, I suffered from a devastating addiction to pornography. I have to be honest, it was not an every day occurrence. But for over ten years, I would frequent seedy adult sites, on average, every two weeks. I cried many tears over the years because of this. Why? Because the person I was showing to the world was not the person who would be sat up until 2am some nights looking for more and more intense pornography to satisfy my fix. I was, by all accounts, considered a very sweet and sensitive guy. Random strangers who would talk to me would often report back to my mother “Your son Marc is a lovely kid, so polite, and such a pleasure to have around”. Whenever she would feed back these compliments to me, smiling with that proud mother glow, I faked a smile and felt really awful about myself.

Going out into the world made things even worse. My ability to relate to women was strained, at best. I could not let myself get close to any woman in the way I truly wanted because I was too well-trained at objectifying the feminine for my own personal gratification. Women were objects. Worse, they were sex objects whose God-given purpose was to get me off. I knew this was a lie, but that knowledge would not sink in to the point where I could let go of that way of being.

It all came to the crunch one day when I sat down, armed with a pen and paper and wrote down every single fantasy I had ever had, my favorite images and why they turned me on so much (and what I was thinking when I saw them). I got it all down on paper over the space of two hours, with my face contorted in fits of tears. It was the most devastating, and most intensely healing release I had had in years.

Almost two months later, being clean for the longest time in years, I decided I wanted to help other porn addicts take responsibility for their porn addiction and start to get clear on what their feelings meant and what was even possible for them once they had let go of their addiction.

I have been a long-time spiritual seeker (hell, it was the only thing I thought to do when I realized I had to kill this addiction). Telling my friends was a difficult thing to do and yet as I started to share with some how much I had suffered, I remember a few years ago hearing some fans of David Deida’s work say they used pornography as practice to open to what was occurring – An Appreciation Practice! Looking into the spiritual and personal development community over the last few years, I started to see what I can only describe as a lot of spiritual white-washing and a lot of very standard ideas like “Porn is fine, stop beating yourself up about it, just watch and enjoy it” seep into online forum posts by people who wanted to bring it up as a serious discussion. Honestly, I saw this as being the most irresponsible way of brushing the entire issue under the carpet, with an issue as large as pornography.

Over time I gave this more thought. As of a month ago, after an engulfing pit in my stomach after beating off, I decided to stop masturbating altogether. Why? Because I started to wonder: What kind of aliveness am I missing out on if I have to beat the bishop every time an uncomfortable sensation arises? A few days after I decided to stop masturbating, I sat in my car going out of my MIND. Thanks to a daily meditation practice and a long traffic jam that morning, I had time to realize that this had nothing to do with “normal human sexual urges” but was me not being able to integrate something. I have recently started my own coaching program The Clearing via my own site and had been experiencing fear of putting it out there for all to see – and had subsequently sexualized that feeling to give myself a way not to fully experience that fear. As I sat in my car that morning, realizing that I was only trying to escape my own personal aliveness allowed these feelings wash over me like water off a dove’s back. Since that morning, I have had very little desire to choke the monkey.

Our society has been trained to sexualize almost every uncomfortable sensation possible. We are told it is normal to “clean the pipes” before going out on a date so that we can “relax”. We are also told that using pornography can be a healthy part of any relationship. What if those of us who have used pornography are actually missing out on “enjoying and playing with” that nervous sensation we ALL get on a date, and what if instead of substituting intimacy with our partner for pornography (does she REALLY want to watch porn with you, or is she just feeling helpless as to how to resolve the lack of intimacy?) were to allow us to experience a kind of intimacy that would open our hearts beyond what we thought possible.

So my question to you is: What is your relationship to pornography? And if you use pornography (however infrequently), if you were to treat these sensations as a point of inquiry, where do you see yourself completely missing the larger point of what the sensation is trying to teach you. As far as I’m concerned, beating off to porn is not a good strategy for living the life we love, and yet we tolerate it more than I think we should.

Marc Quinn is a late-bloomer with a heart that has never steered him wrong. He has engaged in men’s work of various kinds over the last 3-4 years and considers himself “the guy who likes to talk about things people don’t like to bring up”. His web site My Porn Addiction Story was launched a few months ago, for guys and girls who find it difficult to give up pornography, after he saw that most of the advice on Google was “crap”. He is intent on having more conversations about pornography by making them engaging, funny, and down-to-earth whilst providing people with the means to see their addiction as a container for immense personal growth. He often likes to sing “The Power of Love” by Jennifer Rush on full volume while he works.

In a previous post we discussed that by learning to bring an attitude of love to your personal development, you heal, become whole, and ultimately find the freedom and happiness you long for.

Another way to view this love and acceptance stuff is by taking a quick look at yoga.

Yoga looks like a bunch of people stretching. The more you go, the more flexible you become and the tighter your ass/abs, right?

Not so much.

Below that conventional yoga approach is a deeper yoga. As my yoga teacher Matt likes to say, most folks think that yoga is about flexibility. While this is true on one level, the deeper cut as Matt reminds me, is that yoga is the ability to meet resistance (your inflexibility) with acceptance. The more you meet your edge with acceptance, the more the resistance begins to release, and the more “flexible” you become.

Force does not work in yoga. Trust me, I have tried it. When I was “trying hard” and “pushing it” I would consistently throw out my back and I even dislocated my shoulder twice. But one must engage the resistance, the edge, in order to gain the fruits that lie just beyond your resistance, which is more openness, expansion, more flexibility, and ultimately more love.

During a yoga class one can very easily put their attention on their lack. How much flexibility you lack. Each day you come in with an improvement project to get more flexible. You beat yourself up, try harder, and eventually if you are stubborn and stick with it for years, you might actually become incredibly flexible on the outside. Once you reach what that other guy in class is doing you are not necessarily farther along. Because “how” you achieved this is problematic.

You got there through your old habit of pushing and working hard. So, your body learns that to open, relax, accept, and surrender to love and openness, you need to push, try harder, and work harder. So, you did little to become more flexible and open in your “inner” body or mind. You willed your body into compliance through an egoic process and as a result, you will keep getting the same old results out in your life.

This old-school approach is where most men including myself fall victim to the typical masculine belief that:

effort = results

Instead of your habitual trying-to-get-somewhere attitude, practice loving what is, in this moment. Let love, compassion, and acceptance be your attitude and see what happens. Notice what style of “yoga” you live in your life? Are you always trying to force something? Or maybe you want to will your way to success?

Bottom line? The attitude with which we bring to yoga (and our personal development journey) is the key to our freedom. So, instead of the old way, try this one:

love and acceptance + “right” action = results

If you think acceptance is giving up or being weak check out these teachers on acceptance: Tara Brach and Byron Katie.

Stay tuned for yet another post coming up on this tricky paradox of personal development and how focusing on “what’s working” can further increase your results.

photo courtesy of creative commons flickr

Most men suck at conflict.

To me, the hallmark of a healthy, solid relationship is the willingness and ability to go into conflict, sit in the fire, and deal.

Here are a few basic points about men and conflict, then onto the process of working through it.

First, admit you are afraid

Most guys claim to be fearless and spend a lot of energy acting fearless about most things. But those same men are often single, unhappy, and terrified of relationship strife with loved ones.  As I wrote in my rage post, men commonly respond to conflict either by blowing up, care-taking, or shutting down.

If you want to learn the art of conflict, first admit that you are scared of it. Go ahead and say it out loud. “I feel scared of upsetting _______.” Then you can learn to have the balls to tell the truth and be more fearless when it comes to conflict.

Commit to learning how to do conflict

If you want profound love, and to be a solid leader or community member, learning the art of relationship, specifically how to work through conflict, must be a central focal point of your development as a man. Go there.

Remember that conflict is hardest with the people closest to us

Because of what is at stake, we are challenged most by family, intimate partners, and very close friends. Conflict can be easy with strangers where there is no personal injury at stake. It’s easy to tell a stranger off. Much harder to tell a loved one a painful truth that may upset them.

Learn how to fight with your intimate partner

I knew nothing about conflict until I met my wife. Thankfully, we learned together. At times it was ugly and dark. I felt so incredibly uncomfortable at times and I often wanted to hit the eject button and run away. Ouch.

Since my parents hid their conflict from us kids, I learned that a “healthy relationship” meant no fighting. That teaching is and was bullshit.

Every single short term relationship I had prior to meeting my wife, I would say “yeah, our relationship is great, we never fight,” thinking how my parents taught me well. Little did I know I was keeping the relationship stuck on superficial grounds with the unwritten rule to “not go there.” Deep down, I was terrified of ruffling feathers in all my relationships so I would withhold the truth, tell white lies, care-take, and do anything in my power to avoid tension. The irony was that I was already feeling a lot of tension inside myself. Bottom line? I was afraid of conflict.

My wife and I have had some pretty intense fights and I imagine there will be more.  I have learned that healthy fighting is good for a relationship. It’s fertilizer. We now burn through conflict and relationship challenges within hours.



Practice conflict by telling the truth in safe places such as your men’s circle

Men’s groups are a great place to flounder your way through conflict.  In my own men’s circle, we fumbled our way through conflict that was so intense one man left the group for a while. It took us many years to arrive where we are today, able to deal with, and resolve, conflict.

Enlist another man to role play the person you are in conflict with. Practice, practice, practice speaking your truth and say yes to whatever the outcome is.

Give yourself permission to fuck it up and trust that with help, you can come back and clean it up

Early on, you will blow it and make mistakes. No problem. You can always clean up your mess later after you think, journal, reflect and get feedback from non-biased friends and mentors.

Conflict ain’t pretty. It often hurts and brings up the most uncomfortable feelings ever. Say yes to those feelings.

At the root of any conflict avoidance is your unwillingness to feel pain

Did I already mention being a YES to feeling your discomfort?

You must be willing to feel your feelings fully to move through it and become okay with it. Sorry. There are no bypass roads when it comes to conflict.

Most people hide behind “I don’t want to upset the other person.” When in fact, you don’t want to deal with what you have to feel if you see the other person upset.

The more you avoid conflict, the bigger the shitpile gets

If you “hold on,” avoid, shut down, sleep on it and never come back to it, or just brush stuff under the carpet, your shitpile will crack. It will build until that day when your damn of resentments explodes. Sadly, this often causes way more pain and harm than had you told the truth from the beginning.

Finally…

Very few of us have been taught how to do conflict or how to resolve conflict successfully. Give yourself permission to learn and go slow. Bite off small chunks at first and start with people who you trust will not disown you even if it comes out sloppy.

The middle way is to stay present to the whole range of emotion that arises within you and to speak your truth with a open (o even shaky) heart.

If you can learn relationship conflict, you are that much more adaptable, flexible, agile as a man. Your relationships will not only last longer, they will deepen and strengthen.

Okay fine, but HOW?

Here is a great, simple tool for working through conflict.

It’s called the couples dialogue and is a common tool used by imago relationship therapists. It is also used by everyday folks as a way to move through little and big tension between two people. This process can even be used to tell someone how much you love or care about them.

Be sure to really read the full approach here.

Follow these basic guidelines:

1. Find a witness to help the two of you move through this process.
2. Create a safe space to work through it that you both agree upon.
3. Review the 3-step process by Hendrix and Hunt–Mirror, Validate, Empathize here.
4. Move through the 3-step process (below) with one of you as the “sender” and the other person as the “receiver.” See process below.
5. Switch.
6. Now make a request if you have one.
7. Always remain open to hiring a professional help you work through conflict. Sometimes it feels too big for us on our own.
8. Commit to going all the way with this. Don’t blow off your needs or the other person’s needs unless you have an explicit boundary and you are clear you will not budge.
9. If the other person refuses, you can still clean things up on your end by working with a coach, therapist or friend that can help you speak your truth and move through your part. Your part is the only part you have control over anyway.

This is a condensed version in blue that my friend Jeremy (who has trained with the founders) put together for our men’s group.

SENDER

I would like to dialogue about . . .

Is this a good time?

Then, if the receiver says yes, proceed  If not get a commitment for a specific time and place to do the dialogue.

I feel . . .

When you did this, I felt …

RECEIVER

1.  Mirroring

So, if I got that right, you feel …

Did I get that right?

2. Validation

That makes sense.

Is there more?

Then, after a few rounds, offer a “summary” mirror:

Let me see if I got all that.  If I got all that right, when I did ____, you felt ____.

Did I get all that right?

If the sender says yes, then move to step 3.

3. Empathy

I imagine that must feel really bad, or painful, or scary, or ____.

NEW AGREEMENT

After the process is complete, if desired, the sender can ask for an agreement for the future, to create more safety and trust and deepen the relationship.  The receiver does not have to agree to the sender’s request, but must offer a counterproposal.  If needed, the two can agree to work out a final, new agreement at a specific time in the future.  This ensures that something concrete and specific emerges from the dialogue.

Despite what folks think, you don’t have to take your resentments to your grave. You can do conflict and you can learn to successfully navigate your part in the conflict. And, the more you do this, the greater mastery you will have in all or your relationships.

Thanks Jonathan Wondrush for the video skills.

And below is the unedited feedback. Let’s keep this list growing. Please add your feedback for men in the comment section below. This might be a great resource for a man who stumbles across the information below. Who knows, it might be just what he needs to hear.
Show up FULLY..in all areas of your life.
–Shehreyar, 29, Washington,DC

Less talk…. Less self obsession… More action…. More celebration!
–LF Solis, Colorado

When you are acting in a spirit of appreciation and service, pay no attention to the reactions of others  - keep focusing on your purpose.
–Eric Geurkink

Take the time each day to practice gratitude, to exercise, to breath deeply, to meditate. Ask for support, and be open.
–Margaret

Each day, make a conscious choice to live your life. Step into your light, and out of the darkness. The world needs you.
–Clinton Jasperson, 25. Cheyenne, WY

Don’t let your fear of failure keep you operating at a fraction of your potential. Celebrate what failure teaches you and go for it!
–Mark Bloomfield, Colorado

Be strong enough to be gentle.
–Kevin A. Beck

Be Man Enough NOT to Get LAID
–Liana Gailand

Breath deep…..down in to your balls….regularly.
–Joshua Gribschaw-Beck 30, Scottsdale, AZ

Read these 3 articles by Andrea Dworkin: “On Prostitution and Male Supremacy,” “I Want a 24 Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape,” “Pornography Happens to Women.”
–Molly Boeder, Chicago

Work on transforming and evolving the views of men around the world who walk with supremacy and treat women with the many horrifying ramifications of patriarchy.
–Johannah Reimer

imagine an experience in which men are not the center of creation (social, ritual, intelligence, consciousness, etc.) and live it for one full day of engagement with every one you meet.

–Suu, 47, Crestone, CO

We need you to be leaders, starting within.
–Aaron Williams

Realize you have a choice in everything you do, and find a way to trust yourself.
–Diego

My constructive feedback for MEN is to stop dwelling on the mud that is up to your chest and look up to the people surrounding you and ask for a hand.
–Will Mellon

When you catch yourself judging someone, ask yourself, “Does this reflect upon something about me that I’m afraid of facing?”
–Dan S
One sentence? Ha! The feminine does not speak in one sentences. We tell stories. The masculine is far more equipped to be linear, focused and succinct. To ask the feminine to respond in one sentence limits her full expression. If you are still reading even though I have gone beyond the boundary of the one sentence request, then i would offer this to men: learn the currency of the feminine. The greatest gift you can give to her is connection and protection. There are a cagililon ways to show this – ask the women in your life what this looks like for her. There is no one-rule to follow. That is part of the feminine mystique. We are unique and desire to be treated as precious, felt that we are the only woman in the room and dead sexy to you despite offering our bodies no longer looking like quite as tight or perky as when we were twenty. Make a woman feel adored and safe and she will in turn with worship, appeciate and trust you.
–Beth

My constructive feedback for MEN is;
1) Surround yourself with people that will support you
2) Never Stop learning/Growing
3) Choose to be honest
4) Have fun, manhood is a journey not a destination (as I’m learning
–Spida Hunter, New Zealand
Regain a sense of balance and let go of social conditioning. Make this a priority. Just as Yang balances Yin and the Sun balances the Moon (symbolically) we must balance our masculine nature with the feminine. Stop trying so hard to be something you’re not and realize freedom and creativity require that we break out of the hypnosis of social conditioning. We will offer the the planet much more and our fellow human ,much more if we let go and balance ourselves.

–Dan – 41, Dallas, TX
Trust your gut, stop denying your emotion, pain, and passion, take bold action without approval and define your place in the world as protector, caregiver, daredevil.
–Matt Leiphart, Arvada, Co

Start trying to see the difference between what you think and what you feel. Can you find one?
–Utopicus
Get over your teenage years ASAP and move on to being a sensitive, compassionate, hard working adult who cares about other people.
–Patrick
Remember who you were before the world did its work of tearing you down–be that man.
–Lisa

Answer “Thank you for telling me what’s going on for you” EVERY time a woman shares a feeling of hers with you… ESPECIALLY if you don’t like it.
–Erin Brandt, CA

Own your crap but don’t let it own you. Face your own brokenness with honest courage and work toward being a person of integrity and honor for the sakes of everyone around you.
–Michelle

.let go of what you think manliness is and how you feel you should act and reach true self-confidence by focusing on relationships with the ones you love whether it be a significant other, family or friends.
–Carlos, 24, Provo, UT
My constructive feedback for MEN: Grow a beard
–Derek

Stop letting the fear of disappointment and the perceived notion that others will see you as a failure for trying and not achieving and start DOING.
–Jeff Taylor, Ut
Learn to understand and fulfill your physical, mental, and emotional needs so you can serve the people and commitments in your life.

–Ben, 27, Boston MA

We all need to embrace our societal addiction to pornography and end it.It is destructive in so many ways and sadly pervasive.  An acquaintance of mine posted on Facebook the other day about his long bicycle trip. He LOVES crusty European breads. His stop in San Fran had a pic posted that said “Bread Porn” and there was a pic of a loaf of crusty bread, made me sad! Pornography is no joke!

–Yazzymon

Don’t be so damn afraid of owning your power and to use it in accordance with your deepest inspiration.
–Joona

Treat the women in your lives like partners, not slaves or children.
–Pam Belding

Cultivate mindful awareness of your own suffering and have compassion.
–Gabriel Jessee

Stop settling. Find your purpose, your passion, what you deem best, and go for it, all the way.

–

Ron, 50, Lubbock, TX

Be an equal partner with your woman, loving and respectful — men are not supposed to be dominant and superior over women.
–Jacqueline

Stop settling for less than you really deserve because we are so worth it and we deserve to be happy.
–Randle Fox

Please, develop the character and skills to be direct and clear about who you are – out of respect for all involved.
–Susan Hodges

If a man can’t love other men, he can’t love the man in himself.
–David Cates

Read Mauareen Dowd’s excellent book “Are Men Really Necessary?” She covers both sides scientifically and fairly. The disappearance of the Y chromosome will leave us all with non gender identifiable bodies in the upcoming future. The human body continues to evolve, so don’t destroy your life by identifying with it; Identify with yourself and live YOUR LIFE. I am just breaking free of the yoke of my perceived “role”, which I was ‘successful’ at: it’s a joke, don’t fall for it.
–Roger, 64, Ashland Oregon

Accept responsibility for your actions. Your way does NOT mean it’s right. You don’t ALWAYS have to win.
–Pam

My constructive feedback for MEN is… “Real men get real!” Real men drop the facade and stop pretending to be who they are not… they connect with other men who are willing to get real… they deal with their past… and they do all that they need to, to discover and realize their destinies, which should always result in helping others succeed.
–Darren
My constructive feedback for MEN is to contemplate and re-discover the meaning of Fatherhood, to question themselves as to what is lacking in their relationships with their wives, children, and companions, and to launch out in a daring, personal enterprise of self-giving and commitment as true and manly Fathers.
–Firebrand9

Ask more; assume less.The feminine in women and in yourself requires the quest. Check in, with your own soul and emotional nature before you move; check in with me and my soul and emotional nature before making a move. Don’t decide for me, then resent me because you have failed to please me. Find your courage and learn to cultivate it so you may quest successfully along with me, because dominating, controlling and possessing me will never satisfy you. And you, pointing to me as your source of dissatisfaction is not an act of courage or power or control.
–Gina Vance

Follow two things; your heart and the directions.
–Daniel V, Denver, Co

Lean on Men, not Women
–Justice Marshall, British Columbia

Love. Practice love toward yourself first. Then learn to deeply give and receive love. It’s all there is.
–Jayson Gaddis, Boulder Co

Let those whom you love be free. Trust them and accept them for who they are. If they break your heart, accept the pain.
–Brent, 33, Portland OR

My advice for Men is: admit your fear – it’s what’s behind embarrassment, loneliness, bitching about your woman (or lack thereof), and your rage.
We all have it somewhere/somehow – and we are not brought up to admit it.
It takes courage to say I’m scared shitless, I need help, and I’m going to lean into this even though I’m terrified of failing. No-one got to be successful by running away.
The first step is the hardest, but every one after is a little easier.
It’s working for me, it can certainly work for you.
–Bill Lennan

“My constructive feedback for MEN is to remember that one of the gifts of your being a man is your ability to bring your masculine power into partnership with your connection to your heart (remember that?) to co-create a world that doesn’t thrive on separation – from our own essence or with the opposite sex.
–Geoff Laughton, Lafayette, Co

Words lie, heart doesn’t. Do what is yours to do as you understand it, irregardless of whether anyone cheers or not
–Domo

My constructive feedback for MEN is…
to rigorously discern whether they’re integrating their emotional/spiritual work from the inside-out such that they implode who they’ve known themselves to be, or they’re simply applying outwardly, via their actions and speech, all the self-actualization/new-age strategies, techniques, and vocabulary in ways that “look and sound good” but eventually betray the gap in full-out integrity: “awake” men who don’t wake up to this are sometimes scarier for me than men who haven’t consciously worked on themselves, because the “conscious” man is now better equipped to deny and defend that gap, which is where unconscious manipluation, domination, and other survival strategies still show up.
–Marj Hahne

Realize you have a choice in everything you do, and find a way to trust yourself.
–Diego

Stop dwelling on the mud that is up to your chest and look up to the people surrounding you and ask for a hand.
–Will Creates

The first thing that comes to mind is to keep the preditorary energy in check when interracting with women. And teach other men that predation (exploitation) of women is unacceptable in our society.
–A caring woman

Stop posturing and realize that owning and expressing (without collapsing) ALL emotions is part of being a man!
–Sandy Scotland 19, Toronto

Take responsibility for your own life – step out of what others expect of you and step into what YOU want from life.
–Jo Della Penna

Look at all the thoughts/beliefs that come up in your mind when you think of not needing support – and when you truly FEEL into them, how much fear is hiding under those beliefs? Reach out!
–Michael Vladeck, 36, Boulder, CO

You are good. You don’t have to stay angry at your father your whole life. Don’t forget the dreams you had for your life when you were a little boy.
–Josh Levin, Boulder Co

Start being painfully, brutally honest with yourself and others, stop hiding your secrets. Find others who can hear you and challenge you in your growth.
–Marcus Ambrester, Tennessee

Recognize your teachers when they show up!
–Rick Snyder, Berkley CA

Show vulnerability, it gives permission to those around us to do the same, men or women.
–Tad Hardgrave, Edmonton, Alberta

Stop living your life as a perception of others and focus on how you want to be seen as yourself.
–Travis Willis

Its the little things that keep love alive, like flowers on a bad day, a surprise dinner when she’s had a hard week. This is courtship and you should never stop courting.
–Callie Cox

this is pretty hard to comment on, i feel like its a bit open ended… i could comment on my opinion about contributing causes or my opinion about the most personally poignant manifest. Might be helpful if you could be a little more specific about what the statement should address…
–Monica Mungary

My constructive feedback for MEN is, be honest with yourself, and with the people around you. Tell us what you want, what you really want, not what you think you SHOULD want because you are a man and you are trying to be something your not, we cant always guess what that is. We will all be happier for it. Thank you

–Laura Kelly, 31, Hong Kong

Constructive feedback for men- Have a daily goal- and get it done before 11 A.M. You would be surprised what this will do for your confidence level, and how much you will change your world. I feel like as men we set too many long-term goals, and we get bogged down in daily activities. Having a daily goal and finishing it before 11 or noon even will… See More invigorate your day and resonate with everyone around you, and you will feel better about yourself, feel more productive, and others will notice.

–Jake Carpenter, 23, Lexington KY

Left a comment on your website: “My constructive feedback for MEN is a simple question: How well has that (whatever you’ve been trying in the past, making excuses, blaming others, blaming yourself, etc.) worked out for you so far?” This simple question has helped me jar some stuck friends out of a rut, at least for a moment, to help them realize that there are things they could change, right now, to better themselves; if they just let go of what has failed in the past.
–Matt Zimney, Fargo, ND 25yo

Answer “Thank you for telling me what’s going on for you” EVERY time a woman shares a feeling of hers with you… ESPECIALLY if you don’t like it. It makes a woman feel SAFE. So she can tell you everything. Having no barriers (of withheld communications) keeps our emotions and bodies more alive, more responsive (and more ready for sex!)
–Erin Brandt

Its the little things that keep love alive, like flowers on a bad day, a surprise dinner when she’s had a hard week this is courtship and you should never stop courting.
–Callie Cox

Be responsible and accountable for every action you take. You are not a victim, you are a Man, start acting like one. For me, in this moment, this means really paying attention to my finances and start working on my taxes.
–Tom Taber, 41 – Fort Collins, CO

More men need to hold to the commitments they make and move forward with them, rather than just letting idle distractions and pleasures sidetrack them. And more men need to powerfully know what they want and what they’re inspired to create in this world, and really go for it.
–Craig Peters, 25, Vancouver BC

To remember that you are not alone, and to be in need of support is not weakness or ‘gay,’ but rather a sign of strength, for when we are able to realize where we are limited and ask for support in those areas, we able to truly grow to new levels of awareness of ourselves, of each other and the world.
–Ian Shaw 24 boulder co

Our discontent with life is a direct result of hiding ourselves away from fears in our man cave. Life is happening right here and right now! Come out and take a step along with me into all we fear!
–Jim Bray

my constructive feedback for men is to take a long hard look at history and see the effects of the actions of the men who came before you. if the men who came before you raped and pillaged and looted, then handed down to you the spoils of that theft, do not accept it as “the way things have always been.” I think that we as men have essentially terrorized the globe, and now that many are fearing a reckoning day, we are trying to pass the buck. We as men, as a collective and as individuals, need to look at the the events that brought us to this point before we go any further. i am not saying that we should blame ourselves or blame another man, but that we should take an honest assessment of our society and our selves, and take full responsibility for our own mess. (this is both literal and metaphorical)- there is a tendency among men to throw our trash into a landfill- out of sight and out of mind, but i believe we need to start seeing that it does not just go away. the sneakers that we toss into a waste bin are not just rubber and cloth and leather. they are railroads and strip mines and child labor and toxic glue and aromatic polyamides. before that they were colonization and imperialism and slavery. this doesn’t necessarily make the shoes bad, or you a bad person for wearing them, but i think this realization should be a part of every decision made from this point forward.
–alex szyleyko, 28, pueblo co

My feedback for men is to get in touch with what you truly, deeply desire and find a path through the wilderness until you achieve it or die trying. What the world tries to offer you is never going to serve you or fulfill you – it must be found in the wilderness (both literal and archetypal). Seek mentors and bros – even if that means leaving the known, comfortable circles of co-conspirators that keep you from stepping up in life. No matter how much you love them, there comes a point where you have to acknowledge that the ones you came up with are not going to walk with you to the place your Mission leads you, but new men will come into your life who will walk beside you, guide you, even carry you… and perhaps eventually you will move beyond them too. Just be open to that possibility – your heart will know. Be willing to deconstruct yourself (vs. self-destruct) and rebuild from your core whenever you’ve accumulated too much crap that is no longer serving you and only hiding your light and your purpose – from you and from the world. Hold the deepest desire of your heart as your compass, seek out worthy mentors, and be willing to reinvent yourself when your map no longer matches the territory you find yourself standing in.
–Craig Filek, NY

My constructive feedback for MEN is to stop living your life as a perception of others and focus on how you want to be seen as yourself.
–Travis Wills

Stop pretending you know what you’re doing. It’s okay that you don’t. How could you?
–Jennifer Grove

My constructive feedback for MEN is….
Breathe..breathe deep..practise dropping out of your head (thinkingness) and get into your body (feelingness)…feel your feet on the ground connected, feel where your tight in the body and breathe through it until it loosens..then FEEL into your world and its women as they ARE and watch the magic
–Ian

My constructive feedback for MEN is….Open the door to vulnerability and feel love flow in
–Michelle

For Men: Do you just not SEE me? ;if you did you would know me. If you knew me, you would love me. Be honest and know what you want; please don’t play games.
–Salsayvonne

Photo by Josh Levin

In my humble opinion radical personal development has one powerful process and its core.

Knowing and living this one gem can be the difference between the relentless self-improvement project and experiencing true joy, abundance, and fulfillment, especially for men who are habitually geared toward “improving” and “being better.”

So, what is this process?

LOVE.

That’s right. Love in every form. From self-love, to loving others, and even loving things.

“Loving” is the process by which we transform, evolve and open to greater and greater aspects of ourselves. Typically the process of loving happens within the context of relationships, a major pain and pleasure experience for most men.

If you are a normal man, you have struggled in the realm of relationships. Perhaps you have had your heart broken, been betrayed, or maybe you have experienced great pain in losing a loved one.

Love shows up in our “relationship” to family, friends, pets, co-workers, race, politics, money, the environment, and of course, our relationship to ourselves. And, like most men, you might attempt to tackle your relationship problems with more doing, acheiving, trying harder, and more problem solving. But if you desire more fulfilling relationships, try setting aside your current masculine approach and lean into loving as your “way.”

If amazing relationships are your destination, loving (adjective and verb) is the path to get there.

Pour genuine love into just about any kind of relationship and you will get results you were not getting before. Learn how to open your heart in your relationships and your relationships will evolve and deepen. Give some love to yourself and you will find over time that your personal blocks, issues, and challenges transform. Love your demons, your fear, and the parts of yourself you don’t like and something powerful begins to occur. Love is what transforms your judgments of others (which are disowned judgments of yourself) into acceptance.

I’m here to purport that love is the greatest medicine in personal and spiritual development.

As Carl Jung says,

“Love is the dynamism that most infallibly

brings the unconscious to the light.”

Try it on that you are either opening to love or contracting away from love. Anything else is an ego-building project. More status, money, fame, power, are all just another ego trip.

Love is who you are at the most fundamental level. It is the main food you survived on during infancy and childhood, and the teaching you likely delivered to your parents during that precious time.

This concept is something I thought I understood for years. I remember when I was 21 listening to the Samples song about loving myself. It made sense. In that moment I realized I kinda loved myself. Looking back, I had no idea about what that really meant or what was possible with love. I had layers upon layers of self-protection that were unconscious to me and I was pretty unhappy.

If I am honest with myself, I spend most of my time in subtle levels of contraction. However, slowly over time that is shifting. Parenting, my men’s group, my marriage, and my life keep pointing me toward greater love. As any of you parents know, a new baby in your life can crack the dam open pretty wide. It continues to crack, some days it bursts open and my love comes ripping out like a mountain torrent. Other days my love is just a trickle, and some moments, my love is well hidden far behind the dam, which, in those moments seems impenetrable.

Loving is changing how I work with people and the view I take on the personal development path. I know there is an endless well of depth and profundity to me experiencing love. I’m suggesting the same for you.

So, I’m here to challenge you to join me in opening to greater and greater love in the context of your relationships and your life. Why not? What do you have to loose? Think about a world where you and others exuded love most waking hours?

To me opening one’s heart is the hardest practice of all. Much harder than climbing big peaks, going to med school (so I’ve been told), being lost in the wilderness, or even starting a business. A man’s relationship to his work, his family, his partner, his guy friends, and his environment can all be enhanced with serious and frequent doses of love.

Since, loving might just be the hardest practice, here are some basic tips to love more and more.

First, get honest and think of your relationship to love. How much do you feel love? Do you know what it feels like? What is more of an edge for you– giving or receiving love? Big picture in life and with your intimate partner or lover.  For many men receiving love is a much steeper path. Receiving love is largely a feminine process and most guys are simply not in touch with the feminine aspect of themselves. I struggle with both but my greater challenge is in receiving love.

Here are some signs that you could use some help receiving love:

• You always have to be “on top” during sex.
• You are great and helping others and being there for friends, but you never ask for, or need, help.
• You blow off compliments and affirmations with a compliment back, without first taking a breath and letting what the person said sink in and impact you.
• You like to be in control and be the leader.
• You have a hard time relaxing and doing nothing.

Signs that you are challenged by giving love:

• You resist giving a genuine compliment to a co-worker, lover, or friend.
• You hoard things in your life such as money.
• You are territorial
• You say things to yourself like “I am not going to drop the “L bomb” on her until I really feel it.
• You withhold your love for the “right relationship.”
• You judge, hate, blame, shame, and make fun of others.
• You believe that gays are bad, criminals should be locked up forever or killed, and you think anyone who doesn’t believe what you believe is going to hell.
• You see giving your love as someone potentially taking something from you.

Now, on to the practices.

I am practicing most of these daily. I suggest that you choose the ones that fit you and your life.

Warning: Only do these if you want to experience more love in your life. If you prefer contraction, being shut down, or have a stronger allegiance to your fear, please skip these practices and see if you can genuinely love where you are at instead of judging yourself. Seriously.

Practices toward greater love

1. Practice connecting to your own love. Close your eyes, meditate, relax and breathe into your heart. Imagine someone (or something) you love deeply. See if you can feel the love in your body, not just think about the concept. What does it feel like and where do you feel it? Can you expand it?

2. Live love daily. Commit to showing at least one person love every day. Strangers, friends, co-workers, and even yourself.

• Self-love. Stand in front of a mirror. Talk to that guy in the mirror and let him know by saying things like “I accept you” or “what I love about you is…”
• Love others. When you are at the store, a coffee shop, an elevator, or in your building at work, just make someone’s day by opening to them and loving them. Tell them directly what you appreciate about them in that moment, or show them with your body language and your smile without saying a word.
• Notice when you showing love is genuine, forced, or faked. All are find, but notice the difference and what it takes to drop in to a genuine expression of love. Faking it helps you see where you are holding back.
• Find an accountability partner. Send your accountability partner a text message every night, letting them know you showed love to someone that day. If you forgot, or didn’t do it, practice in the mirror, or, directly with them via text by letting them know you love them. Send a TM that reads one word: love.

3. Express gratitude. Do this verbally with someone or in your journal every day. Use a service such as gratitude log or just let yourself know 3 things you are grateful for prior to going to bed. “I am grateful for A, B, and C.”

4. Set the tone every morning. Every morning for 10 minutes do practice one and commit to love today. Choose love over stress, being grumpy, or complaining.

5. Own your fear and contraction. Remember that we are either opening to love or closing down to it (fear). Own your fear, own how comfortable you are in judgment and contraction.

6. Make a list of everything you get by keeping your heart closed and withholding your love. Share it with another man.

One of the first things you might notice by doing these practices, is that you will begin to bring awareness to how often you are closed down. No need to judge this, just open to the truth of your experience and love that.

Now, why the hell would you do this daily? Well, simply because most of us claim we want to feel better, be happier, be more at peace, or experience more love in our life. If this is true for you, I challenge you to commit to this for 1 month and see what happens. Find another man to do this with. Why another man? Because it is harder of course. Okay fine, a woman friend is good, but at some point, man up with another man and practice together. As my mentor David Cates likes to say, “If a man can’t love other men, he can’t love the man in himself.”

And finally as Pema Chodron says so eloquently:

“If your everyday practice is to open to all your emotions, to all the poeple you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that–then that will take you as far as you can go. And then you’ll understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught.”

Stay tuned for part 2 of this post in a few days when we discuss how the yoga of self-acceptance might impact a guy like you.

For now, let’s here your thoughts.

Photo by F. Montino (creative commons)

When you think of you and rage, what comes to mind? Do you picture yourself smashing cars with a baseball bat like I do? Or do you immediately think “I don’t get angry or enraged, that’s just not me.”

Have you personally ever felt rage? Homicidal rage? Rage at a lover? The world? The “system?” or whatever?

And, when you add the two elements of rage + men, what comes to mind? It is common to think the worst. Criminals, rapists, murderers, war, and extreme forms of violence. Rage often kills, destroys, and damages people and things.

I think that we can agree that most forms of rage are hurtful and beyond hurtful.

However, I want to introduce another slant on rage.  This is the rage-reframe that you and the world needs. I need and want your rage.

What is Rage?

First, what is rage exactly and where does it come from?

Without jumping into a thesis on rage and the human brain, here are a few basic aspects of rage. Think of rage as a geyser. Let’s say anger is near the surface, maybe it’s the steam, the boiling water, the heat. Rage on the other hand, comes from deep down within the geyser. Rage is “superheated” and can cause a great deal of damage.

Rage is commonly brought on by fear–a threat to some part of yourself. When you are threatened, your brain instantly reacts with a fight, flight, or freeze response. Rage can also be a reaction to protect deep, deep shame. (Read more about the biochemistry of rage here).

Why is my rage wanted/needed?

As I said before, I need and want your rage. You might be thinking WTF? Rage equals violence, no way. Rage only hurts.

While it is true that rage has caused much of the devastation around the globe since the invention of agriculture, and we can safely assume, largely at the hands of men, a new kind of rage is needed. Call it “conscious rage” or as my friend Christiane Pelmas calls it “rage-in-service-of-life.”

Christiane writes in her ReWilding blog:

Men are responsible for egregious violence against life. It has been this way for at least four millennia. Yet in order for something different to arise men must cultivate a functional relationship with the very emotion responsible for so much of the violence. They must be reacquainted with their rage, allowing it to come out of the shadows and take its place alongside the (only slightly) more accepted emotions of love and grief.

A man’s rage is a powerful portal back to the deepest heart connection he has with the world and with himself. We need masculine rage-in-service-of-life as desperately as we need rain forests, clean oceans, mountaintops, and wild-flowing unobstructed rivers.

I could not agree more. We men must own our rage and use it for the greater good. Otherwise, your stuffed rage, or your buddy’s sloppy rage will cause harm, period. Moreover, if you have not dealt with your own rage, chances are you won’t be that helpful with anyone else’s.

From my experience as a former wilderness therapy counselor and psychotherapist with very enraged teenagers and men, and struggling with my own rage, I learned a few things about this volatile emotion.

The current approach to rage

Because men have little to no training in regards to expression of anger and rage, and because most men are scared of their emotional world, they typically respond to rage in one of two ways:

1.  The Nice Guy—This is usually the first tactic men use. Don’t go there. Just bottle it up. You might hurt someone or get hurt. Fake a smile and act like everything’s fine.

2.  The Spaz—Once a man realizes he’s tired of being nice, or he can no longer contain such a strong emotion, it bleeds out. Scream, yell, fight, attack, and defend. Largely, because these men have no training, they act like a hurt infant and throw a tantrum.

Both of these approaches have one thing in common–FEAR. Fear is the foundation of unconscious, dissociated rage. So long as fear is on board, you will likely cause harm. See diagram below.

Likewise, the culture responds in one of two ways: 1) by egging rage on, (screaming fans at a fight) or 2) shutting it down with anger management. Conventional anger management essentially means you receive tools to help you further suppress your rage and anger.

To feel rage is to be human. All of us have felt rage at some point from infancy onward. It is human to feel shame, to feel threatened, and to want to defend yourself. The animal part of our brain acts like an animal for a reason–so we can survive.  But the pre-frontal cortex, or front part of our brain, comes in with some form of social conditioning such as “it’s not okay to express rage.” Thus rage becomes compounded and pressurized.

We all know that if feeling rage means you are human, it does not give you the right to uncork it and explode on a stranger, a co-worker, or a lover.

Remember, when you stuff your anger and rage over and over and you then add the stress of a failing marriage, a long day at the office, money issues, and you lack the tools to deal, a mundane event such as a person cutting you off on the highway or driving too slow in “your” lane, can trigger a massive outburst which can lead to real harm.

I personally stuffed my anger and rage for so long that when I would drink too much in college and someone rubbed me the wrong way, I would blow a gasket and go ape shit. My stuffed rage would explode out of me resulting in fights, verbal assaults, and other behavior that had me feeling a great deal of shame the following days and weeks.

But isn’t anger okay for men to express?

On the other hand, men in this culture seem to be “somewhat allowed” to express anger, and even rage. Especially if it’s finger pointing, blame, and fighting. Watch sports, TV reality shows, far-right or far-left politics. Men are often encouraged to “fight it out.” And if you don’t fight, you can be seen as too feminine, or gay.

And if no one ever taught you how to work with your anger/rage, you will likely respond as you did as a young infant boy; kick, scream, throw a tantrum, or shut down. (Sadly, if a woman gets enraged and shows it consciously or unconsciously, she’s labeled a psycho bitch).

Bottom line for men?  You are left with a contradictory message. Stuff it and play nice or intimidate and bully by throwing a tantrum. So even while men have more “permission” to show anger/rage, the contradictory message promotes suppression, confusion, and perhaps eventually violence.

What is the alternative?

Since these two choices suck, I suggest a third.

When you step back from most unconscious rage experiences and think with your heart, from a place of compassion, there is another way.

Conscious Rage–Rage coming from your heart.

Rage sitting on top of love will simply have a different impact.

As Christiane invites, what if your rage was a powerful portal back to your heart connection with yourself and the world? What if you could use your rage as a lightning rod for transformation, peace, justice, and “right-action?” What if you felt safe enough to really go there and express your rage in a conscious way?

I am suggesting we acknowledge that we have anger and/or rage and that we can use that energy for the greater good. In other words, begin to form a conscious relationship to your rage.  While you are at it, do this with all of your emotions.

Try it on that it is actually possible to feel your rage fully and not cause any harm to yourself or anyone else.  How? By tapping into the fact that you give a shit. You care, deeply about certain things. Feel your care, your passion and get pissed and the injunctions in the world. 

So, hopefully your brain is confused by now and you are open to doing rage and anger differently.

And, if you are one of those guys who claims, “I just don’t get angry.” Try it on that you are not connected to your own anger or rage and in turn, you are lacking life force. Anger and rage can be a gateway back to your personal power, passion, and the life force that can inspire you and others to make a difference.

Here are several pointers to get started.

1.  Acknowledge how destructive unconscious, man-rage can be.

2.  Acknowledge your rage and own it. Clean up your “old rage” that is still in you from old hurts and wounds. If you are scared of this aspect of yourself, find a good therapist or practitioner to help you sort it out.

3. Welcome this new view on rage and consider that your personal rage (coming from love) is needed.

4. Know the difference between your unconscious rage and your conscious rage. What is the difference for you? What does it feel like? See if you can find a form of rage in you that would come from love.

5. Take a course in non-violent communication. Become emotionally literate so your emotions don’t own you.

6. Practice working with your rage using the exercise below.

7. Join a men’s group and ask the men to support you in fumbling through this one by practicing expressing rage with other men in a safe way.

Finally, remember that rage in and of itself is NOT the issue. A man’s relationship to rage is the issue.

Working with rage– practice

Do this practice in a safe place, sitting or lying down with your eyes closed.

Visualize the thing you love the most in the world. Feel your heart, your love and your connection to this thing/person. Where in your body do you feel this? What is it like?

Now visualize that thing/person being taken from you.

Notice what happens next inside your body and what thoughts come online.

Take off the label of rage and feel the rage as energy in your body. Notice body sensations (tingling, heat, cold, vibrations, shaky, etc.) Pay special attention to your pelvis and jaw, common places we hold rage. Find the center of it. What is it like?

Find the “NO WAY CAN I LET THIS HAPPEN” in you that would protect that thing you love the most at all costs. Find the strength by identifying a resource somewhere in your body that could rise up to meet the situation.

Track your fear versus love. Tease out how a fear response might be different than a love response. Is fear above the rage or underneath it?

Stay with this energy until it dissipates. The only way over your rage is through it. You must feel it fully.

Notice that anger or even rage when coming from LOVE feels different than when your rage/anger is coming from FEAR.

At the core of your rage is either love or fear and sometimes both are involved. Commit to responding from love as opposed to fear.

If you could do anything with this energy what would you do? Would you hit stuff? Break things? Or would you just embrace the wild energy in your body and ride its wave?

Photo by Josh Levin

It’s near the new year, the solstice has happened and the days are getting longer. This translates into you giving birth to another aspect of yourself, your vision, and what you want in your life.

Or, it leads to another year gone by….

For years, I worked in wilderness therapy programs for troubled teens. The kids sent to these programs were often kidnapped by “escorts” in the middle of the night and taken to a remote wilderness location for one to four months.

Ninety nine percent of the time, the kids sent to these programs didn’t want to be there. They were forced to be there by their parents and the expectation from the parents was  “fix my kid.”  From the beginning it was always a set up.

The kids would show up shut down, angry, scared, and very resistant. Within days or weeks, they understood that the key to leaving the program was to “play the game.” Many kids would fake it and others would genuinely try to change. Regardless, the fuel for their change was usually motivated by one or two forces:

• External influence. Someone outside themselves such as their parents. “If my parents want me to change, fine, I will change and be different for them.”
• Fear. Fear of consequences and fear of rejection and abandonment. “If I don’t change, then I might loose my freedoms and the people I love the most.”

Because changes kids actually did make were through one or both of these forces, change and gains in their treatment were often small and short-lived.

It is very common for anyone who works a program of any kind, be it addiction recovery, an eating disorder, a fitness/diet program, or a simple new year’s resolution, to “relapse” into their old ways a few months after starting. Why? Because the motivation for change did not come from deep inside.

Most of the kids in the wilderness programs lacked this fundamental intrinsic desire to transform.  They felt pressure from the grown ups and so they tried to change for them. We adults are no different.

The same is true in a relationship with a lover. It often goes like this:

A man is brought into couples counseling by a woman who is unhappy with the way her man is being. She is hungry for more of him. She sees his potential and yearns for him to reach it. But he is somewhat comfortable in “his way” and lacks tools to tap into his potential so he gets lazy and cozy watching sports and distracting himself by working on other “projects.” She gets frustrated and asks him to change. He feels pressured, caves in, and tries to change for her without really getting inspired  himself to be different. Know anyone like this?

Rarely does this kind of couples counseling work. Until the man is ready and willing to change he won’t change. Whatever small gains he makes will be for her. This eventually leads to resentments and further disconnection.

This set up also works with our relationship to ourselves. We have two parts. One voice says “You should change and go to the gym 5 days/week.” The other voice, mostly unconscious to us, with more power says, “Fuck you, you can’t tell me what to do.” And so goes our internal struggle.

Do you feel an inner conflict sometimes?  Or are you hiding out in some way? Coasting along in a mediocre relationship? Drifting from you own path in a dead-end job? Or do you claim you want something in your life to be different but you just can’t make it happen? What will it take for you to change?

In my article on spirituality, I mention 3 things it takes for men to “find” spirituality:

• When things fall apart. Through a major life crisis or intense suffering personally or relationally.
• Intrinsic motivation. Through intense longing and hunger for more in life
• Solitude -Spending a considerable amount of time alone

It is the same with personal change, growth, and transformation. And this is the secret to lasting change that sticks.

Said in another way…

Option A-action

You must be willing to do whatever it takes to change the thing you want changed.

That’s right, whatever it takes and at whatever the cost.

So, if you are up to the task, make a commitment, both to yourself and out loud with another person. Something like this:

I commit to doing anything and everything in my power to change _______, and get the results that I desire. (this is commitment 11 of the 10 commitments to manhood).

Remember, this is not about changing another person or something outside of your locus of control. Pick something about yourself that you want to change.

For example, a client recently told me “I want deeper, more connected relationships. I want to work through whatever blocks I have to intimacy and love.” First he is clear on what he wants, next he can make a commitment to change it and put an action plan in place to work on it.

When I was 29 years old, I was in a lot of pain and I was suffering. My relationships would only go so deep. I longed for more. At the same time, I always blamed the woman and refused to look at myself.

But at 29 and with ten or more years of limited results and unfulfilled relationships, I hit a tipping point. My pain was so substantial and my desire for gain was so strong that I was ready. I remember saying to myself and my therapist at the time, “I am willing to do whatever it takes to get better results.”

That was a big moment in my life and it is what sent me on a personal evolution path that continues today.

Note: If you don’t take option A, you invite the default option B which may or may not happen before you die. Let’s look at option B.

Option B-passive

You wait for something bad to happen to you.

I have not shared this one in a while, but for years I wanted something bad to happen to me so in order for me to change, and then my life would have meaning. I wished that some doctor would tell me I had six months to live or that I had some rare disease and that I would lose my legs. Can you relate? Maybe I’m just weird.

I didn’t know about option A until the slow 10-year burn turned to unbearable frustration and reached a critical mass.  At that point I stopped looking outward and turned my attention on my own games and bullshit and asked, “What if I’m the problem?”

It was then that I realized that there was hope for me. But it would take some brutal personal work to get the results that I so yearned for.

Marketing experts know that you want to wait for option B and through this, they prey upon you. Mainstream ad campaigns promise to fix your pain and to do it with ease and little effort on your part. Think about drug companies. “Take this pill or buy this product and you will feel better.” They prey upon the bystander in you that wants someone to do it for you.

Well guess what? True change will only happen when you a) want it bad enough or b) when you wait for the shit to hit the fan. And if you are in mild discomfort, you are less motivated than someone in extreme discomfort and therefore less likely to change.

See if this is true for you and your own changes that have stuck.

Are you playing the victim, waiting around for something to happen to you?  Or are you going to take full responsibility for your life, man up, and get clear about the internal changes you want to make and start today in making them?

Let’s say you are motivated by an external factor such as wanting to be a better father for your kids, this is fine in the beginning. But at a certain point, you must change for you and the desire must come from deep within you. The benefits toward others will come naturally.

You have to want it.

You must be incredibly hungry.

You must want it bad enough or you are simply waiting…

So, here’s my advice for you brave souls who are considering change.

1.  Get very clear on motivation for change. Is it for your wife/spouse/partner? Is it external? Internal? Both?

2.  Next, how bad do you want it? Rate yourself from 1-10, 10 being “I will do whatever it takes.”

3.  Then, look at your thoughts and words and see if it matches your behavior. If you make a claim you are a “10″ and want to change, but your actions are a “7″ and speak a different message, then you are not congruent and your change ain’t gonna stick.

4.  Get congruent. The more congruent you can be, the more likely change is to happen. It might not be at the pace you want or in the way you want. Congruency means that your thoughts, words, and actions all line up and say the same thing. This leads to trustworthiness and deeper integrity as a man.

5. Once you are crystal clear, take full responsibility to make the change happen and commit to it.

6.  Make an action plan and get accountability from another man or a men’s group.

7.  Hire a therapist or coach and/or find a spiritual path and community that resonates with who you are to support you.

If you don’t know what you want to change, but you know things could be different, start by getting some feedback from trusted friends. What do people really think of you? What consistent feedback do you get that pisses you off? What have your intimate partners said about you that is the same every time?

The “how” comes after you are a 10 and after you are foaming at the mouth for change.

Special note to the helpers out there that want to change someone else

If you know someone who has a ton of potential and you just know they would benefit from a personal development workshop, a coach, a therapist or a book, rather than try to change them, please own how their behavior impacts you.

This will help them understand that the cost of their inaction. Advice and sneaky suggestions are not nearly as effective as truth telling about what happens for you when they are the way they are.

It is fine to make a request from a place of love and respect. “I care about you Bob, I want to encourage you to go hire a coach to help you get better results. I’m tired of the talk with no action. I am trusting you less as a man.”

At a certain point, wanting to change someone is an act of aggression and demonstrates a fundamental lack of trust in their path and their life. Who are you to know what is best for them? Who made you the authority on what is best for them and what would help them? If they want to keep stewing in their own bullshit, they have a right to do so.

Always come back to yourself. The more self-awareness you have, the more effective you will be in the changes you so desire.

Easy.

He, like you and me, is human. And it just goes to demonstrate that you can have all the money in the world and be famous beyond belief and still have many, many issues that you would rather no one know about. Tiger Woods having one or more affairs behind his wife’s back is no surprise.

From John Edwards to Martin Luther King Jr, no one is above relationship challenges.  No one is above the human condition. That’s the good news for all you men out there who think you can act perfect and hide your issues.

If you are in a long term relationship or married, you realize that challenge is simply part of the terrain. You also realize that if you want a dynamic relationship, you must face the challenges and invite change. If you have kids you know that challenges increase and change is even more inevitable. Any new father knows that life becomes radically different when a child enters the equation.

As a new Dad, I personally have faced some big challenges such as sleepless nights, money issues, and the onslaught of soiled diapers. But as a new parent, the biggest of challenges have come in my relationship with myself and with my wife.

My wife and I work very hard on our relationship and are committed to evolving and growing. Our marriage vows serve our individual needs and aspirations toward this unfolding process. Why? So, we don’t slip into a comfortable, mediocre, business relationship where we just co-parent and act like roommates.

The roommate trap

While I doubt Tiger Woods fell into being “roommates” with his partner due to his rigorous schedule, I’m sure they fell into some dynamic that allowed both of them to avoid their connection and whatever was “in the way” of them getting real and getting honest.

Men who do not attend rigorously to their marriage will eventually settle into a complacent relationship wherein both parties stop growing and agree to play it safe.

Add a new kid into the family, and the temptation to put your relationship on the back-burner steadily grows. A new child is very demanding and needs full attention from one or both parents. But to use my kid as the reason I am not close with my wife is a cop out. If a couple continues to use this excuse, the gap between them will continue to widen.

I recently read a great article in the New York Times about a couple, with two young kids, who finally decided after nine years of “good” marriage to deepen and make it better by going to therapy and workshops. The wife had sensed much more was possible. The husband was pretty ambivalent at first but went along with it.

In their “good” relationship, the husband focused all his attention on becoming a master chef at home, spending hours and hours in the kitchen while the wife tended to the bills and kids. They didn’t outwardly agree to this, it just happened over time. As the husband got honest, he realized cooking was his way to avoid his wife, their intimacy, and his own discomfort in the marriage. She discovered she was avoiding also by attending to her “role.”

They also discovered that the way they related was serving a function– their sarcasm with one another was “protecting uncomfortable feelings” and stifling their intimacy.

It seems commonplace that over time, new parents unconsciously and quietly agree to be co-parents, pals, and roomies, thus staving off any juicy intimacy that might be possible otherwise. The classic example that is still quite common is that Dad settles into “worker, provider guy” and Mom settles into stay-at-home-Mom.

Within and beyond your roles, how good is your marriage really? Ask yourself what kind of long-term partnership do you want? If you are honest with yourself, are you going as deep as you could go? Have you ever fully revealed yourself to your partner? How much do you hold back in the bedroom? Are you using your new child(ren) as a way to avoid your wife and avoid deepening with her?

Is Cheating Inevitable?

What really happens to the intimacy when a new kid arrives? Is cheating common? What is it that really makes a man cheat on his wife? What is really going on here? If blame can’t be placed on the new child, then who is responsible?

Just the other day, I went to a friend’s place to help him and his wife dialogue about their struggling marriage. Their child is 3 and they continue to have big relationship challenges. My friends are choosing the seemingly steep climb to greater depth and connection. Honest couples get honest about what is going on and work with it. This takes tremendous courage and a willingness to tell the truth. Most couples avoid, avoid, avoid.

I work with many men who have cheated, some openly, others secretly. Most have huge shame and carry enormous guilt about it, even while continuing to do it.

First, try it on that cheating is always a symptom of something going on underneath the surface.

According to Gary Neuman who wrote The Truth About Cheating, “cheating rarely has anything to do with the woman being unattractive.” In fact, according to Gary Neuman 88% of the men he interviewed for his book said that the other woman “wasn’t better looking or in better shape than their wives.”

I mention this because a lot of men might initially place blame on their wife. She isn’t X enough or she’s so Y.

So, what is cheating?

Wikipedia defines Cheating as

“an act of lying, deception, fraud, trickery, imposture, or imposition. Cheating characteristically is employed to create an unfair advantage, usually in one’s own interest, and often at the expense of others,[1]”

In the case of a marriage or monogamous relationship, cheating is leaking your energy elsewhere. A lot of men will justify “leaky” behavior as “I’m just flirting.” or “I didn’t sleep with her, so it’s fine.” But you have to be really, really honest with yourself.

Cheating can be emotional, energetic, or physical.

For example, years ago I had an emotional affair with another woman. At the time it felt innocent and like it was no big deal. And when my girlfriend at the time sniffed it out, I tried to downplay it and move on. Later after receiving some hard feedback from trusted men in my men’s group and a gifted therapist, I owned up to the fact that I had in fact crossed a line and betrayed her.

I discovered that I was angry at my girlfriend and felt judged by her. So, by having an emotional affair and leaking with this other woman, I could indirectly say “fuck you” to my girlfriend because deep down I was hurt.

So, an emotional affair is where you might lean on another woman for support to discuss your relationship challenges. Women often seem safer than men to discuss relationship stuff. Men often go to a female co-worker or friend to vent (another great reason to have solid man friends and a men’s group).

A physical affair is quite obvious and involves physical contact with another woman where there is some sexual charge. Kissing, intercourse, oral sex, long leaky hugs, etc.

An energetic affair can be where you fish for flirting situations. You leak out your interest or see if another woman is interested just passing by at the airport, coffee shop, or bar. You might even use the internet to leak out your sexual energy by cruising someone’s facebook profile or surfing porn.  An online or in-person energetic affair can eventually lead to an emotional or physical affair.

Now, this is not to say a guy doesn’t “look” and can’t “look.” But to me that is different. It’s all in your intention and where your awareness is going. If you have a solid relationship, then any kind of “checking someone out” is going to be a lot less harmful or threatening. But if your relationship is built upon a shaky foundation, any instance where you leak your sexual energy out is an invitation for a fight and hurt feelings.

According to Neuman’s research:

• 1 in 2.7 men will cheat, and most of their wives will never find about it.
• 92% of men say that affairs aren’t primarily about sex.

Yikes! But why?

Why do Guys Cheat?

According to marriage counselor Gary Neuman, men cheat because of:

• Loneliness in their relationship or marriage.
• Affirmation from “the other women.”
• Not enough attention at home.

I would add that new Dads might cheat because of:

• Fear. Fear of intimacy, fear of failure, fear of being seen, fear of being hurt. Fear of hurting your partner.
• Anger. Unowned, unexpressed anger about some issue in the relationship
• Disconnection. Feeling no or little connection.
• Irritability with oneself and one’s situation
• Sexually frustrated. Perhaps your wife doesn’t find you attractive or refuses to have sex with you. Pretty soon, you might start looking elsewhere instead of dealing with the issue.
• Feeling left out. Some new dads report feeling “left out” because Mom and newborn are bonding so much. Dad starts to feel ignored and neglected.

Sadly Neuman says that “The number one reason men cheat is that there’s an emotional disconnection in the relationship. Husbands or partners feel underappreciated, and report a lack of thoughtful gestures. They’re lonely in their marriage.”

Here’s the deal. If you are unhappy in your marriage or your relationship, get off your ass and do something about it. If you are “underappreciated” or “disconnected” then get connected, get in the game. Stop waiting for your wife or partner to make the first move. Stop complaining and playing the victim. Take full responsibility today or you might end up with your tail between your legs like Tiger.

The only reason I have ever cheated on any girlfriend or had “emotional affairs,” was because something was “off” in the relationship and in myself and I was unwilling (and scared shitless) to address it.

The issue is quite simple. There is a relationship challenge or obstacle, and guys who cheat don’t want to address it, face it, or confront it. They would rather emotionally and physically “exit” the relationship. They “leak” energy outside the monogamous relationship.

So, why did Tiger Woods cheat?

It’s anybody’s guess, but in my eyes, he was obviously scared to address some issues before things got out of hand.

To me cheating is not the issue. Remember it’s a symptom. What set this behavior off? What was it that Tiger was feeling, experiencing, and wanting that he did not speak to? What was he so afraid of?

Tiger still has a real opportunity to “teach” his new children about love and about the challenges of relationship. But sadly, I don’t trust him to do that. He doesn’t have to. He can just keep playing golf, making great cash and people will likely forgive him. But most of us are not Tiger.

It’s time for men to Man Up

Remember this is not about staying together or acting “good.” Religious approaches to staying married simply don’t work. This is about getting real and being willing to tell the truth, no matter how painful to yourself first, then your partner.

When I work with couples, it is often the woman who drags the man into counseling or relationship coaching. This is sad but generally true. Why? Dudes don’t want to admit that they struggle or that something is wrong.

How could such a champion be so incompetent in relationship? Well, relationship is a lot more challenging for Tiger than golf. It is humbling for us to see such a champion brought to his knees and reveal his inadequacies and shame. Remember, he’s human like you and me.

I doubt Tiger will make a vow to be as good at relationship as he is at golf. But you can. If you still have something to learn about relationship and intimacy, practice being a student, take some classes, get some coaching and learn.

It is possible to have an amazing marriage and relationship. It took my wife and I about four years of intense counseling, coaching, mentoring to get to a place of profound intimacy. We hit a plateau and now we both want to go further. So, we are diving in and being students again, learning, opening, and making space for the magic of our connection to penetrate us both.

Relationship is an ever changing sea of chaos, uncertainty, love, pain, loss, and intensity. That is, if you engage it fully.

What to do?

So, if you are in a struggling or challenging marriage or relationship and you genuinely want it to be different, do something about it. Or, if you are in a good marriage, but know there can be more spark, more juicy sex, more profound love, get off the couch and take full responsibility for going after what you want.  Don’t pretend like you have your marriage handled if you don’t.

• Stay focused on your own growth and change. Do your own individual work. If your partner won’t agree to seek help, just work on accepting that and work to change yourself. Don’t get sucked into trying to fix your partner.
• Get professional help. I mean really good professional help. There are so many crappy relationship therapists, counselors, and coaches out there. Find one you instantly trust and feel safe with. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to ask for help.
• Get feedback from trusted friends and your men’s group. I’m not talking about friends who give lame advice. I’m talking about friends who have no agenda for you, save you being true and honest with yourself.
• If your relationship is going well, celebrate it–regularly!!
• If you divorce or leave the relationship please know and understand that your issues will follow you. You will find yourself in a similar situation unless YOU change. Try it on that you are the person with the relationship issue. That’s the good news. Knowing this gives you the freedom to do something about it.

He’s in his mid-thirties and has been miserable for years. Not happy in his marriage, not happy as a father, not happy in his job. The guy is in a ton of pain. Recently, he had some big breakthroughs and started to get honest, admit everything above, and begin the work toward a different life.

My client’s statement is not new and one I know well. I remember when I first started working on myself–going to therapy, evolving and growing. I was going through a ton of intense shit and no one in my family and none of my old friends understood or could relate. The label they gave me? Selfish and self-absorbed.

There was even bitterness in their voice. Many said it to my face with an extremely judgmental tone.

Wow. Here I was finally taking a look at my habitual, neurotic patterns that caused me, and others a ton of suffering, that might just make me a better person, and I received zero support or validation. Ouch. It was a painful time. For a lot of you, this attitude is what you are up against.

So, I want to settle this once and for all with you confused men out there that think to work on yourself is selfish and that that is somehow a bad thing. It’s understandable why you might be confused because in our culture, we get conflicting messages about what it means to be selfish.

On the one hand, there is permissible selfishness. If you are on a plane and it is going down, you are supposed to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before your child. You can’t save someone’s life if you don’t save yourself first.

On the other hand if you rush to the front of the line, you are selfish. If you talk about yourself a lot, you are selfish. If you don’t give to charity, you are selfish. If you spend money on yourself, you are selfish.

It seems what’s valued in this culture is acting “selfless” and hiding your selfishness, even though you can be selfish much of the time. In other words, you put on your mask in social situations by being a do-gooder.

For example you might put others first, even though deep down you don’t want to put someone else first. Maybe you are judging them, irritated by them, and in your heart, you may not really care that much about them. But you put on your happy face and act polite.

My client’s attitude is not uncommon. He believes that by helping his family and co-workers (most of which he said he didn’t like) while ignoring his own needs, everything will be okay.  For example, he believed he should spend no money on himself and direct it all to his family.

Some 12-step recovery programs can have a similar attitude. The saying goes that if you are feeling shitty, just help someone else and it will help you feel better about yourself. But ask yourself if you are drowning, do you want another person who’s drowning to be helping you?

The irony here is that once your basic needs are met, the more you can spend money on yourself (I’m not talking about superficial “stuff” like fancy shoes or a new car) such as your personal and professional development as a man, the more you will be available, open, and generous in other areas of your life.

There are a few ways to look at this. Let’s come at it from 2 different angles.

The conventional, mainstream view

The conventional, mainstream view is that working on yourself is selfish. Okay, so freakin’ what? Who cares? My response to this attitude? This is what I found myself saying a few years back and trying to convince my family and friends that I was doing the right thing…

“Good. It’s about time I started giving a shit about my own happiness. If I can figure that out, perhaps I’ll be much more pleasant to be around and perhaps more effective in helping others.

You say I’m a selfish SOB because I want to work through my blocks? I’m selfish because I finally am taking a look at some unfinished business in my life that I’ve suppressed, stuffed, and avoided? I’m selfish because I know that if I work on me, I’ll be a better man, lover, and friend? Great, call me selfish then.”

In this case I had to react, push back, and rebel against someone’s else’s view of me being selfish. At the time, it felt good.

The new view–redefine the term selfish

So, in the grand scheme of things, if you honor yourself, who cares what someone else labels you? Who cares if they call you a self-centered pig? If you know in your heart, you are doing your best to be the person that you know you are capable of being that is to be celebrated!

So, practice redefining what it means to be selfish. The new view is that by turning your attention inward and liberating yourself, you can liberate others. By loving yourself fully, you can love others. By attending to the garden of your own life in an ongoing way, you can give the fruits of your hard labor away for all to relish in. By judging yourself less, you will become less judgmental toward others. And on and on. To know this is to be free of another person’s judgments about how and where you spend your time, money, and energy.

But how to I put myself first if no one supports me doing it?

• Redefine selfishness as stated above.
• Begin to notice and evaluate all the ways you abandon yourself and what you want because you have some idea that you are “putting others first.” Pay attention to resentments you might have as a result.
• Have the balls to tell your loved ones why it is paramount you put more stake in YOU.
• In other words, take full responsibility for your life and put you FIRST. Go after what you want.
• Give yourself permission to take good care of yourself and be kind to yourself first and foremost.
• Consider that the more you put yourself first, the more happy and fulfilled you will become.
• Read the next post on Idiot Compassion versus True Compassion (coming in a few days).

The good news about my client? He’s more on track than ever to putting himself first and negotiating that with his family.  What about you?