Sexual Repression and the American Dating Collapse: You Need An Intervention If You Think My Work Is Extreme

America is in a weird place right now. It feels like a country in the middle of a man’s really humiliating midlife crisis. We’ve overcorrected so hard in both directions — toward purity culture and toward digital hedonism — that most women I know feel like they’re either being cast in the Handmaid’s Tale or as online porn stars.

There’s not a lot of room left in between — actually being in the middle makes you feel a little insane sometimes.

I didn’t have this language when I first started dating in my late 30’s after a long marriage, but I quickly realized something strange: I broadly appealed to most men when it came to “just dating” but less could see me as a partner. Same for me — but it wasn’t about attraction.

It was that something about me that just didn’t feel like them.

And the longer I did somatic coaching, the clearer it became. Most people are walking around with this invisible internal fit filter asking “what will blend into my social world and what feels like home on some level?”

And I was starting to realize I didn’t fit.

The Twilight Zone of American Dating

One of my very first post-divorce dates involved a man proudly telling me he had helped a female friend set up her OnlyFans cameras the night before. I remember just blinking at him, trying to register why he thought this would land as cool, supportive of women and progressive to me. It wasn’t the sex work that threw me — it was the complete lack of relational awareness.

It was the automatic assumption during an interview to be in my love life that I would of course be chill with a man who last night was setting up a porn camera in his besties bedroom. That is extreme.

Then there were the dates with men talking about half-open marriages that ended and left them ruined and sad (spoiler alert: house renovations, threesomes and Sally becoming bi-sexual don’t fix broken attachments). Or the men who trauma-dumped all their therapy and label history on me. Men who didn’t tell me until the date started that they were just taking things slow, looking around for a non-serious (still confusing) sexual connection. Even if I wanted that — GOD it’s so limp, lifeless and sterile — the man with grey hair who is perpetually confused and grieving his last ex, but working on himself. One day. Sad isn’t sexy — don’t bring sad to a date.

What is everyone “working on”? Why is the construct of time triggering? What is this place?

It is so confusing to me how all of that has become normal.

On the other end of the spectrum were the more conservative guys who found the nerdiest things about me, like my record-collecting hobby suspect — too many men in the music scene, too many social outings. Apparently, even me being dressed up at an event without them was an excuse for passive aggressive behavior. Pouting after a girls night out. Pulling away when I had a big win at work or was offered a new opportunity.

My travel plans were not the bizarre pedestal of me they were to the lefty dudes, but threatening and made them feel like they didn’t measure up.

I was exciting and had all this cool stuff going on and they felt bad about themselves OR I was exciting and cool and therefore would be completely chill about an essentially open relationship.

My cooking skills? Mesmerizing — but often in a retrograde 1950s sort of way, like I’d wandered out of a Home and Gardens ad and into their fantasies. Y’all I am not that great of a cook either — I just have been living for 43 years so you know I've come to learn how to do things like prepare meat and steam broccoli so I can feed my human body. Magical.

“You’re Just… Not American”

A friend once told me while I was traveling, “You don’t feel American. Even your kids — they feel European.” And honestly? That really helped me make sense of things. I love those moments, when someone says something super simple that just pulls a hole closed for you.

In our house, we have ingredients (wow right). Rice, pasta, spices in jars. We drink water. We read books. There’s music playing or silence, no all day running of TV allowed. We do chores and go to bed at a time. My kids don’t have social media until high school when they can have a monitored IG and that’s it — because science says their developing brains and nervous systems will go sideways from over-consumption of it. Yes, I said science — edgy.

Apparently, all this makes me radical now. Some of my daughter’s friends recently said we were an “ingredient household.” That’s a term online for weird people like me — look it up.

What in the hell are other people eating for supper?

This extremism in parenting and relationships is mirrored in the dating world. The boundaries I had to set were wild:

Please don’t be in a enmeshed emotional relationship with your ex-wife or take weekend trips and do dinner dates with your female “best friend” where you talk about your sex and dating lives. Also you honestly don’t seem happy — like ever.

Also…

No, I am not cutting men out of my social life, but most of them are married and too old for me anyway Todd. My work is not a threat to you and news flash you don’t make enough money for me to quit anyway so what are you so afraid of? Also — hey maybe if you had wife that worked you could take some time off and figure out how to FEEL.

I wish I could express the fountains of shame I have had thrown at me for what I think is very middle of the road thinking. Perhaps you’ve already seen it a time or two on one of my social platforms.

It felt like I was living in the twilight zone sometimes.

Two Forms of Repression

We’ve confused performative sexuality with actual erotic presence. America is deeply sexually repressed, but not in the one way we think. On one side, we’ve got cartoonish porn bodies, open relationships, and a full-time job managing dating apps like Uber Eats for sex. On the other, we’ve got men cosplaying as Commander Waterford from The Handmaid’s Tale. Shaming women for pretty much anything they’d actually be attracted to in a woman.

Neither of these are natural expressions of human sexuality.

The true human erotic doesn’t need all the tight rules or the exaggeration. It’s depth, not novelty. It’s the perfect peach on a hot summer porch, dripping juice down your wrist. It’s not filtered OR sanitized. It doesn’t perform.

I guess many people watching us from the outside probably saw this trainwreck coming long ago. In 1940, Anaïs Nin wrote, “America is in even greater danger because of its cult of toughness, its hatred of sensitivity, and someday it may have to pay a price for this, because atrophy of feeling creates criminals.”

We’re overstimulated and under-touched. It’s not just the right — equally on the left we’re constantly talking about trauma and anxiety, but we can’t really feel each other. Even “kink” has become a head-based performance for faux connection when people can’t feel at a regular level anymore — instead of a felt experience in the body.

My female clients aren’t repressed, their standards aren’t extremely high, they don’t hate men — they’re just done with this.

Most of the women I work with aren’t repressed at all. In fact, many are or have been artists, dancers, writers, high-level professionals who publish and speak internationally, mothers, travelers. These are very sensitive and intelligent embodied women. They’re not scared of intimacy — they’re not ashamed of sexuality. They like men. They want to feel polarity, tension and attraction in a connection.

But some of them have had to hard-stop dating most American men because the emotional and sexual norms are too extreme and disorienting. Sure, there are men that can find the middle in America but it’s smart I think to broaden your base a bit if you find yourself in the black hole that I did.

They want connection. They also want basic boundaries. If they’re choosing a monogamous partner, they don’t want him emotionally texting his “best friend” or treating online porn like it’s a legitimate hobby. On the other end they don’t want to be shamed for a social life outside of their relationship or engage with men who are intimidated by jobs.

Also, is there some homeless camp with Pilates and nail bars (so you can stay hot) that single woman can wait at unemployed until a man comes to marry them? How are single women not supposed to have jobs?

Largely the women I work with would rather stay single than be some stormy dude’s friends with benefits until he doesn't feel afraid anymore. That is some broken shit to sit waiting around for someone that’s so sad and so not ready if you are an attractive woman. Especially when for a long time the French were making casual sex seem fun and interesting. We have choices, they might just require a passport.

Imagine — “Voulez-vous Coucher Avec Moi Ce Soir” whispered in your ear on a rooftop after hours of laughing and meeting in the wild vs. a dating chat dm that says “just want to make sure you saw before we meet for coffee at 10am on Tuesday that I checked, looking for something casual”

These aren’t outrageous asks.

These women aren’t triggered or controlling. They’re expectations pretty standard in most of the world. I actually find them almost constantly willing to work around some of the inherent differences between men and women with levity and flexibility. They aren’t taking in all the dark stuff online — because it feels bad.

I have had to really work through self-repair on how I initially pushed myself so hard to come to acceptance of these extremes. I tried to listen to a man’s past sex life, comfort his anxieties and I went through several situations where I minimized my work, and spent way too much time sitting around in front of a screen with a man that didn’t challenge me at all — I truly tried.

I even convinced myself a few times the reason it was so hard was because of my past traumas.

Looking back it wasn’t my history or my own limitations in accepting people that were triggering me — it was actually suppression of my own feelings of annoyance and turn off. Through rejection of my own humanity, I felt afraid.

The embodiment of who I was being smothered by men who couldn’t see they were pushing me to either be the Madonna who lives in a private shell of devotion and “acceptance” or the exciting whore who needs saving.

I’ve had more resonance in dating with European or Canadian men than I ever did with U.S. raised men. The irony is, I didn’t set out to be anti-American — I actually feel really lucky and proud to be here. There are very few places where I could live the way I do.

But at some point, being emotionally present, sexually grounded, and raising your kids with vegetables and books became counterculture here.

I honestly ask myself constantly — how is it that I have become radical? Nothing I have ever written — even things that have gotten extreme hate — would have even been interesting or edgy in America before the last 20 years.

When I coach women now in embodiment that are struggling around men my main goal is to help them get to neutral about all this — because hate is one more form of emotional repression and so is being a perma-victim.

Can you see that in the tone of this article? I am not saying no good men exist. I am not saying quit dating and get cats. I am not mad.

I am just saying to women and men who feel like me…

You are not crazy.

This cultural climate is. There are good people but to find them you need to just ignore the ones caught up in either end of this. Don’t fight with them or try to heal them or block them or lecture them to death through ‘boundaries’ — just kind of swish them off to the side as you accept a date with the thin European guy or say yes to the well-read Latin man that’s asking to take you dancing. That’s it. Just feel and expand.

If you feel stuck — like I did — diversify your investment portfolio. Go International. Date younger men too — some of my favorite client matches are women with men that are 8+ years younger. Not all of these younger dudes are binging red-pill YouTube on breaks from their X-Box OR becoming poly in third grade.

Whatever your current box is full of — if you find it alienating — just dump it out and try a whole new flavor. You’ll either start to see your own problems better or see that you were kind of fine all along but just shopping in the wrong isle. (cross-apply to all of life)

America isn’t the whole world (shh don’t tell anyone I said that).

All that stuff just isn’t attractive to me and maybe not to you either and that’s ok. Just because your culture is missing nuance, selection, and that flavor of certain things being intimate and private…

Lingering silences… taking a lover… being silly…getting excited… cast glances… jokes…light touches…songs… words… getting almost there but then waiting… flirtation…desire…safety… something just for us… the what if…

doesn’t mean you have to be like them.

The Real Rebellion Is Embodiment of Human Emotion

I take care of my body. I’m 43. I don’t want to become a puffy sex doll who shoots the fat from my belly into my ass, nor do I want to disappear into invisibility like an apology for being attractive. I don’t want my personality to depend on medications or on alcohol — but I dearly love a good glass of red wine.

I’m just trying to be real and pretty much follow what makes sense, what feels good and to execute a life that’s fairly middle of the road. I want mostly good relationships that add net value to my life and the lives of my quirky community. I want a life where I get support sometimes but take basic responsibility for myself and my inner world most of the time. One where I do interesting work that also helps other people and pretty much leaves the world somewhat better than I found it. If I can do all of that while I pepper in some Netflix watching and eating too many croissants on vacation — I think I'll feel alright.

We’ve lost the plot when we think embodiment of our natural emotions is repression. What I’ve learned — and what I teach — is that real sexuality is quiet and alive. It doesn’t need props. It doesn’t need likes. It doesn’t need a religion, a ring or a white dress either.

It needs presence.

America — you need to get yourself together. This isn’t a good look — it’s not sexy. Perhaps turn off the Fox News and take a break from rage posting political memes on Meta to like go on a hike or wash dishes or something.

Come over here for Sunday supper, I'll teach you how to snap beans and play cards.

Maybe I’m just going to have to settle on feeling like an outsider here for now.

Maybe that’s okay — I seem to being doing just fine.