Men Don’t Know

“I don’t know how to do that”, he whispered. A client & I were talking about the kind of sex his new girlfriend desired. He started by telling me about the sex he was familiar with - hard & fast, driven & repetitive - and that which his girlfriend was asking for - nuanced, responsive, ebbing and flowing, with a continually changing tempo. It’s not that he didn’t want to offer it to her, he just didn’t know if he was capable.

This is true so much of the time. Men don’t know. As their partners, we think they know, and are selfishly withholding from us, but it’s not true. Most of the time, they don’t know. And that not knowing terrifies them.

A few days ago, a new lover & I were discussing similar things. I was sharing what I love in sex, and what I don’t like. I mentioned his hands at my neck - I’ve never enjoyed that. He was relieved to hear it. “15 years ago a friend told me that women love that. I hate it, but have been doing it ever since because I thought it was what you all wanted!”

Yup, like that.

All the formulas, sex tips, and bad advice are enough to drive a man into his head, where the only way out seems to be a good hard f*ck. Oh yes, that’s another one I’ve heard. “The only way I can get out of my head is by going hard and fast. If i slow down, I start thinking and lose my erection, so I do it to not disappoint her”.

It’s true, men do not want to disappoint.

The vulnerability of being a 30, 40, 50, 60 year old man and acknowledging how much of your sex is driven by fear - fear of not knowing, fear of not pleasing, fear of not getting hard, fear of being stuck in your head. That is some courage - one that goes against almost all masculine conditioning.

And where it leads is so amazing. Because on the other side of fear, on the other side of compensatory hard & fast is such an incredibly deep, throbbing, immersive terrain of sex, that every vulnerability is worth it. It’s the terrain of feeling. Of hydration. Of actual erotic power. The shift from two people “having” sex, to two people being inside of sex together.

That, I believe, is the connection - the knowing and being known - we all crave.

And yes, it takes going through each fear and risking it to be true - if only for a while as a new way is discovered. But there is nothing like being free of fear. Free enough to know what is possible beyond the hard & fast f*ck.

I, for one, am grateful for every man willing to go there.

(artwork by Kat Hanula)