Male Menopause and Mid Life Crises
At around the age of 40, we suddenly "grow up" or wake up to a new and glorious self-realization that WE (ourselves) have been living a lie all this time. We have spent the last 40 years trying to do all the things other people EXPECT us to do, and in so doing, have buried our sense of self in the process.
We went to school because our parents and society basically forced us, we found a career and became a money making machine to assuage our egos and prove that we had some worth, we got married because it was the "thing" to do, we had children because we had to roduce some sort of product of our love for each other, and all these things we DID, were all EXPECTED of us if we wanted to conform to societies norm. We assumed we had to do this in order to be accepted, loved and become a worthwhile citizen in our community.
But what happened to our sense of "self" in the process? It got buried, squelched, hidden away, shelved. But at around 40, that "self" seems to rear it's almighty head and says, "Is this all there is?? Is this what I have broken my back for? Is this life what I REALLY want or is it what everyone around me wants me to want??"
The answer to these questions is usually a resounding "NO" and a metamorphosis begins to invade our senses and take over at the helm. Marriages fall apart, men go through male mennopause, women demand a divorce, and all in all, we realize that our life is half over and we still haven't found out what we want to be when we grow up!!
On the spiritual side of things, the sexual energy that is believed to control our sexuality, called Kundalini energy, begins to rise up the spine from our root at around the age of 40. For men, many things happen when this occurs such as heart attacks, accidents in general, and life events that are about to drastically change their thought processes and priorities. Before this age our sexual urges were based in our lower extremities (charkas=energy vortexes) and simply put, sex was more primal and self-serving. Once the kundalini energy rises, it blasts through our upper charkas and opens up a whole new vantage point from which we view ourselves, not just sexually but spiritually as well.
Scores of men who go through a mid-life crisis, go out and buy a corvette and want a juvenile girlfriend, or start cheating on their wife if she hasn't already divorced him and actually, a lot of men around this age suffer from heart attacks, severe back problems, fall off ladders, become diabetic, discover they have high blood pressure or have a serious life changing accident. This is all due to the kundalini energy rising. Once it has risen, and this could take a few years, things start to even out again. Deep personal introspection takes over and mostly in men; he deliverance of true self is a remarkable improvement for them.
For women, this age brings forth new self-realization and opportunities for her to blossom into the personally powerful sexual goddess that has been untapable for most of her adult life. When one starts to even out, all aspects of life begin to fall neatly into place. You have a whole new perspective on EVERYTHING. Things that used to be important, no longer carry the weight they used to and new priorities become your focus. Usually, the kids are grown up enough and out on their own, so you can focus on designing your own life, as you now want it to be. Careers might change, levels of pleasure have shifted, need for sexual nourishment on a higher level of understanding comes into play and most (especially men) decide hands down that they ARE going to get what they need and all the protocol, social demands and things that have stopped them in the past, are simply NOT going to stop them now. At age 40, WE HAVE EARNED THE RIGHT TO LIVE OUR LIFE THE WAY WE WANT TO LIVE IT, FOR US, not for our parents, our teachers, our siblings, our spouses, our bosses, our children, our pets, our clergy, our country, our neighbors, or anyone else who thinks they have a right to tell us how we SHOULD live our lives.
In short, becoming 40 has a HUGE impact on our beingness. We finally come into our own. Higher minded thinking replaces previous selfish, self-serving mind sets because you realize that even though you have been doing for others for so long, you have resented doing it because you thought you had no choice. NOW, you choose to do everything you do, and this brings enormous satisfaction. This is very empowering. Although the process can be incredibly painful, self-actualization brings wholeness, enormous sense of self-worth and the ability to give love on a much more expanded level. Negative emotions like jealousy, possessiveness, deceit; etc can be abolished because when you come into your own knowingness, you do not need outside validation of your self-worth. The competition is over and you don't need to continually prove yourself because you no longer need others to stroke your ego. EGO (reliant on outside sources of stroking) is replaced with self-esteem (reliant on self-love). You know the truth about yourself and no one can alter your knowing. AND, frankly, you don't give a damn how others view you anymore. If perceptions can change with a thought, what good are they to you? What good is it to you when someone says "You're awesome", but when you fall from grace in his or her eyes, they say, "you suck". If their perception of you can change with the wind, truly their perception has NO value. After age 40, we realize that others only perceive us through eyes limited by their experience. How does that translate to our own experience? It doesn't.
Most men over 40 are usually superior lovers. They have learned that pleasing their partner is more satisfying then pleasing themselves. They also realize that if they give, they WILL receive. They KNOW they will get what they want, by giving the woman what she wants. Men care more for fulfilling her needs and find out that their ego is better served, when they are the objects of her pleasure. This is a HUGE difference from younger guys who just want to 'get off' then get off. Sex for men over 40, becomes an event not just an urge to satisfy themselves. They take their time, savoring long sessions of passion, giving selflessly and openly. They value the woman, honor her, and appreciate her in a caring tender way now. They are able to 'make love' using their whole body, mind and spirit in the act, not just their sex organs. Even if all parts don't work as well as they used to, for the most part, the majority of straight men over 40 have learned that making love to a woman makes them feel more manly then any other role they can possibly play in life. Pleasing a woman becomes THE most important aspect of a man's life now. Before, it was pleasing himself while doing what was expected of him.
When a man under 40 asks me if I date younger men and I say "NO," this is the reason. I'll take a man 40+ any day of the week over a young stud that has NO sense of what it REALLY means to pleasure a woman. This is not to say younger men can't be wonderful lovers. It just means that the level of sexual consciousness for a complete and total sensual experience and all that goes with it, is FAR more satisfying after the man has graduated into the higher minded levels of a more spiritual sexuality that he has gained after the kundalini energy has expanded his life.