Monthly Archives: June 2013

Why Men Struggle With The L Word

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Last week I wrote about how all men question their sexual prowess.  If you haven’t read last week’s posts, and you are a guy, I’d strongly encourage you to do that.  We ended the sexual prowess post talking about the real question we need to be answering – “Am I a good lover?”

I believe as men we often struggle with love and intimacy. I think as a single this can become a huge deal in our life.  Often we can go long periods of time without touch or loving words.

I want to say more about physical touch soon, but today I want to focus on the problem we have with the words, “I love you.”

I’m not talking about the way we say it most of the time.  I’m not talking about the sarcastic, bro fake intimacy, of “I love you man” crap.  I’m also not talking about “I love you” when we mean, “don’t be mad at me”. Nor am I talking about the “I love you” when we mean I’m desperate for you to like me.

I’m talking about being able to say it and mean it in the straight forward, no excuses, expecting nothing back, “I love you.”

This is frankly just hard for a lot of us.  There are a lot of reasons and it goes way deeper than the whole macho stereotype.

For starters many of us never heard it from our fathers.  This isn’t to say our fathers didn’t love us, although there are many of us who do come from that.  What I mean is that they didn’t know how to say it either.  Moms said it to us which is good when you’re little but if you only hear it from her you’re in trouble because “I love you” becomes feminine.  And most guys don’t want to be that.

When we don’t hear it from a man, when we become men, we don’t say it.  And I’m not just talking about saying it to a woman.  I’m talking about saying it to your parents, to your friends, to a mentor, a disciple, to your kids.

It’s like when it comes to the surface we kind of swallow it.  There are still times in my life when I know it’s what needs to be said and I choke it back.

Saying I love you – especially saying it in a serious way – requires vulnerability. What if you say it and don’t hear it back?  We can often be afraid to “go there” even with those close to us.  It feels risky.  It feels like I’m opening up some part of me that I’m not sure I want to expose.

The truth is that you can really only be a good lover if you are secure in who you are.  And the only way to be secure is to know that you are loved.  Ultimately only one person can answer that.

Let’s say that you had a 10 minute meeting with God.  In that 10 minutes God (who knows your whole life – all that you’ve done, all that you want, all that you are doing and dreaming) is going to tell you what is most important to Him that He wants you do know. What do you think he would tell you?

I’ve asked a lot of people this question.  Mostly people say something the effect of, “He’d tell me this was good or this was bad, or that I need to work on this or that.”  Some people say, “I’d hope He’d tell me why this or that happened.”

But I’m convinced that what He would do is spend the entire ten minutes telling you He loved you.  Oh if we believed that!  Oh sure we know that God “loves us”.  We know it theologically, heck even logically.  We can quote it, preach it and put it on a bumper sticker.  But living out of it – that’s a whole other thing.

Part of the reason we have a hard time saying it, is that we have a hard time hearing it.  I know this was true for me for a long time.  It was like when someone said it to me I would kind of squirm inside.  It stirred something but I didn’t know what to do with it.

As a guy we need to work through this area of our life.  How comfortable are we at receiving and giving out those words?  As a single person we often don’t have a built in place to do that, but we have to develop it anyway.  We have to become lovers.  It’s part of becoming a true adult.

How comfortable are you with “I love you”?  What did you learn from your father about “I love you”?  This weekend is father’s day.  Could you call your dad and legitimately say, “I love you”?   How do you feel when a man says it to you now?  A woman?  How do you receive it?  How comfortable are you with saying it? When it comes up in your heart do you speak it or swallow it?

If you had 10 minutes alone with God what would He say to you?

Christian Sexual Prowess

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Yesterday I wrote about the fact that every guy asks the question am I good in bed?  How we answer that question is critical to our core confidence as a man.  We can wish it wasn’t that way.  We can try to over spiritualize it.  We can blow it off with joking and hiding.  But it’s still going to be there.  We question our sexual prowess as a man and we in the Christian community MUST have an answer.

At first glance it seems that as a “Christian” that there is no way that I could answer that until I’m married because I’m not supposed to have sex.  Often because we are so worried about sex outside of marriage and the costs that come with it, we end up telling men that they should just table the question and then “presto” answer it on their wedding night.  But in my opinion that is not good enough.  That might have worked a couple of generations ago when people got married by 25 but it won’t work now.

It’s a good thing to direct people to wait until marriage to have sex but it is not ok to wait until then to help them answer their question about sexual prowess.  They are going to answer it somehow.

We need to stop answering the sexual prowess question with a sexual ethics answer.  We need a different conversation.  Sexual prowess and sexual experience are not the same thing.  Thinking they are the same leads to men that are either having sex to answer the question or men that are living with lack of intimacy, touch and confidence in their ability to deliver.  Neither of those are acceptable.  The ironic thing is that our Christian theology actually does answer the sexual prowess question.

The first thing we have to do is realize that God has ultimately created us as sexual beings. It only takes one chapter in the bible for God to bring up sex.  We all have the tools, and I don’t just mean that we have the right “equipment”.

If we believe in a God that created us good, then we must start with the premise that God’s answer to do I have what it takes sexually is yes.  Let that sink in for a minute.  God says, “I have given you what you need here.  You can do this.  You have what it takes because I gave it to you.”

This is core.  Yes we are messed up because of sin. Yes we may have been wounded in this area in even horrible ways.  But at the core of who we are as a man, at the very center of it, we are created with sexual prowess.  It’s there, somewhere, no matter what our experience tells us.

The problem is we take sex out of context and turn it into it’s own question.  It becomes about performance which just kills us as men.  We fear failure.  We fear that we won’t be able to come through and when we make the act of sex the scorecard we are in trouble – even if we are “good” at it.

The act of sex was never intended to be that.  God did not create sex in it’s own context.  Sex is a part of a larger question.

Sex is not intended to be about performance.  It’s about loving another person.  It’s about trust, strength, intimacy and passion. It’s about giving and receiving. It’s about being a good lover, not about being a good performer.  This is why married sex (even in secular research) is described as the best sex.

If I try to answer the sexual prowess question without answering the intimacy question then I’m in trouble – even if I’m married.  Sex is not the goal.  In a sense it’s one of the means to the goal within the context of marriage.  As a stand alone thing, sex will not satisfy.  It will never answer the question.

If you are a good lover, you will be “good in bed”, or at least you’ll figure out how to be.  If you love well, the sex part will be there because there will be the context of trust, intimacy and passion to work on it.

The question we need to be asking is, “am I a good lover?”  It’s actually a lot harder question. If we need the woman’s approval we can’t be a good lover.  If we can’t be strong enough to be vulnerable, then we can’t be a good lover.  This is why women at their core are attracted to strength.

It’s a huge issue for us as men.  Becoming a lover is actually a stage of development just like learning to be a warrior.  Hence the wise saying, “Never give a man a sword who can’t dance.”

The good news is that we can work on all of this without having sex.  We can become lovers.  We can work on how to have intimacy and good physical touch (I’ll say more about how to do this soon).

Here’s the bottom line.  As a man growing in Christ, my sexual prowess should be growing because my identity and confidence in Him grows along with my capacity to give and receive love.   If I’m truly confident in Christ then I’ll have the freedom and strength to be a good lover – and as a part of that to be “good in bed.”

Are You Good In Bed?

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Earlier this week I shared about three questions that all men wrestle with in some way.  “Are you good looking or not?” “What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?” and “Do you have a small or big penis?” All of us have answered these questions in our head, but almost no one has answered them out loud – at least not in any meaningful way.

And yet how we answer them affects many aspects of our lives, none more so than how we interact with women.  This is because all of these answers affect the core confidence we need that in order to pursue, attract, and eventually love a woman.

These questions have to do with three areas of our life – our self image, our shame, and our sexual prowess.  I’ve written a lot about our self image, and I wrote this week about our shame.  Today I want to talk about the third question.  So buckle up men.

The issue of having confidence sexually is gigantic in how we feel about ourselves as men and therefore how we interact with women.

First, let’s just admit that this is true.  Men are about performance.  This is why everywhere you turn you see sexual enhancement drugs, workouts, and techniques.  A man’s greatest fear is failure.  As Eldrege says, every man is asking, “Do I have what it takes?”  No where is this more true, or more scary and vulnerable, than sex.  Nowhere!

Every guy is asking the question do I have what it takes to be good sexually with a woman. In simple terms – “Am I Good In Bed?”  Every Guy.  Our answers are all jacked up.

Most of us began to have the question answered when we were very young.  There are so many factors.  Do you have a father that even broaches the subject?  What happens in the boys restroom in elementary school?  What are you comparing yourself to?  The guy next to you?  The guy who developed before you?  The guy in the porn video? (Average age a male sees internet porn for the first time is now 11).  It can also be affected by our view of sex, abuse, being emasculated by peers or parents or both.

Sometimes the answer is that we are “small” and that we don’t have what it takes.  Often we get no answer at all.  Almost never do we get a positive answer in the right way.

So we of course go and try to answer it.  We might dominate women or become extremely sexual to prove our prowess.  This is the guy who lives for sex and is always out to, “get some”.  We might seek to control the answer by fantasizing or looking at porn.  But this usually just brings about shame, and can undermine the question once again.

And in the Christian culture, for the most part, we are told to bury it, kill it, or starve it.  In fact, we are told basically, “Don’t look, don’t touch, don’t explore, but don’t worry you’ll magically know what to do when you get married.”  It’s like there is supposed to be a Christian switch when it comes to sexual prowess.  Don’t have any, and then man up and have it.  Really?!

It seems to me that most Christian guys end up in one of two camps.  Be a Christian but have sex anyway which leads to the obvious problems.  Or, we go without touch, without intimacy and therefore end up freaking out when we get to it. Sex becomes this taboo thing. We end up having fear and passivity around women, especially a woman we are really attracted to.  We don’t know what to do, partly because we aren’t sure we could do it – as in literally “do it”.

We live in a culture in which the average guy gets married at  28-29 years old.  What that means is that in the Church we are asking a guy to go about 15 years of his life (during the most crucial time when he is answering all of his life’s questions – including this one – for the first time) to not have sex.  My contention is this:  We can ask him to not have sex, but we CAN NOT ask him to not have an answer to this question.  Because he WILL answer it.

While this affects how we interact with women, its much bigger than that.  This answer affects how I do other things in my life.  It affects how I relate to other men, how I relate to my own body and self image and even how I interact at work and play.  This question matters.  I would submit that even if I’m called to celibacy in the kingdom, I’d still better have an answer to this question. It’s crucial no matter what.

In my next post I’m going to take a stab at what I think the Christian community can do to help guys answer it.  But before we can get help, we need to check what our answer is to the question right now.

Do you have what it takes to be good sexually with a woman?  Where does that answer come from? How have you tried to answer it?

Shame Crushes Confidence

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I know of a wise older gentleman who asks men that visit him three questions: “Are you good looking or not?” “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” and “Do you have a big or small penis?”

It’s kind of funny. It’s sort of offensive.  It’s for sure brilliant.

How a guy answers those questions is everything.  Does he answer honestly – even with himself?  Where does the answer to each question come from? They are all relative questions – what is it that guy comparing his answer to?  When was the first time he answered each of those questions?  What answer has the world, his dad, his God given him?  Every guy has answered those questions in his head – just not out loud.

Most men spend their life affected by their deep seeded answers.  They either run from it, avoid it, cover it up, or rail against it with anger.  The kicker is most of us have the wrong answer, or at least the wrong idea of what the answer means.  Very few of us own our answers.

They are the type of questions that haunt our confidence in who we are as men.  We often look for the answers from women.  It’s why single men don’t act  and why married men are afraid of their wives.

The kicker is this, most women don’t really care that much about any of those questions. But how you answer them will affect everything you do with women – whether you are married or single.

These three questions (or similar ones) get at the heart of three areas of our life that we are insecure about.  Our self image, our shame, and our sexual prowess.

I’ve written a lot about our self image, including when it comes to how we view our looks. Later this week I’ll write about the sexual prowess question.  But today, I want to focus on the second question.  What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?

This question has to do with shame which flies in the face of the gospel.  For some there is fear of being found out, for others the fear of being disqualified.  Many have been carrying it as a secret for a long time.

The funny thing about the worst thing you’ve done question is there’s a good chance it’s not actually the worst thing you’ve done.  It is however, what you are most of ashamed of.  But most of us have never actually said this out loud, to anyone.  Many have not even said it to God. Shame is a powerful tool of the enemy.  Shame means we are unreconciled with God. Think about that.

Shame causes us to look away when we shouldn’t.  It causes us to withdraw, back down or act out when we think it might be exposed.  What we hide in the dark, makes us afraid of the light – and freedom (as well as confidence) is in the light.  Worst of all, it holds us back with Jesus because He brings light to everything.  As a secondary problem it holds us back with people – including the opposite sex.

Shame crushes confidence.

The only way to crush shame is to bring it out into the light and deal with it.  It’s the only way to know which parts of it are our fault (so we can repent) and which parts aren’t (so we can heal).

We have to start with the truth that Jesus is serious about both forgiveness and healing.  If we don’t believe that then we will spend our whole lives in the dark.

You see the follow up question to what is the worst thing you’ve ever done is this, “Do you know that you are forgiven for that?”

Either the cross took care of every sin or took care of none of it.  There really can’t be any in between.  So if I think that Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin for us, then I have to figure out how to believe that I’m forgiven for the worst thing I’ve ever done.  We know it intellectually and biblically. But most of us don’t live out of it at all.

Here’s the truth.  Because of the cross, you are forgiven for everything you’ve ever done, everything you’re doing, and everything you ever will do.  That’s either true or we are screwed.

There are also some of us who are carrying shame because of something that happened to us that we have falsely interpreted as our fault.  Again, the only way to get at this is to bring it into the light.  Once it’s in the light, we need to know that Jesus, through the power of the resurrection makes all things new.  There is nothing that can’t be made new – nothing.

What does it mean to bring something into the light and deal with it?  I think it means bringing it before God and someone else.  I think to own it means to share it with someone. This can obviously be dangerous.  But we have to take the risk. If we don’t have community, pay a few bucks and see a Christian counselor – hey married people do it.

If we don’t then we will continue to shrink back.  Shame will keep us dating no one (or the wrong people), fearing commitment, or if we do somehow get married, insidiously impact our marriage.

What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?  Who have you told?  Do you know you are forgiven? Really forgiven?