For a long time I was a solo man,
My interest in women started young, I had my first girlfriend around 11 and wasn’t shy of physical affection, this led to me losing my virginity at 12. From then on my school years were filled with fling after fling, usually with women a few years older than me who thought I was handsome and precocious, something worth playing with. This, combined with my own trauma and over theorized & under developed spiritual beliefs at the time, led me down a path of never taking relationships too seriously, I don’t think I ever became interested in a real relationship until I realized I’d never really had one. I remember once when I was 17, at this point there were no more older girls, they were all off at college, so I was getting less distracted and more lonely & sentimental. I was getting a ride to school from a neighbor and friend, she was a year older and had many beautiful friends and I remember asking her what her and the friends really thought of me? I asked her because one, these were people who grew up with me, and two, feeling like there was a disconnect. I felt worthy, lovable and kind, had been with plenty of girls before, why couldn’t I seem to find genuine connection with a girl now my own age? I’ll never forget the answer, “We can just never tell if you’re being genuine” as I write this 10 years later, it still has the same effect, a powerful question to ask yourself at any point in life, “Am I being truly genuine? am I living from a place of direct authenticity?” Or is there pretense, are there motives or goals behind the words you use, the actions you take?
Remember when I mentioned less distracted and more lonely and sentimental? I slowly realized the only reason I was so interested in obtaining the affection of women was because I was not only lacking emotional intimacy in my life but because it was the only way I felt like I could be held. The only way I knew how to soothe the broken inner child in me was to get a women in to bed so post her dopamine surge, I could get my oxytocin fix which I was in dire and desperate need of. Oxytocin is the bonding chemical, the chemical released that makes mothers feel close to their babies and vice versa, the chemical released when you gaze into the eyes of someone you love, the chemical released when someone takes care of you because they love you, not because they want something, the chemical of unconditional love. Naturally you can see the faults in my coping mechanism.
This conversation with my neighbor led me in to my first real “monk phase” of my life. A monk phase is a term people use to describe a period of time where one goes through deep introspection, puts down the transient pleasures and cultivates an inner garden. I’ll do another blog post about this phase of my life, monk phases and other things of the sort, but for now just know this monk phase led to among many other things, about 2 years of celibacy. The middle of my senior year I also got braces for my teeth, this could’ve inadvertently contributed to my persistence in this endeavor. Regardless throughout those two years I focused on learning how to make sure I was being “genuine” with the woman in my life. I also put myself in positions through different jobs and volunteering at that time to be with as many women my age as I could, forcing myself to be with and have connections with women who I’d see on a regular basis who I didn’t have any sexual or romantic interest in and to resist the urge when I felt those patterns arising from insecurity rather than authenticity.
This is all sounds great right? I saw the light and became a healed, authentic man never to fall victim to coping mechanisms and habitual trauma self soothing tendencies ever again right? Wrong! The best was yet to come!
I had done some traveling by the time I was 20 but hadn’t fully committed with a one way ticket and plan to live the unplanned completely through yet. On my 21st birthday it was time. I had been invited to coordinate a wedding in Thailand, since this was my profession all through school. This was going to be a grand and beautiful wedding and the wedding party was going to a huge music festival the week before, everything would be paid for by the couple, all I had to do was show up and do what I could do in my sleep… This seemed like as good a shot as any. This 1 way ticket turned into two years, two of the most steamy lust filled years of my life. Important to mention, on my 21st birthday I also got my braces off, I felt like myself again, I felt radiant and more desirable than I’d ever felt in my life (I know I know give me a break but it’s the truth)
Sure I wasn’t setting any records for most salacious bachelor but merely to emphasize my tendencies at this time, I was a 21 years old living my dreams and exercising what it felt like to be powerful, charming and free after 2 years having my nose in books, being the gentlest of man I could to every woman in my life and having the most sexually stimulating thing in my life be daily Chi gong. I felt not only full of energy but full of authentic desire to connect with as many beautiful women as I could, not for the sake of sex, for the sake of opportunity, for the sake of connecting, the sake of experiencing that persons essence, their joys, sorrows and passions, and probably most compelling, experiencing myself through their experience of me. If you’d of asked me then I would’ve said we put everything on the table in front of each other on those first nights together, a lifetimes worth of transparency in a single night.
Over the 2 years, I had a 3 longer (one or two months) relationships, fell in real love once… but for natural or personal reasons these relationships faded. The time I fell in love I was separated with her because of the pandemic in 2021, this was at the start of my travels and was my first real heartache over love, maybe one of the first times I’d ever really felt anything real in a relationship.
After these years of traveling ended, I finally found myself back in the USA, freshly 23, living in northern California with plans to be there a year. In terms of my intimate escapades, I felt disgusted with myself and very confused, how had I managed to allow myself so much sensual, unrestricted pleasure, such a distorted view on what I was doing and what I was doing to the women whom I’d spent time with. I felt like I’d used and hurt people only to exercise and experience my own twisted and egoic version of power disguised as what I told myself was finally my ability to be “genuine” like I’d been told was lacking in my “arsenal” years ago, I began thinking I had just picked up new tricks to get the same self soothing I’d become addicted to in my youth.
*Incoming monk mode*
But this time no celibacy, no hiding from relationships. After 2 years of being on the road, living a very unconventional life, dating was strange. I tried my best going on a few normal dates, confused on how to restrain myself, restraining from searching for the key to my dates soul in the first 5 minutes so we could let our intricacies flow onto the table like puzzle pieces for us to play with on the first date, but to also be completely transparent and fully myself…and eventually In this year I had my first “real” girlfriend, why was it the real deal? We lived in the same town, we had jobs, had lives, went on dates, and slowly and surely got to know each other. I was so excited at the possibility of what I convinced myself was the “real deal” not only did she speak English perfectly, she understood my cultural references, knew of the places I mentioned when I spoke of home, I convinced myself a “conventional” relationship with an American girl was going to show me all the things that had been hidden to me in my past relationships with women. I was convinced at this point in my life so much of my trauma would be revealed to me and healed through persisting in a “real” relationship with a “real” ( English speaking American woman my age) woman”
Talk about pressure?
Well lots of trauma was revealed, and I had forgotten you get into a relationship with a real person, a person with their own stories, own tendencies, own self soothing patterns of behavior. We were inseparable, spent every possible free minute we had together. I lost all discipline in my life, my life became about being in that safe place as much as I could. In a relationship I could get this oxytocin fix as much as I wanted and I juiced that beautiful flower until it withered. We both used each other utterly and completely, two desperate and emotionally needy people in need of affection, attention and genuine presence.
So I promise we are getting to something if we haven’t already.
I learned here that a relationship built on an ulterior motive is a slippery slope.
But this relationship broke me open, we ended dramatically and emotionally as to be expected from two people so unknowingly and intensely using the other to self soothe. After we made our break, I felt real pain, real sadness, real tears. It was an experience that looking back was precisely what I needed to begin understanding what being “genuine” meant… if you can’t truly feel yourself no one else can feel you either, this will undoubtedly lead to lack of trust, fear and confusion.
This is a ridiculous thing to share but I concluded to myself that this was the first time I’d let a woman close enough to actually hurt me since my mother, who I had a rocky relationship with growing up and gave me poor emotional care at numerous points in my childhood, bless her heart. (Love you mom)
This is the point I can say the shedding had begun.
I now had a respect and healthy apprehension for intimate relationships. I’d experienced a side of their conscious, fiery, purpose giving, passion filled, gentle soothing, empowering gift and felt a side of their toxic, heart wrenching, brain melting, mind numbing, overwhelming fang they also offer. Understanding a fang is not to be feared and a gift is not to be blindly accepted.
Im not writing this to teach you a lesson, give you the secret to something, to boast or humiliate, simply to share the shedding of “Bachelorsim” in one man. Ive been in a beautiful relationship now for two years, but I don’t have everything figured out and have engaged in many of the same self soothing, selfish, reactive behaviors with my terribly gracious and kind current partner as I did in past situations. But I’m more conscious of these behaviors and where they come from, I can look at my thoughts and behaviors under a lens of authenticity, understanding I’m a human, a human doing my best to purify, doing to my best to radiate genuineness over anything regardless if that’s the most attractive or alluring. To walk in the path of love, and to walk with someone, because we can only ever truly see ourselves through the eyes of another
Stay in light, stay in love,
Jay Bierschenk