Personal

I received a bit of feedback on my Letter, Sex and Divorce. The essence was that the state of sexual harmony was a long-term concern. To that end, let me continue into the discussion with thoughts on how to develop the relationship away from the chasm that leads to divorce.

The stereotype is justified – Men have a fundamental requirement of sexual intimacy. It’s not just a desire, it’s a requirement. What gets lost with the early marital conflict is the reasonableness yet unending aspect of this requirement. Let me assert that it is reasonable to have sex 10-12 times per month and adventurous sex 1-2 times per month. This perspective of reasonableness does little to help the situation if a man is unable to articulate a harmonious vision of mutuality and can only express the desire for more sex. Merely quoting my assertion of reasonableness will do you no good.

A harmonious path must be the mindset – which means a man must have a vision of what harmony looks like for both participants, a commitment to the relationship, an openness toward understanding her needs and perspectives, yet maintain the resolve towards that vision in the face of conflict, and a willingness to make compromises along the way.

Let’s start with understanding. Below is not a comprehensive view towards a woman’s sexuality. It’s generic at best. A woman might not feel “sexual” for large portions of the month due to hormones. She might not think a sexual thought for days and days and not realize that a man might not think a sexual thought for dozens of seconds at a time. She might have been abused or been in a situation that made a deeply negative impression on her about men. That’s not something you just get over, rub some dirt on it. She may have negative thoughts about having to compete against a porn star’s body and aggressive style. She may not prefer the smell or the mess. A woman doesn’t turn on the juice like a man can. Her daily schedule of kids and work, meal prep and chores, may leave her empty of amorous energy. It may be as simple as having eaten too much dinner. Where a man is like a microwave, a woman is like a crockpot. Where she must get her ducks in a row in order to have meaningful sex, a man can have sex and in doing so gets his ducks in a row.

All the above leads to the understanding that sex is highly psychological, more so than a man’s. This idea that a woman can bring herself to the marital bed regularly and fully if something is amiss in her life is naïve at best. Here’s where a man must recognize that when there’s marital conflict around the quantity of making love and the quality of the engagement, the gap of perspectives is not permanent but a God intended opportunity to create intimacy. And because the man is the one that wants change, he must take responsibility to evolve things to bring about harmonious and therefore permanent change.

For example, when a man touches a woman, it sends a message. Does it send “I love you” or “I desire you”? Certainly, those ideas are correlated, desire and love, but a woman can feel objectified. If every time you touch her and it sends a sex message, then a woman man come to feel that that’s all you want her for. Now, if it’s been 4 days, then her perception may be largely accurate. But if sex were more regular, then you could normalize a loving touch without sexual intent. Or if touch were more normalized, then you might be able to have sex more regularly. Conflict starts in small ways and calcifies through miscommunication and frustration. If by your very act of expressing love she misinterprets it as your selfish need to get physical release, then it’s up to you to deal with her whole set of needs.

What are her needs that will lead to her feeling whole so that she can meet you along the harmonious path? First, you need to understand that there is a difference between intellectual understanding and visceral psychological understanding. You can’t just express yourself, have her understand, then expect that things will be immediately and permanently different. It doesn’t work that way. Verbal I love you’s and physical I love you’s don’t get you that far if she wants non-sexual quality time, some acts of service, and overall engagement. For example, if on the nights you don’t make love you get in bed while she’s brushing her hair and are snoring away by the time she gets to bed; whereas on sex nights you’re wide awake, then that sends the message bedtime isn’t about intimacy. Same subtle message on sex nights that after sex while she’s cleaning up, you turn over and are sound asleep when she returns – What’s the message? If giving her a bedtime back rub is only a ruse to explore her body, then touch is a taking and not a giving. If doing the dishes and cleaning up is considered by you to be foreplay and you expect a quid pro quo once the kids are in bed, then you’re sending the message that you don’t care about the house as much as she does. These messages are received – she is an object for your desire not an object of your desire.

What does she want? She wants to be safe. She wants to know that you want her, not just her body. She wants you to care about her desires and are willing to respect the fact that her rhythms are delicate, that she can be delicate. She wants you to lead in many ways. She wants you to figure her out, help her navigate life’s difficulties, and create an environment where her loving efforts are rewarded. If you do these things, you will get your harmonious sex life.

There’s more to this topic. Ha, yeah, there’s more. But we’ll have to take it next time.

To your fulfilled harmonious path,
Dave Marr

Self Respect.

Though this may seem obvious, a man needs to feel valued and can only find peace with enough data that affirms him, whereas lacking that he will pursue self destructive behaviors.

A young man passes by a window and looks at himself to maybe catch his own eye. Is he narcissistic? No, he’s looking for data. Data that will affirm that he’s doing ok, that he’s on the road to respect. Self respect? No, that’s too self absorbed and lacks context. No, he’s checking in the reflection to see if he’s respectable among men, desirable among women, so that then, and only then, can he find self respect. Charles Cooley introduced the idea of “Looking Glass Self”, a concept that essentially says a man’s self-concept is an aggregation of what he thinks others think about him.

The desire to win is a desire to be seen as a winner in the eyes of others. The competitive spirit is early and often a drive to best others and receive data that validates one’s worth. Later, the competitive spirit adds the desire to self-improve and grow – initially to be a better competitor and thereby receive more validating data of superiority, but hopefully eventually just for the sake of enjoying growth. Competition in sports, economics, women, material display, intellectual ability, academic credentials at early levels are efforts to rise up in esteem so that respect is reflected in the eyes of the beholder. Self respect is derived from the aggregation.

And yet for some, for many, it doesn’t remain. Competition is a state of the environment and is unceasing. A man must “compete” for everything. A woman won does not stay won. Sure, a man and woman may remain married for a lifetime, but to win her heart for that lifetime a man must grow. He can’t stay static. He therefore must compete against his own nature of procrastination, or obstinacy, or just plain youthfulness. He must become successful in any endeavor whether in ministry, military or social service, or economics to earn her respect. And that is what he needs to be content – her respect – without which that relationship cannot thrive.

A man must compete in economics because economics never ends. To start a career is only to learn the ABCs of business and to trade time for gas money. However, contribution is about value. It only takes a few years in the economic world to have learned enough ABCs to begin to “compete for success”. The quotes mean that it’s not all about caricature money chase and cutthroat climbing. It’s about figuring out what value the world needs and how you can contribute towards that end. For me that means not competing head to head, but trying to make a better mousetrap. All told, gaining success, climbing the ladder, adding more value, earning a larger paycheck, building an enjoyable lifestyle is aggregating data towards building self respect. The man born to wealth can be challenged because the data towards self respect is warped by a sycophantic mirror. The man born to scarcity can also be challenged because the data toward self respect is tainted with bias and disrespect. And so the wealthy man and poor man who cannot gather enough data to support feeling positive about himself develops self destructive behaviors. I knew a born-to-wealthy man who literally wet himself at a party as a joke. Sad joke. And the number of stories of poor men in self-destruction mode are legion. Certainly any man who cannot find positive data in the eyes of those who look upon him will struggle.

And so, as do so many of my posts, I am led to what I think is an inevitable relationship. Though I am not evangelical in the least, I conclude that some active idea that God exists and can provide manifest guidance in this regard towards self-acceptance and eventually to self-respect. There is a secular pull that is a competition for a man’s mind that he must overcome to gain himself. The competition is amidst distraction, cynicism and faith. But faith in itself is shallow and tenuous, so therefore faith must be directed towards a higher object. It is simultaneously an internal and external search that ultimately, hopefully, lands on a relationship with God and results in self-acceptance and respect.

Ultimately gentlemen, your successes in life will have meaning only in context to your relationship with others, and yet, all the success in the world will have no meaning unless you derive self-respect as a result.

A bit deep today, but I hope there was something in it for you.

Dave Marr

As stated in part 1 and 2, men need work and need to be on a path to pour out your best value in exchange for the best return available. Return can mean money, certainly, but clearly isn’t the whole picture. But it is an important measuring stick on keeping up with external forces as viewed through an internal lens. Let me unpack that: One’s life is an internal (mental, emotional, psychological, spiritual) endeavor that exists in an external (biological, physical, economic, political) world. In Part 3, I’ll attempt to take a longer view of man in the external world viewed through his internal lens and conclude with the next element of what a man needs. 

In your 20’s you’re essentially spit out of your adolescence into the world with the beginnings of  self understanding. Your brain doesn’t even finish its development until around 25 which by that  time you’re slightly viewed as an adult. You’ve begun the long road of finding your way with a job and the economics of your life. You’ve got a little income, some debt, expenses, and a step or two forward on your career path. Hopefully, you’ve got positive feelings – hope, optimism, and energy – for your career. Initially you may know you’re not at the right job, but at least you believe in you and have a reasonable faith in God’s plan. 

By the time you get to 30, you should be solidly on a life path. Income should meet expenses. You should have found balance with your spending habits and income and debt. You should have more responsibilities with job, marriage, and children. In other words, your competence in external life is being rewarded with more responsibilities that stretch your internal skills to manage them.

By 35, you’re fully an adult. Fully engaged in work, fully engaged in family, and being pushed and pushing the parameters of both. You’ve had to trim some non essentials in order to focus on your priorities. You’re now 10 years solidly on your path. Time to assess. Are you on track with economics that you had naively imagined when in your 20’s? Had you made implicit promises to your wife as to the life you’d have? This is the beginning stage of Compressed Expectations.

Compressed Expectations is my made up term for the expectations you consciously or subconsciously set awhile ago that are coming up on some future deadline (maybe 40-45). If you’re not on trajectory, then pressure builds in the marital relationship and in the relationship you have with yourself. I’m not talking just economics, but lifestyle. This is the socio-economic expectations of a relationship that is deemed “satisfying”. However you define satisfying lifestyle, it is likely some ‘equal to or better than’ version of your childhood. As that unstated deadline looms and you aren’t meeting your expectations, those expectations compress and pressure builds. How you and your wife react to this pressure, particularly when there are other pressures – children, sex life, changing bodies, keeping up with the Joneses – will affect your marriage. This is the crucible of marriage and I believe unavoidable, in a sense.  Think of it as on a backpack trip where you’ve added lots of unwieldy items to your pack. Your mid-30’s is where you shift the weight through conflict, reestablishing new expectations, and discarding old items that don’t fit the journey. Yes, unfortunately divorce is a real possibility as you conclude incorrectly what the problem is.

The issue is, your expectations, motivations, intentions, ability to articulate your vision, the idea of even having a vision, setting goals, and all your actions towards creating a life that is satisfying to you and your family are mental constructs – the internal world lived out on an external plane. To help you with avoiding the echo chamber in your head, you need help. And so… 

Men need men. Men need other men to confide in, to practice internal articulation with, to measure by, to bond with, to define truth through, to brainstorm with, get counseling from, and to sharpen against. This is the idea of Ironmen. It is counter-intuitive to say that men need men in order to succeed fully in marriage and work, but that’s what I’m saying. Even if your economics and marriage are a 7, regularly engaging with an Ironmen group will push you towards a 10. Because a 7 today might compress into a 4 down the road. 

Shake it up men.  

Dave Marr

Men are fairly simple creatures. Our “needs” are straightforward if we are “in” them; rather, if we have those “need” elements actively working in our life, then our life is moving forward. However, if those elements are not present, our life becomes more complicated, angst ridden, and lacking in direction. I suppose then I must define “needs” as I mean them so as to separate them from mere wants and desires. A man’s need is something that must be present in order for him to fulfill himself without which a man cannot become what he is capable of. It doesn’t mean though that a man WILL fulfill himself just because some need element is present. It just means that if it is not present, he is incapable of fulfilling his potential. Ergo the idea of need.

Like, for example, work; Man must work. And not just get up every day and participate in labor, though that’s a step in the right direction. And certainly not living a life of leisure because economics are already met. That is a recipe for self destruction. No, a guy has to spend himself on multiple levels. The word “spend” is appropriate – Man must pour out his energies regularly in work. It is a fundamental need that man must truly endeavor towards some end. Rest very little. What is the point of weekend? To escape from the drudgery of one’s job? No, the weekend is an interval to rest and restore so that you may go again and spend your your mental, emotional, psychological, relational, and perhaps spiritual capital towards some worthy endeavor. Those men who think TGIF is an escape from the burden of work are woefully misled. Those are the kind of guys that work to retire some day, whose lives are on hold until…until some unknown thing happens. Then, within 1 year after retiring, they will be dead, surprised at their death because they were waiting for life to begin. No gentlemen, work is a God-given blessing that fulfills a fundamental aspect of man’s being. Man needs work.

Does that mean that all work is equal? Is digging a ditch the same as brain surgery? I suppose in a Buddhist way you could make that case, but here in the Western world that’d be a tough argument. Each man’s potential capacities must be challenged through work. So in fairness, a ditch digger could be challenged to the same degree as a brain surgeon given their capacities. There is the notion of “Highest and Best Use” where a man’s efforts are more valuable to himself and God being poured out in alignment with his gifts and interests, i.e., the area of his greatest potential. So some men’s potential are more aligned with physical labor, some musical labor, others mathematical labor, and some evangelical labor. I, for one, could be more fulfilled digging a ditch than leading a choral ensemble, but not as much as building a business.

So the idea of “Highest and Best Use” is a step closer to understanding another fundamental need – Reason. Man must have a reason to work, a reason to get up energized for the day to spend his energies, a reason that engages his full being towards some directional end. It’s not enough to just work – man must have underlying his work a compelling reason to work. And this is where is gets complicated. There are economic reasons, psychological reasons, and there are spiritual reasons – Body, MInd, and Spirit. These reasons for working are dynamic, layered, hidden, and somewhat elusive. A man needs a compelling reason, a vision, to spend his energies that will define the “Why?” of his life. Pursuit of the answer to that question is to hold a compass and set out on the journey of life. Man must work in order to find out why he works and what are the motivating qualities of his life.

Men are designed to work, but we are not pack animals. It is these Body, Mind, Spirit elements that inspirit us to work harder, smarter, and more effectively. In my future What Men Need letters, we’ll discuss money and freedom, respect and competition, love and passion, and societal and Godly contribution as compelling reasons.

To fulfilling your needs,

Dave Marr