Cursed Male?

[neck_romancer]

Over the recent holiday, I spoke with my father about love relationships. He told me about how all of his brothers have a very hard time making things work with women. No matter the level of extroversion, the men in my family are very poor at successfully initiating relationships, and then they are also poor at maintaining them afterwards, said my father. Then, he looked at me and said that he thought that I had the same characteristics of the other men in my family.

He said that he felt that the men in family have a "curse" that keeps them from having functional relationships with women. His saying this put me in a very poor mood.

I have always loved women, and for the last four years, all of my closest friends have been women. But, I do feel like there is something intangible - not my looks, not my passion or compassion - that turns women cold in my presence. Sex has always been very impersonal, easily the least emotionally satisfying experience of the relationships I have been in. I have done everything I felt I needed to do: shown interest, asked what she liked, listened to her even when she didn't speak. Most of my close friends tell me that I simply have bad "luck", that I have just not found the right women. I don't know if that is true or not.

My problem is that I don't truly believe in "curses" or "luck". What am I not understanding about my interactions with women? Do other men share this same feeling?

 

[jerseyman1963]

This is going to be a hard, if not impossible question for us to answer for you, but what about your friends? Especially your women friends? Can you press them to be brutally honest with you and give you their opinions? I agree that the idea of a curse in this regard is a little out there. Believing that is just giving up, and there's too much in your control to just give up.

 

[M's girl]

I agree with Jerseyman and I do think you have a great deal of control over the situation. You say sex has always been very impersonal, easily the least emotionally satisfying experience of the relationships... why is that you think?

Okay, there is a difference between casual sex and sex with the one you have fallen madly in love with I guess, although I never had casual sex with the intention of it being that. But you must have felt different with different women; more (or less) committed with the one than the other, didn't you?

I think if you treat sex as an impersonal act, it will be. It's a state of mind. So have you always been this way? Have you been disappointed (by sex / a relationship) in the beginning which made you (maybe) think it was never going to be all you hoped it would be?

I know my M has been almost indifferent at times due to bad experiences. He is afraid as hell sometimes to show himself and to open himself up, which sometimes makes for somewhat impersonal sex. We talk about this a lot and over a period of more than two years I can say that sometimes I think he gets it and starts to open up and so, while at other times he's back where we started. It's very hard to undo all the harm others have caused sometimes and as you see that goes for men too.

Still I believe that when you find a wonderful and exciting person to be with and she loves you back she will, like me I suppose with M, be patient and willing to help you reach the level of intimacy you want. I know M wants it and it's sometimes hard for me to understand - knowing how much he wants it - when I see what he does (or does not do) to frustrate that proces anyway...

I know your situation probably is somewhat different but maybe this helps you and you can find similarities.

 

[neck_romancer]

I know my M has been almost indifferent at times due to bad experiences. He is afraid as hell sometimes to show himself and to open himself up, which sometimes makes for somewhat impersonal sex.

This is very similar to my situation. The first girl I was with, I was with her for five years. Initially, I was very eager and open about sex. But, she did not enjoy sex very much. Rather than move on to find somebody else, I stayed with her and restricted my sex drive. I was in love with her, so this was the only choice I felt I could make. Then, she started seeing other men, and it confused me very much and hurt quite a bit. After we broke up, she was very cruel about the topic of sex, and this more than anything made me reluctant to open up to the other women that came into my life later.

Perhaps its simply the combination of being a very masculine male and spending a lot of time in the company of radical feminists and counter-culture types in general, but as for the "curse", it feels as though I am a lightning rod for bad stereotypes about men. Women often assume that I am sexually unenlightened, and say that if there is a problem, perhaps I should think about why I am the one responsible for creating that problem. It is funny to me how being masculine is so quickly equated with being heterosexual (I am bisexual), how being heterosexual is then so quickly equated with being Patriarchal, and finally how Patriarchy is the end-all be-all of ignorance and oppression. People often move up that ladder of assumptions with me very quickly, I have found.

I feel that intellectualism is the double-whammy in my life, next to masculinity. I believe I often come off as a know-it-all. Unfortunately, in order to combat that appearance, I am often silent, or act like a moron so that people will not think I'm smart. This also prevents me from opening up to women. There have been multiple women in my life that were very attracted to me until the second or third night, when I revealed myself to have an intellect. I could almost chew on the palpable feeling of intimidation that these women felt because of that. I have stopped playing that game, and try to present myself as the person I truly am, but I must admit that hooking up is a bit more difficult as myself rather than as a persona.

Anyway, thank you for the responses. I don't know exactly what I was expecting to hear, but M's girl, your perspective especially was good to hear.