I recently wrote about the somewhat surprising prominence men have in my retellings of my sexual adventures. They have the ability to make a sexual adventure super-charged, and they have the ability to shrivel my dick, even while it’s being expertly sucked.
This isn’t, explicitly, sexual. And I don’t think it’s particularly implicitly sexual, either: I’m capable of being mildly aroused by seeing men’s bodies, by seeing men engaged in sexual behavior. Much of my favorite porn features men in it (and much doesn’t). In short, I don’t think men are particularly charged for me, sexually.
But they are charged for me. Obviously.
A while ago, I tried to deconstruct the relationship between my sexual fantasies and tastes and my psyche, my fears and hopes. When I did that, I did so exclusively with respect to my feelings about, fears of, women.
In short, I worry about abandonment and rejection and judgment from women. Women have the ability to shame me, to make me feel bad. And conversely, when a woman gives me her trust, her compliance, when she yields to me, it medicates, on a deep level, the internal wounds and fears and pathogenic beliefs that abandonment, rejection, and judgment confirm. This is why I consciously crave the things I do, even as I unconsciously repeat the wounds.
With men, it’s similar: just as I routinely create circumstances in which I’m rejected, abandoned, judged by women (and as I get more skilled at producing for myself the more consciously desired submission, yielding, compliance), I also seem to create opportunities for me to feel resentment, or even victimization at the hands of, men.
I suppose it’s similar, that the twin to the pathogenic belief that I’m undesirable to women is the pathogenic belief that I’m “less than” other men. This is exacerbated by both my concerns about my small-ish penis, and by my occasional (or more than that) performance issues, particularly in group settings.
I suppose this is, at least, part of why I am compelled to repeat these experiences: they deliver for me confirmation of those pathogenic beliefs, beliefs I consciously have no desire to confirm, but whose confirmation I nonetheless seem to crave deeply.
I’ve become less prone to this sort of repetition with women over the years, as I’ve uprooted those damaging beliefs about myself. I think I have a ways to go with men (though I’ll note how good that night with V in the bar felt).