Monogamy is not easy.

It is confusing a pain in the ass, yet it always pops into our minds, even when we don’t want it to.

Today marks 4 years I have been completely monogamous in my life. To me that’s hard to believe. For 13 years prior to that I had never been monogamous. I don’t think monogamy is any better than any other form of relationships, it is just where I am at in my life.  It’s all good, however you find happiness and expression in sex and relationships is good enough. Stop arguing about it.

Why I am answering these questions 
Today a member of one of our groups posted 4 questions about relationships that he thought were important. Like myself he has lived an amazing sexual life and literally any variant of relationships he could imagine. The questions were posted on a private group.  When you have a private men’s group the answers and discussions get pretty amazing.  This topic is no exception.

Now I can’t let you on that message board, but I can go over the questions and my answers. Hopefully this encourages you to do the same. It can be an amazing thing when men get honest about their lives, build a dialog about it and start living in truth and stop chasing facades.

Join the Discussion –
Since publishing this post we have also posted these questions on a bit more of a public message board.  Our Austin Men’s Development Group.  You can chime in there as well as find all sorts of other resources for community and personal excellence.
You will have to be approved for the group.  2 requirements 1) You need to be a man 2) You have to be dedicated towards personal excellence.
CLICK HERE 

Because I have been in a monogamous relationship for 4 years and and also answer questions about sex daily I often tell people to watch this video.  I made it after one of my dating coach friends went on a rant to me about how pointless monogamy is.  He hasn’t been successful much in relationships.  When you don’t get success in areas it can be easy to cast blame and not see reality for what it is.  Hopefully this video clears a lot up.
[x_video_embed no_container=”true”] [/x_video_embed]

The Questions –

How do you maintain and grow your sexual life in a monogamous relationship?

My Answer –
For me that was easy at first and tough down the road. I have been in my current relationships for 4 years to the day. On Oct 6th Maria and I started our committed relationship. I wanted a committed relationships for a few reasons. I had literally lived every relationship you could imagine for the previous 6 years of my life. For 6 straight years that is all I did.  There is nothing wrong with open relationships or whatever else, but for me the excess started to be unnecessary to such a simple thing as love, companionship and sex.

To put is simply, if we were to be in our ‘nature of sex’ of course monogamy wouldn’t exist, but neither would the need to push yourself sexually to fit some template of ‘how you’re supposed to be as a man/woman’.  What is interesting about sex, love and relationships, is if you have more of them you realize how common the feeling of monogamy comes up.  It just doesn’t stay.

In our first year sex was totally fulfilling, for the first 18 months in fact. For the first time in my life, and literally hundreds of women, I had a relationship with a woman that was more sexually driven than me. We literally had sex 2-5 times a day, everyday. We spent no nights apart for the first 18 months with the exception of me traveling to Australia for 2 weeks early in our relationship.  Aside from that trip, every night we were together.  Every night and day we had sex, and a lot of it.

I can remember multiple times during this period when I had opportunities to have sex with other women and it just didn’t make sense to me.  These were women I would meet, or women I had previously dated.  When you’re in a relationship and are public about it all sorts of girls come out of the woodwork.  It’s weird how that happens but it happens.

There are 2 things that would happen here.

First – There was a part of me that didn’t believe I could be monogamous.  I hadn’t been that way in years and I had tried many times as well.  This was perhaps the biggest issue.   Any behavioral change is the hardest thing to accomplish because it is never fast.  I took this day by day.

Second – Although I was more than sexually satisfied sex is so much more than just the satisfaction of the orgasm.  I knew what it was like to have sex with all different body types of women, different personalities of women.  I knew how amazing it was to see a woman’s absolute unique beauty that was only for me in that moment.  It is one of the most beautiful things in the world.  Knowing you can get that and you’re not going to pursue it, as you did for 6 years straight to the point of an excessive lifestyle, is more than difficult.  You feel like you’re letting beauty, sex and all things man pass you by.  It also doesn’t help when you have a whole community of culture of men who have little to no sexual experience constantly telling you how ‘pointless’ relationships are.  This is one of the reasons I am publishing my answers, because the dialog of experienced men does not happen enough.

There were times when I would kick myself for not sleeping with some of the girls who I had opportunities with.  Especially the ones who were small and petite. Maria is  6 feet tall and it had been a while since I had slept with a girl that was shorter than me.

I can still get that urge, but it is less of a big deal when we first started dating.

I Was Done With It
You have got to realize when I hear these arguments from men talking about how you need to have sex all the time because its your nature, or whatever they say, I have done that.  I have lived that to the extreme.  I have literally had more sex, more sexual variations, lived every type of sexual relationships I could imagine to excess. I can literally tell you, I know what I want because I have experienced it all.
Like I said no type of relationship is wrong, but if you’re not doing it for you it is wrong.  When I see men fight the urge to be monogamous, I want to tell them, fighting being monogamous because ‘it is bad’ is just as bad as being monogamous because ‘it is good’.  You can’t live your sex life by someone else’s rules.

Honeymoon is Over
After a year and a half Maria became pregnant. This changed some things sexually. Women definitely want sex when they are pregnant but things changed. For us we slowed down.  I am not sure if this was because of my testosterone lowering during the pregnancy but I didn’t have the same drive. Before the pregnancy Maria and I had so much time on our hands for each other and now our energies slowly dwindled.

Once our son was born it was like a switch happened in our lives, less sex, less attention towards me and all towards the baby. I remember Maria forcing me to have sex one night saying, “We are parents, we don’t get to choose when to have sex”. Once Esteban was born I instantly had more energy. My sex drive was back and we were back at it when we could.  It was starting to get different though.  Early on we were free, we could experience the world together and have sex the whole time (and we did).  Now we were parents and sex was something we found time for, and where not as naturally inspired as we used to be.

Parenthood Continues 

9 Months later Maria was pregnant again. We couldn’t believe it. Once again the same thing happened. My drive went way down. This was tough for so many reasons.  Sexually I had less drive, Maria had high demand for sex.   Just 9 months before she was pregnant for 9 months and now she was again. Once our next son was born my drive went back up, but it have been 18 of her being of her being pregnant and a lot of stress in our lives. 

There was a lot of frustration.

Some Unexpected Clarity
This is one of the best things to look back on in writing this, but the worst things to live through.  2 sexually driven people out of sync with stress in our lives.  It is easy to screw that up.  Once again more people should talk about this rather than react to it.  For 18 months Maria and I had a lot of pressure sexually on our relationship.  I am thankful for the men’s groups I am in to be able to think clearly in this.  What a great trait I would have never learned by just leaving or finding sexual satisfaction elsewhere.   You really need to bounce things off people with more experience than you and guys who can understand where you’re at.  There are good times to leave a relationship and move on, and there are good times to stay.  When you’re confused and stressed you can’t make that decision clearly and so many of us do.

Re-exploring Sex

We started having sex more and exploring different types of relationships. I didn’t really need to have sex with anyone else and perhaps it is my age, or my experience, I really didn’t care to sleep with someone else.  Every once in a while I might fantasize about it, but it was not a feeling or fantasy that lasted. We started talking about swinging. I had done this a lot in the past and people talk about how great this is, but hardly anyone tells you how hard this can be to stay together. Our priority was definitely to stay together first. Our experimentation didn’t go far outside our own bedroom.   When experimenting in different types of relationships it great at first but like all things that rely on highs, they get old. It is like you’re having sex for the fantasy and not for the person you’re with. I had been here many times in relationships and didn’t want to be there again.  You don’t need to be ‘cool’ or have excess to get all the benefits of sex, love and relationships.  Most guys do not get that.

Now we are having sex at a pace that is nothing like when we started but it is one that is so different. It can be very intimate, sometimes we get caught up in fantasy, sometimes aggressive, but most importantly it is satisfying.

Sex Changes, Let it

You know to truly answer the question, sex just changes. For me I really wanted to value the commitment here and stay with it. At first it was hard, but we were having so much sex I was satisfied physically. But now it isn’t an issue. I am sure that will change. I am sure there will be a time when both of us want something different, but do we hold on to what we have, or do we let go. Right now we are sexually satisfied and are holding on to it and the relationships is the most important thing to maintain.

A Quick Note
The other night Maria went away for the weekend with the kids while I taught a workshop.  We were away for 4 days.  When she got back she was exhausted and so was I.  We were both very horny.  The kids were asleep and I wanted to have sex with her like I used to when we first started.  Sex for hours, and everything going into it.  Lately we haven’t been having sex that way and a part of me wanted to see if I could do it.  Right now we connect so hard I orgasm in a short period of time.  I wanted to see if I could go for hour but also to satisfy her in that way that only hard and long sex can do.
Well, I proved to myself that I could, but she stopped me.  Something felt off for her.  She said she just wanted me to cum and then go to sleep.  I don’t want to go down that road, because I knew she was dissatisfied.   We stopped, no orgasm and went to sleep.

This is a terrible feeling to go to sleep to, but to me it is better than having a poor connection, finishing and calling it good.  Like all men, my head ran and I am sure her head was running the whole time we were having sex.   Finally I went to sleep.   Thankfully the tension didn’t last too long, and sometimes it does last.  It can last for weeks.   This time a few hours later we woke up and the kids were still asleep and then had sex in our plain old way.  It was good and we talked about what went wrong when we were having sex before.  It was a very good night.

 

How do you not get trapped in the mundane and monotonous?

My Answer –
Experimentation. I can’t tell you in all the relationships I have had that sleeping with other people helped this. Men never talk about this, and women don’t either. They talk about it under the contexts of shame, guilt or doing something wrong.  You can still think it is wrong, but what if you saved the moral judgment for another discussion?
Now I have not done this in 4 years but, literally for 6 years this is all I did, with a lot of partners. So I guess it is not monogamy. I would have a relationships that was committed or open and regardless I would hook up with someone for the night and the very next day I was primed, back in love with my girlfriend and so invigorated to have sex with her again. I usually got bored sexually with someone after 2 months of commitment,sometimes sooner.
When I talk with women about this, they say the same thing, but there is always so much regret about it. When we would take regret  out of the equation, all they’d talk about is how it totally invigorated their sex life. When people leave their partners it is because of the regret and shame. They think they are doing something wrong, so they build up more and more contempt for their partner and it becomes easy to leave. Resentment can be easily fueled in a relationship…you’re so close, all you have to do is look for a reason and you’re there.

Light Experimentation

For the last 4 years I haven’t done this. We have relied on at first lots of sex and as the relationships when on some experiment in entertaining the idea of sleeping with other people. Maria didn’t want me sleeping with anyone else. I told her it was alright if she did but I wanted to know about it and if anything got out of hand it had to stop. She tried it for a bit, but it gets too complex. It definitely got us very sexual again.  The only problem is a big spike in sexual activity that is based on novelty or fantasy needs to turn back into a simple and regular connection.  If it doesn’t move into just plain old sex, then you will start relying on deeper extremes to carry maintain those sexual spikes.  The relationship will move further and further away from you.  Novelty is not a sex life, at some point you need to connect fully just by being yourselves.

 Porn & Masturbation

So many people hate on porn but clearly I have some different ideas.  In fact there is a whole article and webinar on it.  In a few weeks I am also giving a speech on this as well.  If you have a porn problem or blame porn for ruining your life, read this and watch this.
In my relationship with Maria I didn’t watch porn for months.  I had watched it all the time prior to being with her.  I am a sex addict, through and through.  I used to go on porn benders for days.  I also used to go on sex benders for days.  In my breaking from that addiction I watched porn the whole time.  That may not be what other people should do, but what I realized was porn was only a small part of that problem.  Sex was good, masturbation was good and self exploration of sex and all the fantasies that came with it was good.  How I used it was the problem.  That is addiction and that is what needs to be treated.  Blaming something does nothing for addicts.

When our sex lives dried up, I watched a lot of porn and it was awesome.  I don’t have any shame over this or disillusions of how porn will destroy me, so I let myself go.  I let myself feel and watch things that only come out when my sexual brain awakens.  Maria also watch porn and masturbates when we are out of sync, or just because she wants to.

Both of us feel disappointed when we find out the other watched porn.  We both think, in slightly different ways, that the other didn’t want us and had sex with something else.  We want to claim the other’s orgasm.  But neither of us has stigmas about porn and masturbation so this doesn’t last.  We also eventually come back to sex.  When we were in long slumps this was a lot harder to stomach.  I think the longest we have gone without sex is 1 week, and that is a lot for us.  I am sure in the future we will break that record, unfortunately.  In those times we know we are watching porn and it can be hurtful, but like I said, we always come back.  When dealing with emotionally charged situations in relationships if you react to them, you’re forcing them to be bigger deals than they actually are.  That causes a lot of damage.  Hold your pen and tongue and ride it out.

Porn and Masturbation keep me sane and I love it.  If you are having a problem with porn and masturbation I would say Read this and Watch this, and join our Men’s Group and ask about it.   You can live a good life.

How do you balance monogamy with the fact that you can have any woman you want?

My Answer –
This was hard at first and can be hard now. But at first it was hard because I didn’t believe I could do it. I thought it was impossible. Now I have less of that. I took it day by day and as the days added up I would santo myself, ‘Wow, for 6 months I have only been with one woman, I have never done that before’. As time went on, the time became more.  When I was about 2 and a half years into it I really didn’t think about it anymore, but 2 and a half years is a long time to have that doubt, and urge sitting in you.   Day by day is how behavioral change works, and you need a support group for this.

There was another issue. I have had sex with all sorts of women. Different bodies, different breasts, different pussies, different faces. I truly know the joy of seeing and feeling that diversity. That can be hard. But literally for every type of body, face, pussy, pair of tits and so on, I have had plenty of experience with. I mean I have had excess. There are those rare women though, some who have that one of a kind body, that one of a kind pussy that I have had, and I know how rare they are. But it doesn’t bother me so much now. What would I be fucking with? I have already fucked that. Maybe I haven’t had sex with 10 women 10 times like that, but I have had it. It is one thing pursuing an experience you have never had, it is another to chase the past always thinking it was better. 

Nothing has ever been better than what I have now.

How do you transition from having multiple women in your life to having only one?

My Answer –
When I met Maria I was sexually active with 3 women. One was young and 19 and had all the benefits of a 19 year old – great body, lots of fun, but she also had the drawbacks too. She was inexperienced with sex and we were getting there. We had only known each other for about a month. She was easy to let go of.

Another was a girl who was super cool, we had great sex and was so much fun to be around. But for me I didn’t want a relationship with her and she did. We started having sex under the pretense that we weren’t going to be serious, but the more you have sex the more impossible that becomes. We had actually stopped being active just before I met Maria.

The third was a girl that lived in another city. We had dated for 3 months, had amazing sex, she had a lot of great things about her. At the time I was not looking for a relationship in the least but she definitely made me think about it. This is one of those things where distance between you builds you closer. Because I only saw her at certain times followed by a week or 2 of not seeing her, the sex was always good, and we made sure to have fun.

But here’s the thing, I was pretty burnt on just sleeping with women. For me to find a sexual partner is not hard.  I was also burnt on shitty relationships. As soon as I went on my first date with Maria and we had sex I stopped talking to all of them. There was no reason to. I remember the 19 year old girl messaged me out of the blue one day and gave me a booty call.  She was a small girl too with a great body.  I didn’t’ give a shit, I had met a woman who was the best and I was going to give her the open door to be the best. That was Maria. I did not need anything else to question it. I remember when all 3 of the girls found out I was with Maria, they all reacted in different ways.

The 19 year old, just moved on, no big deal. I was just a guy that could introduce her to good sex. The girl who wanted more was hurt, and I just stopped talking to her.  Not to be mean, but because there was no reason to cause anymore pain. She was a good person and I did care about her.  Distance can be a good thing, rather than dragging something out.  The girl who lived in another city actually got jealous and blocked me from everything after asking me about it. The funny thing about that is she never showed affection for me on a deep level when we were dating. When she found out I was committed to someone she was like, ‘Why didn’t you do that with me?’…
You snooze you lose. But man I am glad we never went any further because I wound’t have met the greatest woman in my life.

I really think about that often. 
‘Wow, if I hadn’t had this terrible thing happen (there’s a lot of them), I would have never met Maria, or been in the place to have the relationship I have with her. It was so worth it.’

 


I hope this helps.

I wish more men were honest about how they have relationships. We all fall in love. It isn’t a bad thing. We all go through bad break ups and they have their purpose. Your sex life and social life shouldn’t be tied to a fear or an emergency button you’re always pressing. It should simply be a great experience that will teach you for your whole life.

To me that’s hard to believe. For 13 years prior to that I had never been monogamous. I had every single relationship under the sun that I desired and I am grateful for it all. In fact I do not know many other human beings that have had as much experience with sex, relationships as me.

Unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation on relationships especially online. Whether that is comes from relationship experts, the last TED Talk you watched or some dating coach who is giving you the ‘evolutionary breakdown of sex’, from my experience it is probably wrong. It generally makes sense, but it isn’t how life actually plays out.

I am writing this as a guide that could help men see the truth of what really happens when you engage with the opposite sex, make the right choices about your relationships and live a healthy sexual life.

This is based on my life, working with 1000’s of men in terms of relationships and sex, as well as my own experiences.

I am also inspired to write this because today (of all days) on one of our private boards an experienced alumni who’s lived an extremely full sexual life posed a few questions about relationships.

And most of all today marks 4 years to the day I chose to be with one woman.  So much of my life has gotten better.  It may not last forever, but who cares…try falling in love and seeing where it takes you, because one thing is for certain you ain’t taking it anywhere.

As I sat down to write out the answers I decided to make it a blog post…I mean why not?