Kathryn's Blog: Love Shies and Late Bloomers
Every once in awhile, I get a client who, despite being older than 21 by a long shot, and reasonably good looking, has never had an intimate relationship or even sex. It’s a touch problem, because the older people get without having that basic experience of dating and sexuality, the more out of sinc they get with people their own age. Here’s an article about a dating site just for virgins. While it is aimed primarily at younger singles, this sort of service fills a real niche.
Virgin Dating Site ‘You And Me Are Pure’ Launches
Huffington Post
There are no shortage of niche dating sites, offering to serve everyone from women “in their prime” seeking younger men to ladies hunting for wealthy men to married couples interested in extramarital affairs.
A new online dating website, You and Me Are Pure, has launched to help virgin singles meet other virgins online.
The aim of the site, the creators explain, is “to use virginity as a significant compatibility tool to bring people together. Some people may overlook the bonding power of virginity. Virginity
as an important common aspect between people can lead to close friendships, or can even serve as a mutual precious gift of marriage.”
The founders of the website, Lety and Jose Colin, explain that they were virgins until they were wed. “Our site is designed specifically for singles who share the value of premarital sexual abstinence,” said Jose Colin, according to PR Newswire. “We offer a comfortable place where abstinence is nothing to be ashamed of and can be discussed safely and with freedom.”
The Colins write in the “About Us” section of the site, “Our appreciation for each other’s virginity and for each other as a whole lead us into a materialized life commitment.’
The website also has a gift shop offering cards, gift certificates, and wristbands, among other items.
Carolyn Hax has a nice, tart way of getting right to the heart of the matter. In this following letter and her response, she rightly chides the writer about assuming that this man will take the initiative in asking her to marry him, when he clearly is passive and does not initiate much of anything. What she neglects to emphasize is that the relationship is SEVEN YEARS in length, they have had a child together, and marriage has not been discussed? And also, why should this guy get married? What more would he get from the arrangement by getting married?
A huge red flag here is that the man previously lived with his mother most of his life. While we do not know how old he is, the woman in question has grown daughters, so he is probably in his 40’s at least. Not a good omen. While there have always been men—and women—who live their whole lives with their parents, that situation would be evident in a traditional courtship pattern, where the individuals would have known each other and/or the families. With Internet dating, it is easy for people who otherwise might not be on the dating market to list themselves on a dating site as available. Other singles cannot be faulted for assuming that an older adult is on their own or has had experience being so. But buyer beware: Investigate carefully the living situations of your prospective dates.
Carolyn Hax: She’s the only force moving ‘Inertia Man’
Girlfriend is only one moving relationship along.
By CAROLYN HAX
Dear Carolyn: I have been with my boyfriend for seven years. We began dating because I asked him out. I was the first to say, “I love you.” I was the one, after two years, who brought up moving in together. He had no children and wanted a child, but I am the one who brought up children: My daughters were adults when my boyfriend and I had our child. In seven years, I seem to have been the only one making decisions about our future.
So I refuse to bring up marriage. I wanted it to come from him, I needed him to want it, and I waited very patiently. I find myself becoming very bitter that this man obviously does not want to marry me. I know he would if it became an issue.
I do not want to break up my family. I want to be in a relationship knowing the other intends to spend the rest of his life with me. We split expenses. He has a financial cushion; I struggle paycheck to paycheck. I was a single young mother and struggled all my life. He lived with his mother for the majority of his life and has managed to invest and save.
It is not about the money, though I do feel as if we are two separate islands. I feel so very lonely. I feel like I would be happier without him, but what cost would my child pay for my happiness? My boyfriend and I rarely argue and get along quite well. Our child is happy and content. It is only me who is miserable.
Carolyn says: I get why you’re miserable, and why you pinpoint your boyfriend’s failure to merge your “separate islands” as the source of your misery.
But I can also argue that you’ve brought misery upon yourself.
You say your boyfriend didn’t put any moves on you, didn’t volunteer I-love-yous, didn’t pine to live with you, didn’t take the initiative to have a child, and (theatrical throat-clearing here) didn’t even leave his mother’s nest to go out and feather his own.
So how, exactly, did he become someone in your mind who would ever initiate anything?
Here’s an article that really “gets it” about Internet dating and the enormous benefit it has been to older people looking for love, in particular, the never marrieds, who it appears are now getting married and never before rates.
SOME WAIT TO TIE THE KNOT
By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY
When she was still single in her 40s, Debra Siegel made a list of qualities for her yet-elusive perfect husband: honest, family-oriented, a hard worker and physically fit.
But the years passed and the list went unfulfilled.
“When I hit 50, the bells went off,” she says. “I didn’t want to be alone for the rest of my life.”
That’s when she took what she calls “drastic action.”
Her future husband, Dan Furlin, was of a similar mind.
“I didn’t think marriage was in the picture for me,” he says. “Once you hit 50, you don’t want to go through the rest of life without your soul mate. I was a little bit more aggressive.”
Both went the online dating route and met within months. The Dunedin, Fla., couple are both fitness-conscious and vegetarian. They were also both natives of New York state, and each had lived in Los Angeles. They moved to Florida — Furlin to Clearwater and Siegel to Orlando — before meeting online. They married in 2003.
Siegel-Furlin, 56, and Furlin, 58, are among a small but growing group of older adults marrying for the first time after age 45. Years ago, these older singles would have been known as the “spinster” neighbor or the confirmed “bachelor” friend. But now, longer life spans mean 50 is the new 30 — there’s plenty of life ahead. That, coupled with the baby boomer “never-wanna-be-old” attitude and a greater number of aging singles in the population, makes it more likely that those who want to marry actually will.
A USA TODAY analysis of Census records of Americans ages 45-55 shows that the percentage of those who said they had never been married in 2006 had doubled since 1990, and the percentage of those who were currently married had dropped by 9%.
It’s fairly difficult to get a real handle on this segment of the singles population because no federal entity tracks first marriages at specific ages. The closest count is the median age at first marriage, which in 2006 (the latest year for which data are available) was at its highest point: men at 27.5 and women at 25.5, according to the U.S. Census.
A tally by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is available just for a 20-year period, 1970 to 1990, shows that in 1990, only 0.4% of women and 0.6% of men married for the first time at ages 45 to 49.
According to the most recent data from the federal Survey of Income and Program Participation, which includes marriage, 13% of those who wed in 2003 were 45 and older.
Internet dating has largely made it possible for many of these later-life first marriages. It’s only in recent years that some sites have started monitoring that demographic. Among them is Yahoo Personals, based in Santa Clara, Calif., which reports a 33% increase from January 2006 to November 2007 among users ages 45 and over who say they have never been married. Since 2005, Match.com reports an increase of almost 10% of new members 45 and older and who have never been married; these now make up almost 14% of its members.
New patterns, new people
“As people get older, they tend to find themselves in fairly established patterns, so the ability to meet new people goes down over time. They’ve got to do something new if they want to meet different people,” says Craig Wax of Dallas, senior vice president and general manager for Match.com for North America.
Brian Lebowitz, 57, and Lise Goldman, 53, are to be married June 22. They met online almost two years ago and found out at the time that they lived within blocks of each other. Lebowitz, an attorney, lives in Washington, D.C. Goldman, who works in economic development, now lives in suburban Chevy Chase, Md. Lebowitz says his job and his hobby as a book collector took up most of his free time. But when he turned 55, he decided to give online dating a shot.
“I’d pretty much given up, but then thought I would give it a try and see what it was like,” he says. “Some people — myself included — would be more comfortable starting off communication by e-mail rather than going up to somebody at a party. It’s a less threatening way to go about it.”
Goldman says she always wanted to be married. She had been engaged twice — once in her mid-20s and again more than a decade ago — but she says it just wasn’t right until she met Lebowitz, whom she says is intelligent and kindhearted.
“There are wonderful people still out there who are hiding away in their work,” she says. “He’s an international lawyer, so he needs to work evenings a lot. That’s been one of the blessings that kept him away from the dating scene.”
Dating websites have been reinventing themselves since online dating took off in the mid-1990s. They’ve refined their methods, largely emphasizing a more scientific approach, which often includes compatibility and personality testing. Others have focused on niche marketing, including Spark Networks, whose online dating sites include JDate for Jewish singles, as well as CatholicMingle.com, InterracialSingles.net, BlackSingles.com, LatinSinglesConnection.com and PrimeSingles.net. That site, as well as lavalifePRIME and BOOMj.com, is among those offering social networking for these older singles.
LavalifePRIME surveyed 1,001 adults ages 45-65 in the USA and Canada last month who are not in a serious relationship and found almost one-third (31%) have never been married.
Carl Weisman of Redondo Beach, Calif., author of So Why Have You Never Been Married?, conducted an online survey for the book and found that 48% of the 1,533 bachelors ages 40 and older who responded said they were afraid of marrying the wrong person.
“They’d rather go to the grave unmarried than marry someone wrong,” says Weisman, 49. “The No. 1 fear is marrying the wrong person — more than not marrying at all — by 10 to 1.”
In addition to the online survey, Weisman conducted lengthy telephone interviews with 30 men. He says writing the book changed his own perspective.
“I was interviewing men 10 years older than me, and I felt like I could look into my future. I was not necessarily afraid, but I realized if I didn’t change things, it was not going to change,” he says.
Just weeks after completing the book, Weisman says he met a woman at a wine-tasting event and they now live together. They’ve talked about marriage; by the time they tie the knot, he expects they will have known each other three years.
Pepper Schwartz, a sociologist at the University of Washington in Seattle who developed a personality test for Perfectmatch.com, says the Internet has given never-marrieds new hope for matrimony.
“If you were 50 and you went to a dinner party, what’s the chance of meeting a good selection, if any, of eligible people? People would show you the one person they knew who was single, and you would consider that person very closely, even if they were slightly disturbing, because you weren’t going to meet many,” she says.
Despite being engaged in her 20s, Stacey Kono, 48, of Beaverton, Ore., says she really didn’t think about looking for a husband when she was younger because she wasn’t sure a long-term relationship was for her.
Web of happiness
“It was never on my list of things to do. I just wanted to go to work,” she says. “Because I am financially stable on my own, I did not need a partner.”
Her husband, Terry Kono, 51, also was focused on his career. Because he’s in the military, he was moving at least every three years, which he says made developing a long-term relationship difficult.
But as they got older, both decided to try eHarmony, a site that matches members based on a lengthy compatibility questionnaire.
And they didn’t limit themselves on location: He lived in South Dakota; she was in Las Vegas. They dated for two years until he was transferred to Virginia. She moved to Virginia, and the couple were married last year.
Unlike the Konos, Richard Elliott,54, a software engineer from Bedford, Texas, says he had always wanted to be married, but “it just never happened.”
“I thought I’d buy a house and pool and work on an immaculate lawn, and I thought somebody would just show up. You get all these things and it makes you more attractive, but it doesn’t work that way. You have to get out there and be more proactive,” he says.
In his 40s, he says, he sold the house and bought a sailboat, which led him to meet people. He was in a short relationship with a woman 15 years younger, and after they broke up, he decided to look online. That’s where he met his wife, Cindy. They dated for a year, were engaged a year, and now they’ve been married a year and a half.
Cindy Elliott, a marketing manager, 49, says she had been in a five-year relationship during her early 30s and then figured it was too late for her.
“There was a time when I thought, ‘It’s just not going to happen.’ But the World Wide Web is a wonderful thing,” she says.
In my March 1 and 15th issues of *eMAIL to eMATE*, I wrote articles about singles who never got started with dating or relationships. I’ve seen a bit of interest in the subject, so I am putting the two articles together here, just in case someone comes looking.
Late bloomers is a term that describes a person whose talents or abilities are slow to develop. In this case, I am using the term for adults who missed the normal start of sexual and relationship skills.
I’ve had two different clients over the past year who have been struggling with this phenomenon. One is a woman who met a man online that she liked very much, but who seemed pretty inexperienced sexually. The other client is a man who represents the other side of the issue: despite being good looking, a professional, genuinely nice guy, he has never had sex with another person. Highly sensitive men, they seems to have “missed the boat” in relationship experience, continued to miss opportunities that came later, and have gotten so far behind that they cannot figure out how they can ever get started.
It’s been a real privilege for me to work with these two people and see, close up, the frustrations involved. And you will get the benefit of what we have been learning together. Maybe you know someone who is in a similar situation, or maybe I am describing you.
Here are the similarities: Both men are good looking, professionals with good incomes, and never married. One of the men has never had a full consensual sexual experience with another person. The other man I cannot be so sure of, because he has not been my client, but all signs point to an extreme lack of sexual experience, coupled with active avoidance of sexual situations. Another similarity: both men had close emotional relationships to their mothers.
Here is the difference—and it is a biggie: One man is my client and the other is not.
Let’s call the one who is my client Jack. The other man we will call Bob, and his girlfriend who is my client, Joyce.
Jack is highly motivated. After some struggle in the beginning on who was going to be in control, we’ve settled into a really fine working relationship. Jack scours the Internet for information about his “condition.” He reads everything that I suggest and quickly puts it into his formulation and understanding of what is going on.
Bob is not motivated at all. Bob avoids real dates with any chance of intimacy. His avoidance pushes Joyce into pursuing, which of course causes Bob to become even more remote. I think that Bob’s needs are met with Joyce – he has a diversion, Joyce is very nurturing, and he has a “sort of” girlfriend. But for Joyce, this relationship is full of frustration and pain.
Do either of these situations describe you or something you have been involved in?
These two men are in a silent and hidden group who have yet to “come out.” It is all too easy for them to stay “in the closet” because they are not DOING anything. That is what they are doing, actually: nothing. Because doing nothing is hard to detect or find fault, they stay hidden and totally misunderstood. The best that most folks are able to do as far as understanding what is going on with these men is to guess, “Well, they must be gay.” Most men would assume that, because men have a hard time understanding how a man could resist the internal sexual pressure they experience themselves.
Certainly, some men who avoid sexual relationships with women are gay, closeted or not. But this group of men appear to be quite interested in women, just way behind in sexual and relational experience. My client Jack has really helped me with my understanding of the issues these men have. Working together, we have come up with some strategies that have helped Jack get much farther in a relationship with a woman than he ever has before.
Jack has helped me a lot in my understanding of this phenomenon, and together we have designed a plan of action that is helping him bloom. I asked Jack what has been most helpful for him.
Jack says that the biggest revelation was stumbling on Brian Gilmartin’s book “Shyness and Love: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment.” The book is out of print, but has been made available online here.
Gilmartin’s book is huge – over 600 pages, and dated (published in 1987, researched in the ‘70s and ‘80s). It is also flawed and has been criticized in the professional literature. But for sure, Gilmartin’s description of this group which he called “love shy” has been extraordinarily helpful to the men who have discovered it. Jack wrote that the Gilmartin book “showed me that no I am not alone. Rare yes but not alone. I really did think I was the only guy like me on the planet. It was horrid.”
While women can also be “love shy,” Gilmartin focuses on men (which frankly is typical in mental health research), writing that while women may be afflicted, men are more seriously affected because societal expectations place men in the assertive roles romantically, which are close to impossible for this group of men. These women he theorizes can still be courted and marry, because they do not have to take the initiative.
Love shies tend to be heterosexual, highly sensitive, highly anxious, highly self-monitoring, and isolated. A high proportion of the love shy men had no sisters, and even few if any cousins. A very high proportion had abusive families. ”Even as grown men, the love-shy men’s parents expressed that they were disappointed to have them as sons and still belittled them for their current situations” (Wikipedia).
For sure, this is a hidden group, without even a descriptive label in the common understanding. I’d suggest that while the men seem largely hidden, that women would be even more so. These days, older single men (over 35) would tend to be noticed and thought to be closeted gays, whereas women without relationships could fade from sight more easily. After reading about “Late Bloomers” in my newsletter, a female reader recognized herself in the description, contacted me and we talked on the phone. Except that she was a woman, she otherwise fit the love shy description.
While Gilmartin does have treatment recommendations, most involved “practice dating” and use of sexual surrogates in an attempt to help the love shy man “catch up.” That just did not seem to be the right approach to me.
What finally made the most sense was a variation on my strategy for dealing with secrets. *eMAIL to eMATE* readers may already be familiar with this from the free download I offer to new subscribers: “Do You Have a Secret? How to Tell Your Sweetheart the Worst,” a shortened version of Chapter 13 of my book “Find a Sweetheart Soon!” I just couldn’t imagine my client Jack, an attractive and otherwise successful man in his late 40s, as being able to convincingly come across as sexually experienced, no matter how much “practice” he got. The problem, as far as I was concerned, was trying to keep his inexperience a secret.
Secrets are just plain poison. Feeling shame about something spreads rot and contaminates everything around the secret. So people avoid situations and relationships that might require telling the secret. This is the phenomenon that gay people struggled with and conquered with “coming out of the closet.” If they were open about being gay, then no one could manipulate them with the information. As well, society would be forced to acknowledge the existence of gays and confront their own prejudice. It’s only been just over 40 years since the Stonewall riots which is when the modern gay rights movement began. Look at the progress that has been made in just 40 years, the basis of which was a spontaneous decision not to hide anymore.
So Jack and I started working on a plan for him to come out – not the front page of the local paper or a billboard on the Interstate, but with potential female partners.
At first, Jack could not imagine telling a woman about his lack of sexual and relational experience. But he did agree with me that passing as sexually experienced with a woman near his own age was a near impossibility. So we started working on a “coming out story,” a way for him to explain and inform a prospective Sweetheart of his situation.
I told Jack that he be prepared to tell on date one or two, so that the woman could freely choose whether to proceed with dating him. We polished and refined his story, and then he practiced on me, at first, just telling the story over and over (our sessions are on Skype, so we can see as well as hear each other). Then in subsequent sessions, I told Jack that to interrupt me with his story as we talked about other matters. “No woman is going to give you an opening for this or be prepared for what you have to say, so you are going to have to create the space to tell,” I said.
Jack started contacting women on Match.com, met an interesting and interested woman, and on date #2 told his story. Understandably, he was very nervous, but did a good job, and presto! His date did just fine with the news. He was astounded that she could know the truth about him and still be interested.
Jack has also had some side benefits from starting a coming out process. Like gays and other sexual minorities who come out, he has felt enormous relief as he has taken the pressure off himself to evade the truth and hide. He has started to tell a few trusted friends and family members. This of course has enhanced those relationships: truth telling fosters intimacy. He now is aware of the energy it took to be closeted and how all of those years of keeping a secret contributed to the damage.
Wow. What a change, huh?
If Jack’s story sounds like you, like Jack, you can do something about it, rather than resign yourself to a life alone. Get in touch with me. I can help.
Here’s another article that I came across about love shyness, like the other one, in a British newspaper. This condition is so painful for those afflicted, and goes virtually unnoticed. We really don’t even have a commonly understood word to describe it. “Love shy” was coined by author Brian Gilmartin. Love shy does not feel quite right to me, but it is the term that is “out there.” I use Late Bloomers” because at least that implies that blooming is possible.
THE HOPELESS ROMANTIC
By Gareth Rubin
Every day Charles Johnson is faced with panic attacks, depression and a phobia so crippling he often has to take powerful medication to dull it.
Charles suffers from love shyness, a form of social anxiety disorder that often leaves him shaking in the presence of women he is attracted to and prevents him from having any kind of love life.
At the age of 29, Charles is a virgin and has never had a girlfriend.
The foundations for his problems were laid subtly. “When I was 12 there was a girl in my class I formed an attachment to,” he recalls. “Then I found out she didn’t actually like me, thought I was ugly and was only interested in my best friend. It felt so heartless. That was a trigger for these feelings.”
As he got older Charles remained inexperienced. “I never clicked with any girl,” he says. “At university, women ignored me. All sorts of people have trouble forming relationships and everyone feels anxiety but this was like a phobia.”
He began to have panic attacks in the presence of girls and spent years on the drug Sertraline, which is prescribed for serious depression and social anxiety disorder.
CHARLES says: “I hated being out of control, so I would avoid most women. The drug only helped take the edge off it. After a while I mostly felt invisible when I was with a woman but my brain went into overdrive and I felt utter relief when it was over.
“Even with the drug I still had to deal with the feelings. It’s like a dog attacking you. You can’t see the dog any more but you still know it’s around somewhere.”
After leaving university he came across the diagnosis of love shyness – or LS – on the internet. The term was coined by an American academic Professor Brian Gilmartin. In his 1987 book Shyness And Love: Causes, Consequences And Treatment, he estimated that 1.5 per cent of American men were sufferers.
He said it was possible women could be love shy too but they would not suffer so much because society does not expect them to initiate romance.
There are some females among the 700 registered users of the LS internet forum where Charles found support. Some endure the same anxiety and panic attacks in romantic situations and can feel crushingly unhappy due to the lack of a close relationship but they at least avoid the social stigma which men suffer.
For many of the men the sense of social failure and emasculation is often as bad as the lack of relationship.
Professor Gilmartin believed that up to 40 per cent of love-shy men also displayed symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome, the low-level form of autism.
Charles is not Aspergic and lives in London and works in finance. “I live apart from my family so they don’t notice anything wrong. They assume, and I let them assume, that I have had relationships.”
According to Professor Chris Williams, a clinical psychologist at the University of Glasgow specialising in social anxiety, such problems cause people to avoid aspects of life the rest of us take for granted.
“It makes them feel safer but that avoidance can take over your life,” he says. “Life becomes empty and grey and people get trapped in a vicious circle. It can lead not only to panic but also to depression.”
Romantic situations are particularly stressful because they are very much based on mind reading.
“The person has to guess whether the other person finds them attractive, boring or interesting. So an anxious person might avoid any situation where there is any hint of intimacy or closeness.
“Or they might behave in different ways, by dressing in baggy clothes to hide their body and avoiding situations they might find embarrassing.”
Professor Williams treats sufferers with cognitive behavioural therapy.
“It looks at the underlying cause of the problem and encourages people to change activity levels to slowly rebuild their confidence and their life,” he says.
Lack of intimacy is painful for Charles. “I find that people who look good are treated better in social situations, whereas others aren’t extended the same help, no matter what they try.
“Some people might think it is OK to visit a sex worker but this isn’t about sex. It would be nice to have sex but in a normal way with a girl who wants to have sex with me, not to pay someone.”
T his year, American author and LS sufferer Talmer Shockley published The Love-Shy Survival Guide. In it he describes the condition in terms of a phobia.
“Love shyness starts with shyness and then requires some kind of serious ego deflation and poor self-esteem during childhood.
“Many physical or mental disabilities can induce this, including cerebral palsy, Asperger’s syndrome or even just being the shortest kid in the playground. When exposed to abuse or trauma, a typical child may become more outgoing and promiscuous but a shy child will withdraw into him or herself even more.”
Charles has good days and bad days.
“Sometimes I think about LS a lot,” he says. “I see people walking as couples and wonder when I’ll be able to do that.
“I used to be romantic but I am slowly losing that romantic edge. I carry on with my life but it’s like a sore point – a splinter in the mind.”
I learn so much from my clients, and I have been learning a lot lately about men and women who never got started sexually. I have been writing about what I have learned in *eMAIL to eMATE*. Here’s the first article I wrote in the March 1, 2010, issue.
Late Bloomers?
Late bloomers is a term that describes a person whose talents or abilities are slow to develop. In this case, I am using the term for adults who missed the normal start of sexual and relationship skills.
I’ve had two different clients over the past year who have been struggling with this phenomenon. One is a woman who met a man online that she liked very much, but who seemed pretty inexperienced sexually. The other client is a man who represents the other side of the issue: despite being good looking, a professional, genuinely nice guy, he has never had sex with another person. Highly sensitive men, they seems to have “missed the boat” in relationship experience, continued to miss opportunities that came later, and have gotten so far behind that they cannot figure out how they can ever get started.
It’s been a real privilege for me to work with these two people and see, close up, the frustrations involved. And you will get the benefit of what we have been learning together. Maybe you know someone who is in a similar situation, or maybe I am describing you.
Here are the similarities: Both men are good looking, professionals with good incomes, and never married. One of the men has never had a full consensual sexual experience with another person. The other man I cannot be so sure of, because he has not been my client, but all signs point to an extreme lack of sexual experience, coupled with active avoidance of sexual situations. Another similarity: both men had close emotional relationships to their mothers.
Here is the difference—and it is a biggie: One man is my client and the other is not.
Let’s call the one who is my client Jack. The other man we will call Bob, and his girlfriend who is my client, Joyce.
Jack is highly motivated. After some struggle in the beginning on who was going to be in control, we’ve settled into a really fine working relationship. Jack scours the Internet for information about his “condition.” He reads everything that I suggest and quickly puts it into his formulation and understanding of what is going on.
Bob is not motivated at all. Bob avoids real dates with any chance of intimacy. His avoidance pushes Joyce into pursuing, which of course causes Bob to become even more remote. I think that Bob’s needs are met with Joyce – he has a diversion, Joyce is very nurturing, and he has a “sort of” girlfriend. But for Joyce, this relationship is full of frustration and pain.
Do either of these situations describe you or something you have been involved in?
These two men are in a silent and hidden group who have yet to “come out.” It is all too easy for them to stay “in the closet” because they are not DOING anything. That is what they are doing, actually: nothing. Because doing nothing is hard to detect or find fault, they stay hidden and totally misunderstood. The best that most folks are able to do as far as understanding what is going on with these men is to guess, “Well, they must be gay.” Most men would assume that, because men have a hard time understanding how a man could resist the internal sexual pressure they experience themselves.
Certainly, some men who avoid sexual relationships with women are gay, closeted or not. But this group of men appear to be quite interested in women, just way behind in sexual and relational experience. My client Jack has really helped me with my understanding of the issues these men have. Working together, we have come up with some strategies that have helped Jack get much farther in a relationship with a woman than he ever has before. In the next issue of *eMAIL to eMATE*, I’ll write about what we have figured out that is helping Jack.
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