Sex and Control

Understand Your Dark Energy

Wow... It gives me goosebumps just thinking about sex. It's such an important subject. We really need to get it right, men. So much hangs on this, so much flows from the balance between sex and control.

I was privileged to hear a conversation in which one woman was telling another that she was upset that her man had just broken up with her. The reason he gave up was that she kept taking control during sex. He said he couldn't take it any more, the fact that she controls him.

Loss of Control

She was, obviously, upset by this and was fearful of doing anything about it. She was afraid of where things would go if she wasn't in control, she was afraid of losing that grip on herself. She said this left her confused.

Thinking about this I became angry with the man involved, with his inadequacy, his inability to be a man. It made me interested in the subject of how to control sexuality for men. How do you deal with sex men?

Let's wind back, look at this situation and think about it calmly. Let's look at sex control.

Exploring Dark Energy

Last year I attended a workshop in Pune, India, with my wife, Urmila. In the final session we worked together to explore our dark energy. The idea was to find and unleash it's power and see where it went. This was scary stuff for us, but it was something we wanted to explore and come to terms with. We knew that to become completely free in our relationship we had to be sure of what might happen if we lost control. Losing control is a fear we all have. Will we become abusive? Will we collapse? Will we still be ourselves?

It was playful at first but as we went deeper we pushed each other and let go of our inhibitions. The leader came over to us to check we were OK, she was afraid we were hurting each other. No we weren't, we were having the most amazing time of our lives, we were flowing.

We learned about masculine presence/grounding and feminine trust/surrender. The balance took us deep into our relationship and gave us both strength. Urmila, being physically weaker and the woman, grew in her pushing and testing of me. I took everything she threw at me and gave her more back. She went further, let go and gave me all she had. I took this and gave it back to her. I gave her the freedom to go wherever she wanted but never relinquished control. I could take it, and give it back. I remained grounded and present, nothing threw me off.

Urmila's trust grew and she let go completely, relinquishing control. She was no longer afraid of where she might go, she could truly trust me to take it and not to lose control myself. I could give it back, tempered with the knowledge of my own strength and the potential hurt I could inflict. I could hurt her, but didn't.

The power of the dark energy has remained in our relationship and made it strong.

Retreat Into Weakness

When we come to sex between men and women the same situation applies. A man can create a space of allowing the woman to go where she wants, whether it is controlling or submissive, but he retains the ability to take it and give it back. In this space the woman can trust and surrender and totally let go. They both enter a place of trust and presence where they can fully explore themselves and their relationship. The man can take whatever happens and not feel inadequate. This strength, presence and trust creates an electric situation.

Returning to the man we looked in the beginning, we see that he was unable to go there. He was unable to trust his own presence, strength and power, unable to take what was coming to him. The woman was testing him, pushing him to find out where he was, how he would react. She was taking control because he didn't. She wanted him to take it back, not through her weakness, not through her becoming submissive, but through his own power and presence.

He retreated into his own weakness, he relinquished his masculinity, he got out of the relationship. He blamed her for the situation, he made her responsible for the breakdown. She was taking control, women shouldn't do that, women should know their place! What rubbish! A man should know his place, a man should be capable of knowing himself and his strength. A man should be grounded and confident. A man should understand his responsibility. A man should be present and trusted by the woman, trusted to go further, to not go too far and trusted to take whatever she throws at him.

Sex and Power Working In A Strip Club

Sex is often about power and dominance rather than simple enjoyment. Sex and Power together are not fun. I was on the receiving end of this relationship, it didn't feel good and it wasn't.

As a young man I left school and home to go and work in the professional theatre. This was not quite running away to join the circus, but it felt like it. This is where I learned about sex and power.

A World of Misfits

I learned to build scenery, look after actors, hang lights, anything to get the show onstage. It's the 'anything' that I had to come to terms with.

The professional theatre world I became part of was full of misfits. We were people who didn't fit normality, people who wanted to stand out, be different.

Sex became a hot issue; dealing with it made me grow up faster than I expected, certainly faster than my parents expected.

I was young, fresh looking and clearly inexperienced. I was prey for women and men. This might seem to be an ideal situation for a young man, one that many would do anything to get into.

I thought that but found that it wasn't quite so easy.

Sex and Power

I now see that sex is often about power and dominance rather than simple enjoyment. Sex and Power are not fun. I was on the receiving end of this relationship and it didn't feel good.

I saw this in sharp definition, a few years later, when I went to work in a strip club in London's Soho. It was the Nell Gwynne Club at 69 Dean Street.

In Soho terms this was a sophisticated club: it had a bar so the show had an interval to enable customers to spend all their money. This was an innovation in Soho were all the strip club shows ran for a continuous two hours and were repeated 6 times a day.

Working as a stage hand in the club I found that the most important job I had was to catch clothes. This job is crucial simply because all the girls worked in all the clubs. The shows were co-ordinated across Soho so the girls could appear in as many shows in two hours as they could. This involved them running from club to club with a coat, and nothing else, on.

To do this efficiently they needed to take their costumes with them. So I had to stand at the side of the stage, catch the clothes as they were discarded and gather them together so the artist could grab them as she came offstage and keep running to her next slot.

Just Naked Girls

I was unimportant to the girls because I meant neither money nor power to them. The punters they despised as being the lowest scum, they just wanted strip club sex. To pay for sex through voyeurism was OK as long as the girls earned from it, but the men who needed to pay for this meant nothing.

They meant nothing to me, they were just naked girls I spent all day with. This was a disturbing experience for a young man.

In this period I found that sex came my way because someone wanted something, either quick gratification or connection for a reason. Love or affection was sadly lacking. Sex and Power not love.

Later on that changed... But that's a different story...

My Experience Of Male Sexuality—How I Came To Enjoy Sex

Sex is something we all want, but do we enjoy it? Sex is something we all have, but does it make us feel better? My experience of sex left a lot to be desired. I did not understand my Male Sexuality.

Most of us do not want to talk about sex because we do not want to face the truth. We believe that those that do talk about sex are not telling the truth. At least we hope they are not telling the truth.

Experience of Sex

We feel that everyone else is having a great time with sex and we are the odd one out. We read about sex and it is never as we experience it. We feel ashamed about sex and so we hold in our shame in case we are made a fool of.

It is time to own up, I am writing in the second person to try and hide behind what I think everyone else thinks. I do not mean 'we', I mean 'I'...

So much of the experience of being a man is bound up with sex, yet I have not talked about it much here, on a personal level. Male Energy is bound up with Male Sexuality, yet all I have done is imply it.

The Strip Club

In talking about my life in a strip club I still created a picture that many men might be envious of. While being truthful I made it seem like I had a better sex life than other men.

It is time to take off the covers, not to parade my life or as an ego trip, but to help you look at your life more honestly and help you choose to be more open. It is time to see that a lack of clarity on Male Sexuality also led to my lack of clarity on myself as a man.

Losing My Virginity

I was a virgin until after I left home at the age of 18. I dated little as a boy and my only experience of sex was on my own and, briefly, with another boy. None of the experiences were at all memorable.

I left home to work in the theatre. Once I was in that environment I started to experience what it was like to have sex with another person.

For the first year I experienced what it was like to be pursued by a woman/girl. I was young and good looking and I was sought out. It sounds fabulous but in practice I was not in control, not even of myself, and I did not know how to relax and enjoy myself.

I also found myself sought after by men, I did not respond and found I was not interested. Although I was an innocent I discovered where my sexuality lay.

I then spent a few years trying to initiate relationships with little success. I did not know what I was doing and I had no idea how to relate to a woman in an intimate way. This was disturbing, especially when I worked at the strip club.

I found myself to be shy and afraid of what would happen. I did not feel myself to be a man at all, just a boy who had not grown yet.

Passionate Relationship

Eventually I got together with a girl in an exciting, passionate relationship. I must admit, though, that it was still initiated by her. I started to relax and enjoy myself. I started to learn, not just about sex, about how to find my strength and be confident in what I was doing.

This relationship lasted a long time. When it eventually finished I realised that I had not learned as much as I thought. I was now experiencing an inability to perform and I had no idea how to deal with it. This was worrying.

After I shifted as a man and found real confidence in myself, I found I could deal with this issue. When I let go of the outcome and just fell into the fun of the whole thing I found the true power and stimulation of sex.

Finding Myself

It took many years to get there, many years to let go of being led there by others. It took many years to find myself and find sex.

Sex is powerful and, as a result, it can be very difficult to find the Male Sexuality, behind, can get buried under uncertainty and shame.