I thought I was a nice guy

When I arrived into Tantra I was just expecting to learn techniques to get the best out of sex: I wanted to be a stud in bed and to have men queuing at my door because I have offered them the best sex ever (yes, I know!).

Over the past twenty years I have taken personal development very seriously. Several courses of psychotherapy to tidy up some trauma. Lots of body work, life coaching, personal awareness, meditation, so when I got into tantra I thought I was already ‘pretty sorted’.

I could not have expected that the energy of sex was so potent. I used to think that what happened in the bedroom had nothing to do with the rest of your life. Of course, that changed at a time that I felt that I was suffering from premature ejaculation and my therapist appeared to be totally uninterested about how long would take me to shoot my load, but more about the dramas that I appeared to be carrying into the bedroom. 

Funnily that at the beginning I could not make a connection: I was having a tough time being accepted by my parents as a gay man. Feeling that ‘inadequate son’ seemed to coincide also with being an ‘inadequate lover’. My mind could not accept a link, however my body seemed to operate at a different level.

So years later with all those hopes of becoming a stud  I start to deepen into tantra and what I find is that once you start working with the subtleties of the breathing, of slowing down, of being really ‘present’ for  your partner, allowing to express yourself without ‘shame’ then you realise that sex is almost an excuse to explore how you navigate life.

TYPE A, B and C

It became very obvious to me that I had a system of values in place that was pretty horrid. I felt the world was divided by ‘guys above me – we would call them type A’ ; ‘guys like me – type B’, and ‘guys below me – type C’. 

What makes a type A is whatever my insecurities would project: somebody more handsome, more muscles, bigger cock whatever. The type C guy would be somebody I felt was ‘inferior’ lets say less sexy, less ‘emotionally developed’, less ‘whatever’. 

Then there were the guys like me, a type B: not bad looking (but could improve), relatively well adjusted (but could improve) and generally an ‘ok guy’ (but yes just ‘ok’).  As you can imagine I had no idea I had this system of values in place: in my mind I thought I was kind, gentle, compassionate and loving. I suspected I was a bit judgemental but I thought that was kind of ‘necessary’ to get through life.

This all happen when I was in a group setting and I had to work with a partner who I did not find attractive. I could sense how my heart ‘shrunk’. I  was deeply jealous because one of my mates (type B like me) was working with one of the ‘type A’ guys. Fuck. Yes I was really jealous, but I should keep smiling and be nice, however I am stuck with a ‘type C’.

Then my neurotic mind would start going on: ‘I am supposed to be kind and a loving character, however I am resenting this company, I know I don’t have to marry this guy but why I can not be with a type B like me, I am not asking much, then I would have fun!’.

So my loving and caring facade starts crumbling. My ‘I am a nice guy’ starts crumbling. Now I am resentful, unhappy, jealous and feel treated ‘unfairly’ by life. 

The works of my ‘ego’ got exposed: ‘I only see myself as a type B’, I only deserve the love that a type B deserves. Yes I feel inadequate. I am still that ‘not good enough son’, still that ‘not good enough lover’, with an ‘not good enough’ body. I am just ‘not good enough’. 

However something has fundamentally change. I know now. I know now how I have been looking at the world. I know now that there are no types A, B or C in the world. I have just made up a fantasy to sustain my shame that I am not good enough. Once the fantasy is exposed the shame starts to disappear…. and it all started with a simple tantra pairing exercise.