Dealing With Male Sexuality

It takes a certain amount of self confidence, in fact, a certain amount of audacity to write a blog for the purpose of helping others to avoid some of the pitfalls of life that I've stumbled into. My personal friends who know me well would be quick to say that audacity is my middle name. I guess the noun does apply to me, but not in an impertinent or effortful way. Rather I see my audacity more along the lines of possessing an intrepid spirit, a certain courage to boldly suggest to others life is best when lived to the fullest extent possible. I am fortunate enough to have discovered this through my own personal experience. For years I struggled with my sexuality. I denied it. I tried to will it to be gone. That struggle did not invalidate the other parts of my life, but it sure did have an impact on my happiness. As the old saying goes, I didn't know how bad it hurt until it stopped hurting. I came to see that it had hurt pretty damn badly and the realization of my personal pain spurs me to try to help others avoid their own unnecessary pain.

My Mom has been dead for more than twice as many years as I knew her. Yet, in the few short years she had to share her own wisdom about life with me, she had a tremendous and lasting impact on my life and my outlook on life. It was she who taught me that I should be audacious in the best meaning of that word. She felt that one should think deeply and have the courage to stand by the convictions they came to embrace. Never let anyone discourage you from reasoning out your own philosophy, she would say to me. But never be afraid to carefully consider new paradigms either.

My struggle with my own sexuality began to ease when I applied my mother's advice to the problem. First, I began to reason out the facts as they were, not as I wished them to be. I began, in other words, to deal with the issue realistically instead of wishfully. I searched for allies in literature and found there were many who had written pertinent things about the kind of struggle I had been facing. This surprised me because had thought all those years that I was the only married guy in the world that had sexual thoughts about men.

Over time, I became comfortable with my sexuality. The thing which had pained me for so many years became an accepted part of me. For the first time in my entire life, I was happy in being me and all that it meant to be me (even my bisexuality).

The next thing I had to tackle was building the courage to stand by my new philosophy in the face of those who choose to see bisexuality and homosexuality as perversions. Here again, I found allies. Psychologists  have long recognized bisexuality and homosexuality as normal expressions of human sexuality. They have long recognized bisexuality and homosexuality are not choices but genetic and environmental predispositions. Speaking from a religious viewpoint, they are gifts of God; and I found that even my bisexuality could be reconciled within my faith. Significantly and unexpectedly, I found that embracing my bisexuality actually brought me closer to God in my own personal life.

Before, God had always been almost an enemy because He would not answer my prayer that He take the thing away. Having embraced it, I came to see it rather quickly as something that would give purpose to my life through helping others deal with what I had been forced to deal with all alone. If I had had someone to talk with, I could have cut a number of unhappy years of struggle from my life. By having the will and the courage to talk with others about my own experiences, I found that sometimes I could give those years to other men. God became my helpmate and a true part of my life.

Living with a psychotherapist is an experience most people never have. In a way that is unfortunate. It is a fascinating experience. Psychotherapists are, of course, bound by strict ethical rules which forbid them from breaking the confidentiality of their patients, and my wife holds fast to those ethical standards without fail; but, as with any married couple, we know a great deal about each other and each other's lives. One of the things I have come to be aware of through my own life experiences but which has only been put into full perspective by my wife's experiences is how much unhappiness there is in the world. True happiness in life is a very rare thing. Unfortunately, it is something that relatively few people ever come to know. That is a tragedy of devastating proportions bringing untold human misery and other consequences.

We Americans live in one of the richest and greatest countries the world has ever known. It is not that there are not other great countries in the modern world. There certainly are, but I believe that American exceptionalism is simply a fact. In its relatively short history, America and its people have saved the world from Naziism, Communism and imperialism. We are currently working with other first world nations to save the world from terrorism. It is certainly true that America did not do all these things on its own. The courage and the will of the British people during World War II exhibited in the person of Winston Churchill played a signifiant and vital role. The unyielding French resistance fighters who refused to yield French sovereignty to Adolf Hitler and his hordes also played a vital role. But it has been America with her vast resources in the will of her people and the bounty of the country that have time and time again been the catalyst for spreading freedom throughout the world.

Yet, in arguably one of the greatest and richest countries ever to exist on the face of the earth, too many people feel a sense of hopelessness and unhappiness. In the midst of our busy and successful lives, many men still feel something is missing. Even men in loving and emotionally strong marriages too often feel something is missing from their lives, something they cannot lay a finger on yet know the feeling of need. And this vague feeling of unease, of something missing, is not getting better. It is getting worse. It is becoming more and more prevalent.

There is no lack of reasons for this discomforting reality of modern life. We live in the best of times. We live in the worst of times. We communicate with almost any part of the world instantly. We outlawed slavery in this country more than 150 years ago, yet the average American has the equivalent of many slaves making our everyday existence comfortable. Our morning coffee is ready for us when our alarm clock informs us it is time to get up each morning. Our clothes are washed and ready to wear courtesy of our machines and our chemistry. Our automobiles carry us to work surrounded by creature comforts such as hands free cell phone communication, air conditioning or heating, comfortable leather seats and FM, AM and Satellite radio. Throughout each day, our machines do much of our work for us easing our burdens and making us more productive than any people have ever been in the history of the world. For this productivity we are paid relatively well with the medium family income approaching $60,000 a year. Yet, in the midst of all this productiveness and income, too many of us are unhappy.

Human sexuality is complex. Male sexuality is exponentially more complex than female sexuality. And being males, we don't often willingly make use of directions though we live in a world where information of every sort and type are literally at our fingertips. And way too often when we do listen to directions, we listen to the wrong directions. I'm a firm believer in women's liberation, but somewhere along the line women's liberation took a devastating and unfortunate turn. Somehow as a people we became mistakenly convinced that the liberation of women could only take place if their liberation was extracted from the liberties of men. It's as if we somehow came to believe there was only so much liberty to be had and women could only get their share of it out of the liberty men had been hoarding for millennia. This is not the truth of the matter. Liberation is not a zero sum game. Liberty for women does not have to be gained at the loss of liberty for men. At some level, I think we all know this, but we don't act like we do. We often see very powerful and successful women in our country. There is nothing women are not doing. They are CEO's of our biggest companies. They are helping to fight our wars. They are successful entrepreneurs. In today's world women are more highly educated than men and educated in greater numbers than are men. They hold a very substantial part of the total wealth.

Yet women and far too many men continue to believe that women can be successful only if men let them be or unless they are given special help to give them a leg up on the system. Nothing could be further from the truth. Women have long since reached the point in this country that they can do whatever the wish without help from any man. They are full and equal citizens and they assert well their rights and privileges as such. The trouble is men are more and more yielding their own rights and privileges. Men are now obtaining college degrees in fewer numbers than women. This will ultimately lead to the pendulum swinging back too far and find too many men making less money than their wives. I'm all for equal pay for equal work for men and women, but I also understand the reality that dictates that the person who makes the most money in a relationship generally has the greatest control of that relationship.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying men should always be in control of their relationships. Largely, I think control should be a mutual thing. In some issues in some relationships men would be smart to submit to the control of their wives. In other issues in other relationships women would be smart to submit to the control of their husbands. The thing that disturbs me is that more and more in America men are abdicating not only control but also responsibility for everything other than bringing home a paycheck. He brings home a paycheck. Everything else is deferred to his wife. That is not the way it should be.

In another time, not all that far back, things were much different. Most people lived on family farms. The only thing is they weren't really family farms. They were owned by a family but the family accepted help from others and provided help to others to make the system work. Farming is a labor intensive proposition and one man, even one man along with his wife and a number of kids can't  handle the labor burdens all the time. In times gone by there were times when several men from several families had to combine forces to meet the labor demands.

If one looks at historical records closely he will find there were many cases in which different families were bound together for their common good. These families would occupy adjacent farms and help each other to successfully farm their acreage. When it came time to move further west to take advantage of new lands and new opportunities these families would all move together as an expanded unit. In such an atmosphere men worked together for much of their lives. They formed common bonds and common attitudes and common outlooks on life. Civilization itself would not have progressed and the human species would not have survived with out the proclivity for male bonding. Male bonding provided labor when labor was hard and necessary. Male bonding provided for the defense of one's home and the fruits of his labor. It was a vital part of life.

Today, that is not the case. Somehow along the way, male bonding became a suspicious thing. Not so for female bonding. Females still bond quickly and easily with their peers and more importantly females defend their right to bond with other women vigorously.

Not so with men. Men no longer bond easily. It does not appear to be a necessity any longer. Labor  these days means sitting at a computer or standing on a manufacturing line doing one's job. Labor is a solitary thing with occasional highly structured group meetings and consultations. Worse, because male bonding has become suspect to women, too many men no longer even try to defend their right to bond or understand why they need to bond with another man. This is most unfortunate for men are genetically wired to run in packs and to bond with other men

The number one most read blog post I have ever written is "Frot and Frottage." I wrote the blog post in August, 2011. Every week since it was posted it has been the number one most read post. I think that say a great deal about men, what they want, what they fantasize about and what they need. I believe the male need for male comradery is so basic that many men fear themselves to be bisexual or even homosexual simply because they misunderstand the needs they are feeling. What they are needing is a male friend, not a male lover. Sometimes close friendships between males lead to frot activities. This is just another part of male bonding. Simple frot has no bearing whatsoever on how a guy feels about his wife sexually.

My own needs and my own life are what I know best of course. I have had great success in finding and maintaining great guys for long term relationship. This is what a huge number of men want to achieve. A few of these relationships have had a sexual component to them. A greater number have not had a sexual component. I find both types of relationships enhance my life and my sense of well being. However, while one of the relationship has lasted 16 years and for the first 10 years had a very active and highly satisfying sexual component, the truth is I have never found a male buddy who could come close to taking me to the sexual heights that my wife could take me. Given the choice between sex with a great buddy and sex with my wife, I'd choose my wife every time.

My experience tells me that it is not just the sex with a guy that is the need. Rather it is the relationship, the sense of comradery that is important. Men simply have to have this male/male companionship to feel whole. Yet at the same time women have come to feel that their husband should be their best friend and have no need of other friends. If other friends are needed, wives often feel their husbands need for friends can be met by sharing her friends. This just isn't the case. Each guy needs to find his own friends and be allowed time in his life to associate with them. It is a basic need of every man, and too many men are either forbidden to for some bonds or feel guilty about forming then  and do not.

I can tell you that I was never truly fulfilled and at east inside my own skin until I found a buddy to share with. If you have not found your own buddy I recommend that you do so.

I talk with a huge number of men. Many of these men have ended up changing their lives for the better. Several of them have found happiness they never thought they would find, some as gay men, some as bi men and some as straight men.

The simple truth is it scares guys to think about their sexuality. They shy away from thinking about it and they certainly shy away from discussing it. Some that do get up the courage to talk about it don't give themselves time to bring about a change in the way they have been thinking. They want instant results and instant results are just not possible. Before one can change paradigms, he must understand both the old paradigms and the new ones. That takes some time. But taking the time to think things through is worth it. Take it from me. I've been satisfied with my own life for more than a decade now, but through this blog and through conversations with the many guys I talk with, I'm always learning new things that help me to  understand myself better.

Guys can and do make all kinds of excuses for refusing to try to get to know themselves, their wants and their needs better; but the truth is a guy can never be everything he needs to be to his wife and to his family until he is everything he needs to be for himself.

Jack Scott

Who Does God Hate?

I'm very open about the fact that I'm a Christian and view life from a liberal Christian perspective. I'm also very open about the fact that I was raised in a large fundamental denomination. By the time I was 10 or 12 I knew that church held nothing of value for me and that I would never be an adult member of that church.

I left this particular denomination when I was 18. In the years sense it has become more and more fundamental in its view of God and what it means to live a Christian life. It has become more and more focused on religious law and less and less focused on the Grace of God.

Unfortunately this denomination is so large and so akin to other evangelical non-denominational churches that are springing up all over this country that fundamental Christianity has become the face of Christianity for many believers and for most non-believers. This is most unfortunate. If I hadn't taken the time to learn for myself that there were alternatives to fundamental Christianity, I'd be an atheist now. I got pretty close to it before I discovered there were such things as reasonable Christians.

Reasonable Christians don't care that  you've been divorced other than to regret the pain it must have caused you. Reasonable Christians don't care that you had an abortion when you were a young unwed mother other than to sympathize with the burden of that decision you've had to deal with. Reasonable Christians don't care that you are a homosexual man living with a male partner other than to recognize that you're a child of God just as you are.

But somewhere along the line, fundamental Christians lost track of what Christianity is all about. They lost track of the fact that the word "gospel" means "good news" and they long ago started spreading the bad news that, as they see it, God is an angry old man who is taking names and kicking asses into Hell for any reason he can find to do so.

Somewhere along the line, fundamental Christians quit seeing themselves as sinners; and in their own minds became God's helpers. They help God identify the people that need to go to Hell, the people who perform abortions, the people who prescribe or use birth control measures, the people who are homosexuals, the people who don't go to church or go to the right church or the people who don't call God by the right name.

Fortunately, the true Gospel of Jesus Christ is still there to be found by those who will find it. It's in many verses in the Bible and it's in many lives of people I personally know. One of my favorite descriptions of the Grace of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is found in Romans Chapter 8, verses 38 - 39:

 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

To me "anything" means "nothin at all" can separate any one of us from the love of God, nothing in heaven, nothing on earth, nothing in all creation, not even your bisexuality or your homosexuality. Some Christians won't tell you that. I'm a Christian just did. It's not just my idea, I hear it every single Sunday in the Methodist Church I attend.  It's in the book (though not that all things in the book are true or apply to me and you or any of us).

As it turns out God actually hates small-minded bigoted, blind fanatics!

In another blog that I read the blogger posted this cartoon recently. It was just too good not to share with my readers, so I borrowed it.

It's a great cartoon and it made me laugh because I personally know some of these (self described) Christians, the ones who think you're going to Hell because you're a Fag. I think it would be the irony of all ironies if these Christians were in fact met not by St. Peter at the pearly gates, but by the Devil himself at the gates of Hell.

But that's just the human side of me. The reasonable Christian part of me knows that (fortunately for fundamental Christians) God does not hate anyone. In fact God loves everyone just as they are. I sincerely doubt that homosexuality is a sin in and of itself. But whatever our sin, (and we all have em) it is not only forgiven, but forgotten by God because He simply loves each of us too much to let our human shortcomings get in the way. That is the true Gospel of Christ. That is the real good news. God does not have a book. He's not taking names and kicking asses into Hell.

And just to cover all the bases, what if you're an atheist? Well, I can't blame you for the opinion. If all I knew were fundamental Christians I'd be an atheist too. But what if you're right? What if there is no God. Well, we can't know that for sure can we? You simply have an opinion, a belief that there isn't. Maybe you hope there isn't. If you're right, you die and you cease to exist. You rest eternally in the oblivion of death. I can think of worse things.

What if you're wrong? What if there is God? Well, we can't really know can we? It's a matter of faith, not proven fact. But if there is God, the good news from Romans says nothing can separate you from the love of God, not even your atheism! So, either way, it doesn't matter, God understands how difficult it is to believe in the absence of solid evidence. He understands how hard it is to sustain faith in a word that seems to be going to Hell. So he loves you anyway.

That, my bisexual and homosexual friends is all you really need to know about Christianity in plain and simple words that are understandable to everyone.  I guess I could call it "Christianity for Dummies"  but that wouldn't be very nice, and after all Christians themselves have been arguing about this for 2000 years now. How could you be considered a dummy for not figuring it all out in your short life time?

Now, the fact that they are plain and simple words and understandable to everyone does not mean everyone believes them. Even the fundamental Christians that say every word in the Bible is true don't like this simple little message. You see, this simple little message puts them in a box because it conflicts with other words in the Bible that appeal to them more.

Fact is fundamental Christians kind of like the idea of an angry old man God who is taking names and kicking asses into Hell. After all they sacrifice to live a Godly life. Those asses that belong in Hell can't be loved by God as much as they are. Really now, they are in church every Sunday. Some of these people God hates have never set foot in church. They belong in Hell!

Only problem is, that's not what it says in Romans Chapter 8. Maybe its just my eternal optimism, but given a conflict between no God at all and a loving God that loves us no matter what, I'll choose to believe in that all loving God. Given a conflict between a loving God that loves us no matter what and an angry old man God that is taking names and kicking asses into Hell, I'll take the loving God. After all He is described right there in the Book in the 8th chapter of Romans. I didn't see an "if," "but," or "unless" in that verse at all although the fundamental people, as the sinners they don't see themselves to be and the helpers of God they do see themselves to be, have added those ifs, buts and unlesses right in there just to help God out.

Fact is no matter what, God loves you! Never forget it. In fact, give it some thought. It might change your life.

Jack Scott