BEFORE KURT RUSSELL attempted an Escape from New York, before he battled The Thing, he starred in the underrated comedy Used Cars.
Early in the movie, he is given some of the greatest wisdom a young man could hope to hear: “Don’t let the little head do the thinking for the big head”. I wasn’t even a teenager when I caught this film on TV late one night, and despite my best attempts to absorb this valuable guidance, it vanished the moment they cut to a scene with exotic dancers on the hoods of the cars as a sales promotion.
I know I’m not alone in having sexual thoughts or sexual urges crowd out what I was actually trying to do with my day. I wasted a lot of time and energy following similar thoughts and urges to fruition. When I did so by myself, the only person losing out was me. As an adult in a long-term relationship there’s really nothing like fulfilling those urges with someone who I really care about, and who cares a lot about me.
As a single man, however, I sometimes found myself following those urges into situations where there was a lot less care from both people, and the length of those relationships was significantly shorter.
At first, I believed I was assuming my final form, that of a goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus. But it wasn’t long before the wisdom of which head was doing the thinking started to make sense.
It started while trying to solve the equation as to why I felt so hurt when a woman didn’t text me back after asking her on a third date. I discovered that it was because my big head had negotiated the initial situation. If I found myself in crisis management fielding a stream of upset texts from a woman who had different ideas to me about the status of our relationship, that was usually because the little head had been project lead on that scenario.
Things carried on like this until a good friend of mine sat me down and gave me a stern talking to regarding what kind of calamity I was getting myself into by having such an unsustainable sexual energy policy.
He wasn’t only warning me of the kind of personal trouble I was inviting, but also of the spiritual trouble I was so obviously trapped in: constantly searching for something that was missing within me and expecting to find what I needed in another, not knowing that I could keep looking until the end of my days and never find it. That’s not to mention that I just wasn’t getting anything done.
At one point I would be walking back to my home in Bondi with my groceries, and I’d pass a beautiful woman in her togs on her way to the beach. Of course, I didn’t say or do anything, but if the feeling in my body from witnessing her stunning, undulating womanhood walk past me lingered like the coconut-scented air that wafted in her wake, the moment I was inside my apartment and the tofu was in the fridge, I’d lose a whole afternoon manually working that feeling out of my body on my own.
It took a while before I finally accepted that my mate was right, and when a ‘big head’ relationship showed up it was clear that I needed to find a way to stop the ‘little head’ from deciding how things would go this time. So, I got to work learning how to redirect those feelings to places that were far healthier and more productive.
By learning to see such moments as a gift given to us by these women and knowing that the energy released from that moment can be used to our benefit in ways far more constructive than mere pleasure, we are instantly freed from our choices being derailed by our more basic instincts.
There’s a physical side to this as well, a technique I learned that is not unlike breathing through a stretch to find more flexibility. Being present to that explosive rush in your body, then taking a few deep belly breaths, it’s possible to move that powerful ball of energy out of your hips and up into your heart. When I moved that energy there, the sky looked a little bluer, things sounded a little crisper, even food tasted more sumptuous.
When we’re teenagers, it’s almost impossible to harness that sexual energy. Learning how to harness it is an important part of growing into a man. Just as we learn how to control our physical power, so we don’t accidentally hurt someone, or learn how to handle surges in emotion or desire, part of being a man is knowing when and how to use the power we all have in ways that provide for or protect the people around us if needed.
If we keep losing energy to anger or desire, we won’t have anything left when it comes to achieving our goals or helping those we care about.
Little boys get ‘stiffies’ on the beach when a pretty lady walks by and unleashes a cascading hormonal response within them that they can barely control. Men, gratefully and respectfully take that very same energy as a free power-up, using that beautiful boost to help them be a better partner, a better provider and a better friend.
When I first started working in the reality TV dating space, I was a single man. Journalists at the time would ask me to my face if as a single man I was a ‘cat in the henhouse’, sometimes even on live television. While I was disappointed that’s the first place they went, completely ignoring not only the professionalism I’m proud of but also the agency of every woman involved, I understand why they did it.
Because as men (and only men asked me this question) they had probably never considered that you could choose what to do with the sexual urges that can sometimes come over you (sorry). For a long time, I was the same, and I’m grateful I get to live now as a different man.
Like anything new we learn, at first, it’s deliberate but soon enough it’s automatic.
Now, any such thoughts immediately repurpose themselves to thoughts about me and my wife, which is a delightful bonus that can sometimes bring a cheeky smile because I’m now thinking about what might happen when I get home, were it not for the 5-year- old kicking-machine sleeping between us.
Learning how to redirect this energy can allow us to reap the benefits of what it means to wholly and completely commit to a loving relationship, even to be more productive at work, be a better father, even to be more helpful to others, because that’s what can happen when we’re using our big brain to do the thinking.
Related:
Osher Günsberg on the male rite of passage we don’t talk about
Osher Günsberg on saunas and the power of self-talk
