Some of my favorite conversations with male clients are about masturbation.

Hard to imagine?

Picture this.

Everything’s going well. As they say in Developmental Psychology “shit is off the hook,” which roughly translates as a butt load of healing and development taking place. We’re also laughing a lot which usually surprises them because we’re supposed to be “working.”

Then out of the blue I say that we have to dive into something REALLY IMPORTANT.

I make sure to put my serious face on when I say this. They do the same. Then I drop the bomb.

“Let’s talk about wanking.”

A shock wave of genuine anxiety ripples across their face.

I charge on.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m bringing this up. That’s a good question. And I can assure you that it has nothing to do with you specifically.

No, I do not think that you specifically have a problem with slapping your donkey, or whatever they call it these days. In fact I have no idea whether you do or not, and frankly I’m not that concerned. Because what I do know is that – all men in the modern world have a problem, to some degree, with creaming their avocado whether they like it or not.

So I want to open the subject up so that we have no doubt in our minds about what this entails from a balls and boobs out enlightenment perspective.

Are you open to hearing me out?”

They usually nod at this point.

Green light on.

“Firstly I’m sure we all can agree that there’s nothing particularly empowering about spending minutes at a time hunched in some corner of your house like a dribbling medieval peasant frantically trying to strangle a weasel.

It’s just not a good look.

There’s also the side effect that masturbation, if done quickly (which it usually is) trains us to premature ejaculate.

Fantastic. Just what everyone wants more of.

And what about that ridiculous idea that’s been perpetuated for years about jerking off before a first date? Seriously? I mean what towering intellect came up with the idea of shooting all your UNAGI into an old sock before meeting a goddess with whom you want to marshal all your male potency to engage with? I mean, what if you make it to home base? You think ejaculating like a stroke victim trying to keep his rice pudding down is going to blow her hair back? The release of your cosmic life force should have the raw power of a samurai sword chopping off the tip of a fire hydrant. It should explode with the force of Old Faithful. It should drench the woman, the entire house. Semen should be running down the staircase from her bedroom like the rivers of blood in the Shining. It should fill the fireplace and shoot out the chimney. The neighbors should be able to dance underneath the shower that covers the street like a Bedouin tribe celebrating the arrival of the rain after a drought. Animals in the nearby Zoo should run for higher ground. What I’m trying to say here is that it should be an event. Do not jerk off before a date.

But the real reason we do this is simply because we are not in training.

We have no understanding of how to channel our sexual energy.

So when a powerful woman enters our sphere of awareness we simply can’t hold onto our donkey, and it pops.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Because whats really going on here is far more dis-empowering than simply losing control of your chi when you should be transmuting that shit back up your spine and shooting it out of your third eye like a boss. No, what this is really all about, is where we, as men, psychologically and emotionally train ourselves to go while we’re masturbating.

What?

Hear me out.

Modern men all over the world have been trained since a very young age to masturbate in a very particular way that involves focusing our awareness onto a very specific, very secretive place inside our psyche that is often completely contrary to what a fulfilling sexual experience usually looks like.

What I’m talking about is not your every day WANK BANK, but your SECRET VAULT, your CONCRETE BUNKER. That place that all men born in the modern world and exposed to advertising, television, film, magazines, pornography have been, on a very deep level, programmed to go to when fantasizing.

It’s that place that has been trained to be turned on by an active or passive sexual violence, an aggressive domination or submission, or any other variation of the classic “dominator hierarchy.” And the underlying reason? As a society we’re still, for the most part, getting off with our egos.

And an undeveloped ego only ever feels good when locked fast in an endless struggle for power and control.

The result is an unconscious yearning for the kind of sexual relationship that couldn’t be further from a healthy sex life that most of us truly want. And in the midst of a mental health epidemic it seems logical (if incredibly painful because of the stigma of shame surrounding it) that at some point we might want to consider how we actually teach our young men to masturbate in a way that doesn’t simply churn and hard wire some version of sexual toxicity within them, so they can actually begin to set themselves up for a healthy sex life thereafter.

But for the most part, we’re still too immature as a society to even talk about it. The result is that most of us never ever truly turn and face that deep, dark place inside where our personal off-shore secret Swiss Wank Account is stored so that it has no choice but to grow in interest until it eventually gets so bloated that it spills over into our public life like an Elliot Spitzer, Dominique Strauss Khan, or Anthony Wiener.

Because if our sexual fantasies are not aired, cleansed and processed into something healthy, they will ultimately take control of us in a moment of weakness and remind us that the deeper we repress them, the greater their power over us.

Lest we forget masturbation is arguably the place where our ideas about sex first begin to crystallize. And there’s nothing worse than having a nice young chap with good intentions give off a totally rape-y vibe for no other reason than for a few minutes, a dozen times a week he trains his brain to wire around some twisted sexual power struggle simply because he hasn’t been offered a healthy, empowering alternative to put in its place.

And finally, its important to get straight that an orgasm is a tremendous window into the unconscious. When we climax we’re in a profoundly receptive state. Those few seconds are a sacred neurological ground that we want to make sure we grace with phrases and acts and emotional content that is going to strengthen not weaken us as individuals.”

By this time they’re nodding their head.

They’re even smiling a bit.

They get that this isn’t a take down, or a pot shot, or some weird messed up turn of events where they’re going to have to spam me and change their phone number.

No, they get the point and are hearing me out. Which as you can imagine only ever takes place because we’ve already established an I’d-take-a-bullet-for-you level of rapport.

But what does this all really come down to?

I’d have to say that it comes down to sexual slavery.

Harsh, perhaps.

But if you’re a man, and you’re not eighty years old, or have a testosterone deficiency, then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Because all men, in spite of our best intentions, have at one time or another felt completely at the mercy of our libidos.

It’s just part of the game.

And don’t get me wrong. In an age where so much emphasis is finally being placed upon the Feminine, and rightly so, it can be a curious thing to bring in such a concept. That as men, we need to be understood for the biological pressures that we’re being put under by the Heavy Weight Champion of the chemical world: Testosterone. Mr T., AKA The Dark Lord Ballsdemort.

Yes, ladies, I can assure you that Ballsdemort has the power to put your higher functions into a choke hold in the blink of an eye like a magic spell you can be under in no time. And with all the support Ballsdemort gets from the mass media machine, it can be a full time job for men finding their center when every cell in their body seems to be screaming kill every man you meet and have sex with every woman.

Most men I speak to usually have no trouble admitting that they have, at one time or another, felt like Ballsdemort’s bitch. A slave to his (and not their) desire. And I’m not giving testosterone a bad rap here. It has its upside for sure. I’m just talking about the spell that takes training to come to terms with, to meet with a level of personal empowerment that doesn’t just involve repression.

Because at some point there comes a time when we all have to stare our relationship to sex, and to our sexual fantasies squarely in the face, with our eyes open, so that we can begin to ask the inevitable question – do I want to be free from this?

And I’m certainly not suggesting that everyone does.

But for those of us who are tired and do want to, I offer a few suggestions:

1. Identify where you go in your deepest, darkest fantasies.

But don’t just stick your big toe in them, or glance at them cowardly from a distance. Dive into them. If they’re unconscious then you may even have to allow yourself to go there consciously, which may very well inflame the part of you that is ashamed. Yeah, it’s a Gordian knot. But until you hold your eyes open to them no matter how strange or painful they are you won’t be able to identify the underlying dynamic that you’re training yourself to get off on. Is it the abuse of power? Is it humiliation? Self-deprecation? Aggression? Usually a distortion of power is involved, but not always. Identifying what it is, and then understanding the underlying need that wants to be expressed is the first step in understanding how that need might authentically be met in a way that heals and empowers.

2. Take a meta perspective of yourself in the act.

The first time I forced myself to do this it changed my relationship to masturbation forever. It was like throwing a rock through a mirror and seeing the truth. So just take a moment to really engage your pattern, really commit to going to that secret place physically, emotionally, psychologically, and then right in the middle of it – turn and check yourself out in the mirror.

Dear lord, its like having a bucket of cold water thrown over you while being hit by lightning.

Seriously, if you’ve got your cum face on and your hunched over you probably look like a beaten down dog taking an incredibly painful shit. It’s horribly humiliating and allows the spell of your own illusion of what you think you’re doing to be momentarily broken. At the very least you’ll realize that if you’re going to masturbate then you could attempt to bring some dignity to the act. Think, The Masturbations of Marcus Arelius.

3. Stop it with the celebrities for god’s sake.

They get enough energy as it is without you beaming your first chakra directly into their psychic storage center. More importantly, masturbating over public figures can perpetuate the unconscious belief that your sexual fulfillment will always remain unattainable, always within the realm of individuals with whom you may never meet. Then again if you are in a position where you may meet them, then even more reason not to. The last thing you want to do is walk into a meeting and have to actually shake hands with someone with the same five digits you beat off to them with.

4. And yes, stop watching porn.

Porn is erotic junk food. There are plenty of other areas that can turn you on that don’t involve the exploitation of women and an unhealthy example of sexual fulfillment. So try going cold turkey, or if that’s too difficult then gradually phase out from full fledged porn, into “art” photography, then into “normal women” with “normal bodies” photography. This will begin to bring the fantasy back into reality. Like retraining your taste buds into understanding that a fresh salad is always better than a big mac and fries. Your libido is the same.

Now for God’s sake say Om.

~

If you enjoyed this post consider checking out the recently released Part 2 of Why We Need To Talk About Male Masturbation.

Photo Credit: Helios