Day 19 - Group Sex

It is a perhaps less well known phenomena that, after a while, men in a men's group tend to manifest issues together. I think it's rather like women who live together end up synchronising their menstrual cycles (though I'm not even sure if that is true or yet another man made myth about women). Issues that might be up for me tend to be up for the whole group and vice versa.

Last night multiple men in my men's group worked on (1) intense feelings of jealousy about their partner, and (2) feelings of sexual inadequacy. I was not one of those men, but it's a hair's width away for me, and I suspect most other men in the group.

(1) Jealousy
I wonder what RCG was doing last night. I wonder where she was and, especially, who she was with. I feel somewhat ashamed about my curiosity, and am quick to label it a controlling impulse. I know it could all be solved with just a simple question today of "How was your night last night?", but somehow I'm more attached to the game in my head than I am on the facts. I've been here before. I know it'll fade. The sad truth is when this white heat of honeymoon love fades, I'll be wanting us to have time apart.

I know that any mistrust I have of her is in fact my own mistrust of myself. Despite my blossoming love for RCG, I have continued to be distracted by attractive women I pass in the street, and I occasionally I day-dream fantasies about women other than RCG. Sometimes I contemplate forgetting the commitment I made to stick with her. Ashamed of this in me, I'm susceptible to projecting this wandering tendency on to her, regardless of whether or not it is true for her.

My choice then is either to shame myself about this wandering tendency, or to accept that it is simply part of my sexual self. I will always be attracted to sexy women, and I have the choice to celebrate that sexual energy in me through my union with RCG. It's the fear of my sexual energy that might destroy me, not my sexual energy itself. Of course, the acceptance that I will always have these impulses is not even close to a justification to act on them.

And when I reach that place of self assurance about me and my intentions, I find it very easy to trust and love her, and to honour my instinct to protect her and to passionately fuck her into love's deepest bliss.

(2) Sexual Inadequacy
Back when my marriage hit the rocks and I was still at the tail end of my depression, my sexual appetite disappeared, and the lack of sexual activity between us was a significant factor in the ultimate demise of the marriage. Since then I've had a fear of losing my sexual appetite again. Like most men I know, I have a deep fear of impotence.

Once again, I can allow myself to be consumed by this fear and enact a self-fulfilling prophecy, or I could accept the reality that RCG turns me on far more than any other woman I've been with. I could dwell on how much more pleasure I could (nay SHOULD!) have given her, or accept that we made love for hour after hour after hour, and it's not surprising that I had faded away towards the end. I could let in the lusty look in her eye when she thanked me the morning after.

Still, the drill sergeant in me will keep whipping me into shape, because that's the tool my psyche knows and trusts the best when it comes to the deepest issues. Switching the anti-fear mechanism into simply knowing and trusting is ongoing work.

With the processing and facilitation I did last night it was so easy to see how close to the bone our sexual identity lies. To see how it is so easy to completely deflate a man by pulling the plug on his sexual energy, and how when relationships get toxic, this vicious cycle begins and perpetuates. My mentor calls sexual identity the inner-most electron of our psyches. I'm comforted by the fact that my men's group is comfortable to work at that level of intimacy. I'm also proud of, and grateful for, the facilitation work I did last night with my brothers.