www.modernmasculinity.com

It is amazing what kind of damage keeping a secret can do to your soul. From a masculine perspective, if you’re keeping a secret, there maintaining a duality between your public image and your internal image. All of the energy you put into maintaining the secret, presenting a public image that dissonates with your inner image is energy which should be put into pursuing your greater purpose.

In a relationship context, this is very damaging, and nearly always unnecessary. The feminine ability to forgive is amazing when the masculine maintains his core and remains true to his greater purpose.

Should there be complete openness and honesty? Maybe not. Complete honesty doesn’t always serve his greater purpose. Does she need to be told that he found the cashier at the supermarket attractive? No, because if she was there, she knows.

Be consistent, internally and externally, with your greater purpose. If your current relationship causes you to be inconsistent, perhaps she is not the woman for you. If you cause yourself to be inconsistent, perhaps it is time to come clean so you can achieve that consistency, so you have more energy for achieving your greater purpose.

Tom at brakar.com, recently wrote “How to Compete With a Vibrator“. Quoting an Esquire Sexpert column where a reader asks about a vibrator desensitizing his woman to the point where he cannot please her, Tom comments:

Ahem… If I may slide in my two cents here… A woman can satisfy herself much faster than you can satisfy her. Just as you can satisfy yourself single handed much faster then when you’re making a team effort. You can’t compete with that, and you should not even try. Instead, try to take control of the situation. Take it slow. Tease her and take pauses. Build up the sexual tension and she will climax way much better than she does on her own.

I agree wholeheartedly with Tom, and take it a step further: Men, if your woman knows how to please herself with a vibrator, she can help you learn where her hot spots are. Even better, you can manipulate those differently than she can, with or without use of a tool to help you.

Her vibrator is not a competitor, it’s your scout. If your woman knows the terrain of her body well enough to use a tool on it, she can help you be a better lover, and a good lover is way better than a plastic toy. If she doesn’t already know that, this is your chance to show her.

I recently asked a few friends for topic ideas, and my friends don’t throw me any softballs. This was the first idea to hit my desk.

As a little boy, I cried frequently and with relatively little provocation. I had a thin skin. I was sensitive. Over the years, the other boys beat a lesson deep into my psyche: crying was not OK for boys, and continuing to do so would result in immediate revocation of my man license. I learned to suck it up. I kept the tears in, and it is a lesson that still influences me today.

When I watch my youngest son playing, I see how crybabies are made. He’s 22 months old and growing like crazy, so he bumps into something, falls down, hits his head, skins his knee, or otherwise injures himself almost every 10 minutes. If I’m standing right there when it happens, the tears start flowing immediately. Naturally, Mom or I will pick him up, soothe him, and then set him to playing again. But, if I’m discretely observing him while pretending to read a magazine, he’ll look at me after such an event, and if I’m not paying attention, he keeps playing. This also happens when he’s having so much fun playing that crying wouldn’t be as fun as continuing.

As much as I can, I try to let him handle it on his own. He’s a tough little kid, and I think that if I continue to let him roll with things, not soothing every little “owie” he gets, he’ll be less likely to cry inappropriately and more likely to avoid the lessons mis-taught by his peers.

Do I cry, now? Not much, and never publicly. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to unlearn the lessons of the past, and I have felt times when I wanted to cry and couldn’t. The lessons are deeply ingrained, and I may spend my entire life trying to unlearn them.

Can real men cry? This question presents a false dichotomy. There is a spectrum of crying, from “My wife won’t let me buy a Harley so I’m going to cry” to “My best friend just died in my arms”. I think that every individual has different criteria for when it is OK to cry, and those criteria change based on who is doing the crying. I’d even go out on a limb and say that these criteria change frequently, depending on recent experiences.

Should real men cry? Yes and no. Crying is a physiological response to stressful situations which provides a catharsis, a release of the stress. When the stress is too great, it leaks out in bad ways. In all things, the extremes are to be avoided. Cry too often, and a man is labeled a wimp, not to be trusted as a protector, mentor, or provider. Cry too little, and a man becomes hardened, quick to anger, and not to be trusted as a protector, mentor, or provider.

A recent discussion with a friend revealed that her father had recently insulted her, calling her beauty into question. After some reflection, I’m still left with the following reaction: What a jerk! To be completely open, the other things I’ve heard about this man have only reinforced my judgment of him.

As fathers, it is our life-long duty to love and respect our children. I don’t have a daughter at this time, but I cannot imagine ever telling her that she is anything other than beautiful and wonderful. My boys provide me with plentiful amounts of frustration, but I’d never consider calling one of them stupid, inept, or ugly.

In David Deida’s The Way of the Superior Man, Deida states that the feminine, (as an energy/force/personality aspect) responds positively to positive reinforcement. In other words, the feminine spirit responds best to encouragement of their actions. So a woman who has a predominance of feminine spirit will find that someone encouraging her when she does something will do that thing more often. The masculine tends to respond positively to challenges, so a man will more often try to do something his buddies say, “I bet you can’t” to prove that he can.

Dads out there, please treat your little girls with the utmost care. There is enough social pressure to look and dress a certain way, so always tell them you love them, that they’re beautiful, and yes, capable. Let them know how much you admire their effort to succeed.

If I have a daughter, she’ll get this from me, and God help the poor boys who try to date her. I can already see the big, ugly ogre who will greet these boys, question their intent, threaten them with a shotgun, and let them know how much I love my little girl and how disappointed I would be if she were to come home in tears. As I write this, I stop and think: Would I be issuing a challenge to this young gentleman? Would I actually be unintentionally inviting him to do the very things I am trying to avoid?

She’s getting locked in a closet until I arrange her marriage.