Love, Sex & Intimacy

When I talk about Men’s Relationship to Love, Sex & Intimacy, I often describe it as the Intimacy that we yearn for, the love we misunderstand, and the sex we settle for. Intimacy for many men is a scary proposition and for many of us we get love, sex and intimacy tangled up. Love is often assumed but misunderstood and the wounding that many men experience from social/societal conditioning limits access to love.

On my trip to Barcelona over five years ago, I got the message that as men we haven’t been socialized to socialize in healthy ways. The ways we are disconnected from each other, the fear many men have to be vulnerable and especially to be vulnerable in the company of other men. Studies show that men stop making friends at the age of 35 and for many the relationships they had early on were superficially based and lacked the depth that many men need and desire.

The need is less to unpack and more to untangle the ways we blend love, sex, and intimacy. We as men need to unpack the wounding that keeps us from experiencing and tapping into the transforming power of love. We need to explore our relationship to sex. And we need to walk into our fears of intimacy where we are truly seen for who we are and we can unlock our authentic identity from our constructed identity.

I often say that this work isn’t actually about men’s relationship to masculinity, it’s men’s relationship to their deeper humanity. It’s looking at the ways that the societal construct of masculinity has limited our access to our own humanity, to our authenticity, and to our ability to love freely.

In so many of these conversations, we talk a good game about love, but when you look more deeply at our actions - the question becomes - are we about to consciously and consistently show up from a place of love. Are we able to love freely embody love, and are we able to show up in healthy ways around our sexuality, around our ability to be intimate - in romantic relationships, in partnerships, in friendships, and in family.

Have we worked through our attachment wounds that either take us into a non-committal or needy place. Have we really explored our belief systems around love? Do we believe we are lovable? Are we able to express love to another human being? Can we move beyond expectation and judgment of ourselves and others to wrap ourselves in the blanket of compassion and compassionate expression.

These days the conversations are about bridge building, but if we are not able to fully express love, how are we able to truly be the bridge builders we are called to be in the world? It’s my belief that only when men can tap into a healthy relationship with sex, love, and intimacy, will we be able to truly be the bridge builders we are called to be.

In many conversations I have with men, we talk about our deeply held values, our desires to create social impact, and the ways we are creating impact in the world. Yet, at the same time, when the conversation blends into relationships and romantic relationships, dating, or sex, it’s like I see a very different person in front of me. I often call this the Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde syndrome for men. It tells me that this work is critical before we can even look deeper at the work beyond to the ways we create impact in the world. The love, sex, and intimacy work is also paramount to accessing compassion. At the root of compassion is self compassion or the journey to self love and subsequently the compassion we have for others.

I was always confused early on when people would say you can’t love someone else until you love yourself. Yet there was no roadmap. The book I’m writing is about the roadmap for men to learn to access and embrace self love so they can fully express love in the world.