Male Sexual issues

By Peter Pendelbury Reprinted with kind permission of: Keith Jeffreys the Editor of the SMERI Mail.

It’s 7.30 a.m. and I am standing in the bathroom of Nambour General’s birthsuite munching on a muffin. A smile crosses my face, this must look really silly, here I am selfishly fulfilling my need for food while my wife with terror in her eyes is experiencing unknown womanly pain as a contraction grips her body’s internal energy forces. Me, feeling useless. I am here to support her through the birth of our second child. The labour appeared to be similar to the first. Days of, on again off again, early labour. I knew what lay ahead. How could a bloke support his wife if he was hungry? An hour later her waters broke. Although I could of gone another muffin, being absorbed in the excitement and intensity of the next two hours blocked my hunger.

It is believed by some authors that men, in awe of womanly powers to gestate and give birth to their young, will try to emulate such powers in many other forms. Yet it cannot be equalled. Forbidden until recent times to witness such a phenomena men could only guess what really went on in there as they paced the halls or staying at work or in bed. It was / is “Women’s business”. “It’s hard work Dear you wouldn’t know how hard it is”. The proud father would eagerly go and do his “Men’ business”. “It’s hard work Love you wouldn’t know how hard I work”.

Yet times have changed and thankfully men are now regarded as essential accessories in pain relieving and emotional support, there to catch the baby as it enters the world and into the supporting arms and hairy chest of the masculine. Some men may see the full power and potential of their women and quickly feel defeated. No way can they accomplish such a task. The woman has the real power it seems. Maybe this might be attributed to the fact that men are feeling repressed in some way, the lovable dope, nice bloke but lets the missus walk all over him.

For me I feel that it is extremely vital to bond with your birthing woman, to share the power. Hopefully you bonded at the conception and many times before and after. You only get one chance here, make the most of it. Midwife’s, doctor’s and nurse’s expertise can be vital for the lives of the woman and child and can be very supportive and reassuring, yet they may not fully understand how your partner may be feeling or what she wants from the birth. Forget the blood, sweat and tears and be there with her. The pain and the blue colour of squeezed hands is a small price to pay.

The illustrious vision of woman and child bonded as one at the instance of birth may not be reality if she is exhausted or undergoing surgery. The baby is yours mate, don’t let any other person have him / her, unless they have to. Researchers say that men present at the birth make more supportive fathers and are likely to be more involved with the child’s upbringing. I have seen modern fathers who are moved deeply by the presence at a birth but sadly neglect EMOTIONAL support and development of their young.

It’s all a new ball game, no preparation, little support, no idea what is needed or what can be done. Only the imprinted defeating messages we received from our mothers, fathers, (if they were present) and old values and perceived roles to follow. As new parents, two years ago we stumbled upon a book that changed our lives, it gave us freedom to explore ourselves and work toward more effective ways of dealing with our children and ourselves, helping us to understand where our parents unintentionally let us down emotionally and helped us to break the cycle of generations for beneficial change.

I listen and hear the hurt and anger from people of all ages whose greatest fulfilment of being of being close to their parents and / or children has not been realised. It’s a great shame.

Steve and Shaaron Biddulph’s library of books, Secrets / More Secrets of Happy Children, Making of Love, Manhood and many other parenting books that may sometimes vary but the basis is pretty much the same. In this “Information Age” are there any reasons for not KNOWING any different?

So you are Unemployed, looking for that job that hundreds of others are competing for. Had about sixty to a Hundred knock backs and getting to the stage where your getting desperate, depressed and pissed off with the world.

Are you saying to yourself , If I only had a job every thing would be right with the world !! All the fights with the missus will stop, we’ll have the extra money needed for Christmas, I won’t be so depressed and I won’t be so short tempered with the kids. Will having a job really solve all the problems, maybe financial, but not everything.

Ask yourself this question, why did you work all those long hours when you didn’t need the money? Why did you spend all that time at the pub with your work mates? why then do we work our self to death and never really achieve anything much in our life. What I mean by anything is ” something for ourself ” and that something is self fulfilment. We end up learning about our selected trade inside and out, but we never learn any thing about ourselves? I have discovered over the last couple of years that you don’t need a fancy car or a boat to find that happiness we are all ways searching for. I don’t need that big bank account, I don’t need the twelve hours a day working for a faceless Corporation, and getting little or no respect from a boss that couldn’t care if you live or die.

I am not saying work is not important to us, but I will say, its not the path to true happiness and satisfaction. Since I have been unemployed for over twelve months I have worked out there is more important things to life than a career. I have to also point out that we need a job that we are happy doing and I also recognise the importance of being employed. Employment will give you that part of self worth that is needed, it allows you to feel, that you are a valid part of the community.

What I find hard to digest is the longer you are unemployed the lower your self esteem becomes and the harder it is to motivate yourself. You get to the stage where you couldn’t really give a stuff if you where employed or not and I have gone through this stage and it’s not very nice. After working for years and putting all my energy into my career and not bothering about any thing else, I found myself emotionally stuffed and lost all my self esteem in one swift move once the job wasn’t there any more. I found that my world was gone, I had nothing, my sense of security was gone, I stopped being a somebody and became a number at social security.

After applying for countless jobs and doing about three Job Clubs and not getting anywhere, I lost faith in Life, The Universe, and Everything. However their is a benefit to being long term unemployed and that is that you get to have all this time on your hands. So what do you do when you suddenly have all this time on your hands? Well you get to thinking where you have gone wrong in life, and why are you in this predicament. You end up searching your soul, your inner self. You start discovering yourself, a vital part of your life that was missing when you where working those long hours. You start addressing problems that should have been sorted out ten years ago, but you choose to ignore them due to it being to hard or you were too busy at work. The major thing you discover is that you have a wife and kids that you forgot about. You get to see them during the weekdays and on the weekends. You discover that your wife is an intelligent human being. You have time to realise that y ou are a person with feelings and longings. Most importantly you are made to face these feelings and fears, like it or not. You get to see your partner on a day to day basis more than you ever did, and all those problems you put aside, now comes to the surface and you have to deal with them. You find you can no longer run and hide any more.

The beauty, is that you recognise your strengths and weaknesses, you have the chance to plan your life better. You learn not to take life so seriously, you learn how to play again with the kids you forgot. What the most important thing is, you discover the beauty of the world we live in. You have time to appreciate people for what they are. I also discovered how to relax for the first time in my life and be happy with what I have got.

Just think your talents will be needed one day or you might have to re-learn new skills to get a job. I have come to the conclusion that my skills are not required in the area that I am living now, so I have to restart from scratch and believe me, it wasn’t an easy decision to make but it had to be made. I have started putting into place a way to re learn a new trade. With me being 33 It won’t be easy . At the end of the day I believe that I will be right and every thing will come together. The most important lesson that I have learnt is to have faith in life. I still have a lot of problems to deal with, but as they say “one at time” . We as a society need to change attitudes towards the role of a man in a family. The man has responsibilities, but not the one’s society expects, the first responsibility is to himself. He has to be happy and healthy person to be a valid part of a family. If he’s depressed, stressed and feels that he is not worthy of his partner’s love, due to him not being able to provi de, he will in the long run destroy the family unit. Society needs to recognise that he is not only good as a bread winner and providing for the family only. He has a responsibility to himself, his partner and the kids. The old scenario of him being the head of the family is garbage, however his role is very important. He is a vital member of a team, a team of two people, who works together every day. Men need to get in touch with the family again, not just their career. A man needs to be responsible along with his partner in the bringing up and the development of his children.

Most importantly he needs to be able to communicate with his partner, in every day issues, such as, sexual matters, financial matters, education, dreams and goals or any other issues that may pop up. In today’s world communication is becoming one of the most important factors in society. Be it in the or the work place, or in a relationship. If a man can’t communicate on all levels, he will end up being stagnated in life and not able to move on to the next stage.

People I believe, have to realise that domination, and control of others doesn’t work, drinking to avoid problems doesn’t work, working long hours to provide doesn’t work. Having a seven bedroom house in a suburb won’t bring happiness, neither will having that BMW parked in the driveway. Happiness is what you make of it. As I wise person once said “If you are not happy with little, how can you expect happiness with possessions”. I am not saying that it is wrong to want to succeed in life and having a longing to want to improve your standard of life. You first need to be happy inside, you need to feel comfortable with yourself. You can not hide your feelings and fears, you need to face them on a daily basis and improve the quality of life. I found it was impossible to meet my dreams and goals and the reasons was :- because I didn’t know myself, didn’t have faith in my abilities, I didn’t have enough self esteem to meet the challenges I put on myself.

So what I would suggest is to learn to relax and get to know yourself. Express your feelings and explain your fears to your partner. Communicate on equal terms and respect each other as a person. I believe once you find who you are, you will discover self confidence and with this new self confidence it will come out in those interviews and you will win that job. So relax and don’t stress so much.
MUNCHING ON A MUFFIN

A few years ago I heard a man talking on radio about a distressing experience he had suffered. After it, he confessed, he had cried, which he regretted as he thought it a sign of weakness. What a contrast then to read (Mercury newspaper, October 23) that Sergeant John Shea had “unashamedly shed a tear” after successfully defusing the harrowing situation in Launceston when he and three police colleagues were shot. Crying, shaking, sweating, raging - in whatever the body needs to do - are natural and necessary parts of recovering from such an ideal. Unfortunately, these reactions are usually denied us by well - meaning “helpers” who urge us to “keep a stiff upper lip”, “have a drink (or other drug) to settle your nerves” or even “oh come on, you should be over it by now”. Even less helpful are the admonitions to boys “don’t be a sissy” or the even more horrifying “stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”.

The results of such suppression of emotions are complex and far reaching. People in the grip of a stressful situation lose the ability to think clearly. How often do you hear or see someone “paralysed by fear” or someone so angry that rational thought is impossible? That wonderful computer the brain is unable to handle the incoming information and file it properly in the memory; instead it is as if some of the “circuits” are “blanked out”. If the person is then denied the chance to talk through that event to a supportive listener and to feel and express the emotions involved then those circuits remain blanked out. This has two further consequences:

1. Similar situations will give rise to the same (panic?) reactions despite any differences in the new situation.
2. More and more “circuits” will become ” blanked out” leading to an increasing loss of ability to think clearly.

As a male who was sneered at for showing emotions when young (”cry-baby”) I can vouch for the damage done by societal attitudes.

When anger is perceived as the most acceptable emotion for males is it any wonder that incidents such as that in Launceston take place? I wish Sergeant Shea and his colleagues a full and speedy recovery from their trauma and congratulate them on their courage and clear thinking in resolving a very dangerous incident.