Diana Richardson - Tantric Sex for Men
in which emotions surface—the instant when, seemingly out of the blue, the love boat begins to rock
dangerously. What we need is self-awareness. The immediate physical symptoms of emotion can be
described variously as “suddenly feeling paralyzed” or as if “a wall suddenly comes down.” You
may experience a jumble of feelings you can’t put into words, find it impossible to look the other in
the eyes, or have the awkward sensation of feeling disconnected from everything, utterly separate,
lonely, totally misunderstood, and physically collapsed. Often we find ourselves feeling vengeful and
wanting to hurt back. We start blaming our partner for the situation, using the accusing words, “You
never . . .” or “You always . . .” When a breakdown like this takes place, we must recognize that
emotion is in play. It takes some practice to recognize emotion, but after a while, it does become
obvious.
This inner acknowledgement immediately puts things into better perspective. Emotion is the
resurfacing of old or repressed feelings that we were unable to show or express at the time the feeling
was actually taking place. This is why emotional reactions are often quite disproportionate to the
slight comment or mild action that triggers them. The trigger itself does not usually warrant the huge
upset that follows in its wake. It’s those old, unexpressed feelings that begin to resonate and bubble to
the surface and create confusion. When you acknowledge these old feelings for what they are and
work their negative effects out of your system, emotional reactions will begin to diminish. In a few
years your partner will be able to say precisely the same words to you, and the comment will slip by
you like water off a duck’s back.
The Solar Plexus and Emotion
In addition to emotional alarm signals like suddenly feeling paralyzed or disconnected, you can learn
to recognize states of emotionality through your solar plexus. Consider this area as a sensor, because
here the tensions of emotions can gather and create a lot of discomfort. These tensions try to seek
discharge in various ways—through irritation, complaining, nagging, or passing on your frustration to
family members or colleagues. When you develop awareness of the solar plexus, the moment
someone says something that strikes an uncomfortable chord in you, you will probably notice a
response in that part of your body: the sensation of tension or congestion, like having a stone in your
stomach, or a hollow, empty, nervous feeling in the stomach. These kinds of body responses let you
know that you are emotional and that something unresolved is being triggered. If the solar plexus is
free of tension, it allows for unobstructed flow of sexual energy between the genitals and heart. There
may be slight feelings of nausea when first relaxing into lovemaking (perhaps more common in
woman), but this is nothing to be concerned about. It is a sure sign of the surfacing of old tensions
seeking release. Nausea is usually a by-product of the sexual energy expanding, displacing, and
cleansing the restricting tensions from the body.
OVERCOMING FEARS CREATED BY LACK OF LOVE
Many people begin experiencing feelings of being separate, wrong, unworthy, or not good enough
very early in life, already as young children. We become separate from ourselves, from each other,
and from the whole of existence. As we cut off from our pure energy, we also cut off from our love
source, and as fear replaces security and joy, a false self gradually develops around us. The fear is
due to imprints made by an absence of love in the immediate surroundings (family and parents). It
provokes a child into behaving differently in order to try to get approval (or disapproval, through
rebellion, where at least some attention is gained) and secure the love so necessary for survival. And
so our parents begin to write the script for who we are and how we should behave, and we gradually
lose our authenticity.
Emotionality is an unconscious, automatic reaction to a situation or circumstance, like when a
switch is flicked off, and light turns to dark. It can even be a learned habit: some people learned to be
emotional as young children by mimicking their parents’ behavior. As the years go by, we begin to
define ourselves according to our emotions, thinking our emotional part is who we really are. It is as
if we are in a movie, and the situation is not actually real. Only the past makes it real. (If we were to
wake up one morning without our memory, with no past, what then?) But in spirit and essence we are
all interested in love, and to keep love alive, love has to be separated from the unconscious backlog
of stored emotions. As we begin to release these old feelings consciously (whenever we notice them
arising), pieces of the past get healed.
Toxic Emotions and Conventional Sex
Emotions are extremely toxic and will poison the atmosphere by striking deadly blows at the person
we most love. This is a big problem; we unconsciously put all our unresolved feelings onto the
person we most love and thereby contaminate the love. We say the most awful things to our partner in
an attempt to unburden ourselves of our emotions. Emotional statements stick like glue in the mind and
revolve endlessly in the thoughts, long after the fight is over. Did she really mean that? Am I really
like that? And then the mind will create more emotions from endlessly rethinking the past. In truth,
love cannot withstand too much emotion; it is a delicate and fragile flower that requires awareness to
keep it blooming. Love will slowly slip through our fingers when we let emotion have the upper hand.
A big source of emotionality lies hidden in sex. When energy moves downward, as it does in
conventional sex with its usual discharge, tension and anxiety are by-products. This is why arguments
and dissatisfactions easily follow. Sexual tensions eventually create a subtle overpositive charge in
man and a subtle false-positive charge in woman. These falsely acquired charges make woman
slightly male and distort her essential female qualities. Man’s essential qualities are also distorted as
he becomes a “tough guy.” These accumulating tensions have to be discharged in some fashion, and
they are often released through arguing, finding fault with each other, or complaining. When emotions
are in the air they easily spawn excitement, which gives rise to the famous fucking-after-a-fight
syndrome to heal the rift. But trying to repair the damage through sex and ejaculation/orgasm is a
vicious cycle, because through that very same fuck we acquire more charge, which can flare up into
emotion at any moment. This explains why, even in the absence of an argument, after a so-called good
fuck, a fight can start so easily.
Recent brain research has revealed that chemicals released during a conventional peak orgasm
have a separating effect that causes withdrawal and disconnection (see Marnia Robinson’s book
Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow in Recommended Books). Previously we mentioned a tendency for men and
women to withdraw and feel separate after peak orgasms. Now we know that behavior is actually
controlled by a chemical event in the brain. Conventional sex ultimately causes separation, not union.
False Female Emotionality
The false charge built up through a misunderstanding about how genitals relate to each other is a big
factor in the emotions for which women have become famous. The overcharge, tensions, and stresses
present in the system seek release in order to keep the system in some kind of balance. One way they
manifest is in the form of overwhelming emotions. Women seem so sensitive, get upset easily and cry,
have dramas, and start blaming. This is man’s nightmare! These emotional reactions affect a woman’s
equilibrium and her capacity to love and be loved. The tensions can also be reflected in women as
various menstrual syndromes or genital disturbances.
Man unknowingly contributes to this. When man has hot sex and ejaculates, he frequently (but not
always) deposits some of his sexual/ emotional tension in woman’s body, which she later has to
process in some way or other. Woman is unconsciously accumulating stress and tension on a few
fronts, which affects her behavior and self-perception, and men’s perception of women.
The Emotion of Jealousy
Jealousy is perhaps the most debilitating and excruciating of emotions. Jealousy is about having the
desire to possess and control another person; it is not an expression of love for that person. Jealousy
has its roots in comparison, and we are taught to compare ourselves in all kinds of ways, particularly
in the sexual sphere. Comparison is a useless activity because each individual is unique and
incomparable, and once you truly understand this, jealousy can evaporate. Sex certainly creates
jealousy, but jealousy is a secondary thing, so it is not a question of how to get rid of jealousy. It is
more a question of loving without conditions. Love that does not control or posses but honors the
other’s freedom to live their own life.
GOLDEN RULES FOR GETTING RID OF EMOTION
There are some “golden rules” (elaborated on in Tantric Love: Feelings versus Emotions; see
Recommended Books and Resources) to help in processing emotion. The very moment you recognize
that you are emotional—through the solar plexus, the experience of disconnection, or in whatever
other way you recognize your emotion—the first step is to acknowledge it and say aloud to your
partner, “I am emotional.” This verbalization instantly brings a touch of relaxation, because at least
now your partner knows that you know that you are emotional, which takes the other out of the picture
and no longer makes that person responsible for your unhappiness. It is a difficult and challenging
step to take (at first), to admit you are emotional by actually saying so, because the ego will be
justifying and fighting like crazy, trying to blame the other. But until you take yourself back to yourself
and acknowledge the unexpressed past within you, your love life will remain a series of good times
followed by bad times.
In such circumstances, having said the three golden words, “I am emotional,” to your partner as
gracefully as possible, physically leave the room, adding the words, “I need some time to myself and
will return soon.” Close the door gently and go outside or to another room in the house and take some
time alone. (Do not drive off and feign that you are abandoning the relationship in that moment—
accidents happen.) Now is not switch-off time, but the time to switch on and release, to get in touch
with old feelings residing in your system by moving your body. In fact, when emotions get activated
the toxins of feelings gone sour move through a layer of connective tissue in the body, called fascia.
This explains why sometimes at the onset of an emotional attack you will feel the event in your body
very clearly, almost as if a substance with density is swirling through you. (Indeed, fascia does
weave dimensionally through the body and from head to toe about five times, connecting the
superficial layers with the deepest physical layers.)
To get rid of these emotions, you need to use physical movement to help them move out of the body.
Be active in some way, and do whatever you do purposefully; for example, beat a pillow for twenty
minutes, bang on a drum, go for a jog, chop some wood, or dig in the garden. Talking gibberish
(nonsensical words) also helps to clear emotion. It’s important to be physically active and do what
you do with intention and not give in to any inclination to contract and collapse. Surprisingly, when
you return to your partner after a bout of physical release you are likely to experience that the feeling
of disconnection has diminished, you can make eye contact again, and the distancing “wall” is slowly
crumbling to the ground.
If this is not the case, if you feel you are still looking over a half wall, that there’s still some sense
of separation, you likely need an additional round of body movement. This sounds almost too simple,
but it works. If you need two or three hours, or days, to get over the attack of emotion, then take the
time required. As you begin to operate in this way with your emotions, soon the whole process gets
faster—the recognition, the acknowledgment, and the burning up of the past.
Being creative in this way certainly beats the alternative option of dragging the emotions around for
a few days, miserably wondering what has become of love, until eventually, sleepless nights later,
one side breaks down into tears, gives up the fight, and starts to express the feelings lurking behind
the emotions. You have experienced this yourself many times, for sure; the very instant one side gives
up and starts to express inner feelings, the fight is over. We pick up the remaining threads of love and
start again.
You may wonder why it is necessary to separate physically in order to deal with emotions. One of
the telltale traits of emotion is that it enjoys discussion and argument, each one trying to convince the
other why he or she is right. Emotion is full of ego. If you do stay in each other’s presence when
emotionally activated, it is really best if you can speak only about yourself and say, “I feel . . .” This
is the most direct way to step out of emotion, by expressing and releasing your deep, hidden feelings.
Bring the congestion of emotions from the solar plexus—where it is likely to have formed a knot—up
to the heart, and get into your inner feelings for real. Do not make your partner responsible for
creating unhappiness in you. Reach behind the emotion and find what is truly happening inside of you,
the old buried hurts that have nothing to do with this individual in front of you. She has only been a
trigger.
Even if this person is in some way responsible for some of the hurts you carry from the past, the
