Quick Check-in

I’m keeping this brief.

I’ve put together All‑Star Joke Collection 2 — a curated set of jokes and comics I’ve been collecting over the years. If you enjoy my writing at all, this is a lighter touch.

👉 Read the All‑Star Joke Collection 2

What follows is the short personal update that feels worth sharing.

My marriage update, and what I’m learning

To begin, my life has been completely upended by the completion of my memoir, Broke, Single, Crazy and Old. Twenty years in the writing, this marks the real beginning of my professional author career: my first book which can be read as spiritual and psychological entertainment. I wrote about this in the prior article, An Invitation into a Story About Love, Obsession, and Becoming Yourself. Completing the memoir coincides with what appears to be, a complete re-write of what Sophie calls my “tragedy story”. This is what is present to me now, as I write. It’s nothing other than a consciousness explosion, with tangible impacts in my world-engagements, happiness and income.

It does seem that my life has moved into the fast lane over the last four months. That’s exciting; but for someone with bipolar tendencies, also a little scary…

Happiness is not a familiar experience to me

As I say in the memoir—in the chapter On life’s “epochs,” or developmental cycles (also published to the substack)—I’ve been throwing my stuff at the world for forty‑odd years, and the response has been a fairly consistent, “No, sorry, not that.”

But now, finally, the world seems to be offering a quiet “yes.” It’s whispering to me, at last: I like that. I am oddly content and at peace.

It’s impossible for me to communicate the impact of all these events. I just hope I am not having a bipolar break. Given my story that I am a bit crazy, I have to take a pause. I call myself an “idiot savant”, by the way. But this phrase does have “savant” in it.

The best of all: my marriage, and what I am learning

Sophie and I have moved into a new phase together. This is actually what I’m most grateful for. 18 months in, this improbable relationship appears to be successful. God is great.

I adore her, and still can’t quite believe my good luck in having found her. We started under challenging circumstances, both logistical (I needed permanent residence in Germany) and relational. Not all problems are resolved, but the potential deal‑breaker problems are. We’re in a very sweet space together now, even as real challenges remain.

What I am learning through Sophie and through the various AR groups that I am engaged with (especially our peer group of 5 which has been meeting regularly now for 1 1/2 years, and our on-the-ground groups in Berlin), is that I am not such a fuck-up as I imagine myself to be. Yes, I do make mistakes. Sometimes bad ones. But I grow from them. Most importantly, I can see now that I have the capacity for deep human connection, which is ultimately the only thing I care about. I do not feel anywhere near as alone as I used to feel.

Another thing that has become apparent, is my extraordinary ability to treat as true, the things that I want to believe. And how I isolate myself when I have such an idea (refuse feedback and proceed unilaterally). This may be a bipolar trait, I don’t know. All of the biggest mistakes I have made in my life, financial and relational, can be directly traced back to that trait.

I’ve learned that my wife is central in that way. I am finding myself ever more deeply surrendered. To her and to life. But it is still a journey (for me, the journey of embodiment). Much work still remains.

A special thanks to you, my friends and readers

This list originally began as a list for my friends. Many of you have known me for a long time. I’d like us now to celebrate together.

And know that I still think and care for many of you, even if I have not recently been in touch.

And now, the fun part

👉 Read the All‑Star Joke Collection 2

(Also remember I am still looking for test-readers for the memoir. Just reply to this email or write to marco@marcbeneteau.com )

I have an important announcement: I’ve just finished the final edit of my magnum opus, a book that has been 20 years in the making. It’s a memoir called Broke, Single, Crazy and Old: The Redemption of a Sex and Love Addict.

It is the story, in all its beauty and wreckage, of my lifelong pursuit of redemption through deep sexual loving. And of the women who helped me (some would say “enabled”). Two of them in particular, whose beautiful letters are included, allowing you to know the hearts and minds of these two extraordinary women in their own words, and to see how they related to the relational idiot I was at the time.

This memoir isn’t about self‑improvement or spiritual instruction; although it does include the story of my primary mentor whose name is Victor Baranco, and whose ideas were ahead of their time.

No, it’s about what happens when you pursue your daemon into the darker places, leaving (as I did) a trail of relational destruction behind. Amazingly, this strategy actually worked for me, as I am now very happily married.

The book is finally complete, and this marks a genuine inflection point in my career as a professional writer.

Why This Story Might Matter to You

If you’ve ever stayed too long in a relationship that appeared to be destroying you, wondered if your life had value, or struggled with relationships and mental health issues, you may relate to my story. I do believe that my story has human interest, but it’s not just about me. I actually consider my life and my trials as fractals of the current “meaning crisis”, our collective struggle to find meaning and fulfillment. The path I chose – rightly or wrongly – was through sexual intimacy.

Between 1993 and 1999, I was caught in a love triangle that unraveled my mental health, distorted my sense of reality, and forced me to confront addiction and dependency. But from this, I grew into the man I am today.

The final chapters trace how meaning and sanity returned, the role of my writing, and deeper reflections on the arc of my life and what I call “epochs”. I try and communicate the things which, if I had known them 30 years ago, might have saved me and others a lot of grief. If you want to read that chapter, I have published it separately in the article On life’s “Epochs” or developmental cycles.

Why I’m Inviting You In

I want feedback and reflections from real readers. I’ve just completed a final substantive edit of this book after years of rewriting, cutting, and tightening. If you choose to read this book now, you’re helping ensure that a story about obsession, love, neurodivergence, and redemption lands with the force and care it deserves—so that when it reaches a wider audience, it speaks clearly and cleanly.

If you’d like to be part of this, I’ll send you a free Kindle copy, or a print copy if you’re willing to share a mailing address. Simply reply to this email, or write to me at marco@marcbeneteau.com. You’re welcome (not obligated) to tell me how it lands. And if you genuinely feel that the book deserves to be read, an honest Amazon review helps it find the people who are wrestling with the same questions.

If You’d Rather Just Read It

That’s welcome too. If you prefer to support the project directly, you can also just purchase the book here.

How This Fits with my Other Books

I have previously published two books:

As Lovers Do: Sexual and Romantic Partnership as a Path of Transformation was my first book, completed about 10 years ago. It talks about the sexual teachers who have been important to me (including Baranco), and is (I would like to think) a “crash course” in feminine psychology, targeted to men. It has earned me a small fan club, partly because I had a wonderful editor (God Bless you, John Kelsey).

My second book, The Circling Guide, is now in a major expansion / re-write as well, through a successful crowd-funding project. The goal there is to position me as a thought-leader within the Authentic Relating movement. If you are interested in Authentic Relating, a $10-25 donation there will get you the new Circling Guide Anthology when it’s published, and also support the movement.

The other books are very synergistic with the memoir, but Broke Single Crazy and Old is my favorite. I hope you like it.

Table of Contents (TOC)

Note: this is a re-stack from the original post on We-Space Letters. If you are interested in the intentional community project, please also subscribe there is as well as this substack is about sexuality in the we-space. I am still working on the follow-up piece Love, Rage, and God: The Year We Didn’t Kill Each Other.

This marks a real inflection point. After a long stretch of grinding, things are suddenly working across multiple fronts and I am “firing on all cylinders”. The creative writing surge alone would be noteworthy, but it’s happening alongside breakthroughs in my AR leadership, my marriage, and what I’m now calling my “life‑legacy project”, something you start thinking about at my age. I try and keep it short, but please be aware that getting it into ~1,000 words is already a victory.

We’ve come a long way from the original “Marco’s narcissistic ramblings”, which is how this email list started out 30 years ago. Some of you may remember this.

Historically, I am not fully happy unless I am in love or writing a book

Right now, I’m doing both—and possibly joining the founding team of a new intentional community in Virginia. The combination feels surreal. I am a bit too much in shock at my good fortune, perhaps, to fully feel the emotion called “happiness”. This may be my “tragedy story”, however (to quote my lovely wife, S.).

Time to re-think the tragedy story, perhaps. Or simply surrender to my life as it is and go to God (including the existence of tragedy stories). I am considering all options.

Note that I was basically an atheist until a few weeks ago. In these early days of my “conversion experience” (if you can call it that), I still don’t have much of a mature concept of God. I’m jealous of people who seem to have God on speed dial. With me, He communicates through riddles and sideways nudges. The bastard.

What actually triggered all this?

It began with Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, All the Way to the River, which I reviewed in this article. It hit me hard. At the time, I was in a meltdown with my wife, obsessively biking to calm myself, looping the same angry thoughts and unable to stop. On the upside, I have now explored the entirety of Northwest Berlin by bicycle.

Then something clicked (with Gilbert’s help): Wait. I’m an addict. A sex‑and‑love addict. An alcoholic. A bipolar. Of course my life feels out of control. What else would it feel like?

I will write more about this—including the three days S. kicked me out of the house (fully deserved)—in a forthcoming piece: Love, Rage, and God: The Year We Didn’t Kill Each Other. Marriage as Spiritual Practice. Right now it’s still a bit raw.

My current core inquiries are about creative mania as both gift and liability; chaos as a doorway to authenticity; and intimate relationship as laboratory for consciousness. Without some kind of spiritual frame, all this is just depressing. Or, at best, “sound and fury signifying nothing”. With God, maybe it becomes workable.

Enough said about that. Otherwise it might confirm to some of you I have completely gone off my rocker this time.

My AR career finally takes off

Even before the marital explosion, things were shifting. For the first time ever, we sold out our online program, Authentic Relating in Community: 12 students. Two sessions in, it’s already the best program we’ve run. As much as S. and I trigger each other, we’re strong complementary teachers. I joke that I’m the Circling philosopher, while she’s the love‑machine. Together it works.

The timing mattered financially too. Yes, I can live simply on Social Security. No, we haven’t been living simply. We traveled to the UK to see dear friends from our AR peer group, then went to the Transformational Connection Festival in Amsterdam. I’m still paying that off. A few months ago (as I wrote at the time) I had zero clients after four months. Last week, one finally appeared. God is great.

Meanwhile, our Thursday AR + Circling nights took off: 10+ people weekly, consistent regulars, and big experiences being reported. Momentum, at last.

The Intentional Community project

This part still feels fantastical, but here’s the outline.

A year and a half ago, Sophie and I led a program that spawned an unusually magical AR peer group. We kept meeting. Maybe we were just mirroring each other’s psycho-pathologies, but rapport like that is rare.

Six months in, someone floated the idea of living together. Wild, considering two of us were in Berlin, two in the UK, one in the U.S., and at the time none of us had met in person yet.

Fast‑forward: we’re now in active conversation with an intentional community startup in Virginia. We love them; they love us. There’s land, existing buildings, and even a retreat center. The five of us could become the “heart of the community.” If it happens, it might be the first intentional community built explicitly from the integral we‑space—the deep relational field cultivated in Authentic Relating.

Honestly, I’m still pinching myself.

What else?

Nothing dramatic (and thank God for that). Still working on my tragedy story. Still in wonder and confusion and humility at the challenge of being me. Still pursuing this thorny, joyful and heart-breaking problem which is, IMHO, not just at the center of my personal neurosis, but at the center of our collective neurosis. The problem is, how can human beings get along? How can we “create the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible” [Charles Eisenstein]

This is the Substack and podcast for my book, As Lovers Do: Sexual and Romantic Parnership as a Path of Transformation, along with some notes and journals about how I apply these practices to my own, sometimes turbulent marriage.

In addition, I have put here a few full-length chapters and podcasts from my memoir, Broke, Single, Crazy & Old. The memoir tells the story of how I came across the teachings of the Lafayette Morehouse, which irrevocably changed my life about 20 years ago.

Please let me know via the “Notes” feature what you think. Alternatively, feel free to comment on any of the articles or podcasts.

I wrote As Lovers Do before I had encountered Authentic Relating. If you are also interested in Authentic Relating and in bringing this powerful practice into all spheres of life, see my other substack, We-Space Letters: Authentic Relating, Business, Community, and/or subscribe to the Circling Guide.

PS: Sophie and I are starting our 5th cohort of Authentic Relating in Community on Tuesday Nov. 4. I have discovered Authentic Relating as the most valuable practice to get into connection with anyone, in or outside of a sexual relationship. I would love if you would join us for the course or the free workshop.

Victor Baranco, the creator of Morehouse, was one of the greatest sexual geniuses of the20th century and has had a profound influence on me and on dozens of other sexual educators, many of whom are now much more famous than he is.

Relating to “bad sex,” another interesting fact. Unbeknownst to me at the time, a mere 20-minute drive from where I lived in Berkeley, through the Caldecott tunnel into a town called Lafayette, was one of the most advanced man/woman education and sexual research centers that the world has ever seen. It was called the Lafayette Morehouse and was founded by a man called Victor Baranco, who in the mid-80’s (the time I was in California) was in his prime; and the Lafayette Morehouse at the time was a wild, wild place.

Baranco’s story is unusual. He was a street-thug who had gone straight, the son of well-known musicians who lived in Oakland, a black father and a Jewish mother. After going straight, he became a successful appliance salesman, and then courted a popular and wealthy socialite, his first wife Susie. He had participated in CIA-sponsored LSD experiments and had discovered in himself a kind of gift for therapy and for human transformation, based on his idea of “perfection,” which I will describe later. He had also discovered a sexual gift of sorts, as Susie was frigid. They had gone to see various doctors and psychiatrists about Susie’s condition, and been told that there was nothing to do about it. But Baranco had refused to quit, and in the end Susie became so orgasmic that she was able to do the three-hour orgasm demos for which Baranco ultimately became famous. From these gifts and these teachings, Baranco had bought a house and started a commune in Oakland, the Oakland Morehouse; and later had been donated a fairly large tract of land in Lafayette California, about 17 acres of what would later become prime real-estate. The Oakland and then Lafayette Morehouse have been running continuously since 1969, even though Baranco died in 2002. Over the years, the Lafayette Morehouse population has varied between 60 and 150. Baranco was not especially interested in getting rich or becoming a guru; he was just looking for “a good gig”. When he started his second commune, the Lafayette Morehouse, which ended up having about a dozen houses, Baranco was quite prepared, in his own words, to “coast” for the rest of his life. He wasn’t exactly ambitious.

But then Baranco had a self-reported “thunderbolt” experience with a young woman in the swimming pool of the Lafayette Morehouse, which transformed him irrevocably. Her name was Cindy and she became his second wife, the object of his adoration and the center of his life for all of his remaining years. Baranco’s first wife Susie continued hanging around, took other lovers, and is a respected figure in Morehouse to this day. I had a slow-dance with Susie, once, in Lafayette about 2006, and she was still sexy then, 30 years later.

For more information about Baranco, google my article “Lafayette Morehouse History,” and then follow the links in the article in which Baranco tells of his “thunderbolt” experience with Cindy, what it did for him, and how he came to start Morehouse.

There are more Morehouse stories in Steve Bodansky’s fascinating memoir of those years, Extended Massive Life: A Love Story (the only biography that covers Morehouse, as far as I know, as Baranco wrote almost nothing). Baranco was a man/woman and sexual education pioneer, and he has had an enormous influence in sexual education in this country. His students are now much more famous than him. They include Bob & Leah Schwartz in The One Hour Orgasm; Steve and Vera Bodansky in Extended Massive Orgasm and other books; Patricia Taylor in Expanded Orgasm; Nicole Daedone in Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm, and many others. Even Tim Ferriss (of 4-Hour Workweek fame, who now produces one of the most popular podcasts on the internet), has visited the Lafayette Morehouse and speaks of it in his 4-Hour Body book. Baranco had little interest in self-promotion or even in making money, he mostly wanted to make women happy. He is one of the foundational teachers in my own system and as such has a prominent place in my book, As Lovers Do. He was the first man that I am aware of to say publicly that the best and most powerful role for the masculine is to serve the feminine (“do what the woman wants”). That surrender is as much a masculine virtue as a feminine one; indeed, that surrender is essential for love.

Morehouse teachings and Morehouse lifestyle are especially relevant to me because my experiences of therapy during my time in California were, essentially, a failure. Those experiences just increased my despair, because I was giving it my best, spending all my money, but not having any meaningful success. I was not looking exactly to “find myself,” clear childhood traumas, discover the great existential truths of the human condition, or leave my mark on the world. I was looking for a fun, all-immersive environment where I could hang-out with interesting people, men and women, and learn about love and sex. The Lafayette Morehouse was the answer to my condition at the time, but I did not engage with them until many years later, through Rebekah who was then living in the Yonkers Morehouse in New York (I moved in after 3 dates with her and we became lovers). Morehouse made a man out of me later, and so I wonder what would have happened, had I engaged with them way back then.

I do half-remember a so-called “Mark Group” which I attended when I was in California. Mark Groups are an early form of Authentic Relating, a group conversation practice or type of intimacy game; but that Mark Group felt too chaotic, too sexual and too “hard”. They don’t always treat you gently in Mark Groups, which is unfortunate because the underlying philosophy is pure gold. It’s about love and connection and fun, and about making women happy, based on the underlying notion of “perfection”.

The idea of “perfection” is that we always attract what we unconsciously want and need for our own growth and development, especially in sexual relationships, because “human beings want to experience the full range of human emotions” [Baranco]. Meaning that we are attracted to both the light and the dark. As such, Morehouse philosophy is an early form of Esther Hicks’ “Law of Attraction” (or LOA), and yet, arguably, much deeper. LOA can be criticized for focusing mostly on the good and our ability to attract the good. LOA is probably correct; but an over-focus on attracting the good, versus just accepting and making peace with “what is so,” can become a neurosis.

The root contexts of Morehouse philosophy and LOA are the same, however: it’s about taking 100% responsibility for the results that you generate. I personally can’t (or won’t) believe that these ideas are “true” in a universal way (shit happens, cancer cells find a home, racism and genocide exist, etc); but in the inter-personal realm, I think it is true. I believe that all my relationships happened for a reason, and maybe were even engineered by Spirit. If this is superstition, so be it. I don’t mind holding superstitions that make me happier, more effective, and more loving.

Morehouse is also about creating exceptional sex, with many very practical and effective tools for getting there, such as the “do-date,” which is a (mostly) man-on-woman clitoral massage. They teach a range of courses on sexuality, including the awkwardly named “Mutual Pleasurable Stimulation of the Human Nervous System Intensive,” better known as “the 69 course”. Rebekah and I took this course in Hawaii, and it was wonderful. Morehouse courses haven’t changed in 40 years, so I am not sure I would still recommend them, exactly; but I love the community still. There are only four remaining Morehouse communes: in Lafayette California (where Cindy Baranco currently resides); in Oakland; in Atlanta; and in Hawaii. The New York and then Yonkers Morehouse, where Rebekah and I lived for 3 years, shutdown in approximately 2013. Baranco is virtually unknown; but these teachings are as relevant today as they were 50 years ago.

Anyway: I left that Mark Group in California and never went back. It’s not a cult as some people claim, Baranco had no interest in running a cult, he just wanted to make women happy. There was never any kind of financial coercion, for instance; although people did pay big money for the so-called “Expansion of Sexual Potential Course” (or “ESP”), which became one of their big money-makers. Having done the ESP was something of a badge of honor in Morehouse, a status symbol. All such groups have cult-like traits, even if they don’t meet the official requirement for being a “cult”. Rebekah and I could not afford the ESP, but we did give them quite a bit of money during the years we were living in the Yonkers Morehouse. Later in Philadelphia we produced a course for them.

The Oakland Morehouse is about a mile from where I ended up living in Oakland, in my third and final year in California. But I never knew this, and I didn’t know anyone in the community. A personal introduction would have made a big difference. In those years of hopelessness and despair I was just batting wildly at anyone and anything that looked like it had the potential to end my pain. I wasn’t always able – I lacked the time and money and emotional resources – to go deep. Also, those were still the “wild west” days of therapy and personal development. The therapists themselves did not know what they were doing, and there were some pretty bad therapists.

The worst, however, were the medically-trained psychiatrists. They were simply awful, all of them. They would take long case histories and then show zero empathy and judge you. It wasn’t until many years later that I found a psychiatrist whom I could respect. The mental-health profession has been, since then, utterly transformed. Really bad therapists and psychiatrists are now rare. There is no longer any excuse to not seek mental-health treatment, other than the cost.

I would not connect with the Lafayette Morehouse group again until 2004, the year that I met Rebekah and moved into the Morehouse in Yonkers, New York. Rebekah and I then studied with them intensively for three years, spending time and taking courses both in Lafayette and in their place in Hawaii. By then Baranco was dead. We then modeled their ideas and even extended them in different ways through the intentional community that we founded in Philadelphia and ran quite successfully for three years, from 2007 to 2009.

Baranco and Morehouse are not political, despite the enormous power of Baranco’s ideas for social change, for the transformation of human society. The logical extension of Baranco’s ideas is the end of patriarchy; which will also, presumably, lead to the end of all wars, since few women will agree to send their sons and daughters off to war, especially the mostly stupid and unnecessary wars of the last half of the 20th century. But ending patriarchy was not on the agenda of Victor Baranco or the Lafayette Morehouse, at least not directly. They were hedonists and sought mostly to have a good time in their little world. Their principal interest was in having more fund and better sex.

This is not a criticism, exactly (that they were socially and politically unaware): figuring out how men and women can get along, how we can have more love and more fun in our lives, and better sex, is a lifetime of work. What they accomplished is a triumph. They didn’t even care much for making money; they only taught and recruited to the extent necessary to fund the party, which they hoped to return to as soon as possible – and indeed all their courses are designed as some kind of party. Vic’s most famous saying is “enlightenment is when you realize that what was planned was a party”.

It’s very difficult to know exactly what God had in mind when He made us, but I think He would agree that a party is a good thing. As such, I completely agree with Baranco. Of course, God throws many obstacles in our way, but this is for our pleasure and growth, so that we can figure out for ourselves the quickest way back to the party. Life would be boring otherwise.

But in any case, since Baranco and Lafayette Morehouse appear to be either unaware or uninterested in the social implications of their ideas, the job of promoting these ideas to a larger audience has fallen on to my shoulders; as well as the job of integrating these powerful ideas into a more modern context. This is my life’s work.

I pick-up this topic again later on, in my lecture on sexual polarity.

Continue reading at Broke, Single, Crazy and Old…

“Every man knows that his highest purpose in life cannot be reduced to any particular relationship. If a man prioritizes his relationship over his highest purpose, he weakens himself, disserves the universe, and cheats his woman of an authentic man who can offer his full, undivided presence.” ― David Deida

Second comment on the letter, and I will use the opportunity to deliver a bit of sexual polarity theory lecture – and also explain, as promised earlier, the great tragic flaw of masculine psychology, with fatal consequences to women’s happiness: “To be honest I do not sense it is uniquely me you are loving…”. Much of what I am about to say next reflects my understanding of David Deida, the man who brought sexual polarity into the mainstream. Note that John Gray’s ideas (the “Mars and Venus” books) is also a sexual polarity theory, but it doesn’t have the depth and scope of Deida’s ideas. I believe that Deida misses a few things, perhaps even the most important things; but if you complement his thinking with Victor Baranco’s ideas, you get a complete picture.

Every woman wants to feel she is loved uniquely and is irreplaceable, but this happens rarely with masculine people, according to Deida. For a person living in masculine consciousness, purpose must precede and pre-empt love. One of the consequences of this, which is controversial, is that for a masculine person, his woman is replaceable. This is not “sexism,” by the way, to the extent that men and women are not slaves to their gender, meaning that men can be core-feminine and women can be core-masculine in their polarity. Another important distinction here (this one is mine and not Deida’s), is that masculine and feminine are two dimensions, not a linear scale with two poles. The goal here is to become highly skilled in both. Simplistically speaking, these two poles are “doing” versus “being,” or achieving success versus the ability to be happy no matter what. Deida’s fundamental idea is that people tend to prefer, and willingly inhabit, one or the other sexual polarities (which are also fundamental psychological archetypes), having greater or lesser skill in one or the other, and are happiest and most productive when they stay in that role most of the time (not always! That would be unhealthy). And finally – very important – that the most powerful (or transformative) sexual relationships tend to occur between people who are, maybe deliberately, occupying opposite polarities.

I am not going to fully define what I mean by “masculine” and “feminine” here, for that please check out my book As Lovers Do, or anything by Deida. But I will summarize the basic ideas.

First, there is a common misconception that “surrender” is a feminine trait. All love requires surrender, from whatever polarity you inhabit, meaning that you surrender to the needs and desires of your partner. It’s the needs and desires that tend to polarize into one archetype or the other. A neat definition is that “masculine” is the desire and skill to get what you want, whereas “feminine” is the desire and skill to enjoy what you have. Masculine is single-pointed consciousness, whereas feminine is diffuse, it is more aware of different objects in its environment and their needs. The masculine wants to solve problems, or to “provide,” whereas the feminine wants to give and receive pleasure, especially being seen, witnessed, appreciated and to have her desire and her gifts honored (which is especially pleasurable for her, obviously, given that this rarely happens for her under patriarchy).

The main usefulness of this theory – which Deida appears to miss, despite other deep wisdom – is that the optimal relationship occurs when masculine serves the feminine, and feminine serves her own pleasure – which, her being feminine, naturally extends to taking care of her masculine partner. By contrast, a man left to himself would not naturally be very attentive to his feminine partner’s needs. This is not how men are designed, we are designed for hunting, winning wars and problem-solving, which require single-focus on our mission or goal. Typically, men have to be educated about women if we are to be successful with them. Just as women need to be educated about men, if they are to be successful. Women need to be educated to value their own pleasure and to operate from attraction and loving assertion (informing the men of their needs, thus ensuring that the men will win with them) rather than direction, criticism or make-wrong, and to accept men as they are – which is difficult for them, because men are not like women and are often emotionally clueless.

This is not a prescription or a command for women; nobody should inhabit a sexual polarity all the time and boundaries are important. It is, however, a suggestion to women if they want to have their masculine partners support them and be present to them and adore them, something which is important to most feminine people’s happiness.

That’s Victor Baranco for you, in a nutshell. It’s a far more practical and actionable philosophy than Deida’s for ordinary couples. Deida’s philosophy does work well for a sex guru or anyone who is relating from a primary sexual need, as it does have the potential to create powerful sex. It also has deep wisdom for men seeking enlightenment through their work in the world, men with a tantric attitude towards life. The challenge here for men, is that relationships have many needs beyond the sexual, and an obsession with enlightenment tends to preclude it. Deida’s ideas have limitations in dealing with most women, especially the women that we really want (the women who aren’t looking for a “daddy”). I know a lot more happy couples who follow Baranco’s system, than Deida’s system. In fact, I don’t know any happy couples at all who follow Deida’s system. Deida’s system is aspirational, compared to Baranco’s system which is highly practical.

And in addition to creating happy relationships, Baranco’s ideas, if they were implemented, will naturally and inevitably transform patriarchy. Full equality of the sexes in politics, business and the law is desirable, but women do not want to be equal in the bedroom. They want to be adored and to receive all the attention. It’s my main critique about Baranco, that he seems to have missed the social/political implications of his philosophy. If men were fully present to women in the home and the bedroom, and listened to them fully within their masculine limitations, it would fundamentally transform politics, business and the law. And not only because women’s viewpoints are valuable (and often dismissed), but for an even more important reason: everyone would be happier. Happy people are naturally more effective, more generous and more loving. The fight for women’s equality is a good fight, but it’s not enough. There needs to also be a fight for more love, freedom and joy in the world. You do this by modeling love wherever you show up and by being joyful, generous and free (as in free from self-judgment). Women are uniquely qualified to model love for all of us; but it is everyone’s job.

Once again: I have written a whole book about this, and Deida has written many books (his most famous being The Way of the Superior Man), and John Gray has written many books; so summarizing these ideas in a few paragraphs is not easy.

The thing I want to leave you with, is that despite a lot of wisdom, the male writers on sexual polarity (excluding Baranco, who wrote almost nothing) don’t go far enough. Due to the fact that women evolved to be nurturers and care-givers, they are genetically superior to men in that regard (and their social conditioning makes this even more true) – that’s the simple truth that nobody wants to say, and which generates push-back everywhere, even from some feminist women, ironically. And therefore, practically speaking, the wise man will let his feminine partner take the lead and will do whatever she asks of him, especially in relationship; but provided (and this is key) that satisfying her desire is congruent with his own needs, purpose and identity. Where the real power emerges, is in that negotiation. And not just in the sexual sphere, which is Deida’s focus. In every sphere. This is controversial, and I address that controversy – probably not very effectively, because people have so much emotional charge around this that intelligent conversation is often impossible, but I try – in my other article What Women Want: Towards a New Psychology of Love, Sex and Gender Relations.

The masculine and feminine evolutionary purposes

I will return now to unpacking Ellen’s statement, “I do not sense it is uniquely me you are loving”. There is one more important piece here.

Deida’s idea is that if a masculine person disobeys the basic rule of staying true to his purpose, and sacrifices it for his woman, he will likely lose both; because at the end of the day, what makes a man attractive is his commitment to his purpose or his mission, and his ability to “provide,” however you define that (it’s not just about making money, it includes emotional and intellectual gifts, and quality of attention). I take everything that Deida says with a large grain of salt, partly because I don’t like him as a teacher (I find him lacking in compassion and a bit of a misogynist), and partly because I find his ideas too extreme. Any mission or purpose, be it masculine or feminine, must be balanced with the needs of the other when in relationship.

And yet I largely agree with Deida here. A masculine person without a mission, is an unhappy person. A feminine person without a mission… it’s not as important to her (and please, remember that all women are not core-feminine and no woman operates from a feminine polarity all the time). A feminine person derives her identity from many different sources, so she may still be happy even without a clear mission. But a masculine person derives his identity from his production. Without that, he’s screwed. In a lot of ways, men are simpler and more linear than women. Recent studies, incidentally, confirm that the strongest predictor of men’s happiness is not family or even health; it is job satisfaction.

And now, back to the narrative: the root reason that Ellen did not want me. What I am about to say next is mine, and is an extension of Deida’s ideas.

A masculine person’s mission, from both an evolutionary and a psychological or developmental perspective, is to provide for his woman and his family, to provide for all the women of the world, and to “contribute to life” [Marshall Rosenberg]. Sometimes these needs will be in conflict, and in such cases he must choose to provide for the greatest number possible or achieve the most impact. In this he may need to leave his woman behind. Most men know this (that women are replaceable), but they don’t speak of it, for obvious reasons (they would never get laid again).

But think about it: there is an evolutionary reason for this truth of women being replaceable. Despite what women might consider a tragic flaw in men’s psychology, if men were interested in love more than in providing (or solving problems, which is the same thing), we would still be living in caves. Happy in caves perhaps, but hungry, cold, ignorant, and without Wi-Fi. Truly, women should be thankful that men were made in the way they are. It is my thesis, oft repeated and maybe ad nauseam, that men and women are perfectly designed for each other. They are perfectly designed to complement each other in the service of evolution; and since the purpose of evolution is to magnify love (complexity and inter-relatedness), men and women are also perfectly designed to teach each other how to love. With the unfortunate consequence, however, that they are also perfectly designed to torture each other. They would not be able to to torture each other, if they did not care. “Men and women have searched for each other for generations, and always missed one another” – Dieter Duhm.

My purpose at the time, and remains so to this day, was having a good time, living at depth, “experiencing the full range of human emotions” [Victor Baranco]. If you cannot see how a mission of “having a good time” can contribute to life, let alone provide for all the women of the world, then listen up (I expand on this idea in the final essay I have a Dream).

In a world gone mad with false values powered by ignorance and internalized oppression, there is nothing more important than having a good time and living at depth. There is no task as important or meaningful. No task. Nothing. It’s a mission that can benefit people on a small scale (by adding joy to the world, brightening the lives of all the people we touch) and potentially on a larger scale as well (through works of science, philosophy, art, or books such as this):

”Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Howard Thurman

The basic problem with Ellen and me, is that she was not fundamentally in alignment with this mission. Or maybe she was in alignment, but I lacked the maturity to deliver the attention and care that would have allowed her to play with me, in that sphere. She wasn’t ready for it. This was the root reason that she did not want me, which she intuitively understood. She was not against it, of course – she even had a considerable talent for it, for fun, intimacy and the enjoyment of life – but it was not core for her. What was core for her at the time was emotional survival, handling her demons, “grounding” as she put it and repeated endlessly.

And hence, Ellen had a deeper understanding of relationships and man/woman than I did at the time. It wasn’t conscious in her, but it was clear. And this despite the fact of her craziness. She had, after all, the relational advantage of being female.

Such was the nature and the causes of Ellen’s second refusal of me. I will tell now the sequel of that exchange of letters. The sequel is actually stranger than fiction and adds to the karmic flavor of the scene.

Continue reading at Broke, Single, Crazy and Old…

To be perfectly frank, I am not certain of the relevance of posting this article here, on a site that is about teaching men and women how to relate more successfully. However, this is a topic that I am extremely passionate about, and so I am posting it anyway hoping that it will bring some insight. My point is that the work of loving your opposite-polarity partner is one of the most important things that you can do to change the world — in addition to making you and your partner much happier.

“We cannot have peace in the world so long as men and women are at war with each other” – Dieter Duhm

A major theme of this book is the lack of quality information about love and sex, the conspiracy of silence, the guilt and shame surrounding it that block intelligent conversation and real solutions. I am not really a conspiracy theorist, believing that the culture – that is, all of us – act as we do out of ignorance rather than a deliberate attempt to suppress anything, or to maintain the status quo at any cost, the military-industrial complex or whatever. But whatever the causes, the suppression of good information and intelligent conversation through internalized oppression – the shame and guilt that is put upon us for being human, for having human desires and human needs, including sex – is tangible and disastrous to our happiness, fulfillment and well-being.

Sex and love are not the only areas of our internalized oppression, far from it. Our culture and the media try to paint a picture of “the good life,” the “American dream,” that only 10% of us (if that) will be able to achieve, leaving the other 90% of us feeling inadequate in some nameless way, blaming ourselves for our failure to be happy or successful. This fantasy-picture of “the good life” was invented and perfected by the advertising industry in America between the wars, in order to get us to buy more stuff. For more information on this topic, you can watch the amazing BBC 4-part series The Century of the Self (free on Vimeo), or read my mentor Mike Jay’s book, @F-L-O-W, Find, Design, Use Talent to Emerge Happiness & Success in a Post-Modern World.

So, while I am not a conspiracy theorist, exactly, you can easily discern a secondary function of this media-created fantasy (in addition to getting you to buy more stuff): to distract and pacify you from the callousness with which they kick you through their so-called educational system, bend you to fit into their heartless industrial machine, and then send you off to be butchered and poisoned in crazy, unnecessary wars. The purpose of the fantasy is to hold at bay your natural existential anxiety under the conditions of modern life, so that you play willingly into this inhumane treatment.

We are all complicit in this, full partners and guilty as charged, unthinking and unconscious victims; but this does not exonerate you or clear the responsibility that you have for participating in this insanity. The fantasy of the happiness and success available to you by “playing the game,” or buying into the system, is extremely seductive, because it does work for 10% of us, with the remaining 90% aspiring to be like the 10% and then imagining there is something wrong with us that we can’t be as happy and successful as the people in the ads, the movies and the celebrity sound-bites.

They say: “you must try harder! You too can be happy and successful! Your problems are all in your head”. And this argument is hard to counter, because it is true, you do have a problem in your head. What most of us fail to understand is that any normal person would have a problem in their head, under the conditions of modern life. “Insanity is a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.” [R. D. Lang]. Of course you are crazy! You are being kicked through schools, denied human needs, and bent to fit into heartless business and war machines. If you did not feel crazy, this would be deeper proof still of your insanity.

This is a terrible problem, but not an unsolvable one. The solution is quite simple, and it is to understand that we have been duped. We have been given false values, and have adopted a lifestyle that does not meet real human needs, as social animals who really seek nothing more than to love and be loved, make some kind of contribution, and reproduce. That is all most of us want, really. And frankly, what more is there to want? Simply learning to love and be loved is enough work for a lifetime, for most people. It’s not that easy. We begin this journey by unlearning everything we have been taught. Then we must shed decades of emotional armor, cry oceans of tears, and learn how to feel and how to love again. Many of us imagine that we can make this change through a new ideology, way of thinking, or social-political structure. We can’t. There is one way forward here, and only one way: the way of the heart, of understanding and forgiveness. And this is really great news, because nobody can stop us from doing this. It is the “irresistible revolution”.

So, I have a dream…

… and a possible solution to this problem. It is perhaps delusional, but it is the deeper reason for all my writing.

I hold this truth to be self-evident: that men and women want some good sexual loving more than they want to be kicked through boring and oppressive schools, or bent to fit into heartless industrial machines, regardless of the promised rewards. And a few of us, especially feminine people, want some good sexual loving more than a big house, a secure retirement fund, or even the most interesting and prestigious job in the world.

So here is my dream: Imagine that men and women could learn to speak each other’s language. And from there, the fights at home would stop, for maybe the first time in human history. As Victor Baranco said, “you are either fighting or fucking”. Let’s imagine a lot more fucking and a lot less fighting in the bedrooms of the world.

If that happened, what impact might it have on the fights in the schools, workplaces, parliaments and even battlefields of the world? Maybe they would stop too, duh? Or at least quiet down a bit? More fucking in the parliaments and on the battlefields might be too much to hope for, initially, but maybe we could try for a bit more civility, fewer insults and bullets?

And from there, once people found what they most deeply want – love – and started putting their resources where their hearts and minds truly are: can you not imagine that the oppressive schools and industrial machines would empty, and the big expensive houses all go up for sale? Who would grieve any of these things, really? We might be poorer, but we would make do. We would have fewer physical comforts, but more time to enjoy the comforts we had. As everybody knows, the best things in life are free: time, freedom, play, creative work, music, peace of mind, and the company of our loved ones.

Could this be the next revolution of humanity? Beyond religion, democracy, communism, and “economic progress”? The world’s first true revolution of the heart?

Could we be heading toward the kind of world described by Werner Erhard:

“We can choose to make the success of all humanity our personal business. We can choose to be audacious enough to take responsibility for the entire human family. We can choose to make our love for the world what our lives are really about. Each of us now has the opportunity, the privilege to make a difference in creating a world that works for all of us. It will require courage, audacity and heart. It is much more radical than a revolution, it is the beginning of a transformation in the quality of life on our planet. You have the power to ‘fire a shot heard around the World’”

A world where the greatest aspirations and focus of our efforts would be our “love for the world,” our desire to make a difference to other people and to our loved ones? Could we?

I personally believe so.

This revolution, of course, has many dimensions and ramifications. But it can begin, as far as I am concerned, with men and women learning to love each other. It’s really quite doable.

Furthermore, that act alone may be sufficient to start the ball rolling, dragging everything else in its wake. Men and women were actually made for this; they are perfectly designed to teach each other how to love. The proof, paradoxically, is that they are also perfectly designed to torture each other. They would not be able to torture each other, if they did not care. It is time they accept the great work and get on with it, get on with the job. It’s no longer just for fun and pleasure, it has become a survival need for the planet.

One can dream this could happen: that the men and the women of the world would finally understand they are on the same team.

Perhaps the great tragic flaws in men’s and women’s psychology[i], the cause of enormous suffering to both sexes over millions of years, has a reason after all. Perhaps God has a plan, and maybe it is not a bad one. Perhaps He wanted some good sexual loving to happen, and the only way He could do this, was to create men and women so that they were optimally designed to torture each other.

One can dream that this was God’s true intention, and that what he did was not some tragic error or oversight.

Notes / Resources

• [1] The Century of the Self – Part 1: “Happiness Machines” on Youtube

• [2] @F-L-O-W, Find, Design, Use Talent to Emerge Happiness & Success in a Post-Modern World, by Mike Jay

• [3] “The great tragic flaws…” — this is from my memoir. The great tragic flaw of feminine psychology, is that the women still want us and need us men, that they crave our attention and affirmation, despite our being a selfish, unconscious, betraying lot. The great tragic flaw of masculine psychology (from women’s perspective, that is), is that women are replaceable, since men are genetically driven to solve problems and search for “freedom” more than they are driven to love, exactly. This point is also made in a different form in What Women Want: that men’s purpose needs to precede and pre-empt their primary relationship, as per David Deida.

Preamble
Asbstract
Re-Inventing Feminism
Sexual Polarity according to David Deida
Sexual Polarity for Women
Sexual Polarity for Men

Preamble (July 2019)

This article is already 3 years old, having been previously published as a pamphlet. To be quite honest I am afraid of keeping it, as its reception has been very mixed. Some people have found it very interesting and even transformational, others have told me it is too adversarial and even pedantic (ouch). I have also had some heated debates about this with my ultra-feminist sister (who incidentally is quoted in the text as a case-study). So I want to give you a heads-up of what you are getting into here (perhaps you will hate me less for this, LOL).

To begin, if you haven’t read (or listened) to my article / podcast Online Dating and the Man/Woman Game: My Story (or else the even shorter I have a dream), I suggest you do this first. These articles are shorter and more personal. The “What Women Want” article below, by contrast, is a more complex article that summarizes my own ideas, my 20 years of research into sexual polarity and man/woman psychology. This research includes more romantic disasters than I care to admit, plus a 9-year marriage with Rebekah Beneteau, who is now my best friend and business partner (so perhaps I have learned a few things along the way).

Despite the controversial nature of this article, and some of the “heat” that I have taken personally about it, I stand by my ideas below, and I want to say why. The essence of the conversation that I had with my sister about this, was her idea that by accepting the reality of genetically-based gender differences and engaging in a conversation about it, we justify and defend men’s aggression, sexual and otherwise. And while I understand this, my argument is the opposite. I present it below and also in shorter form in the Online Dating and the Man/Woman Game article. We simply cannot solve this problem of the relations between the sexes, including the associated problem of patriarchy and all the evil that has derived from that and continues to this day, by blaming men and demanding that they change. We have tried that and it hasn’t worked. Feminism has done much good in educating men about women’s emotional and sexual reality under patriarchy, but what many women don’t realize, is that men suffer under patriarchy as much as women do. Patriarchy is essentially a pyramid where the top 10% of men, along with their female allies, benefit. The 90% of men who are NOT at the top, are now suffering not just from patriarchy, but from this cultural meme of men-bashing, and the tyrannical holding of the conversation. This is a very sad situation for everyone, because it precludes what I see as the only real and practical solution, which is emotional healing and reconciliation leading to a lot more good sexual loving.

Thus, I am letting this article stand, while fully acknowledging the radical nature of the solution that I am proposing, which is to end patriarchy through more good sexual loving. We need to begin this process, of course, by waking up to our essential nature, to the fact that Western culture has us majorly duped about the nature of our humanity and the cornerstones (or causes) of authentic happiness and real success. My thesis is that for most people, good sexual loving has more impact on happiness than any other single factor. Martin Seligman’s research on Positive Psychology, incidentally, confirms this by naming the three strongest predictors of happiness: “marriage” (or sexual partnership), community, and faith. I expand on this idea in my article I have a Dream: the social-political context of love and sex

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this, and that it challenges your ideas of what it takes to relate successfully to the opposite sex. Ultimately that is my goal. I am not interested in mere philosophy or evolutionary biology science. What I want is to see men and women getting along better.

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to redefine the concepts as “masculine” and “feminine” not as gender roles, but as psychological archetypes that affect all human relationships whether we are aware of them or not. It extends David Deida’s ideas on sexual polarity into the realm of human loving: because if it is true, as per Deida, that people have a preferred sexual polarity; and if it is true, as per Jerry Jud, that “love is a response to need”, then masculine and feminine people have different needs and therefore must be loved differently.

Once the fundamental sexual polarity model is explained, the paper goes on to present actionable strategies for men and women to increase love and attraction with their partners. The ideas presented here are eminently practical and have the power to dramatically transform a person’s relationship to the opposite sex. These ideas also have the power to finally fulfill on the promises of feminism, but much faster and more pleasurably for everyone: that women should have the same respect and opportunities that men have; that women should not be subject to male violence; and that women should not be shamed for being sexual beings. The reason these ideas are so powerful is that they carry the potential, for maybe the first time in human history, for men and women to become full partners by truly understanding each other and connecting through their differences.

Re-Inventing Feminism

Note: this is the part of the article that may occur as overly polemic. If you have already accepted the idea that men and women are different, then you can probably fast-forward to the more actionable sections of this article, which immediately follow this. I think its important however to understand the cultural context of this conversation, so I am keeping this section.

The idea of personality or character attributes that are genetically linked to gender provokes all kinds of reactions in people. These reactions range from dismissal and denial (“We are beyond that now” or “young people don’t do that anymore”); to the notion that gender differences are not relevant to modern men and women; or that if they are, that they should not be, that we should try and get over it, and that the ongoing conversation perpetuates these stereotypes and the further victimization of women; to violent opposition. Many people don’t even want to hear about “masculine” and “feminine” traits, they feel that the terms have become meaningless and therefore should be avoided. Others admit that differences exist, but believe that they are entirely the result of social conditioning. Many people don’t want to be identified as either masculine or feminine, they feel these terms to be limiting, like a psychological prison. They want to live their lives beyond gender stereotypes.

“Good luck with that,” I say (living your life beyond masculine and feminine, as fundamental human psychological archetypes, as opposed to gender roles). And yet, of course this attitude is understandable given that for many centuries, purported gender differences were used as a tool for the oppression of women. Women were denied full participation in society, and their voices silenced, due to characteristics with which they were identified with at the time: weak, moody, overly emotional, irrational, hysterical, and sexually depraved. Gender stereotypes have led to great evil in the world. Naturally people are reluctant to engage in a conversation that seems, for many, a relic of a bygone time – and thank God for that, really, that at least the more outrageously oppressive aspects of this conversation are no longer happening.

At the same time, the belief which denies genetically-based personality or character differences between men and women has many unfortunate results. The first is that it is hardly believable. On any given day there will be more men watching football or playing competitive sports than women, and more women shopping or hanging out with their girlfriends then men. Of course, we cannot exclude the possibility that our cultural conditioning is so deep and pervasive that it predisposes men to enjoy watching football and women to enjoy hanging out with their girlfriends; but I would argue that the average person is aware of gender-based behavior and intuitively feels there is some reality to it that goes beyond social conditioning.

But even if it were true that many of our behaviors are culturally conditioned, the differences that are to be found in sexuality, in our sexual desires and relational needs, are even deeper. In fact, the sexual and relational variances are so apparent and so undeniable that commercial empires have been built attempting to teach men and women how to relate through these differences: John Gray and the “Mars and Venus” system, in particular. Quite a few Christian writers have also taken a crack at this (the Farrels among others). Some of this stuff is useful, and some of it might generate murderous thoughts in a feminist mind, or in any mind for that matter. There just does not seem to be any way of thinking and speaking about gender differences that does not provoke violent opposition from some quarter.

The easiest solution to this problem, let’s call it the path of least resistance, is simply to deny that anything of the sort exists, and to avoid the conversation altogether. We are fundamentally the same, this voice says. Let’s not rock the boat or upset anybody. We have more important problems to discuss.

I respectfully beg to disagree with the idea that the discussion of gender differences should be taken off the table. Because if it is true that we are actually different, and especially in our sexual and relational needs, this is a rather important conversation. Some people will avoid the topic by saying that what men and women have in common is really so much greater than what separates them. This may be so, but this idea mirrors, in a highly suspicious way, another aspect of our cultural oppression: “Sex is dirty – save it for someone you love” [Esther Perel]. Because this statement that what separates us is not that important, might be true, if sex were not important. In other words: saying that what we have in common is so much greater than what separates us, is not too different from saying that sex is either unimportant, or, at best, not really something that we, intelligent and evolved 21^st century men and women, want to talk about in public. Meaning that: almost everyone is aware of significant gender differences around sexuality, differences in sexual response patterns and desires. It is very difficult in Western culture, as per Esther Perel, to have intelligent conversations about this. This may be in part why the “social-conditioning” theory is so prevalent. I personally, find it hardly believable that social conditioning can account for gender-based differences in our sexual desires and response patterns. This occurs to me as wishful thinking and extremely naïve.

But beyond all arguments and counter-arguments of the reality, importance and alleged causes of gender differences and sexual appetites, the general attitude appears to be, quite simply, this: that the world would be a much better place, the problem would be entirely solved, and men and women would get along just fine, first if women could be given the same respect, opportunities, and freedom that men have; and second, if men could become more like women, and particularly if men could gain more empathy. Let’s call this point of view, for the sake of argument, “feminism” – with the understanding that this is a ridiculous over-simplification of the vast body of feminist thought, and that feminists may differ among themselves. Nonetheless, it is a very common point of view, regardless of its source. I will spend a little time analyzing this belief, for a purpose that will become apparent very shortly.

No one can disagree that women should have the same respect, safety, and opportunities that men enjoy. But as for the second idea, that we would all be better off if men were more like women… let’s just say, that in theory, it sounds like an excellent idea. We would want the same things, and hence we would stop fighting! We would truly understand each other, finally, for the first time in human history! But we need to look at the actual results here.

Feminism has had many successes in giving women more respect, freedom and opportunity, although much work remains to be done. Feminism has, for the most part, failed to make men more like women, with some women blaming men for this as the cause of the slow and painful progress of women’s rights and real freedom. And feminism has spectacularly failed to make women happy in relationship. America – the country where feminism originated – has been declared to be “the loneliest country in the world” by Mother Teresa. A Kinsey Institute study, reported by Norm Schriever[1], shows that 52% of Americans are sexually dissatisfied and also that we have considerably less sex than many other countries. American women and American men’s anger towards each other is as high as it has ever been, and there has been a backlash from men which I, personally, find very unfortunate, as it simply compounds the problem and hardens the positions. None of this leads to love, let alone any good sexual loving.

So here is my proposal: let’s keep “feminism” – or whatever people imagine feminism to be – in the spheres where it works: business and politics, the workplace, the media and the law. But in terms of sexual relationships, let’s try something different — at least for those of us who are still angry, lonely or sexually frustrated, both men and women (which is 52% of us, at minimum). My proposal is conceptually simple and is best articulated by William Penn: “Let us see now what love can do”.

For this to happen, we would need to do the following:

• Reinvent the concepts of “masculine” and “feminine” as human psychological archetypes, sometimes described as “sexual polarity” – archetypes that have developed over millions of years and which are key to our genetic survival, which is one of our most primitive patterns – and then dissociate the concepts of masculine and feminine from the culturally-adopted gender traits that have resulted in the oppression of women in the past.
  In other words: there is no such thing as a “going into the office” polarity. There is also no such thing as a “love” polarity, or an “empathy” polarity exactly. Love and empathy are cross-gender traits, but there are key differences which will be described in the next section. Masculine and Feminine are simply different styles of loving.

• Let’s imagine that sexual polarity is an individual preference, and to some degree fluid, as opposed to a prison sentence that is determined by your gender. Meaning that both men and women can occupy both polarities, and even alternate at different times throughout the day.

• And finally, let’s imagine that many people, and maybe most of them, have a preferred sexual polarity. A way of being in the world and with other people in which they will, in general, be happiest and most productive. And let’s further imagine that many (not all) women have a preferred feminine polarity and that many (not all) men have a preferred masculine polarity, terms which will be defined shortly. However, let’s accept that men are generally less fluid (more fixed) in their masculine polarity, than women are in their feminine polarity. This is a key distinction that carries enormous consequences for creating successful sexual relationships, which will be described shortly.

To anyone who would agree with these general tenets, I have some excellent news: The re-invention of masculine and feminine, the philosophical foundations of this new system, has already been done. Many people have participated in this re-invention, but foremost among them is American tantric master and sexual educator David Deida. I don’t believe everything that Deida says, I believe that he misses fundamental concepts, and I believe that applying his system rigorously is dangerous (which he would surely agree – there is no magic formula for men and women getting along). Nonetheless, his ideas on sexual polarity are both simple and brilliant, and have the potential to reframe and heal the entire conversation.

What we are envisioning here is an “include and transcend” of feminism, as per Ken Wilber’s ideas and Integral philosophy. These ideas actually have the power to finally complete the mission that feminism began (and which has been slow going and painful): that women should have equal respect and opportunity to men; that women should not be subject to male violence; and that women should not be shamed for being sexual beings. The reason these ideas are so powerful is that they have the potential, for perhaps the first time in human history, for men and women to become true partners. Women cannot by themselves end violence against women. They need men’s assistance: and not just any kind of assistance, but a deep and passionate and heartfelt assistance coming out of love and understanding. Women and men working together have the power to move mountains.

Indeed: ultimately these ideas have the power to end patriarchy – although that is likely many generations away. And finally, ending patriarchy will likely end all wars, as few women will agree to have their sons and daughters sent off to war, especially the mostly stupid and unnecessary wars of the last half of the 20^th century.

This is a game worth playing. It may, indeed, be the most important game happening in the world today – as Dieter Duhm, among others, has pointed out: “Sexuality is the #1 super-power”.

And it can be a lot of fun, too. So let me describe this game.

Sexual Polarity according to David Deida

To recap, or set the context here: Deida’s fundamental idea is that masculine and feminine are psychological archetypes, which men and women both can occupy, but which can also shift throughout the day. I will describe the core characteristics of these archetypes now.

But before I do that, I want to mention Deida’s second, brilliant idea: that the deepest and most powerful sexual relationships – those relationships that are most loving and most transformative – tend to occur between two people who are consciously and maybe deliberately occupying opposite polarities. This is not a rule exactly – people have an infinite variety of sexual desires and appetites, even greater than the variability of human personality types, which is already enormous. However, it is my belief that to engage in a sexual relationship without understanding these concepts would be foolish, in the extreme – even if a couple decides ultimately to reject them. There are many extremely successful sexual relationships in which men and women intuitively act on these beliefs, even if they would not be able to articulate them as clearly as I am about to do.

To note as well, that these distinctions can be useful in both heterosexual and homosexual relationship. I would dare to say that in most homosexual relationships, some degree of sexual polarization occurs. It would be difficult to escape from this, as masculine and feminine are fundamental human archetypes and relationship styles. In essence, they represent different needs. Which is why it is (in my opinion) of extreme importance to understand these differences. Because if you believe that “love is a response to need” [Jerry Jud], then it is of critical importance in loving somebody, that you understand their needs, especially when they are different than yours.

So what are “feminine” and “masculine” according to Deida? There are innumerable complexities here, to which I cannot do full justice in a short article. For this, I suggest you read my first book, As Lovers Do: Sexual and Romantic Partnership as a Path of Transformation. The book is written for men, it is essentially a “love manual” for men (along with a sexual manual). However, it does provide a good summary of sexual polarity theory, and also an entire section of relationship practices that can be very powerful for both men and women, along with an extensive resources section. You can read Alison Armstrong’s Queen’s Code, which is better at describing the women’s game (or else attend one of her fabulous programs for women). You can, and should, attend a course on Authentic Relating or Circling (see www.CirclingGuide.com), on NVC (Non-Violent Communication), or read Marshall Rosenberg’s work, these will teach you the foundations of empathy. Empathy is the fundamental skill that people need to be successful in sexual relationships, or any relationship, regardless of their polarity. You can also look into the work of Michaela Boehm (who is carrying on Deida’s work, perhaps in a more heart-centered fashion); Esther Perel; Keith McGuiness; and many others whom, I dare to think, would be at least partially in alignment with the ideas which I am about to present.

And so with that caveat (that all this is a very complex topic), let’s get right into it. What I am about to tell you is actually very practical, immediately actionable, and proven to be effective in thousands of relationships. In the sections following this, I will provide details of strategies for both men and women to begin the process of becoming superlative partners and lovers.

The “feminine” archetype – how a person behaves while occupying a feminine polarity, be they man or woman – involves the magnification of love. Quite simply, a person in a feminine polarity seeks, above and beyond anything else, to attract love; but not for the purpose of selfishly enjoying the attention, but for the purpose of sending it back. A feminine person does this by trying to become attractive, in every possible way. She hopes that by doing this she will be loved. Often, a feminine person will also give love freely, regardless of the quality of love and attention that she is getting back, and certainly this is enjoyable for her, usually; but unless her masculine partner responds accordingly, by giving her his real presence and loving attention, she may get angry, or she might feel that she is too much or not enough for him, or feel unloved and unattractive, or generally own the problem in a way that might not be healthy or good for her self-esteem. And therein lies the problem: that many men don’t have the fundamental quality of presence, emotional self-awareness or free attention that will truly satisfy a woman in her feminine polarity. And many women don’t have the self-awareness or communication skills to attract the kind of attention that they deeply want, as per their polarity (and note here that “attention” is essentially the same as love, provided it be quality attention, attention that truly sees and empowers the love object). So what women do instead, since they are endlessly frustrated in getting from their masculine partners the quality of love and attention that they want, is that they get into a power struggle with them. More about this below. Let me just say for now, that the solution to women’s problem is fairly simple, although not “easy”. I will describe a solution to this fundamental problem of women below, in the section called Sexual Polarity for Women. Once again, this is very practical information.

(From this point on I will use “woman” as shorthand for “feminine person”, and “man” as shorthand for “masculine person”. With the understanding that “woman” or “man” is just shorthand notation for a person operating, maybe momentarily, in a feminine or masculine archetypal psychological role)

Deida says that the feminine goal is love, while the masculine goal is freedom, or power. This is a good short-hand notation for the fundamental problem that exists between people of opposite polarity who are trying to relate to each other, but as already mentioned, it is not precisely true. The deeper truth is that feminine and masculine people have different styles of loving. Both seek to love and be loved, they just express it differently. Because for feminine people, the fundamental currency of love is attention, empathy, real emotional presence. But for masculine people, the fundamental currency of love is practical service. Men want to solve problems, and they particularly want to solve women’s problems. This is the deepest desire of masculine people, to solve feminine problems, to support women and to “provide” for them in some way, to be useful and productive and to be valued as such; no less than the deepest desire of feminine people is to increase or magnify love. As such, it could be said that the masculine style of love is more “active”. It involves doing things, rather than listening and seeing and responding empathetically.

This is the root of the problem. An alternative formulation would say that masculine and feminine are different processing styles. People in masculine consciousness prefer a processing style called “single-pointed consciousness.” They are able to focus intensely on a single problem or goal, go deeply into that topic, find out everything there is to know about it, and then design and execute a strategy for success. Single-focus, also known as problem-solving, is the delight of masculine people, and one of their gifts. “Freedom”, as defined by Deida as the masculine goal, could be freedom from some constraint or from some pain, the resolution of which is the hoped-for outcome. It might also be the freedom of complete awakening or enlightenment. Masculine people, at their best and worst, also have an ability to ignore anything not immediately related to their current single-focus. Including, notably, their partner’s needs and emotional states.

Women (or people in feminine consciousness) cannot understand these kinds of limitations of masculine attention, because it is not how women’s brains works. You know the famous joke, the difference between men’s and women’s brains? Women’s brains are like spaghetti: everything touches everything else. Men’s brains are like little boxes, none of which touch each other. Women are generally better at multi-tasking, and can turn their attention on a dime. And so, a woman may attempt to access a certain box in a man’s brain – the empathy box in particular – but he won’t be able to do that, partly because his attention is currently focused on another box, and maybe also because a man’s empathy box may be very small, for reasons described below in the men’s section. And the woman will get angry, because she can’t understand how he could be like this. After all, it’s not how she operates.

And so it goes. Women endlessly seeking quality attention, also known as love, but not knowing how to articulate this need or the right strategies to elicit it, and so becoming frustrated and enraged. And men getting defensive and shutting down even more, in the face of what they feel to be this incomprehensible need and demand, which the women are not even able to articulate in a way that the men can understand. Women just feel it, this need for quality attention and emotional presence, but they are generally not very good at articulating it and even less good at eliciting it.

Because this is the other difference between men and women: men like things clearly articulated. Of course, all people like things clearly articulated, but women can get by when it doesn’t happen; most men, on the other hand, are completely lost in the face of non-articulated emotional needs. They can be, at times, beyond clueless – at least from the perspective of women.

Life would be so much better, some women think, if men were more like women. But the problem is that this attitude and this demand is antithetical to love: because men will never become like women. Most of us men can’t do it, even if we could be persuaded that it would be a good thing, which is unlikely because most of us enjoy being men, for better or for worse. That’s the bottom line. The demand that men become more like women is, fundamentally, a lack of empathy on the part of women. It’s what is called a “self-referential perspective” because, as already mentioned and will be further discussed down below in the men’s section, women in general have far greater capacity to move into a masculine polarity, than men are able to move into a feminine polarity. This attitude is the opposite of love. It is self-righteously demanding that someone become a certain way, in order to ease our own suffering – as opposed to figuring out the other person’s needs, and then filling those needs, until they want to reciprocate. And the further demand from some women that we men assume collective guilt for our grim history of rape and violence, some of which continues to this day, is equally ineffective. It’s not how human brains are wired, male or female.

And ultimately, this has made women even more angry. Women don’t want to be angry! They want the promises of feminism to be fulfilled (respect, equal opportunity, an end to violence, and an end to sexual shame); and they furthermore want to be loved and sexed by attentive, present, skillful and powerful men. Of course women want freedom and power too, but they will never be satisfied with only that. Women want it all. That is the essence of feminine consciousness. And this, incidentally, is the correct answer to the question of what women want, a question which men have been puzzling over for millennia and which Freud famously declared to be unanswerable: women want everything.

If women had any idea of how easy it is to transform their relationships with men, which may ultimately fulfill on the promises of feminism, and with far greater speed and enjoyment by all, they would kick themselves for the 50 years of their sexual and relational misery that has followed upon the American wholesale adoption of the idea that men should become more like women.

As such, the next two sections, which describe the “tried and true” solution to the problem of men and women loving each other – not the only solution, as there is no single solution to the problem of love, but the simplest real solution – the next two sections are the most important part of this paper. Once again, this is only bare-bones – you will need further education and practice – but it will get you started, whatever your polarity.

Sexual Polarity for Women

Let me recap some of the key concepts here, so there is no confusion, as per David Deida and my extensions to his work. Masculine and Feminine are styles of loving, which both genders will occupy at different times, although many people will have a preference of one over the other. “Love is a response to need” [Jerry Jud], and since human needs are infinite, there are an infinite number of styles of loving. Anything I say here will be simplistic and nothing I say here will apply to everybody. Nonetheless, in the next two sections I will present some truths, some general principles, which if fully understood can radically transform a person’s relationship to the opposite sex.

In particular, I am going to present one strategy for women to support their men into becoming overwhelmingly attentive and responsive, endearing, and fabulous lovers; which strategy, as already mentioned, may be one of the keys to the ultimate fulfillment of the promises of feminism (and from there, the transformation of the quality of life on this planet). The feminine game of love is extremely complex, of course; much of it involves the cultivation of joy, self-acceptance and other-acceptance, and radical forgiveness. I am only going to present one strategy here; but this strategy or mindset is so important that it practically encapsulates everything else.

Once again: this is not the only way to do a relationship with a masculine person. However, this is the tried-and-true method, and you would be extremely foolish to ignore it, or not to try it. Regardless of whether you are a woman, a man, a gender-queer person, or whatever: if you want to relate lovingly and effectively to a masculine person of any gender, and get one of things that you most deeply want as a feminine person (which is love), listen up.

The essence of the feminine game of love is to never engage your masculine partner in a power struggle. This is so important that I will repeat it: do not ever, if at all possible, engage your masculine partner in a power struggle.

So what do you do when he is behaving in incomprehensible ways, or even being an asshole? You provide empathy, while asserting yourself and your needs as lovingly as possible, and then watch him. Watch him calm down, and watch him become more receptive to you. Empathy is what he wants, it is what everybody wants. Model it for him, simply because you are probably better at it than him. You have the advantage of being female, it’s a both a genetic advantage and a cultural advantage, as you may have had more opportunities to practice. Have some compassion for him. (And if you are not any good with empathy, or if you yourself were never loved, that is sad, but you will need to get some training and some healing. Start with Authentic Relating).

Anyway: as you offer empathy, normally he will calm, become more receptive to you and more willing to do what you want him to do. It might take some work. Even if he doesn’t do what you want immediately, it might make you closer, which is actually more important to you than getting him to do what you want, in the long term.

If you start giving empathy and he doesn’t calm, or if he gets even angrier, you would try and increase the quality of your empathy. This may simply involve mirroring his condition back to him: “You seem to be getting even more angry. Is there something I am saying, a way that I am being, that is making you angrier right now? Please tell me, explain to me, because what I really want is to be in harmony with you, that we return to a field of love. Are you willing to do this for me? I am prepared to listen”. Remember that stating your needs with love and accurately articulating another person’s emotions are two of the greatest acts of love that you can do. This is the definition of empathy, and the most fundamental skill of loving.

If he doesn’t even respond to that, you have three options.

1. First you can call a time-out: “I am sorry I am very upset right now and I need a time-out. Are you willing to do that? Can we resume this conversation later”? Or even stronger: “I need a time-out. I want to talk to you, I want to know what is going on for you, but I can’t take your attitude right now, how you are being with me. I am walking away, but I will be back”. Or else (this is very powerful): “I am sure there is a good reason that you are being the way you are, but I don’t like your attitude right now and I am walking. I would love to continue this conversation with you when you are able to be kind and civil, as I know you are capable of it”. And then do it – walk away. Let him come back to you, when he has calmed sufficiently. And when he does, welcome him back with a big smile, open arms, and some kind of acknowledgement of what he means to you and how important he is to you: which is nothing other than the truth.

2. The second thing you can do is unilaterally decide that you are going to do what you wanted to do in the first place. Sometimes this will be necessary. However, you must do this very consciously since it will have repercussions and may not serve you in the end. Because what you really want is his love and devotion, and every time you act unilaterally in the relationship, you are disempowering him to truly serve you, to take care of you, and you are making withdrawals from the “emotional trust fund” of your relationship. When the trust fund goes down to zero, your life will be hell: much worse than it is now, because every incident will trigger him, on principle. So think seriously about the consequences of what you are doing, when you act unilaterally in the relationship, or against his wishes.

3. And the third thing you can do is surrender. You can do what he wants, accept his point of view even though you think it is completely stupid. But here again, you must use extreme discernment. Because if you surrender, but in your heart cannot accept it, cannot forgive him for how he’s being and cannot gain any empathy for him, you are actually betraying both yourself and him. He does not want you to do this – even though he may not be aware of this or able to articulate it. He does not want you to do anything that you truly do not want to do, cannot accept, or are unwilling to do out of love for him. He would much rather you stand your ground, on a fundamental issue. And so, what you must do in this situation of a major difference, is to return to empathy, and continue until either the problem is resolved, or one of you is exhausted, can’t take it any more, or too angry to listen any more. In the latter case take a break, but be sure to resume the conversation later.

This is the essence of an effective strategy for a feminine person dealing with a masculine person in a power struggle. Again, this is only the bare highlight, the 30,000- foot view. You will need further training and you will need to practice.

Let me give an example. A fairly trivial one, as this incident only lasted two minutes, but it is prototypical and a great illustration of this process.

My sister and her boyfriend were making dinner. We had gone shopping together and she had bought really good tomatoes. As we started making dinner, he pulls out from his refrigerator a bit older tomatoes and says, “I would like to use these ones instead, and save yours for later”. She said: “no, sorry, I don’t like your tomatoes. I have bought these tomatoes for us and I want to use them”. And she proceeded making the dinner with her tomatoes. He got mad, of course. When I witnessed this interaction, I suggested she try a little empathy. I suggested she say to him: “Honey, I can see you are disappointed not to use your tomatoes, lest they go bad. But I bought these tomatoes with my own money, and I really want to use them. Do you really mind?”. He responded extremely positively to that statement. True empathy is very powerful. But he was still angry, first because my sister had engaged him in a power struggle from the get-go, and secondly because she was moving forward unilaterally in her decision, against his wishes (even though she had provided empathy, in the end, she was still being unilateral, proceeding without agreement). It was not a huge deal – he was fine in another few minutes – and yet what she did was to make a small withdrawal from the “emotional trust account” of her relationship. She had engaged him in a power struggle, and she had won; but she had paid a price. Truly, a much better thing for her to do would have been to probe him in terms of how important it really was for him to use his old tomatoes. If it turned out to be important to him, and not a deal-killer for her, her best bet would have been to surrender to that. A feminine person who wishes to be successful in relationship with a masculine person should, as much as possible and with the caveat mentioned above, let him make the final decision – she must yield – while, of course, exercising the extraordinary capacity that she has for empathy, learning to express her needs with love, and capitalizing on the deep desire of masculine people to serve women and make them happy, which I say more about below.

Of course this is hard work for feminine people. We all want our way, empathy is hard work, and surrender can be difficult. The good news here, is that as the emotional trust account gets replenished, as he begins to feel confident and secure that she trusts him and his judgment, and will respect his desires, and as the sex gets better, all of this gets a lot easier. Everybody wins here. Indeed, the sky is the limit. Some people, including David Deida and myself, believe that a sexual polarity game that is played well, and the deep sex that may result from it, is bringing us closer to the great mystery of love. You could become Shiva and Shakti, dancing together and creating the world. Miracles might start to happen all around you. This may be superstition, but I need to say it.

Some women may consider this too much work, they don’t want to do it, or else they would never consider surrendering, that this would make them feel weak or of less value than their men, and that from there the men will take advantage of them.

And to these women I will say: find another partner. Stop torturing him, and stop torturing yourself. If you are not willing to do the work of relationship, then do the next kindest thing: cut him loose. Let him find another woman that he might be more responsive to, and trigger her less than he triggers you. And same for you: do you really want to continue putting yourself through this? If you want to have love in your life, you will need to learn empathy, and you will need to learn surrender. These are the great skills of loving, for a person of any polarity (and I will be describing the masculine side of this shortly). If you want to be loved, you have to begin by acting lovingly. Towards everyone, even the idiots and the assholes of the world, such as your partner may occasionally be. So start with the man directly in front of you, and play the game as long as you can, or as long as it’s useful to you.

An important caveat: sometimes you will need to end the relationship. Ending a relationship can be a very difficult and painful thing to do, especially if you have children or property together, and have invested years in trying to make it work; however this is a better option than a constant power struggle. The important distinction here for women, is that you must only surrender within your “terms”, also known as your truth or your value system. If you surrender inauthentically, you will only make the matter worse. This is especially problematic for women, because women tend to be over-accommodating, meaning they tend to lose themselves in relationship. This is, once again, a very complex topic that I cannot get into in a review article. Just remember, as an over-arching frame, that a woman who loses contact with her true desire or her joy, is a woman who is lost; just as a man who loses touch with his real purpose is a man who is lost, as I will discuss in the men’s section immediately following this.

If you need to end a relationship, as a woman, my advice to you is to not make it about him. Simply make it about you, about what you want, need and desire. Articulate that to him as best you can, and keep in mind two things:

First, to quote my mentor, Victor Baranco: “the goal of relationship is not longevity“. The goal of relationship is aliveness, or transformation. If it’s not happening, you must move on, and it’s not his fault. He helped you along the way. The appropriate emotion here is gratitude: he prepared you for the next one.

And the second thing to remember, is that your next relationship will only be as good as the quality of love and of closure you have achieved in your previous relationship. If you cannot find closure, you will probably manifest another relationship either exactly the same, or else depressingly similar. Do your inner work here. As a woman, it is probable that your primary developmental work is to connect to your true desire and learn to articulate that with love. So start with the man in front of you, no matter how imperfect or inadequate he is (or you think he is), and play the game as long as you can.

To recap: you may find another relationship style with a masculine partner that works better for you. But you would be very foolish not to at least try this. It may be a lot easier than you think. My advice: start with this, what I am describing, and improvise from there. You may be shocked at the results.

Sexual Polarity for Men

The masculine game of love is equally challenging, but for different reasons.

The first and most fundamental reason why the masculine game is challenging is the same reason that feminism has generally failed to make men more like women. In general, men do not have either a genetic predisposition, or cultural training, in empathy, humility, and surrender. Those are the fundamental skills of loving. So we men are starting in this game of love with a fundamental and sometimes fatal handicap.

Related to this problem, is that women in general have a more balanced polarity. Typically, women can switch into a masculine polarity with greater ease than men can switch into feminine. The reasons for this are, once again, both genetic and cultural. We can trust that there are solid evolutionary genetic reasons why men, on average, score poorly in empathy, humility, and surrender: these traits are not good for hunting and winning wars. And in terms of cultural reasons, it has been possible until now for men to relegate the job of raising children and running their social lives to their wives. So they have been able to get by without empathy or other feminine virtues, more than women have been able to get by without the masculine virtues such as single-focus. Women have always had to solve problems; but men have not always had to learn the skills of loving.

Men have been able, until now, to play their game of freedom and power (the masculine goals, remember), breaking everything in their way, raping and pillaging to their heart’s content, in the process of creating so-called civilization. Obviously, men have done very good things too, from which women have benefited as well. But now, finally, the women are trying to put a stop to the raping and the pillaging. And thank God for that, regardless of whether we men approve of their methods and their style of communication. We really need to be grateful to the women, that they are calling us to something higher.

However, there is some very good news here for men: which is that men have as much capacity as women to excel in the fundamental skills of love. They just have to work at it. Which is fine, even perfect: men love to work, they love to get things done, to produce things.

To clarify: everybody likes to work, to contribute, this is a fundamental human need; it’s just that for masculine people, it is a higher priority need. Indeed, it is essential to a man’s happiness and self-esteem that he have a job to do, a game to play, or a challenge to overcome.

Tolstoy wrote: “For men, love is a game; for women it is all of life”. This is a sexist statement coming from an era where women had no access to the public sphere (and thus the game of love was the only game that they were allowed to play); and yet it is a fundamental truth as well; although to put in a modern-day context, I would substitute “masculine and feminine” (as defined above) for “men and women”. The essence of a person in masculine consciousness is that they need a game to play, a job, a mission, a challenge. For men, everything is a game, including the pursuit of women. This is why men like football. The importance of a man in relationship to a woman to have a mission, and the problems that can introduce in relationship, I say a bit more about below; but if you wish to understand some of the deeper distinctions, especially relating to what is called “Masculine Terms”, please read my book, As Lovers Do.

As an important caveat to all this, and the fundamental problem of men’s inherent lack of empathy, please note that there are plenty of women who score zero on empathy – and almost every woman will score zero on empathy, at some point, even the best of them. At times, this will be linked to their hormonal cycles, which gives them a much greater variability of mood than we typically have. This is a very difficult situation for a masculine person, because to get through it you will need to model empathy and surrender for her – as opposed to let her model it for you, so that you can learn it and repeat it, which is what would ideally happen in relationship to a feminine person.

This may be an extraordinary learning experience for you, or it may cause you to want to hang yourself, or both. Because the other thing that you will need to accept about feminine people, is that they will never respond in exactly the same way. And this ultimately is their gift, because they are endlessly entertaining, provided that you can look at “entertainment” in the larger sense, which is pushing our buttons so hard that it causes us to reframe everything we thought we knew: this being, of course, the beginning of humility. Women make us think, and we men like to think. To put the matter bluntly, they are causing us to think about and solve the problem of “woman”. The problem of “woman” is the problem of love, of how best we can serve. It is a fabulous problem to be thinking about, and hopefully solving.

An alternative formulation of this same idea, is to understand that men and women are perfectly designed to teach each other how to love, with the unfortunate addendum that they are also perfectly designed to torture each other. As such, when your woman is torturing you, your best assumption is that it’s for your own good: at minimum, it will teach you humility (since you will be powerless to stop the attack), and it ought to teach you empathy and surrender as well (that is, if you are smart, as you will find this to be the quickest way to the resolution of the problem).

This does not mean, of course, that you need to always accept what she’s doing, surrender, or take it like a trooper. You will need to assert with love, and sometimes you will need to walk away – just like her. Nonetheless, the idea that her torturing you is always for your own good, even if you need to walk away, is a deep spiritual truth in relationship to a feminine person. Deida, in particular, writes about this very eloquently. In my work, I call this “The Dark Feminine”, but once again there are distinctions there which I cannot go into in a review article.

But let’s move down now, from the 30,000- foot level, to ground level. What do we do? How do we win with our women? For most men, this requires a deep and fundamental attitude shift. Once you “get it”, however, and start to practice the attitude and the skills which I will describe now, you will likely be amazed at the results.

The first thing to realize is that a happy and sexually fulfilled woman is one of the most powerful creatures in the world. Many men – maybe most men – have absolutely no idea of what is available to them by giving even a little love, be it good attention or good sex, and the impact that this can have on a feminine person. Feminine people thrive on masculine attention and appreciation, to a degree that masculine people can barely comprehend. A happy and sexually gratified woman spreads joy, love and light all around her, in a way that even the most highly evolved masculine person can barely imagine aspiring to doing himself. And of course, if you are her partner, you will get a good dose of it. It will absolutely and irrevocably transform your life. Indeed, this act – of making your woman happy and sexually fulfilled, which you are truly the best person for, you are “the man on the spot” – is probably your most direct access to power, be it freedom, wealth, influence, or contribution – whatever turns you on. It may also be your most direct access to enlightenment in this lifetime, as Deida points out. In a way it is the masculine dream: because you will have freedom and power, and you will have love, and you will have plenty of sex. For a masculine person, life doesn’t get much better than that. Learn to make women happy, and your life will never be the same again.

One of the difficulties here is that the work of making your woman happy and sexually gratified, has to be done in parallel with your mission, which may or may not involve her. Obviously, feminine people need a mission too, a path to contribution that is separate and distinct from their primary goal of being love magnifiers. But for masculine people, their mission is key.

As a masculine person, you cannot make a woman truly happy unless you are also doing your mission. Because what she wants, maybe even more than she wants your love and attention, is for you to be happy and in your power, doing what you want to do with your life. Only you can solve this problem, maybe with the help of your male buddies. She will help, she can inspire, heal, soothe, energize; she can give you feedback whether you are on the right track or whether you are completely deluded; but she cannot do the work for you. She may not even understand the importance of this work for you. She may be conflicted in her support or ambivalent. But still, you must do it.

So it goes like this: if you are a masculine person (meaning that you prefer to inhabit a masculine polarity more often than not), you will have two things going on simultaneously: your mission in life, and supporting your feminine partner. Your mission in life needs to be your fundamental #1 priority. This mission could be to provide for your woman, to provide for all the women of the world (through works of service, art, technology or business leadership), and to “contribute to life” as best you can. You must choose to provide for the greater number possible, always, and to give your most important contribution, your greatest gift, regardless of whether your woman is happy with that choice.

But your #2 job is making your woman happy. Give her everything that she could possibly dream of, to whatever extent that does not compromise your mission or higher values. Do whatever she wants you to do, even things that seem completely crazy to you, provided you can do it with love. Let her desire, her unquenchable appetite for pleasure and for love and new forms of entertainment, be your “northern star”, your barometer, your muse. Surrender to her as much as you can, in every situation, provided your heart is in it and you can do it with integrity. Surrender is even more important for masculine people than for feminine people, because it is not considered a masculine virtue, and tends to go against our genetic makeup. Above all, give her your full undivided attention when you are with her, your best emotional presence. But do it with pleasure and do it with gratitude, never out of obligation. Because one of the things that she wants is for you to be happy and in your power. She may not even be aware of this, and this might be very difficult for you to understand, how deeply she desires this (for you to be happy and in your power), because for you, her happiness and power may not be the first thing on your mind. Don’t knock yourself over this fact, it’s just how you are wired. But you can learn. Let her teach you. Learn the three great skills of love – empathy, humility and surrender. Unlike her, you were not born or socially conditioned into these skills, which will make your triumph even more real and more magnificent, once you have finally acquired them.

That is the essence of the masculine game of love. It may be the most important game that you could ever master.

From the moment I encountered Authentic Relating in 2016, I dreamed of taking it into the world in three specific areas: sexuality, business & entrepreneurship, and Intentional Community (IC).

Well... it’s happening. It’s been both the most exciting and the most destabilizing period of my life.

This article is the first of a three-part series. It includes,

• Part 1 (this article, Couples in the trenches) will cover what I have learned and experienced in the first 4 months of “rubber hits the road” of my moving to Berlin to live with my new wife S. She is also an AR leader, which means we aren’t just trying to live-out the AR dream of a permanent emotional and sexual we-space, we are also running programs together (such as the next cohort of Authentic Relating in Community which starts Sept. 2). I am now living and sleeping with my business partner.

• The second article (Monetizing Authentic Relating: the Courage to Lead and my Entrepreneurial Awakening) tells how I got started running professional programs 1½ years ago, and the surprising thing I recently discovered relating to the monetization of AR – a topic of deep interest to many in the movement. It ends with an invitation to a peer-support / Mastermind group, in which I hope to explore these issues within an AR container.

• The third article (Building AR Intentional Community: Lessons from the Edge) gives some of my history in building AR-inspired Intentional Community (IC), my stay at the Transformational Connection (TC) house in Portugal, and some exciting things happening in our AR peer group relating to our search for an AR IC.

So hold on to your seats—we’re going on a ride together. Alongside all the relational growth, my personal and professional life have been completely upended by Artificial Intelligence. You may have already noticed this in my shorter, less navel-gazing writing style and the slick new cover images for these posts. AI is a whole other story that will get its own article soon. It’s a real game-changer for entrepreneurs in every field—including AR.

An Update on My Marriage: When the Rubber Hits the Road

I arrived in Berlin late March, permanent visa in hand and three suitcases in tow: all my worldly belongings. After a whirlwind of cross-continental courtship, the romance suddenly had a roof, bills, and two volatile personalities trapped in two large rooms: our bedroom and our living room / public meeting space. Plus a small shared kitchen and tiny bathroom. Add intense financial pressure and you have the ingredients for a psychological disaster.

I’m a self-described “recovering asshole”: reactive, judgmental, and very moody. She’s deeply private, fierce, and allergic to anything that looks like a judgment or condescension — which I deliver very freely.

Only fools in love (such as we were—and are) would have bet on this lasting. In the end, our intense emotional and sexual connection saved the day.

Psychological Death & the Turning Point

After several months of heavily triggering each other —sometimes acting more like
“love-hungry carnivores” than human lovers [Max Eastman] —we stumbled into a kind of fragile peace, alternating with deep happiness. I am here to tell how this happened.

Each fight brought me face-to-face with what I call “psychological death”. Psychological death means the loss of the woman I love, the loss of my business / lifestyle / transformational dream, and returning to America to become (as Randy in my men’s group said) a “broke, depressed alcoholic”. This prospect was very real to me.

But one day, I snapped out of it. I realized that this fear wasn’t truth—it was addiction, or what I call “drama queen” or “fear factory”. I would survive.

That realization cracked something open.

Her Ask: Stop Blaming Me

With her permission, I’ll share this:

S. asked me—relentlessly—to take more responsibility for my experience. To stop saying “You are ___” and start saying “Ouch.”

This was rough for me. Because (let’s be honest), I thought I was right about her.

But over time, I began to see her point: I was miserable before I met her. Clearly, it’s not her fault, if I remain miserable afterwards, at times.

What really threw me was that she was asking me to embody a level of ownership she herself (in my eyes) wasn’t modeling. It felt hypocritical. Then I saw it: as a neuro-diverse person (Asperger), I’m highly triggered by unfairness and illogic. But if I’m waiting for the world (or her) to be fair and logical before I show up as love... I’ll die waiting.

My Rage Problem (And Hers)

I’m also terrified of anger—especially when it comes without connection intent, or what I call “fair fighting”. I thought I was better at anger than her because I stayed “rational.” But what I was really doing was retreating into intellect and dodging intimacy.

It didn’t work. She got angrier. I got colder, more distant and more hopeless.

I was stuck on my story: if she really wants me so much, why does she seem so determined to destroy me? Can’t she see that that she is killing me? I simply could not understand it.

The Real Fear: Surrender

Finally, another shift: I asked myself—if it’s true that I am better at anger, why not model it? Why not stay connected, present, and receptive even when she’s acting “crazy”? Why not assume at least 10% of what she’s saying is actually true, and 100% is emotionally true?

What would be the danger of this attitude? Only to my ego. And to some very old trauma.

I saw that every time I could stay with her intensity, something softened in both of us. She would calm down. I would feel proud. We would both feel more connected. And it would usually lead to some fabulous sex.

We repeated this cycle maybe 15 or 20 times. And then… the turning point. It happened a few months ago. I wasn’t certain at the time, if I could sustain it. We were in a pressure cooker.

The Feminine Responds to Presence

But here’s the thing: like all deep-feminine people, S. is exquisitely sensitive to presence and to what we call “the real love”. Any time she’s upset, I now see it as a call for me to grow. Not because she’s always right. But because her distress invites a deeper me to emerge.

I’m not claiming we’re “healed.” That would be ingenuous.

But I will say this: every time we come back together after disconnection, it feels ecstatic.

Maybe that’s the point of relationship: the bliss of re-connection after a rupture?

Maybe my entire context of a loving relationship (that we should always “fight fair”) is wrong?

Or maybe I’m just a drama queen with a 24x7 production fear factory (such as I sometimes accuse her of)? Maybe I need this intensity to feel alive, and must enroll others in my drama?

Or maybe it’s all of the above? What we call in AR, “multiple simultaneous perspectives”?

AR Support Communities: Our Lifeline

Three support groups saved my sorry ass:

• My men’s group, which I formed 6 years ago and has been meeting weekly ever since. Randy told me, “You and S. are each other’s perfect shadow projections.” That landed, among other very wise things that I heard there.

• Our AR peer group, born from one of our courses. Five of us, meeting every week in deep we-space. They’ve mirrored our patterns and offered fierce love, and vice-versa. We are now talking about living together, joining or even founding an IC. I will say more about this in the final article, Building AR Intentional Community: Lessons from the Edge.

• Relateful.com, my AR alma mater. S. and I have both found sanctuary there.

These spaces profoundly impacted us. Not by fixing us, but by seeing us.

What Happens Next?

Stay tuned.

I’ve learned some hard-won lessons about leadership, projection, masculine presence, and AR in intimate relationships. But the story isn’t over.

(Next: Monetizing Authentic Relating: The Courage to Lead and My Entrepreneurial Awakening)

The last post to this list was almost 6 months ago, Getting married and moving to Germany. It was sent just before I visited Sophie in Germany for the third time, when we immediately moved in together into a new place, leaving an apartment where she had been living for 7 years with her 12-year old son and some room-mates.

Some of you may be wondering what happened next. Specifically whether two “fools in love”, with little money, from different cultures, very different personalities and somewhat challenging characterologies, united only by love and a crazy sexual attraction and some high-falutin ideas derived from Authentic Relating – whether such a couple could survive for more than a week. I am here to report on that, in case you are interested.

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I will tell you part of that story now. It’s not at all what I had imagined, and it took me close to what I call “psychological death” 5 times. But we are still together and very much in love and generally kicking-ass together on all fronts. Inshallah.

First, let me recap the timeline…

I arrived in Berlin for our third visit on October 22, and left January 9. There were difficulties getting married in Germany and impossible to get an appointment at the immigration office there, so we decided she would come to Boston where my sister lives, marry there, apply for a visa at the German consulate in Boston, both come back to Germany, wait for the visa to be granted and then have me do one final round-trip Berlin-Boston to pick up the visa and re-enter.

What I did not understand were the Schengen visa (tourist visa) rules. With the result that I was told in Reykjavik (the transit airport) that I had over-stayed my Schengen visa and was banned for two years from Iceland, with no possibility to re-enter Germany for another 3 months, even from another city.

That was my first “psychological death”: would we make it? The thought of being separated for 3 months occurred as unbearable. She has a 12-year old son with joint custody, meaning she can’t just pack-up and go.

Still, she came to Boston a month later. We did manage to get married and applied for the visa at the German Consulate in Boston. Then we had two beautiful celebrations, one a zoom wedding reception for our friends, and the other a zoom meeting with my family for them to meet Sophie. Her two children, ages 12 and 20, came to the reception and the older one Louis moved everybody to tears with his love speech. The four of us were hosted in Boston by my sister and her husband, who are both angels. The grand finale was a weekend trip to NYC on a vacation we could not afford but did it anyway.

They told us the visa would take 3 months. It took 2 weeks.

The cause was probably Sophie’s sob-story letter to the consulate telling how much we were in love, that it was unbearable for us to be separated, that we were poor and that paying double-rent would be quite challenging for us, etc. She felt confident that this communication would succeed. Me less so. She was right.

The impact on me of getting the visa in two weeks was profound. I had announced to all my friends and to my blog that I had found the woman-of-my-dreams and was moving to Germany. I had spoken publicly about “Transformation at the speed of light” or TSL. The idea of TSL is that if you operate out of love, and approach life with a passionate idea combined with humility and surrender, and are grateful for whatever results you get, then the universe aligns with you and you get what you want. Or perhaps, to quote Mick Jagger: “you can’t always get what you want; but if you try sometime, you get what you need”.

To be perfectly honest, I myself did not entirely believe in TSL. I mean: I WANTED to believe it, but it could easily be considered “bipolar ideation”. I have no doubt that all of my friends and family in what I call “conventional reality” consider it bipolar ideation. And sometimes I agree with them!

However, I also fundamentally think that holding ideas which may be fantastical, or not reality-based, is okay provided they make you happier and more effective. And provided you don’t take yourself too seriously, and “keep on trucking” as I say. Or learning.

But it gets even better…

Getting the visa in 2 weeks was one of the turning points of my life. But it gets even better.

So, to recap: we have two “fools in love”, at least one of them (me) with a rather unimpressive relationship history, very little money, recent spectacular successes and failures both, and mental health challenges. And we have two Authentic Relating (AR) leaders, both professionally successful, but at least one of them crazy-as-fuck. Would we be able to use AR in our relationship and “practice what we preach” (which is the way of love)? And in the midst of huge relational, logistical and financial challenges?

There is not time and space here to tell the full story of how we made it through the first 6 months. I may say some things about that in the next post here. Or maybe it’s a full-length book similar to my memoir. Or perhaps an erotic novel. The erotic novel is already started, by the way. It is perhaps bipolar ideation 😀. You have to be a little crazy (or narcissistic, or both) to be a writer. I am a writer.

I CAN say, however, that it was pretty touch-and-go. We are both quite hot-tempered, reactive, idealistic to a fault, and bossy. But the combination of our AR training and deep sexual chemistry (which I call “God’s free therapy”) seems to have worked. Inshallah.

I will continue with the story now. We only learned about the visa 3 weeks ago, by the way. All of this is emergent in what I call “rapidly changing reality”. The flow of miracles appears to be continuing. Inshallah.

Earlier this week a 3-month collaboration with the Global Eco-Village Network concluded in producing a 6 week course called Authentic Relating in Community, which Sophie and I are leading together. This is the largest AR course I have ever taught and also the most money I have ever made in AR. We have had one class and it was wonderful. It’s also a new design which we are quite excited about, combining elements of AR and Circling, and specifically targeted to people in the IC (Intentional Community) space. AR and IC are my two great passions.

Sophie is back in America again March 10-24. We booked that trip shortly after she left and before we knew about the visa, because we could not stand to be separated. We will be spending most of that time in Brattleboro, participating and offering programs at a community in formation called HERI House. I am calling this “our first real honeymoon” as our travels and experiences up to this point have always been in response to some looming crisis (as in, needing to move, needing to do my immigration, needing to figure out our complex relational dynamic, etc.). So the next two weeks are really our first time together where we will be able to entirely relax. If such a thing is possible…

Please stay tuned to this list…

I will have more news coming. All this occurs as a fundamental inflection point of my life. It’s the end-point of my 40 years of “wandering in the wilderness”, searching for my purpose and for a way of life in which I could be happy and make a difference.

Needless to say, it is quite an emotional experience, and will take me a while to fully “grok” what this means.

Why I write about myself

“The heart has its reasons, which reason knows not” — Blaise Pascal

So I will do here what I always do, which is to unpack my own psychology in relation to my mission of showing up with more truth and care in all my relationships and being a more potent channel for love and transformation in the world. My own psychology is unique, and hence not everything I say here will be relevant to you. I do hope, however, that I am revealing universal patterns here. Inshallah.

Specifically, I will talk about practicing Authentic Relating in a world in which AR has very little visibility or adoption, competes with a vast array of other schools and modalities and communities which are not nearly as effective and often expensive, and many of which (maybe the majority) are cases of what I call “cult-psychology“. Cult psychology is a whole other topic, and I can only bookmark an article on that. Just to say that the search for love and community, and especially deep sex, can take us to some quite “dangerous” places.

As is meant to be: If love and sex weren’t “dangerous”, they would not be so much fun. “Danger” is actually a good thing, if and when you willingly engage the process of re-evaluating everything you thought you knew. You will be different from when you started. And since most people are afraid of change and resist it, this can be quite painful.

My views on AR, and shared-reality within the movement: Why very few people really “get it”

My views on Authentic Relating are not necessarily shared-reality inside the movement. For sure this is, in part, my “story”. An expression of my core wound, which is that I am too far outside of the mainstream to be relevant, nobody understands me or cares for me, the world will never give me the attention that I deserve, and hence I will die alone, sick and broke in the gutter.

I am a person who establishes identity by “differentiating” myself, meaning that I am hyper-aware of how separate I am from others. In Landmark-speak, you could say that I have an “already/always listening” for separation (as opposed to resonance). This is actually not a good thing, especially as an AR leader. But I am a pretty good AR leader, so I can only trust that this aspect of me is for the best, ultimately.

I do believe, however -- and this may be completely made-up -- that few people even inside the movement “get” the real power and potential impact of Authentic Relating. They think of it as something fun to do with your friends. I think of it as the most powerful human transformational system to hit the streets since Jesus Christ started teaching. At least before the Roman Catholic church took over the franchise and it became the state religion.

AR is partially sourced from NVC, which has the right idea but doesn’t go far enough, and has aspects that are cult-like. Susan Campbell, the “grandmother of AR”, was also a huge influence, and remains as relevant today as she was 50 years ago when she started out. Even so, I will declare that most people in the AR movement don’t get it. I am currently taking a course with Miki Kashtan, by the way, who “gets it” in terms of the real goals of NVC and AR, and who is taking NVC into the world in very impressive ways.

So what happens when you commit to taking AR into the world in all your relationships?

I will tell you: all-hell breaks loose. Of course, I am not certain that this will happen to you. I ardently wish that it NOT happen to you. I am just saying: be prepared. And do not expect the world to shower you with love and appreciation for your AR efforts. You are probably not that good, anyway. I wasn’t very good when I started out, and continue to make massive mistakes, 8 years later.

I have written about this already in my most recent article Trauma is good for you: Authentic Relating and “karma acceleration”. I am going to go even more detailed here, in this article, about the particular challenges and triggers of my characterology.

So, the first thing you will have to deal with if you are seriously taking on AR leadership is projections. I tend to go non-linear when I receive condescension and contempt.

Here are some examples of the projections I receive

There are people who view vulnerability as a weakness (Brené Brown has abundantly demonstrated the opposite, but not everyone is aware of this). The majority of people cannot tolerate direct expression of anger, even when it is expressed responsibly, which is not always the case for me. There are people (some in my family!) who view me as a fundamentally selfish person whose goal is ultimately to bring all attention back on himself. Who “takes” a lot but doesn’t give that much. A brilliant guy, perhaps, but one who is seriously dysregulated, who needs a good shrink (plus good meds) and who compensates by wanting to be a guru. When they hear I am a self-described “bipolar / mixed episode”, it’s pretty-much case-closed from their perspective. They feel justified to write me off entirely.

Note-to-self here: I should stop calling myself “bipolar” as its not entirely correct. There is just not a DSM4 category that precisely fits me. Maybe if they had a category called “happy bipolar”, that would be me. It’s taken me quite a while to get to this point, however.

And here is the “problem”: all of these projections are partly true. And needless to say, this can be hugely triggering to me

This in the nature of projections, all projections have a core of truth to them. I DO take up significant attention in relationships. I like to say, my religion of Authentic Relating is not a mass-consumption product. And that Marco Beneteau is not a mass-consumption product either. I tend to “want what I want” and overall unapologetic about that. I love it, of course, when other people want what I want too. When they don’t, I sometimes tread rough-shod on them. I am ashamed about this, but it’s true. I am certainly somewhat dysregulated, some times more than other, of course. I am looking into this, but it’s a work-in-progress. Here is what I want to go on my tombstone, by the way: “He was a crazy fuck, but he got shit done. He loved many people and many people loved him, despite his enormous flaws”.

Moving on. Egg-on-my-face here.

Case-study one: condescension

In my last post I wrote the story of my relationship with Sophie. We have known each other for 6 months, but our romantic relationship is only 3 months old at this point, and we have spent only a month together. People in “conventional reality” (as I call it) can’t grok how this could be real. Let me tell some of the feedback I am getting about this.

One friend on my personal list replied: “Well, you are kind of crazy, but this is why we love you. Generally marriages where you have known the person for less than a year don’t last”.

My impulsive reply to this was: “hey brother, thanks for the statistics about the longevity of marriages, I see you have been reading Cosmopolitan magazine and the National Inquirer”. Of course I did not say that. What I DID say -- and even this is a bit defensive -- was: “thanks for the feedback, which is good in terms of “craziness”, not so good in terms of marriage. I actually score quite well in marriage. I was very happy with Rebekah and continue to receive overwhelmingly positive feedback about the commune which we ran together, 10 years after the fact”.

The truth is that I actually DO appreciate the feedback about “crazy”. I like to say that all feedback, no matter how bad, pushes you in the direction that you should go in anyway. It surfaces triggers and polarities. This is good AR by the way, which teaches the value of all perspectives. Sophie actually helped me to unpack this. She said: you call yourself “crazy” every second sentence. The guy was trying to be supportive. Can you blame people, for repeating back to you the words you say to yourself?

From this I got a valuable distinction, between “crazy insane” and “crazy genius”. The distinction is: “what works”. It’s where ideas get reality-tested. The definition of “what works” is essentially, impact. This can include the felt-sense of a relationship or of a group experience, program sales and income, or even hits or likes to an article or website.

Wilhelm Reich, for instance was mostly crazy-genius, with a couple crazy-insane notions thrown in (such as the Orgone machine). People still talk about Wilhelm Reich. But it can be quite costly in Western culture to receive “crazy-insane” projections, and eventually they killed him. It’s also impossible (or difficult) in the thick of the action, to know where you stand, exactly. “Truth” (or reality) can only be found by agreement. Deep emotional truth, in particular is only discovered in the we-space.

Case study 2: contempt

Another “friend” response (on Facebook) was even more direct. She said “what you are experiencing is projection. Since you are both emotionally immature, it won’t last”. I was, of course, hurt and judgmental. Is this person for real, to post such things on someone else’s facebook? I can see a positive intention to educate me and my readers, or maybe a need for self-expression of difficult “truths”. But it’s irrelevant to my condition as I am well aware of the presence of projection in infatuation states. And as for “emotionally immature”… OUCH. I wish I had the courage and discernment to say that, every time I feel hurt (as opposed to wanting to hurt back)

At first I just hid the comment, but a few minutes later I went back, deleted the comment and unfriended this person. This was a significant inflection point for me, by the way, in terms of my dealing with contempt. I decided then and there: it’s zero tolerance for condescension and contempt, going forward. I will tolerate it from certain family members, perhaps, on a good day. I will give it the “benefit of the doubt”. Given my story that I am irrelevant (and doomed to die alone in the gutter), I may actually be “imagining” contempt where it doesn’t actually exist. Or, at minimum, hyper-sensitive to it. But the situation with the second “friend” was cut-and-dry. I actually felt some joy from unfriending her.

However, I got something of value even from the second comment. What I realized is that people who don’t know AR, cannot understand how taking the experience of “being in love” into the we-space changes everything. The problem of sexual loving is, of course, the horniest of all human problems (no pun intended). And since hardly anyone understands AR (or else compatible modalities like NVC), they don’t get the potential or usefulness of bringing AR into the problem of sexual loving. They don’t get what a game-changer it is.

My Sex and love addiction, and the impact of AR

I bring to a close now this reveal of my triggers, and return to the main point of this article, which is how an irrevocable commitment to “live into” AR ultimately heals trauma, including some of the “core wounds” that I have described. With the important caveat, is that first they will re-awaken the trauma. What I have realized, is that AR practices will re-awaken the trauma with the intention of bringing it to a different outcome. This has been a key realization for me, which has enormously relaxed me as I notice trauma arising.

You know the adage: “the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off?“. Well, AR will set you free, but first you will feel more crazy than you did before.

I have been obsessed with love and sex for the last 40 years. Ever since my first girlfriend, named Alexa in my memoir, took me into a deep, 10-year, chemically resistant depression. I call it my “awakening” and the pattern has repeated: all the most important developmental experiences of my life have been related to the women I have loved and who have loved me, however briefly. This has happened three times, in consecutive “epochs” I call them, which is an approximately 10-year life-developmental window. In my fourth and latest epoch, 2013 until now, there was no primary woman, but I did write four books. The latest epoch was very painful, but intensely developmental. My next (fifth) “epoch” is now starting, with Sophie.

Essentially, I have been a Sex and Love addict for 40 years, even before Alexa. I was still deeply unconscious in those days, of course. I have spent the last 40 years unpacking the problem of love and sex in relation to my characterology, cultural trauma and cult psychology, and mostly losing in that game. Banging my head against the wall, what I call “the 40 year war against myself and against the world, trying to make a buck and get a little love, mostly unsuccessfully“. And I have finally figured it out, with the help of Authentic Relating, my community there (which includes my men’s group) and Sophie’s love.

This may sound grandiose, and probably is. The problem of human loving is infinitely complex, nobody can ever completely figure it out. But I am at an inflection point, or “point of no return” here. I call this “moving from the red into the black“. It means: efforts are finally bearing fruit. I have hurt a lot of people (especially women) through my ignorance, selfishness and stupidity. . Maybe, just maybe, I can finally start doing more good than I do harm.

God’s natural therapy

Deep love, or deep connection between people, is God’s original, natural and free therapy. It is the fundamental nature of evolution, which is moving into greater complexity and inter-relatedness, as in what happens in the natural world. This is what we are trying to do in AR, through the activation of collective intelligence.

Once deep love is happening, such as occurs in many AR groups, the natural extension of deep sex has the potential to take things over the top. For obvious reasons: deep sex (which can’t happen without deep love) is the original act of creation.

My advice: commit to “love as best you understand love“ through AR practices. Start leading private groups. If you are in a couple, bring AR into your primary relationship. If you are not in a couple and you want to be, keep up the good work of “loving as best you understand love”. And maybe, like me you will get lucky.

Where to find out more

Sophie and I are running a program starting Tuesday Oct. 22 called Practical Relational Leadership in Community, with a free into on Tuesday Oct. 15. The group is almost full, but we still have two spots left.

This post has mostly been about what I call Transformation at the Speed of Light or TSL. TSL is the amplification of love through Authentic Relating practice, which (according to my theory), is what will inevitably happen to you when you start bringing AR into all your relationships. Essentially, the universe aligns to give you what you want, and you achieve “the dream”. This can take a while, 40 years in my case. I do wish you more rapid success than I have achieved, which is the main reason for my writing.

“Any fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” ― Otto von Bismarck

I am not a Christian, exactly (I honestly don’t know what that means, and it behooves me to find out), but I am for sure “a friend of Jesus”. The “dream” is, to quote Peggy Seeger, “That all may live as lovers do”. Frederic Buechner describes “the dream” as “when your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need”. I call it “communities of fun, love and transformation”. Or maybe “the meeting of hearts and minds”.

What I am calling “TSL Squared” (or TSL2) is an extension of TSL into the domain of eros, which includes both sexual loving and deep connection practices. TSL2 (or TSL squared) is an extension of TSL, and is the amplification of turn-on (or eros) through an understanding of sexual polarity and female orgasm. TSL2 is a whole other topic and I will not be going into it here. Maybe later. For my ideas on that, please read my book, As Lovers Do. There is a quick summary (or high-level view) of the model in the article / podcast A lecture on sexual polarity.

Yes, you read that correctly. I am getting married and moving to Germany permanently on October 22.

This post will [mostly] take a break from my developmental theories. It reminds me of the joke: “Enough talk about me, let’s talk about you. What do you think of me?”

My developmental theories are sourced from my life, it’s about what has worked (and not worked) for me in Authentic Relating leadership. Thus, its not really possible to NOT talk about me, at least in a blog format. So when I say “enough talk about me”, what I mean is that I am taking a break from my ceaseless whining. Try as I might, its difficult for me currently to find anything to whine about. The post is long and may not be of interest to anyone who doesn’t know me. But here it is.

Specifically, I will tell how a 64-year old unsuccessful author who hasn’t gotten laid in 10 years (despite that being his most ardent desire), and who was beginning to think that he was too broke, crazy and ugly to attract any self-respecting woman, happened to meet a beautiful and brilliant young German woman, fell in love and is moving to Germany.

You may recall I moved to Mexico in July of 2023, eventually starting an intentional community there which was a spectacular failure, albeit with many great learnings. That story told (in lurid detail) on the substack, 2024: The year I finally landed in my life.

For all the mishegas created in the 18 months I was in Mexico (I am an expert in mishegas, no doubt because I enjoy it), during that time my AR career took off. I ran many successful on-the-ground developmental groups there in a style called Practical Relational Leadership through Authentic Relating, and the online groups were also quite successful. Sophie joined one of the online groups in February of this year, 2024, and that group was fantastic. I later learned that most any group in which Sophie shows up (including those that she leads in Germany, online and on-the-ground) are fantastic. The girl has some talent as an AR leader.

Anyway, I liked Sophie so much I hired her to lead a new program that I was offering, sponsored by the Global Eco-Village Network. That group ran in June-July and was also amazing. While this group was running, however, I decided to leave Mexico, packed all my stuff inside, on top and in the back of my beat-up 2-door hatchback car, and headed north for Philadelphia.

Sophie and I had gotten quite close during the time that we were teaching together, and she would occasionally “counsel” with me. Meaning that we would do AR together. In one of these sessions, she suggested I come to Germany and save her.

Being rather dubious that I could save even myself let alone anybody else, and too shy and too insecure to name that a beautiful woman 16 years younger than me was flirting with me, I initially made a joke out of it. We continued the joke for a while, and there was no loss as I enjoyed talking to her so much. After a few days, however, I went for it and responded with a 5000 word essay on my sexual and romantic history, which is actually not very impressive. I had done this before with new dates by the way, and it had not gone well. What was I thinking?

To my shock and amazement, Sophie loved my letter. We continued intense correspondence and chats for the next week, even as I was traveling. Thousands of words and voice-mails crossed the wires during that time. Most of these words came from me, but she met me at every step, which also amazed me. She is actually a very good writer. Later she listened to the entire audio of my memoir, which also impressed me. And we fell in love.

After a week (we would now be into the third week of July), and just for the heck of it, I checked Orbitz.com for flights to Berlin, and found a $270 round-trip airfare to Belin for two weeks in early September. I checked with her, the timing worked, and I booked it.

In the next two weeks, even as I was traveling and having big experiences with that, the heat built up even more. Despite both of us being broke, I decided that the anxiety was not bearable any more, of not knowing whether this was just a fantasy. I booked another ticket, also at a very good price, for the last two weeks of August.

Well, I’ve been back and forth to Berlin twice now, each visit for two weeks. In the first visit we more or less spent two weeks in bed. Sexual compatibility, the big question, has been resolved (intellectual and emotional compatibility was never in question). In the second visit (which I just returned from Sept. 22, a bit under two weeks ago), we decided to get married. She found us a large bohemian-like apartment in the heart of Berlin, two enormous rooms for us (one of which we can use as an AR event space), and one room for her 11 year old son which she has joint custody. The rent is well under-market (around 1000 Euros a month) as it’s a sublet / co-housing with one of her friends. Sophie has a million friends, all of whom adore her. She and I will be moving in together on November 1st.

“Damn“, I was thinking to myself. “In addition to being brilliant and beautiful, this girl gets shit done”. Oddly, her self-concept is that she is constantly overwhelmed by life and never gets anything done. This may be the reason she likes me, btw, that I have a perspective on her that is vastly different from her self-concept. More about our relationship dynamic below.

In the second visit we also resolved the logistics of the marriage and immigration. The marriage is necessary for us to be together, otherwise I could only stay 3 months out of 6 on the standard Schengen tourist visa. The immigration is actually surprisingly straightforward. It needs an appointment at the immigration office, which is heavily booked. Once you get an appointment, however, you show up with your marriage certificate (the marriage requires an appointment somewhere else which also takes a while), passports, German A1 proficiency test (this is a bit of a racket, but I have 5 weeks to get to level A1 German, which is doable) and 80 Euros. It takes them 4-5 weeks to process the application, after which they give you a temporary residence permit for a year. After the year you ask for permanent. In the meantime I can work in Germany and I get on her family / state health insurance. Easy-peasy. Now it’s just a question of solving the non-trivial problem of how to pay the bills.

Well, on the surface — I am just saying so you know that I know this — it’s all pretty crazy. We have very little money. I am on Social Security. We both derive a modest income from running AR programs and coaching (she more than me), but its not enough. She quit a full-time job at the Australian embassy three years ago because it was killing her. I still have technical skills from 10 years running a web design business, and I am going to need a part-time technical job, probably doing online VA (Virtual Assistant) work initially. What a guy will do for love 🙂 . Knock-on-wood that this will work. Long-term we have what I believe to be high-value offers in the AR space and book publishing space, but that may just be delusions of my bipolar brain.

So that’s that. Its a great romantic story, such as I never expected to happen to me again in this lifetime. My romantic engagements have, for the most part, been disasters, with the exception of a sweet 9-year marriage with Rebekah, who is now my best friend. We were very good together and quite happy, especially at the beginning, and manifested great things together, including the commune that we ran for 6 years (2017-2013). But that marriage failed, and it’s taken us both 10 years to “recover”. Rebekah is back in NYC and happy again, thank God. But I had not expected to fall in love again, so quickly and so completely. And Sophie either.

Oddly, in spite of the difficulties and the manifest craziness of all this, Sophie and I are both “all in”. There is zero doubt from either of us. I often think, it’s more risk on her side than mine. In a way, things have not gone so well for me in the last several years. For sure there have been spectacular successes, but also spectacular failures. I call this “karma acceleration“. Things DID start to turn around for me 18 months ago when I moved to Mexico. I had some glorious experiences there. But overall, it was not a happy scene. I had few friends and my sex life, in particular, was non-existent. I write in my memoir, that I am not fully happy unless I am in love or writing a book. Now, it turns out, I am doing both. Our union is sourcing a kind of kinky erotic sapiosexual novel, loosely based on our relationship. It has some commercial potential. And our joint AR leadership is really good. Clients are coming, slowly but surely.

In support of Sophie’s decision — I say this to feel less insecure that this beautiful and extraordinary young woman would actually want me — I am a “Morehouse-trained guy”. This is a sexual technique, but more importantly it’s a model for doing man/woman relationships that always made total sense to me. I later learned that this is called “sexual polarity” and I wrote a whole book about it in 2015, which continues to receive great feedback. It’s a style of relationship that goes counter to “modernism” (or even “feminism”), but it is time-tested and it actually works. In this model, the man (or masculine partner) is primarily responsible for handling the “production” (meaning generating the money and “getting shit done”) whereas the feminine partner provides what’s called the “appetite” or the pleasure. It works because both serve or support each other in their area of expertise and joy. I have always enjoyed “getting shit done”, although that hasn’t generated much money in recent years. And every woman, of course, enjoys pleasure and freedom, good sex, and the love and devotion of her masculine partner. Sexual polarization is not “exclusive” by the way (I mean role-switching naturally happens), that would not work. It also only works if there is a very high level of honest and loving communication.

Well, that level of communication and care IS present to a higher degree than I have ever had before in any relationship. Rebekah and I had it pretty good. But I was still pretty much of a relational idiot in those days (and man/woman idiot too, there ARE quite important differences between the sexes, which you can only ignore at your peril). You could say that Rebekah, and all the Morehouse training I received, prepared me for Sophie, for the “real enchilada” relationship.

I am a very happy man, but also scared. I view this fear as proof-of-sanity, btw.

I am leaving North America permanently, although perhaps we’ll setup a part-year residence here at some point, especially when the money starts flowing. The truth of the matter is that I never wanted to be in North America in the first place. I arrived here with my family 50 years ago, and its been a pretty turbulent ride. A lot of “sturm and drang“, which carries the risk (as I often say) of “sound and fury signifying nothing“. I do like it hot.

Well, what can I say. I never quit, and I finally got lucky. I found a woman who likes it as hot as I do. A woman who wants to live for love, and for whom everything else is unimportant. Who happens to be brilliant and beautiful, and who loves me. Plus we are in the same business.

Crazy? Perhaps. However, I have always believed in the adage, “Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all…”

Oh happy, happy Marco.

PS: God only knows when I will be back in the US, but I greatly value the deep and fulfilling friendships that I have made in this bizarre country. I never entirely fit in to the culture, but this did not stop me from enjoying the people.