From working with hundreds of men, I have seen how much pressure they often feel around sex, desire and intimacy.
Pressure to be the one directing the show in physical intimacy…
Pressure to perform…
To be a stallion in bed…
To know how to pleasure their woman and give her multiple orgasms…
To be confident and dominant…
To be hard on demand and able to last for just the ‘right’ amount of time.
And at the same time, growing awareness of the sheer amount and impact of exploitation and violence perpetrated by men against women have left many men terrified of making the wrong move and crossing a woman’s boundaries.
And a lot of men are confused.
I’ve seen men stepping back from dating and struggle in intimacy with their partners, suppressing their desires because they don’t feel confident initiating; they don’t want to be seen as the perpetrator, or worse, some kind of predator. And yes, restraint, awareness and positive allyship to women are important and very welcomed, but where does this leave you?
Sexual energy, sexual drives and fantasies can be hugely powerful, so much so that desires can threaten to overtake common sense and tempt us into wanting things we’d be horrified of in real life. So for many men, there is this power of wanting and at the same time, a tangle of shame, fear and suppressing desires. This internal struggle between the power of your wanting and the denial of your needs is often only managed by squashing it all down and locking things away.
I can’t even begin to tell you here how unhelpful this is for you, because you don’t just lock down the ‘bad stuff’ or the stuff that you or others have judged as ‘unacceptable’…
You also lock down your access to fuller and deeper connection, love, intimacy and the whole of your gorgeous sexy self.
Navigating this can be exhausting, confusing and can bring up all sorts of feelings and responses including shame, fear, stress, self-judgement, denial, numbness or withdrawing from truthful or authentic connection completely.
Are you one of the many men that feel you need to focus on your partner(s), to put your own needs to one side and mostly get your pleasure through her satisfaction? This way you get to be the ‘good guy’, putting your partner first while, to a large extent, denying your own needs.
Are you feeling any truth in this for you?
Even as a woman, elements of this have been true for me too.
Sex, intimacy and touch are natural human needs. But in the confusion of getting these needs met, most of us have muddled on with a mixture of guesswork, telepathy and performance pressure. I don’t know about you, but this has never successfully worked for me!
Discovering the Wheel of Consent was such a relief.
Finally, I had found a road map for understanding what I want and how to get my desires met in consensual and respectful ways. It helped me, and I know from my work with men, that it can help you too!
The Wheel of Consent is a whole body of work developed by Betty Martin, who I’ve had the honour to train with. It provides a framework for communicating desires and limits, and negotiating what may or may not happen in a connection. Instead of following what you think you ‘should’ do, intimacy becomes all about choice.
And to make choices you first need to know what you truly want.
The Wheel of Consent invites you to notice what you want, to trust it, to value it and to communicate it by making a clear request. In a similar way, you are invited to notice, trust, value and communicate your limits – what you are willing and not willing to happen.
This process also helps you to find and deal with a ‘no’. Instead of feeling a sting of rejection, or fear of crossing boundaries, receiving and offering a ‘no’ simply becomes a useful piece of information, and something to work with rather than recoil from.
And the best bit? When you can feel, hear and say a ‘no’, you can fully access and wholeheartedly trust and enjoy the many ‘yeses’.
This is ‘ninja level’ communication-in-intimacy and I believe it is absolutely essential for fully satisfying sexual and sensual play. It requires skills and confidence and these are exactly what you can learn through my workshops and my 1-on-1 sessions. So if you’re interested in learning more about how to expand your experience of intimacy, desire and communication – then get in touch!
Find out more:
Read about my work and the Wheel of Consent
Listen to my podcast with Jenny Wilson about Sex, Men and Communication
Read Betty Martin’s book The Art of Giving and Receiving: The Wheel of Consent
Discover the home of everything on The Wheel of Consent The School of Consent
Arrange your free Clarity Call
