critucal truths

January, 2006
The bottom line for him is not what's he's doing or not doing but the freedom he has to do what he wants and to be himself. Men and many women need to have the freedom to be unfaithful in their fantasies without fear of retribution or guilt.

That freedom regardless of what any man actually does or doesn't do with that freedom is one element that puts the juice in his relationship, you, and keeps everything flowing. He feels restricted at work, restricted by his other limitations, by his own demons, childhood issues. To experience you as an enhancing, freeing spirit in his life is an incalculable joy.

He would never, ever cheat on you for real, and he probably doesn't even do it in his mind (Men aren't that imaginative. They don't go off into fantasies like we do. They look at a picture of a woman, it's a quick buzz, then they see the sport's section, and that's the end of the woman.) When he looks at you it's a totally real experience. You want him to be with you which he does. The only limitations you have on him are in reality, and that's the limitation he not only can accept without tension, but it's the limitation he wants also for himself and for you.

Try to accept that he's a different animal. There's a complete difference between momentary eroticism in a picture for a man and the full bodied response he has to you in the flesh. What he wants to feel is that you know the picture is no competition; it only stokes the fires of his passion for you, and that's the kind of confidence he wants to see in you. Even if you don't feel it, you can think it, and then the feelings will follow.

He is very aware of what committment means, and if a masculine energy man needs to tell himself he's free at all times to choose you over and over again and that looking at pictures of other women helps him in that regard to not feel commanded by us, then that's a good thing.

And by not making a big deal about it, we are demonstrating self-esteem and self-love that we recognize these pictures are not real, that we rcognize that his fantasy life is not under our control, and we will not try to control it because we are confident in our power and committment and can let him be because we know he loves only us. This is a very powerful magnet for a masculine energy man.

I believe that the pornography is absolutely no issue at all judging from what you said. He was very non-defensive yet insisted on his own rights and boundaries to his own self, mind and fantasies included. He wants to make sure you are coming together a separate equals. He is standing firm for your relationship to have as few co-dependent elements as possible. He is strong enought to say basically, "Take me or leave me," and yet clearly he doesn't want you to leave him.

It is made absolutely clear by him and borne out by every man I've ever talked to or heard about that for men, sexual fantasies, pictures, etc. have NO emotional context. When we look at pictures or imagine things, there is an emotional, romantic imagery attached. We women imagine ourselves there and experience the emotional feelings.

Men don't work that way. It is purely an instinctual, habitual, physical response. When he looks at you however, he feels emotional context. It is completely separate for him, compartmentalized. He does not put you or the woman who passed on the street and he admired her breasts on even the same planet.

He is capable of looking at a strange woman's body and feeling slightly aroused and then turning to you, feeling love, and telling you he loves you without skipping a beat and without confusion in his mind or his heart. We women cannot even comptemplate this. You must accept this is so.