Do men view sex emotionally?

Seems like an apt ideology to how guys are taught to deal with these kinds of conversations.

Honesty and communication are the key.

Here's another question I've had to answer a lot around the round table discussions I've had at college.

"Is it true men don't view sex as an emotional thing like women do, or is it emotional for them as well they just don't show it like women do?"

Ladies, here is the right honest truth. We are just as equally emotionally tied to sex as you are. We might express it differently than you do, but we are VERY emotionally tied into sex.

Let me cut to a couple myths that men spread among other men and often throw around like bags of manure to our significant others. We like to tell ourselves, each other, and our partners, that we don’t get emotionally involved when it comes to sex. We like to tell everyone that sex for men is solely about pleasure, that women are nothing more than objects to insert ourselves into, ejaculate into, and feel nothing for in the morning.

And the truth is, a lifestyle of this kills everything inside of us. It empties us and makes us feel hollow and broken. And all we know to try and fill our vacuous sucking vortex of need is to go out and find the next drunken party girl who is willing to ride us for the price of a few cheap drinks. A self-perpetuating spiral of destruction leaving us waking up and wondering why “She got away.”

As a male in western American culture, there is a lot of pressure on men that people don’t realize. We are given images like the might sports icons and the ripped abdominal celebrities and we are told every day you need to look and act like them or you’re not worth anything. You need to act like them or NO woman will ever love you. And by love, we are told “have sex with us.” We are drilled into our thick skulls that the only women worth being with are the “hot” women. Those physically appealing creatures that are paraded before us like meat and we are told that unless our girlfriend/wife/lover is as hot as one of them… Our lives are meaningless.

Or… We are taught now that sensitive yet good looking romantic men win the day. Those men with lavish suits who have enough money to throw around and treat their love interests to expensive gifts, dinners, jewelry all in attempt to prove that a nice guy can win the day and provide the needs will land the hot yet wary damsel. And if we don’t… Our lives are meaningless.

Oh yes… We are emotionally tied in to sex. Our emotions are ignited at the very thought of sex. For we are taught that without sex, we don’t have love. Without sex, we are taught we don’t have meaning. Without sex, we are taught we don’t have lives. Without sex, we are taught that we will be alone, forever. And ever.. ( I admit, this is sometimes where I find myself feeling.)

So these two ideals create an even bigger backlash.

Going back, if the ideal we are given is to emulate the popular sports icon or the physically fit sex symbol, then we are taught to treat women like objects. So we pursue women like we pursue our other objects of fancy. We look for sleek lines, hot curves, hot colors, and something that we find eye catching. Caring nothing for personality or for how she may be perceived as a person. We treat her as we treat our other toys. We play with her until she breaks. Till she leaves. And we find ourselves broken in like kind, and alone.

To the sensitive guys, we learn to strive to collect as much money as possible and shower it on our loves. We read poetry, we shower roses on our loves, we do your dishes, clean your houses, do your windows, mow your lawns, and we allow ourselves to be taken advantage of continually. We do our best to give gifts of love, prove our love, all in the hope of feeling like we too can be someone special. And when we find out inevitably that the relationship just isn’t working out. Either we’ve managed to find a toxic woman intent on leeching off us only to leave for another abuser or we find that she simply isn’t interested in us at all, we find we are alone again.

And I’ve been both of these guys in different times of my life and I can honestly say the questions remains the same every time we end up alone. WHY?!

If you ask any man who’s recently broken up with a long term love with a very active sex life, you’ll find he is indeed quite emotional. He for whatever reason found himself emotionally invested in the person he held interest in. And now for whatever reason the relationship ends, he finds himself now without what he felt was meant to give him his happiness.

You see ladies, we are taught that in almost every given loving scenario that without sex we cannot be happy. We are taught that without your gentle and amazing touch, we have nothing else in our lives. So we look for it and we crave it like heroin junkies. We invest ourselves in the hopes of finding what society tells us is love in your warm embrace.

What we as men are never taught is that sex is only ONE expression of love. It is not LOVE itself.

So we stumble about it blindly until one hopes we take the time to listen to an older and wiser man who has had the benefit of horrible experiences who sits us down and respectfully tells us how it really is.

And that is that love comes first from you. You have to be able to see yourself as valuable, precious, and desirable. You have to like the man you see in the mirror. Second: love in a relationship comes not from a sex act, but from the actual building of the relationship itself. And that Thirdly: Sex is just one of a lot of different ways two consenting loving adults can share love together emotionally and physically.

And if we bother to take the time to listen to those people, we find ourselves on a better track with life.

Now, there’s all kinds of emotional complications that guys experience with sex and I could write a decade of dissertations that we have. Primarily I will say this, every person we have sexual relations with leaves a mark on us. Every person we are with, regardless of how much we try to convince ourselves otherwise, affects us. For whatever reason we are not taught the emotional issues sex brings. But this we soon learn, we carry a piece of every person we are with no matter the case.

I can honestly say after living a life of excess once myself, it can weigh you down horribly if you don’t deal with and shed that baggage.

We are every bit as emotional as any woman. We are taught not to embrace it, we are taught to avoid it, but the lesson I honestly have learned is that hearing a boulder isn’t rolling down the mountain doesn’t change the fact that it could roll right over you. Hearing you’re not supposed to have emotions about sex doesn’t change the fact that you do and you will have to deal with them.