Men and Intimacy

In our series on men and intimacy, Adam Nisenson, LAMFT, CSAT, EMDR, writes about the complex issues facing many of our male clients today. With changing roles in society comes a lot of positive cultural changes, as people are able to choose for the first time, perhaps in the history of the world the role they will play, whether to have a career or whether to play an active emotional role in their children’s life. This gives adult women and men many options they didn’t have before.

First Generations with Certain Choices

While you or your parents might be the first generation that had the choice about who you partnered with, whether to get divorced, whether to remarry, both husband and wife will work in careers, raising kids, many living in LGBT family–A whole new set of challenges are upon us as a modern society. We are wrestling with the consequences of these new set of choices. Although we wouldn’t push back the hand of this progress, there are particular challenges we must face as a consequence.

Men, as a consequence, are struggling to know how to find intimacy in every aspect of their life. 

Men’s Modern Struggles to Find Intimacy

We’ve probably always struggled in this arena. The modern man has some advantages over our ancestors. We are allowed some flexibility in terms of our gender we may not have been afforded in the past. But the Internet, technology, media messages, and the economic pressures both genders find themselves struggling under provide a perfect situation for a lot pornography addiction and sexually compulsive behavior. Whether you’re a man or a woman, an addict or the partner of an addict struggling with betrayal, there’s a lot of challenges for families today trying to staying mentally well and find an ideal sense of intimacy.