This is one, if not the toughest battle I've had to face so far (there have been many others of course!), but more so due to the amount of effort it has taken to move away from the emotional hold it has had over me. So "men losing their sex drive" could also perhaps be read as, "men addressing their sex drive".
As an early teenager I always had enough to keep me occupied and wasn't particularly interested in girls, until I was 15 years old. I was burnt not long after that due to a relationship that ended abruptly due to both of our behaviour bringing out the worst in one another. That particular incident set me off on to a road of destruction. I made a point of not allowing myself to get emotionally involved and so would simply jump from one girl to the next. Whenever it was brought to my attention that a girl was attracted to me I always felt obligated to move beyond being "just friends" and would make a move accordingly. In fact, most of the time I didn't even bother trying to be a friend.
Quite simply it was nothing more than a conquest as far as I was concerned and what with victory being a short lived affair, there was always another conquest on the horizon. This behaviour started to get rather monotonous and relationships were always brief.
Further down the line, I met a young woman who was extremely attractive as well as older than me and when her friend pointed out that she was interested me (I was baffled at the time as to why she would be), but as usual I wasn't going to turn an opportunity down and so quickly decided to give it a go except this particular time I was actually rather taken by the young woman concerned. Well, the shoe was on the other foot and it was me who ended up being "conquered". One minute everything was going along swimmingly and the next she said that it was over. The feeling of being used was not a pleasant one, but rather than seeing that the role this woman was playing was no different to the one I had previously adopted, no way was I going to let myself get involved in such a way ever again and immediately reverted straight back to my "normal" behaviour.
My reputation as a womanizer grew. It boiled down to a simple yes or no (would I have sex with them or not) regarding pretty much every girl / woman I saw, I can recall sitting on buses watching all the women go by playing this ridiculous game. I just presumed that this was normal for all young men. All along though my behaviour did not change and I continued to play around. Once the girl was smitten, the game was over and it was on to the next one. At the time, I couldn't see that there was anything wrong with my behaviour, I didn't make any promises, surely this was just what a "man" does? Conversation with my associates at the time was never really about anything other than "well? did you or didn't you?" there was no regard for the other person involved, treating a woman badly appeared to be seen as a sign of strength!
It was only later in life that it dawned on me that my approach was shocking to say the least. Analyzing the situation, I noticed that all I'd ever wanted during that period was to actually feel wanted / liked, yet once I knew that I was, the novelty soon wore off. I've spent many hours, days, weeks, months and years having to work my through all the emotions of the varying situations that I'd bottled up inside that correlate with why I behaved in such a way. As I slowly worked through my behaviour patterns, I became aware that even just eye contact with a woman in public was an issue. Simply being noticed was another program to address.
On the occasion when I was in the mood for some physical interaction and my partner was not, I would take this as a personal snub and would became resentful enough, that I would adopt a rude and dismissive response to any further interaction. It took a long time for me to be able to check myself whenever the feeling arose and realize the stupidity of such a response.
It was plainly obvious that some serious effort would be necessary to be able to progress further with "the work". Until this was dealt with, I was well aware that it would be hindering any growth. It certainly didn't help being constantly bombarded by images of nubile young women through the form of advertising, day in, day out, but it was used to my advantage as an alarm clock of sorts, to check myself when any such thoughts arose. Reading up on such matters and plenty of self reflection to get an understanding of what I could do, led me towards what I needed to do to get out of this particular lesson. It has taken a long time to be able to handle the thoughts that spring to mind and not react, but progress was / has been made!
To bring this to an end, the reason for this post was due to me having some time to work through any buried emotions and/or experiences and I was looking within to actually see if there were any remnants of this particular issue hidden away, that I'd perhaps missed. I was able to pull upon the emotion/energy involved and deep, deep down within I managed to grasp and hopefully release what could be described as total disgust for each of my actions rolled into a feeling of dirtiness that a shower, hot or cold, would not be able to cleanse. I was discussing the matter with a friend at work and how I had no qualms about sleeping around when i was younger, but on reflection how many of those times I now realised that I came away feeling dirty, but simply just refused to acknowledge it at the time, primarily by keeping myself distracted by moving along to the next candidate. As I tried to picture this to him, he demanded I stop and literally started backing away as it was reminding him of his own behaviour and he was now feeling what I was actually attempting to describe.
This post admittedly is a little wishy washy with detail, but I've tried to keep it to the point and perhaps see "the hit" from another angle...
