Dumpster-Dancer

“The Art of Sexual Ecstasy” is a westernized #tantra book by Margot Annand. I recommended it to a female who seemed to be interested in exploring the relationship between human sexuality and the God who made us both sexual and relational.

On further consideration, that book recommendation was the wrong one. That book helped my relationship . . . but only because I’m a man. It’s the wrong book for a feminine woman who also has a touch of the masculine essence.

At 35 I was ready to blow up my marriage. I truly and deeply loved, admired and respected my wife. Most of our relationship was idyllic. We talked, shared and budgeted on the same page. We solved problems well. We had overcome the pain of childlessness (or at least learned to deal with it.) But I ached. I ached because my sweet woman could not understand my need for something more in our sex life.

I thought that I just wanted something kinkier and more varied. I thought that I just wanted more passion and enthusiasm. I demanded, wheedled, threatened and cajoled for more spontenaeity, variety, frequency and passion. Finally, it came to the ultimate marital threat. “If you won’t give me what I need, I’ll go get it elsewhere.”

I felt that it was not fair for one person to prefer (it was never a command for us #monagamy ) sexual fidelity for an entire lifetime and then deny the other person all the joy that sex should encompass.

Sweet, loving woman that she is, my wife set about solving the problem. With red cheeks she snuck into the sexual self-help isle of Borders Books. I felt better just seeing her dare to look at the racy titles and bright colored bindings.

Eventually, she plucked up her courage and headed to the counter with a fat, plain, white book “The Art of Sexual Ecstasy.” I was so disappointed. It’s a book like a bible, more spirituality and touchy-feely new age mumbo jumbo than a down and dirty fuck all night swinging from the chandelier guide.

Predictably, she explained over and over again that the book touched something in her, that it appealed to her sense of what sex should be. Equally predictable, the book quickly wound up on the shelf, mostly unread. Nothing changed. Nothing at all.

In those days she had a full time job while I worked from home. Desperate, forlorn and depressed, I wasn’t getting much work done. I’d met her at 13; fallen in love at 14; convinced her to go on our first official date at 15; married at 20; I’d given all the best years of my life to her and still sex was a once a month affair where I’d spend months watching the menstrual calendar, days setting the mood, hours on foreplay, and a predictable, interminable 30 minutes grinding her in just the right way while thinking of baseball and green slime as her slowly heightening arousal made it harder and harder for me to stay . . . well . . . present. Only to have her quietly shudder exactly one time then rush to shower our closeness off her, dress and move on to “normal” things.

I’d head off into the bathroom in shame to masturbate a couple more times to finish taking my edge off.

One of those days, after she left for work, I pulled “The Art of Sexual Ecstasy” off her shelf. I’ve heard preachers say that in times of need they’ve opened their Bibles randomly and found that God put them on exactly the right passage.

It was like that. I opened the book randomly to the passage where Margo Annand says that our partner is not responsible for our sexual fulfillment. That if we want ecstasy, we need to work on ourselves first. If we develop the skills, our partner will be unable to resist following the energy that we emanate. She also said that a couple that masters the skills will never, ever want to cheat or stray because the joy built together will be too great to risk.

Thus began a mature adult’s lifetime journey into the world of energy, emotions, and the dance between the masculine and feminine essences.

Margo was right. As I learned to dance with the divine feminine, I learned to become the man who could draw out not just an orgasm, but a life filled with good sexual tension, play, love, and passion which continues to spill over into some kind of sexual / intimate play almost daily even now that we are old.

I thought that I wanted sex. I was wrong. I wanted connection. When I pursued connection, sex followed.

Back to my original point, “The Art of Sexual Ecstasy” was the right book for me, a man, because it taught me to embrace, appreciate and honor the divine feminine.

So, for the exact same reason, it’s the wrong book for a woman in crisis to read.

I should have recommended David Deida’s “The Way of the Superior Man.”

While written for men, the book really is an exploration of the dance between the Masculine and Feminine written in a way that a woman will be able to relate to. In it she might see both her own feelings, emotions and needs, and those of the other half of the human race around her.

The issue in my marriage just happened to be sex, but I think that virtually every marital issue can be traced back to places where the masculine and feminine essences get out of sync in a couple. Another common example is where the feminine needs to share and express emotions and the masculine hears only problems.

In sum, men should read the stuff that women like #romance_novel and women should read what men like when they are trying to sort out relationship issues.