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LOVE SAFETY
NET
Transcript
of July 27, 2009, program
“What Has Happened to Family”
STEVE: Hi. Welcome to The Love Safety
Net.
KIM: I’m Kim.
STEVE: And I’m Steve.
Today’s show is titled, “What Has Happened
to Family?”
KIM: Yes, in today’s show we want to give
a very clear picture of some of the dangers facing families
today and the importance of healthy family relationships for all
of us.
STEVE: And we will also be talking a bit
more than we have in the past about pornography’s role in family
breakdown.
KIM: Next week, we will continue with this
subject and discuss peer attachment and how that has also played
a major role in the breakdown of family.
STEVE: Yes, we have such high divorce
rates now. But it’s a bit worse than that, isn’t it, Kim.
KIM: Yeah, I think the divorce rates don’t
really show the real depth of the problem because what is
happening is it’s not just that people are divorcing amicably.
The conflict between partners isn’t being resolved and sometimes
lingers on for years after the divorce. This really has a very
major detrimental impact on children.
STEVE: Yeah. And the lack of attachment
in families and the lack of attachment with kids is really bad
in their teenage years. We’ll talk a bit about that too, Kim.
KIM: Mmm. Well this attachment to family
and the health of the family is really, really important.
Sometimes as adults we just see it from an adult perspective.
If a marriage breaks down and have marriage problems, then we
see the “happily ever after” didn’t work for us. We can be so
caught up in our own emotional turmoil and the pain of what we
are going through that we can actually miss what is going on
with the kids. Having that really strong and healthy attachment
to parents, where your parent is actually a friend, it’s someone
you look up to, it’s somebody you trust, it’s somebody you
actually enjoy spending time with is really under siege now.
That is from a lot of influences. There are more and more
distractions with school, with TV, with computers, with
technology distracting kids away from spending time with their
families. But when you add on top of this already those things
that are conflicting for kid’s attention, when you add on top of
that a divorce where the conflict isn’t resolved. Or, as you
say, Steve, as kids go further into being teenagers, when their
boyfriend or girlfriend drops them or they are rejected by
peers.
STEVE: Yeah, that’s a real danger time,
especially for teenage kids.
KIM: It’s very much a danger time, because
this has actually been shown as just about 100% cause of teenage
suicide, is that peer rejection, that happens on top of that
child lacking a really strong and healthy attachment to their
family.
STEVE: I think it’s a good thing to touch
on here, Kim, is what we recommend to people is to really work
on building that attachment within the family so these things
don’t really happen. You know sometimes you think, “Oh, I get
on with that person really well”. You’ve got some friends where
you bounce off people really well.
KIM: It just happens naturally.
STEVE: And that doesn’t always happen in
families. We are all different personality types; the parents
and the children are from different generations. So there are
always those conflicts that are always going to be present. But
we need to just put a little bit of time and energy into those
differences, and work at reaching out and making those
attachments. From there, we have built a lot of our work on
that very basic principle. But there is some work you need to
do in reaching out to people and making attachments.
KIM: Well, if there isn’t a healthy
attachment between the husband and wife in a relationship, how
much harder is it to form a healthy attachment with the kids?
STEVE: Oh, absolutely.
KIM: The benefits of a healthy attachment
are just so many. The kids are going to respect you better; the
kids are going to listen to what you ask them to do.
STEVE: And feel better supported.
KIM: I mean, we could do the whole show on
attachment I guess, really. (laughing) But we’ve got a lot to
get on with here.
STEVE: That’s right. We are talking about
keeping families together. Now something I feel very strong
about is the false idea that feminism is what destroyed family
of the past generation or so. I mean, I really think that’s
ridiculous.
KIM: We hear that all the time, don’t we?
That it’s feminism that was to blame.
STEVE: Yeah, we do. We think that at some
stage during that era when feminism became popular and came to
the forefront of the political scene, that all the sudden we saw
disintegration of the family, which is our topic today. But I
think that’s ridiculous and I’ll tell you why.
Most people don’t have a problem with the
idea of a couple sharing roles and women and men having the same
kind of opportunities within the work force and sharing the
unpaid labor that is around the house. That was the idea that
the main thrust of the feminism movement that we have had in the
Western world.
KIM: Yeah, and that has been achieved. I
mean, do that many people really have a problem with that?
STEVE: Well, I don’t think so. I mean,
does anyone have a problem with women voting?
KIM: Well, I hope not.
STEVE: Well, I think in Australia we
sorted that out about 100 years ago or so. But that’s not the
point. The point was that feminism was almost pinned with the
responsibility of ‘family values’ breaking down.
KIM: I actually hear that all the time,
Steve. I read that all the time and I just sit there and I
scratch my head. Because I wonder why isn’t anyone talking
about the ideas of free love and pornography, which all became
popular at the same time that feminism hit. These are things
that have been proven as obviously so destructive to
families.
STEVE: That’s right. And what about birth
control for that matter?
KIM: Yeah. All at the same time as
feminism came on the scene in a big way. I mean, not that we
are against birth control.
STEVE: No, no. But it did reshape the
way families evolved.
KIM: Yes, it was another element to deal
with all at the same time. I think that’s important
too. I mean, I was a kid through the 70s and I was living in
California then. And it was just an unbelievable time. You
know, feminism was just one of the ingredients in the mix that
people were dealing with in this big change in families.
At the same time, pornography was being
popularized and becoming widely available. Then, as you said,
birth control and a bunch of things that all just came in at
once. It was a lot for families to deal with. There may have
been things like feminism and birth control—which I don’t think
are particularly bad things or really necessarily destructive to
the family—but they seem to get all the attention. People don’t
really seem to be talking about pornography and the idea or free
love.
I mean, I had half brothers and sisters
that were a little bit older than me. They were teenagers.
They were baby boomers—I’m not a baby boomer. And watching them
when I was a child. I was watching them in their teenage years
trying to cope with this idea of free love, and it was just
horrendous. It was absolutely horrendous. For my older half
sisters, they were expected not to be jealous of their
boyfriends playing around. And that just wasn’t realistic.
STEVE: It was a very poor concept. And I
think it came—and I’m stating the obvious here—but it was kind
of a knee jerk reaction to the stifled, puritanical kind of
views we had on family during the 40s, 50s, and even the early
60s. So I guess it was a natural kind of reaction that the
community had.
KIM: And I think the pendulum swung too
far the other way, from my perspective.
STEVE: Yeah, well that’s what we are
trying to convince you of today in this radio show.
KIM: (laughing).
STEVE: That the pendulum did swing too far
the other way and we got too far where the family was chucked in
the trash heap.
I should add, we don’t talk about any of
our ideas about birth control from a religious point of view.
KIM: None of our message is from a
religious perspective. We are not saying these things from a
spiritual or religious perspective. We are saying these from a
sociology and psychology perspective what has actually been
proven to be good for people and what has also been proven to
not be good for people. In the area of pornography, getting
back to that, which is the main topic of our show today—there
was a lot of research studies that were suppressed. I won’t go
into this in a lot of depth. I did a lot of research in this at
one stage and it was very, very frightening doing research at
the number of studies that were suppressed over the years.
There were studies proving, more than once—quite a number of
times—a very direct correlation between child abuse and the
availability of pornography in households. That has continued
to rise now, obviously, with the advent of the Internet, which
has made it freely available.
Now, again, we get back to this situation
where as the attachment in the family starts to disintegrate and
you don’t have healthy attachments between family members, the
kids are the ones that really cop it the hardest.
STEVE: Absolutely.
KIM: And their parents are heartbroken,
trying to figure out what is wrong with the relationship, trying
to get things back on track. But the kids—it really hits them
in a much more in-your-face, real way. This is what these
statistics really show and I just think it’s so criminal that
these studies have been covered up and they have been
suppressed. And that the people haven’t been made aware of the
dangers of this. You know, we just blame everything on
feminism.
STEVE: Yeah, sure. And kids are so
vulnerable; they don’t really have the same choices we do as
adults.
KIM: Mmm.
STEVE: So you really have to come to a
very quick realization if you are in a family in conflict that
the kids are really not going to be able to help fix this. It’s
really up to you. All of the responsibility is with the parents
to sort out their differences. And that has to happen. Nothing
else should happen before this happens. Even if you have
individual problems with your kids, like I do with my kids. You
know, I am often getting rubbed up the wrong way by a certain
child of ours.
KIM: (laughing) Yep. You do okay.
STEVE: We do okay. But that’s the point.
We really want to emphasize here that the parents have really
got to make sure that they are responsible for healing any
conflicts that are existing in the family and will always pop up
from time to time.
KIM: I think it’s important that you
mention that, Steve. Because kids have a way of appearing so
much more confident and so much more streetwise and so much more
cocky and on the ball than they often are. Then you talk to
them when you are close and attached to your kids and you
realize the things they don’t know yet and the things they don’t
understand, and suddenly it’s like—ugh, wow. You get that
realization of how vulnerable they really are. I think a lot of
adults when they don’t have that strong connection with their
kids they don’t see that. They think their kids are okay.
Their kids have got their friends, and the kids have got the TV
and the kids have got this and that. The kids really need a lot
more than that.
STEVE: Absolutely. Okay, let’s get back
to what we were saying initially in this show. Now then,
feminism brought equal opportunity for women and men.
KIM: Yep.
STEVE: And there are still differences
now. Everybody recognizes there are still a lot of
prejudices—in the workplace in particular, and definitely within
domestic households there are still a lot of problems there that
aren’t sorted out.
KIM: And women can still be women and men
can still be men, though.
STEVE: Sure.
KIM: I mean, just because we have more
equal opportunities doesn’t mean that we need to become
androgynous. (laughing)
STEVE: (laughing) Absolutely. We still
have to be who we are. So we have moved forward through the
progression feminism did bring us in terms of opportunity, but
pornography is still a big problem that still exists and it has
flourished under the radar, I guess. It flourished under the
radar during the late 60s and early 70s and has become so
widely available.
KIM: Now it’s just being promoted
shamelessly.
STEVE: Yeah, it’s becoming more and more
normalized as…
KIM: As an industry.
STEVE: Yeah, and we have these expos in
Australia now that come through once a year. And it just shocks
me.
KIM: I didn’t know about that.
STEVE: Yeah, it’s called “Sexpo”. I’m
sure they have them in The States as well.
KIM: But what are your feelings about
this, Steve. I know you feel quite strongly about this and you
have had a very big turnaround in your life about the dangers of
porn. Where do you see the problems with it?
STEVE: Well the very first problem from a
man’s perspective—from my perspective—is it’s really not good
for a man’s self-esteem at all. It’s extremely
unhealthy. On one side, it is sort of pretended to be kind of a
macho thing—a male right if you will—something that men are able
to access and it shouldn’t be a problem.
KIM: Yeah, it’s their right.
STEVE: Yeah, that it’s okay.
KIM: And women are wrong if they feel
upset or jealous about it.
STEVE: Yeah, that’s right. There is that
kind of concept out there, precisely.
On the other side of that, guys really know
that you’re just a wanker. And I’m sorry to use that term,
because I know it can be quite abrupt in certain cultures around
the world, and I’m not sure which part of the world you are
listening from. But in Australia if you call somebody a wanker,
it’s not somebody who is really able to be truthful. It is
somebody who pretends to be better than they are.
KIM: (laughing) And who is really an
idiot.
STEVE: Somebody who is really makes a fool
of themselves. And also it has a connotation with porn too.
KIM: It has a sexual meaning.
STEVE: Yeah, so we won’t go into that too
deep. But I think that’s my take on it.
KIM: Because that never gets resolved.
STEVE: It doesn’t get resolved.
KIM: In a guy’s mind, it’s like does this
make me big and macho, or does this—
STEVE: Make me a wanker. Exactly. It’s
very difficult.
KIM: Yeah, and it sort of goes round and
round then, doesn’t it? Because it can’t be resolved.
STEVE: Absolutely. And the other problem
is, you know, guys know that eating too much sugar you can get
diabetes, drink too much alcohol you get liver failure. But
with porn it’s kind of a substance abuse that nobody is talking
about what kind of medical problems or psychological problems
you will have down the line.
KIM: And relationship problems.
STEVE: Relationship problems, which are
really the serious one, which we are here trying to talk about
on the show.
KIM: Yeah, well it’s just huge, isn’t it?
I mean, there is the issue of imprinting. And from I suppose
more of a academic or sociological point of view. Sexual
imprinting is very real, the sexual experiences we first have in
our lives really imprint on us. It has even been shown quite
clearly that homosexual experiences with somebody who is young
and going through puberty can have a major influence upon that
person and where their sexual preferences go later when they
grow up. Basically, what first turns us on and we find erotic
we tend to keep going back to that. With pornography, this has
some really horrendous implications. When it is so easily
available and it’s just so there for our children while they are
growing up. And when they are going through puberty this
imprinting can cause people to become quite addicted to
pornography and it being what people look for sexually, rather
than them looking for and getting on with real people.
STEVE: Sure.
KIM: As you see when people are younger,
when guys are younger, this may not be as much of a problem.
There is that stereotype of the young single guy just kind of
focusing on his career and isn’t really attached.
STEVE: He isn’t looking to build a family
just yet.
KIM: Yeah, isn’t looking for a steady
girlfriend. And this is all portrayed as sort of macho and
commendable even. But I notice when men start getting to 38,
39, 40, suddenly things just change dramatically. If they
haven’t built a solid attachment with a partner by that stage,
they are really up the creek.
STEVE: Yeah, without a paddle.
KIM: We were helping a friend last week
who is in that situation. He is now in his 40s and hasn’t got a
partner. It can be extremely tragic and a real eye opener that
they didn’t see coming. This real danger of this imprinting and
this addiction where if you keep turning to two-dimensional
people for sex habitually. There is the problem of that
escalating as well.
STEVE: Yeah, there is a confidence issue
with men. I think anyone who becomes addicted to pornography has
a serious confidence problem when it comes to talking—from a
male point of view—with women. They don’t have it. So
pornography allows this sort of escape clause, if you like.
They don’t have to risk anything, feeling low in confidence.
They don’t have to risk any rejection with a real woman. So
over time there is an incremental loss of confidence as he gets
older. Men, when they are in their 40s, they kind of feel like
they are in the top of their game, especially in their career.
A lot of men have children who have grown up. That role of
being daddy has finished. And we have that very important role
of the midlife crisis, which we hear about every day.
KIM: Well, from both sides. From men
whose children have grown up but what I am hearing now—I mean,
in Japan this is an enormous problem—with men who by 40 have
never found an attachment with a partner. They start going, “am
I ever going to have a family and children”.
STEVE: Yeah, and confidence starts
spiraling down quickly then, doesn’t it?
KIM: Yeah, well, if you didn’t have the
confidence to go after a girl you liked when you were 18, how
much easier is it going to be when you are in your 40s?
STEVE: Absolutely.
KIM: I think this is real. I think, as
you say, Steve, that it’s very tragic that the dangers are not
being put forward to men. I think it’s really interesting what
you say about we know with sugar there is a risk of diabetes, we
know with smoking there is a risk of lung cancer, but what you
are putting at risk with pornography, which is just as addictive
is you are putting at risk your whole future hopes and dreams of
being loved for who you are and having a loving family around
you. When guys are in their teens and in their 20s, that may
not seem so important.
STEVE: Well, it seems like a million miles
away or a million years away.
KIM: Yeah, and think there is plenty of
time for that. But the reality of that—and we see it all the
time—is that doesn’t always happen. Particularly if men get
over 50—into their 50s, 60s and 70s they really need that family
around them. They are really lost without that family around
them. And this is one of the things again why healthy family
attachments are so important that you don’t waste your youth
looking for love and affection and gratification in different
areas that you are not building that strong attachment. It is
one of the biggest areas that I have seen against the idea of
free love. That was fine for the baby boomers when they were in
their teens and their 20s. But once that carries over—if you
take that too far and you don’t look at a human’s very real
emotions of jealousy, which is a real warning sign. That’s what
jealousy is for. Jealousy is warning us that our attachments
are in danger, that we are not forming healthy attachments with
the people around us. The ways we may be needing to learn better
ways of attaching and getting better at that. If all of these
things are ignored and we don’t manage to build healthy
attachment with family in those earlier years of our life, the
later years of our life can really be quite a very long winter.
STEVE: Absolutely. So young men can
really be looking to make attachments with their parents, their
siblings, and mentors in the community—even if they are not
quite ready for a family. And that has a lot of merit to it, a
guy not wanting a family right away. And the same for girls.
KIM: Yes.
STEVE: A lot of girls these days don’t
want to get straight into a family. But there is still that
whole principal of attaching to somebody in a healthy way that
is still very important. And it doesn’t have to be to the woman
of your dreams. But there is still that whole principle of your
own healthy attachment with that person. I want to see how this
is going to enable me to grow. Pornography is an attachment
which is the exact opposite of that.
KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: It is leading to a path of personal
disintegration, not to personal growth.
The other thing about porn that I wanted to
mention too is it decreases sexual performance. It may not give
you diabetes and lung cancer, but it certainly does decrease
your performance. The imprinting we talked about is a part of
that. We are not physiologists, we are not neurosurgeons, we
are not neural anatomists.
KIM: We aren’t doctors.
STEVE: No, we’re not doctors. So if you
want to do your own research on that, please go ahead. But
there is a very clear link between poor sexual performance from
a male and his attachment to pornography. It is what he is
expecting from it, it’s how he—you know, the whole mechanics of
having a sexual experience is affected by what is being
imprinted in his mind.
I’ve got teenage boys in the house now.
One thing I really want to work on—and I’m not sure if I’m going
to be able to do this—is I’d love to be able to do a separate
kind of program for teenage boys. Teenage boys and teenage
girls get sex education in school just about pretty much
everywhere these days. But I would love to be able to do a
module on porn education.
KIM: Mmm. Yeah.
STEVE: Educating them on the dangers that
we are talking about on this show and maybe some of the ideas
from the show we can put into that. I think teenagers need to
be taught about this. They need to be shown the inevitable
dangers.
KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: Of becoming a porn addict.
And Kim, we are touching on this, and I
suppose we should mention this now. We get so many people
writing to us about the problems with porn in their
relationship.
KIM: Yeah, well porn and narcissism just
go hand in hand. That’s what we have discovered.
STEVE: Absolutely.
KIM: I was writing to a man—oh a year ago
now—when I used to have the time to write to people and we
weren’t quite so popular. (laughing) And he was dealing with
his wife, who was narcissistic. We had just finished putting
your site up, Steve, which is
www.narcissism.com.au,
that’s Steve’s site. We had just finished putting that up and I
sent him over to that to have a look at it. And he got back to
me and he was really quite stunned that that site was so much
about porn and porn was so much at the center of that site,
because he said yes, his wife did have a big problem with it.
And he actually found it very offensive. She was wanting him to
be involved in watching movies and he just found it very
unhealthy and very distasteful. That was actually one of the
first warning signs that he got about her narcissism that ended
up opening a really big can of worms and it was a big problem.
But he was actually able to help her and got a lot of benefit
out of our material. He was in a community of people where the
men in that community did fortunately have some morals and
understanding about that and were able to help him. He was
actually able to contact the police. The local police knew her
and knew a lot of the problems she had been having. They were
able to form a fairly strong support network around her. That
is the topic for another show, but I think it’s very, very
important. There are a lot of men on our list who have wives
who are the narcissist. The idea that the narcissist is always
the man is just completely wrong. I think in our audience it’s
about 50/50. But because of our early experiences it was the
other way around and it’s not always easy for us to help. I
have a lot of sympathy going out to you guys. I really do
understand what you go through and I know how difficult it can
be to get the police and to get community on your side. And
that can be quite embarrassing to admit to those people that you
need their help.
STEVE: Indeed.
KIM: But men are hurt by domestic violence
as much as women. Men are hurt by emotional abuse just as much
as women. And there is no shame in that.
STEVE: Yeah, that’s right. We really need
to bring these topics out into the open, don’t we? I’m going to
just keep going with—
KIM: Yeah, let’s get back to porn. Sorry,
Steve.
STEVE: It links in perfectly with
narcissism because pornography feeds the fantasized reality and
it encourages narcissism in a way. It’s the biggest
relationship killer.
KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: The fantasy infatuations that a
narcissist tends to have about his own prowess, his own
entitlement, his own past, his past deeds—the fantasy- is a
problem.
KIM: It’s a major part of the disorder.
STEVE: Well, it’s the biggest blind spot.
Pornography is exactly it—it’s exactly what we are talking
about. It’s encouraging a fantasy. It’s moving away from
truth. It’s moving toward shame and guilt. It’s essentially
not allowing a lot of truth to come out. And for guys, they
can’t share their world of porn with their family. So there has
to be—inherent with the pornography addiction—the deceit, the
lies, the cover-ups, the omissions of the truth.
KIM: Yeah. Well, I know that’s where it
came to with you and I. You used to very much defend your right
to be interested in pornography and it was for a while very hard
for me to argue with you about that, about exactly where and why
it was wrong. I remember it got to the point of me saying to
you, “If this is fine and there is nothing wrong with this,
would you like this and this and this person that you know to
know you have this pastime?” And you were just mortified. You
would have been completely embarrassed about those people
knowing. And I said, “If this is okay, why are you embarrassed
about it? If this is so okay, why do you yourself feel
you need to hide this and that you are ashamed of this?” I
think that was the beginning of the crack of dawn or the light
coming on for you.
STEVE: I think it opened the floodgates in
many ways. I knew you would carry through with it.
KIM: (laughing) You mean talking to those
people about it.
STEVE: Sure.
KIM: Well, because I was really concerned
about you. I really was. I could see where you were taking
your own life—let alone us—you just were dragging us down into
the gutter. Sorry, but—
STEVE: No, that’s for sure.
KIM: That is where it was going.
STEVE: It is good that we mention that to
everybody who is listening because we are not talking about
these things like we are gurus and we know all the answers. We
are talking about this because we came from a very, very bad
state of affairs within our marriage.
KIM: A dysfunctional marriage.
STEVE: It was terrible. And I was
completely addicted to pornography—attached to pornography. I
had a real attachment there and like you say, Kim, I was
defending it. You know, “I should be able to do this. What is
your problem?”
KIM: I remember you nearly putting your
fist through one of the cupboard doors saying that you loved
porn and nearly slammed a hole through one of the cupboard doors
when you were having a fight with me.
STEVE: That’s not really very healthy….
KIM: Boy, you fell a long way.
STEVE: Not real healthy behavior.
KIM: But that was the thing. And I think
the other turning point for you was seeing how much rage it
fueled in you. You know, there was all this rage it fueled in
you that I started making you aware of as well. I started
saying, well, let’s just leave me out of this and why don’t you
just start noticing how this affects you.
STEVE: Sure.
KIM: How this pastime is affecting you.
And I remember you being really quite stunned by that when you
actually started seeing this. Of course, you would always blame
things on me having my period or it was just this, that, or the
other. And another time I said how different you treat
me at different times of the month, having nothing to do
with me. But that’s the thing, I started sort of putting that
back on you a little bit and saying look, I’m not the only one
going through cycles here. Your behavior is going through
cycles and you are allowing yourself these interests and
preoccupations that really do change you, that really do
have an impact on your happiness. Because really I could see
from a distance it was just making you extremely unhappy.
STEVE: Absolutely. I want to mention what
I got from what you just said then, Kim. That is that because I
wasn’t on any sort of path to personal growth then, I was really
attached to pornography, I was on a path to personal
disintegration—I wasn’t seeing myself as having a problem. And
the reason why I wasn’t seeing myself as having any problem is
because I would conveniently hang everything on you.
KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: And your menstrual cycle, and all
of the things that “you did that, that’s not me”.
KIM: “I don’t have to look at myself.”
STEVE: Yeah. I don’t have to look at
myself, I wash my hands of this. You know, “you got cranky
first!”
KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: Or however the story went. But
because I was on a path to personal disintegration with my
attachment to porn is the only reason I wasn’t seeing my role in
it. Because I wasn’t looking for growth. Since I have changed
all of that, I can stop this and pull myself up and start
saying, “Okay, well maybe that is me.” And years of bad
programming starts to come out. years of the wrong way of
thinking. Imprinting of not just sexual imprinting, but
imprinting of “Oh, well, Kim should just be able to do that for
me. Kim should be able to take care of this. I should be able
to just drop everything for the next two days and Kim will look
after things.”
KIM: “Yeah, that’s what she’s there for.”
STEVE: Yeah, and if she can’t, she’s not a
good mum.
KIM: (laughing)
STEVE: So it altered my thinking in a way
that would not allow me to grow.
KIM: Yep.
STEVE: Like you said before, Kim, the
rage. And the sense of inadequacy that I felt too. I wasn’t
growing. On a conscious level, I consider myself a reasonably
intelligent person. So I knew deep down that I wasn’t on a path
to growth. I wasn’t living as the best person I can be.
KIM: From my perspective and from how I
see it—and I tend to just say it like it is. I mean, for the
guys (with porn) you tend to have all of these beautiful women
that are just waved in front of you and you are being deluded
into this idea that you can have them….
STEVE: And that they want you.
KIM: And that they want you. And that
they are available. But then when the fantasy is over, I mean
you are just there alone. You’re just there by yourself. There
must be a realization that you never even got close to that
women. She is never even going to look at you. (laughing)
Realistically. I mean, that must be really a pretty hard
hitting sort of come down.
STEVE: Oh, for sure.
KIM: And really sort of negatively impact
a guy’s self-esteem. And then it’s like—well, what now. I’ll
just go and pay out on my family. You know, take that sense of
inadequacy that this has given me and take it out on somebody
else.
STEVE: For sure, I think after using porn
men feel deflated on many levels. And I think men’s
hormones—and again I’m not a doctor so I don’t know precisely
what I am talking about here—but I do know that after a
real-life 3D sexual experience with somebody, men’s hormones
kick in pretty much straight away. And it’s really deflating in
a sense, and it’s real loss of energy. Or—I don’t know if it’s
a loss of energy it’s just an increase in a very sleepy, happy
sort of—
KIM: You get your endorphin level up.
STEVE: Yeah, that’s right. Your
endorphins kick in a bit quicker. So there is that kind of
deflated feeling after sex, which is kind of great when you
share it with your woman. You know, it’s fantastic.
KIM: Us girls get upset sometimes with you
falling asleep on us.
STEVE: I wonder why? We’ve got to talk
about that.
KIM: I’ve got some tips on that in
Honey for the Bees. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
STEVE: Yes, please. I think after porn
again there is also that deflated feeling, but then a rushing in
of guilt and shame.
KIM: And then there is nothing. There is
no one there.
STEVE: Yeah, exactly. And no value.
KIM: And I think that’s when the reality
hits. Sex wasn’t reality, and this is just a piece of paper.
STEVE: Yeah, and I’m going to have to hide
it now.
KIM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or this is just a
computer screen or whatever. It’s two-dimensional.
STEVE: It’s two dimensional, it never
happened, it was just embarrassing.
KIM: And I think that sort of also leads
to the escalation that happens with porn as well, that you are
having to go further and further looking for material that will
arouse you because there is nothing satisfying, there is nothing
nurturing, there is nothing in it for your soul. So what was
exciting once doesn’t stay exciting.
STEVE: That’s right.
KIM: You know, it’s not just men but
people can get very caught up in this addiction with the and
that becomes harder and harder. And I know that sex between
married couples is always sort of maligned—that it gets boring
and they say that porn is sort of necessary to keep sex
interesting between people. But I don’t know. I think that if
you work on attachment, intimacy and trust between two people,
the sexual experience becomes more and more fulfilling.
STEVE: It gets better and better. It
really does.
KIM: I mean, it doesn’t necessarily have
to occupy such a central role in your life. Obviously, once
you’ve got kids and you’ve got responsibility in your community
and you’ve got a life and you’ve got goals that you are working
toward. I mean, I certainly wouldn’t want to be as sexed my
whole life as I felt in my late teens and early 20s. I mean it
is a bit of a relief, I think.
STEVE: Yeah, absolutely.
KIM: It’s not so center stage, and it
shouldn’t be, I think, if you’ve got other things in your life.
But the level of intimacy and that soul-level satisfaction that
comes out of sex between two people that are very attached and
do have that level of intimacy is much more satisfying. It
becomes more satisfying and more nurturing every time.
STEVE: It’s an unending source of joy
that does keep getting better and better. It is endless and
boundless, and you can tap into it. So it’s quite the opposite
of porn. Porn just gets narrower and narrower and becomes less
and less fulfilling. I think there is a cone graph there, you
know. An ice cream cone, you know?
KIM: (laughing) Well, I’m glad you feel
that too.
STEVE: Well, we are going to have to wrap
it up, Kim.
KIM: Well, we’ve got a few minutes. So
let’s talk about Honey for the Bees.
STEVE: Yes, please.
KIM: If you are in a situation with
yourself or with your partner that you feel your sexual
development or your attachment isn’t the healthiest and it’s
gone off track somewhere and you are looking to get things
better on track, there is a book of mine that was actually the
first book I wrote, interestingly enough. I won’t go into that
story. It’s called Honey for the Bees, from One Night Stands
to Marriage, Getting Good with Girls, which I think might
put some women off if they are thinking of buying it for their
husbands.
STEVE: Fair enough.
KIM: Because the one night stand theme may
scare you off a bit. But really, you know I talk about that in
the book because I am really to-the-point, aren’t I?
STEVE: That’s right.
KIM: I don’t mince words. I get into what
women need to feel satisfied sexually and with a lot of
misunderstandings that really damage relationships. I don’t know
if women actually understand how big a deal that is for men. I
only understand that because my dad was a doctor his whole
life. And he didn’t have me until he was in his 40s. So I had
an older, wiser father and he had been in private practice all
of his life as a family doctor. He shared a lot with me about
the things that would go wrong in people’s lives and would
damage their relationships. It’s probably where I got a lot of
the wisdom of the things I do know I got from dad in that way.
He was always very clear about that. A lot of men are much more
concerned about these things than women realize. “Oh, my wife
was too easy in the beginning.” And that will really haunt a
guy, and can actually become of a problem as the relationship
continues. There are a lot of these misconceptions that are
tackled in Honey for the Bees, and it’s really written
from the point of view that I’ve done a lot of research with men
from the understanding of the male psyche. Maybe not all women
will go and read the book and understand it. They will go, “why
is she saying this, and why is she saying that”. But you can
tell me, Steve, I don’t know. Most of the men who have read it
just go “wow”.
STEVE: Well, it’s really interesting
because it’s from a female perspective. The book is essentially
written by a women trying to help men get confident about sex.
KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: And that’s really what a lot of men
would want. They would love to have a sister, or a friend, or a
cousin, or someone close.
KIM: Yeah, if you want to learn about
women, you’ve got to learn from another woman, not some sleazy,
creepy guy.
STEVE: Well, there are plenty of sleazy,
creepy guys out there on line on how to pick up women.
KIM: Ugh, and a lot of it is terrifying.
STEVE: It’s very terrifying and tacky, and
would really hurt men. And I think that’s one of the reasons
you wrote it in the beginning, wasn’t it, Kim?
KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: We were reading a lot of these
things—
KIM: And we were just going “yuck”.
STEVE: We’ve got boys who are growing up
and we are really doing this for them a lot as well. If you
have kids, we want to be able to share the great knowledge we
have come across with other people’s work. We want to be able
to bring that to people’s attention.
KIM: And you may not agree with all the
ideas in Honey for the Bees, and that’s fine. I know
there are a lot of different religious beliefs around sex, but
this is just really getting into the level of what builds
healthy attachments in families and what doesn’t. Do young
people and teenagers need some sexual experience? And also just
really saying to the guys that they don’t need to be worried
about a lot of the things they are worried about. And why don’t
need to be worried about it. There is also a lot of information
in there about desensitizing yourself from porn, about the
benefits of working on that, about how to please a woman, about
how to build a better rapport and a more satisfying sex life
with your wife, and really I think by the end of the book the
one night stands aren’t the bit that looks juicy.
STEVE: Well, it’s shown as the junk food.
The more nurturing, nutritious kind of option is a really good
relationship with someone you care deeply about.
KIM: Yeah. So I am proud of Honey for
the Bees. I think I did something that needed doing there
and it wasn’t particularly easy for me because my mum thinks I
am a complete prude. I am the last person to actually want to
talk about sex—I am usually pretty private about it. But when I
have seen so many men suffering and just not getting it, just
being so off the mark. They just don’t get it about what women
really admire and respect in a man. I see guys running around
doing this stuff to try and impress women, and I just sit there
thinking, “oh, man, you are just so off the mark”.
STEVE: But you also have to let these guys
make mistakes sometimes too. That’s all just part of it.
(laughing) But if you do read Kim’s book, Honey for the Bees,
if you are a man you will get a lot of great advice. We do have
to wrap up now, Kim.
We are going to offer this with an audio?
KIM: Yep, and we are going to throw in
“Understanding Love”. This is a special offer for Global Talk
Radio listeners and it will be available on the show page.
STEVE: So just have a look on the page and
I’m sure you will see it. It’s called Honey for the Bees. It
will be a special offer.
KIM: Discounted with a free audio.
STEVE: Thanks everybody for tuning in. And
thanks to Global Talk Radio for making this happen. We really
appreciate it and we will talk to you next week. Bye!
KIM: Bye!
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