It's a Guy Thing (13 page)

What Can I Do When His Sex Drive Suddenly Disappears?

If anything interrupts your man’s directionality, he will feel emasculated. His feeling of weakness will then affect his sexual drive and his passion toward you as a woman, because he has become depolarized as a man.

A man’s sense of self-worth is deeply connected to his ability to persist or carry through with a goal. For instance, he is trying to write a novel and he can’t do it. He is trying to make money and something falls through. These kinds of things are more important for most men than their intimate relationships.

For most women, the success of their intimate relationship is at the core of their life in one form or another. They also have many other aspects to their lives, but love or the lack of love is the main concern at the feminine core.

For most men, however, their quest, purpose or mission is at their core. An intimate relationship may be an extremely important part of a man’s life, but at the core of his life is his quest—his quest for money, creativity, God or whatever. This quest takes precedence over everything else for the masculine.

It is very natural for you to feel hurt, rejected, abandoned or unloved when he is not paying attention or giving you the energy that you want. Remember, though, that if he is not there for you it may be because his life quest is failing. Remember also that unless a man is succeeding in his purpose, he is not capable of being in a full relationship with you, and he cannot offer you his love fully. Instead, the energy he would otherwise give to you is sucked into his hollow core.

You will feel this as a collapse, a collapse away from you.
But if you could feel it from his point of view you would feel it as a collapse into the hollow core of his failing life.

Once you understand what your man is feeling, you will begin to accept your man’s withdrawal. Realize that it’s not your fault. Realize that even if you were the perfect woman, even if you were doing everything “right,” whatever that means, he still could not be there for you if his personal quest was failing.

If he feels like he is supposed to have energy for you even though his core is failing, he will begin to feel guilty. He will feel bad because he is not doing what he should do in the relationship with you. This added demand will begin to wear on him. Finally, he may come to the point of wanting to reject everything.

He may finally break down and say, “I can’t take your demands anymore.” You may feel,
I’m not demanding anything! I’m only supporting you
. But he feels you as a demand. He is, in fact, inventing the demand. He feels,
The core of my life is collapsing and I’m supposed to be here for you. You are placing this demand on me
. It feels like a demand to him even though you don’t demand it. He feels,
I have to be there for my wife. I have to be there for my children. I have to mow the lawn. And here at the core of my life I’m feeling totally devastated
.

Traditionally, in cultures that had more wisdom than our present culture, a man in this state would go on a vision quest. He would seek a vision that would guide his life, then he would align his life with this vision. How did a man engage in such a quest traditionally? He would do it alone or in the company of other men. Such a quest does not traditionally involve women.

During difficult times, you will find that your man has a
desire to spend time alone or with his men friends rather than with you. At this point in his life, more important than anything else, he must try to get his life together by finding his vision and aligning his life with it.

First, he needs to decide what his vision is. Then he must set up his life so that for a period of time he does nothing else except align his life with his vision. In this culture, finding his vision may not be possible because he is expected to do things like go to work and take care of household projects. In other cultures, the vision quest takes priority: Your man would be expected to forgo his responsibilities to complete his quest. As in other cultures, your man needs to dedicate as much life-energy as possible to discovering and aligning his life with his vision.

Part of this will probably involve a temporary retreat from your relationship in some form. Perhaps your man could move into a separate room, with the understanding that for the next day, or next week, he is not going to be responsible for the children or the household duties. Perhaps you could hire someone to help. There are ways to work around it.

It might take a day, it might take a week, but eventually he will begin to realign his life. And when he does he will feel his natural and true masculinity. A man only feels masculine when he is aligned with his direction. When he loses his vision, or when he loses his ability to live his vision, it is as if he becomes impotent, physically as well as emotionally.

You can help your man align himself with his vision by eliminating distractions from his life and helping him live his freedom, his creativity, his quest.

Why Can’t He Express His Appreciation for Me?

Anything you do that serves your man’s quest feels like a gift to him. Anything you do that obstructs his quest feels like a slap in the face.

Most important to the feminine is love, but most important to the masculine is freedom. As a woman, you may assume that when you gift your man with a glass of water, what he feels is love. But that’s not the entire gift he receives. He does feel your love. However, the gift that you bring to a man—what feels most like your special gift of feminine energy to him—is not the emotion of love
per se
, but the freedom and the energy it gives him. When you bring him a glass of water, your energy frees him to continue his quest.

One reason your man might not express his appreciation when you do something for him is that if he has to break away from what he is doing to express his appreciation, then it is no longer such a gift. If he has to stop what he’s doing, if he has to leave his train of action and thought and turn to you and exchange acknowledgment, this can often pull him off the track of his quest.

If expressing his appreciation for your action takes him away from his quest, then your gesture is no longer such a gift in his experience. Of course, once his quest has been set aside, he’s a fool if he doesn’t completely express his appreciation to you in some way. However, if you expect your man to express his appreciation during his focus, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

If he is obliged to break his quest to express appreciation to you, he may resent you. In some insidious fashion, he will express his resentment towards you even while he expresses appreciation.

Don’t expect your man to always stop what he is doing to express his appreciation. In the long run, however, you will know his appreciation. You have gifted him in a way that nobody else can. He feels your unique gifts of love. Through your gifts, you give him freedom. Through his gifts, he will give you love. If he doesn’t, you are with the wrong man.

How Can I Reach Him Without Making Him Angry?

The male and female relationship is good for balancing the extremes of the masculine and feminine. Nothing balances a man’s dry rigidness more than the love of a woman. And nothing balances a woman’s sensitive emotions more than a man’s love. Men and women can balance and serve one another this way.

Just because the masculine character is modal, or one-pointed, doesn’t mean that you should tolerate him when he is just acting like a stubborn child or avoiding something.

Know that most men are modal. It’s a masculine quality that should be honored. But you should also question whether his life is being served by his modality in this moment, or is he lost in his own narrow mind.

If you honestly feel he’s not being served, that he’s just rigidly stuck in a selfish mode, then you could serve him with your feminine energy. This doesn’t mean arguing with him or analyzing him. Instead, you might want to put your hand on his shoulder and say, “Hi.” Or, “It’s a beautiful day.” Bring him into his body with your touch. Soften his edges with the loving tone of your voice. Enliven his dry heart with the sweet force of your feminine energy. Find out what works.
It’s really an art to heal each other in intimacy.

You will know what to do from your heart when you no longer fall into the trap of being hurt by him or pushing him away. If he is self-absorbed, you might feel hurt, abandoned, or rejected. You might also react by punishing him in kind: “If he doesn’t want to pay attention to me, I’m not going to pay attention to him.” When you go beyond a reactive response, you will be able to feel what he needs and help him snap out of his little world to rejoin you in intimate connection.

He is already in his modal, masculine energy. The secret is to connect to him through the polarity of your feminine energy. If you put out masculine energy, instead—discussing his “problem” with him, or analyzing him—then he will only be depolarized further away from intimacy. However, the polarity of your feminine energy will attract him into your healing, if he is able to receive you. All you can do is offer your gift. Whether he receives it or not is up to him.

Why Is He So Afraid of Getting Close?

Men fear constraint. Remember that! The closer they get to being completely attracted by you, the more they feel, “Whoah! I’m going to lose my freedom.” The more their attraction to a committed relationship grows, the more they will talk about wanting their freedom.

Especially at the beginning of a relationship, men feel themselves slipping from the freedom of bachelorhood into the constraint of relationship. They say things like, “My business is important to me and I need to spend a lot of time with it.” Or, “We might be getting close, but don’t get the idea that
we are going to see each other every day. I need a lot of time by myself.”

He is trying to convince himself: “No, I’m not going to lose my own life. No, I’m not going to lose my freedom.” The more he feels love drawing you together, the more reasons he will give as to why he needs his freedom and the ways he will keep his freedom. He will talk about his freedom because he’s feeling attracted to you—he is precisely
not
rejecting you, although that may be what it feels like to you.