The New Male Sexuality (30 page)

It’s amazing how often a woman will complain about not hearing something such as “I love you” or “You look terrific” or something of the sort and the man will respond with “But I do love you” or “You certainly did look terrific.” But why didn’t he say it spontaneously? Why does the woman have to fish for compliments and expressions of love? The rest of this discussion assumes that you do love your partner and find her attractive but just aren’t expressing the feelings directly. If you don’t like or love your partner, or you are so angry with her that you’re not even sure if you do love her, you probably need to get competent professional help.

Human beings need to be appreciated and complimented. We all need our daily quota of strokes. When we don’t get enough, we are irritable and out of sorts. When we do get enough, we’re more pleasant to be with, more amenable to working things out, and can endure a great many things that otherwise would have us climbing the walls. Yet it’s amazing that both at home and at work so many of us—men and women—feel unappreciated, unnoticed, and unliked.

If you have trouble expressing compliments or words of love, the next two exercises can help.

EXERCISE 10-3: EXPRESSING APPRECIATION OR COMPLIMENTS

Spend some time over the next week thinking of things you like and appreciate about your partner and jot them down. Most of the time you won’t actually have to do any thinking; you’ll be aware of saying things to yourself like “I’m glad to have her help with X,” “She really looks great,” “She’s such a joy,” or “She’s got a great sense of humor.” Write these thoughts on a piece of paper
.

At the end of the week go over your list and ask yourself how many of these thoughts you expressed in words to her. Be careful with this. Many men believe they’ve expressed a compliment when in fact all they did was say it to themselves. Make sure you actually said it to her. If there are compliments you didn’t give her, would you be willing to express more of them? What would it take?

If you’re willing, just do it. Not all at once, but when it’s appropriate. For example, if you appreciated the help she gave on some task, even if that was two weeks ago, why not tell her now? If she looked beautiful when you went out last weekend, why not tell her now? If you appreciate her intelligence, decisiveness, humor, mothering skills, cooking, or anything else, why not just say so?

Give yourself a goal of giving her a specific number of compliments in the next three days, maybe two or three of them. Keep track of how many you give and what they were
.

Then ask yourself what good feelings you have about her that you’re not letting her know about. If there’s no compelling reason for your silence, see if you’re willing to break it
.

You might also want to determine if your compliments are limited to just one or two areas. Are you, for example, complimenting your mate’s beauty and sexual abilities but not her intelligence and sense of humor? Women love being treated as sex objects by the men they love, but they detest being treated as nothing
but
sex objects. Feel free to compliment her looks and sexual competence, but make sure to mention other qualities as well
.

You should do this exercise every week for a month or so, until you get into the habit of expressing your positive feelings
.

Now to the famous phrase “I love you.” Few words mean as much to a woman, yet a great many women claim they don’t hear it at all or as much as they’d like. What’s fascinating about this is that upon hearing the complaint, the men usually respond immediately with “But of course I love you.” The problem is not with a lack of love but with a lack of expression.

EXERCISE 10-4: SAYING “I LOVE YOU”

For the next week, every time you feel that you love your partner, tell her. If she’s not there, call and tell her. If you can’t reach her, leave a message on her voice mail or tell her later: “I was in a meeting today but had a hard time concentrating. All I could do was think of how much I love you.” Another option is to write your feelings down on a piece of paper and leave it where she’ll find it. Don’t get fancy: “I love you” or “I adore you” is all that’s needed. Other phrases such as “I’m so glad you’re in my life” or “Marrying you was the best thing I ever did” will be taken as synonyms for “I love you” by some women but not by others
.

If you can’t do what I’ve suggested above—that is, tell her you love her—then write your feelings on a piece of paper when you have them. Do this for several weeks, and at the end of each week go over what you’ve written. Then close your eyes and imagine yourself telling her these things. Many men find that after a week or two of this, it’s much easier to express their love directly to their partners
.

GETTING IT OUT OF YOUR HEAD

Much of what I’ve been saying in this chapter can be summarized this way: Get your feelings out of your head or body and make them public. As I mentioned earlier, men frequently think or feel what their partners want to hear but don’t express it. So most of the time it’s a question not of finding things to say but simply of getting out what’s already there.

A related issue doesn’t have to do so much with feelings as with just keeping your partner up to date with what’s going on in your world. One couple I counseled came to see me very upset about what had happened the day before.

Tracy had called John at work, and although he didn’t sound particularly glad to hear from her, she started telling him about her day. A moment later he screamed at her to stop bothering him and hung up. In our session, John explained that when she called, he’d been frantic—two of his company’s largest clients were visiting, and a report was due before five o’clock. Tracy’s call made him feel that she didn’t care about his hectic schedule. The truth was that Tracy was very considerate of John’s time and work, but he hadn’t said a word to her about how that day was special. If he had only told her, she wouldn’t have called.

If Tracy and John had been having the nightly debriefing sessions I mentioned in
Chapter 9
, this incident would not have occurred. He would have told her the night before what this day looked like.

When something changes in your schedule or in your mind that might affect your partner, why not tell her? It’s a good idea, because not doing so can result in unnecessary upset and arguments.

WHAT ABOUT TEARS?

Crying is a natural way of expressing feelings associated with losing someone or being reunited with someone we thought we had lost or might lose. But it can also be a way of expressing great joy or nostalgia. I suspect that when someone doesn’t cry at certain times—for example, on learning of the death of a loved one—some serious suppression is going on. While I don’t think you have to cry to be a good person, I do believe that being able to do so is one sign of being in touch with and able to express certain feelings.

All babies cry, and it’s not unusual for five-and six-year-old boys to shed tears. But you don’t see many ten-year-old boys cry, and it’s rare in the popular media to see or read about a male of any age crying. The message, although perhaps delivered earlier, starts getting through around age seven or eight: “Big boys don’t cry.” The message often comes from parents, but also from peers and is certainly reinforced by them. An eight-year-old boy who cries during a game or at school is going to find out very fast that such behavior is unacceptable. It’s fascinating and quite sad to watch eight-and nine-year-old boys when they are hurt, disappointed, fearful, or in grief. You can see the tears well up and the lip trembling, but you also see them fighting back the tears, trying not to look at you, biting their lips and, as novelist Jonathan Kellerman so aptly put it, “straining for macho.”

And that’s all it takes for many males. They may never again cry, not when a friend or their parents die, not when they return from a war to see their wives and children after years of absence, not even when they are so sad or lonely or heartbroken that they’re thinking of killing themselves.

You can release the ability to cry if you want to. What’s required is to remove the blocks that are in the way. Being in a safe setting, or with a safe person, makes a great difference. Many men, for example, cried for the first time in years when they participated in encounter groups popular during the 1960s and ’70s, or in group therapy or men’s groups. Many men have cried for the first time in years when they were in a relationship where they felt safe. They knew it was acceptable to cry in such places, that they wouldn’t be put down or considered less manly for doing so.

What these men accomplished in groups and relationships can be done on one’s own by deciding that crying is okay and by looking at how you stop yourself from doing it. A common obstacle is fear, not only of not being manly but also of not being able to stop crying if you start. Since men aren’t accustomed to their own tears, they often fear being overwhelmed
by them. That fear is not realistic. You usually can stop the crying when you want; even if you can’t, you eventually do get “cried out” and the tears stop of their own accord.

Here is one man’s account. He decided in his forties that not being able to cry made him an incomplete human being. He felt bad that he hadn’t cried when his mother died a few years earlier—he had felt sadness and desolation then, but wouldn’t let himself cry. He set himself the task of sitting down one night at home and thinking about his mother. If the tears were there, he wanted to let them out. They were, and he did.

This was the first time I’ve cried since I was a baby. It was frightening at first. Felt like a tidal wave of tears and I thought I might drown in it, but I made an amazing discovery. Crying actually feels good. It’s a way of handling sadness, and you feel better as a result. I somehow feel more complete about my mother than I have before. She was very good to me and a wonderful person. It’s fitting that her son cried for her. When I feel like crying in the future, I’m going to let it happen. No more stomping down the tears like I’ve done all my life. If someone doesn’t like it, that’s their problem.

EXPRESSING YOURSELF SEXUALLY

Many women I’ve talked with complain that men don’t express their sexual passion and pleasure. The specific complaints range from men who don’t initiate sex with passion and enthusiasm to those who don’t express pleasure during sex and, perhaps most surprisingly, those who are so quiet during orgasm that their partners aren’t sure if they have come.

My take on all this is that it has to do with the general flattening of affect in men because of what we’ve been taught. Because we learn that any expression of emotion is suspect, and any indication of being carried away by feelings is even worse, many of us keep a tight rein on all our feelings. Even though sex may feel great, we tend not to let it show. This is unfortunate in at least two respects. One is that we cheat our partners. By not letting them know how much we appreciate, desire, and enjoy them, we rob them of feeling desirable and knowing how much pleasure they bring us. We also rob ourselves, because the expression of desire and pleasure can add to our own arousal and enjoyment.

Many of us are unaware of how inhibited we are in these areas. I have watched many times while men listened in disbelief as their partners
reported they didn’t feel desired (even though the men initiated sex) and didn’t feel the man enjoyed sex. These men were simply unaware of how little they let their feelings show.

One way to check into how expressive you are in sex is to ask your partner. Does she know when you’re really hot for her? Does she know how much you enjoy making love with her or when she does a certain thing? Is she aware of how beautiful and sexy you find her? Is she aware of how much you enjoy your orgasms? Another way of checking is to look into yourself. When you desire her, are you letting all of your desire show, or are you doing some heavy editing? An example of editing would be feeling that you really want her but saying only something like “Would you like to make love?” Why not show her and tell her what you’re actually feeling? And during sex, are there any feelings, sounds, and movements that you’re bottling up?

One man whose partner complained about his inexpressiveness told me this when we were alone: “I know there’s a lot I’m keeping to myself. I really do enjoy sex, but I’m afraid I’d sound like a squealing pig if I let it all show. This doesn’t quite fit my image of myself, and I’m not sure how well she’d accept what I might do.” What he didn’t know was that his wife had had a lover before him who did let it all hang out, and she’d loved it. “I loved seeing him so uninhibited and out of control,” she said, “and it made me feel so powerful that I was the source of all this pleasure.”

I have never heard a woman complain that her lover was too uninhibited, that he made too much noise, that he showered her with too many compliments, or that he expressed too much pleasure. When you think about it, it’s clear that we love to see others express pleasure, especially when we’re the source of it. We delight in babies who squeal and squirm with joy when we touch them. And the main standard many men have of judging good lovers is how “wild” and “uninhibited” the women are. Maybe there’s a moral here.

If you want to be more expressive in sex, just attend to the difference between what you’re feeling on the inside and what you’re exhibiting on the outside. If there’s a sound, a word, or a movement that wants to come out, why not let it? If you have concerns about how your partner might react, why not discuss this with her first? As you express more, I’m sure you’ll find that you and your partner’s enjoyment will increase. Decorum has its place, but not in the bedroom.

And don’t forget about talking about sex after it’s over, minutes later, hours later, and even days later. Such talk provides guidance to your partner and can help the good feelings continue long after the act is over. The
kinds of expression during and after love play can vary from general comments about what went on to more specific feedback: