What is our motivation to offer this training?
Moxe: I am giving workshops for many years now around Intimacy, love, sexuality and touch. In all of those workshops I noticed that many people are facing the challenge of connecting. Gay men are receiving the message from a very young age that gay relationships are very difficult and not long lasting. It is true that things change but for many of us it is still the main challenge. Gay men are being excluded from the traditional concept of family and from many positions in society from a very early age. Thus self acceptance, trust and opening up are not an easy thing for us.
I did a very long journey to reach where I am now. And I still have a long way to go. So, I would like to share my experience and my knowledge with as many people as possible.
What does this training intends to achieve?
Thomas: For me, the path to fulfilling and true relationships was a very long one. I have accepted many difficult, exhausting and sometimes stressful situations. My innermost desire to be loved was too great. I had many (and now much less, but still some) patterns of behavior in me that make relationships a difficult affair.
I had to make the same mistakes again and again until I learned my lesson.
This topic is very close to my heart. I would like to share the years of experience, teaching and supporting couples and coaching individuals and groups. Designing this training so that other men will have it easier and reach their goal in a more focused way. To work with you to understand yourself better, learn to accept yourself and open your horizon for the human in relationships.
Why do so many of us have issues to find a boyfriend?
Thomas: as we know there are many personal and social reasons but I would like to mention two complexes. First, many gay men do not accept themselves: they don’t allow themselves to live their desires- Therefore, locking them up or cutting them off.
Very often we meet gay men who do not share their sexual orientation with others or keep their sexual experiences far from their “normal” life. Often these desires and experiences are not integrated into their day to day life because they assume that they can not be integrated.
If I divide myself from my behaviors or feelings, I cannot love myself. My self-confidence is then so negative that nobody finds me attractive. So I am then forced and trapped in a downward spiral.
The second complex refers to my longing and my image of the ideal man and the dynamics that normally arise from that…
Can you explain this dynamic?
Thomas: As long as I project everything that I don’t have and miss to my partner. I put too much pressure too fast too soon. Idealizing him as a god, Hercules or James dean whoever the ultimate hero is for me. Unfortunately, so often, it relates to my own family history, I look for someone or repeating a dynamic that reminds me of my beloved mother, or my missing father… It may sound a little flat, but many times it is part of the reality we all live: If I do not know the entanglements of my family and soul history, then I unconsciously look for partners who (must) continue to play this unconscious and often sinister game. Under these conditions, however, in the vast majority of cases no happy gay long-term relationships can develop…
Understanding the complexity and patterns I was brought up with, connecting with the family soul and history- all of that helps us to appreciate what we have and let go of the patterns that doesn’t serve us anymore and stop us from having a happy long term relationship. Lets face it, many of our families didn’t give us the tools for a happy gay life.
How do we see love relationships in general, is there a perfect model?
Moxe: Nothing is perfect and there are no models for human behavior. Every time some theorist is trying to explain human relationship they fail. A love relationship is based on love, commitment and understanding. I like to look closely at the interrelations in the relationship. We are not just two individuals. We ourselves change every day, with the years we change look, the way we think and behave. The world is changing fast, society, culture, how people relate to us as gay men. Technology affect the way we relate, interact, think, plan. So maybe the model is not to have a solid model.
Thomas: Also for me there is no perfect model. You’ll have to work your way up. I had three long relationships, with many dramas, and also a handful of dramatic love affairs. Learning from those conflicts, I slowly started constructing a framework of positive experiences with my partner. This means carefully trying out what goes well together, what is fun together and what satisfies you and your partner.
You create the positive experiences yourself and don’t try to live by a given model. Building on positive experiences, you can then begin to slowly expand the positive framework of experience. My motto is: Relationships are there for you to have a good time together. This approach works very well in my current long-term relationships (15 and 5 years…).
In the training we learn a lot about the different models and the experiences associated with them. Of course we like to you to share your own experiences with us…
What is your relationship status?
Moxe: I have a partner for the last 5 years. We are very happy together and actually we are very surprised that we are still together. My relationships were never so long, I had great ex boyfriends, beautiful and smart people but I wasn’t ready to make space to someone else in my life. I can clearly say that although I was with someone for years, I did my decisions and my things alone and my boyfriend was not as important as my best friends, my family and not even more important than my job.
It took me a while to understand that the intimacy and nest that two lovers can create is a new third entity that is not me nor him but the two of us together and if we care about it, it can grows bigger than any of us. This third entity asks us to adjust, to reflect on the way we connect, determine my needs and put my individuality in question. Are we really ready to go there?
Thomas: Mine is a little bit more complex. I am very happy with it. I might tell you details if you join the training☺
How tantra can help in our relationships?
Moxe: That is really what we offer in this training.
There are many ways to open your heart, mind and body to relationships. The tantra world is teaching us to connect with our body, and it affects our mind and soul: Tantra guides us to better sex, turn it into something spiritual, profound and long lasting. In my experience practicing tantra helps us to love our body, trust our touch and to communicate better.
Thomas: I love hot sex sessions with my Partner… But tantric rituals are just wonderful – when we are together, sharing a massage together, breath together and than go over to sex, a deep satisfaction begins, where we connect much more than just good sex… Would you like to experience this also?
Tantra taught me to be calm, to accept situations – to really get involved with my partner. To accept him on all levels, but also: to accept myself first.
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