by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Lust Is Usually About So Much More Than Lust Itself
One thing that a lot of the guys I’ve worked with were initially struggling with when they started their journey into Realness was lust and it usually showed up in a few different ways:
Some found themselves constantly lusting after women who weren’t their partners despite genuinely loving the relationship they were currently in, others felt trapped by compulsive masturbation or an addiction to pornography, and others were simply distracted by sexual fantasies that seemed to hijack their attention throughout the day.
What almost all of them had in common wasn’t just the lust itself but the shame that came afterwards and the belief that there must be something ‘wrong’ with them because they couldn’t seem to switch their desires off.
This sent them down a negative spiral of judging themselves, fighting themselves and life, and gradually losing confidence in their ability to trust themselves and so – instead of moving forward in life – becoming stuck in an exhausting cycle of desire, resistance, temporary release, and endless self-criticism.
The interesting thing is that, in almost every case, the lust wasn’t really the problem because it was just the surface expression of something much deeper and the unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ that was guiding without them even knowing it.
This article will help you to get a grasp of your own lustful desires and instincts so you can finally master yourself and life and grow real.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Lust & Unresolved Emotional 'Stuff': What We'll Cover in This Article
- Lust Is Usually About So Much More Than Lust Itself
- First Things First: Every Human Instinct and Emotion Has a Light and a Dark Expression
- You're Not Trying to Stop Being Human
- Lust Is Just Energy in Motion
- When Lust Becomes Bigger Than Lust
- Freedom Comes From Feeling What You've Been Avoiding (You Gotta Feel It To Heal It)
- Three Steps Towards Freedom From Lust
- The Real Goal of Overcoming Lust
First Things First: Every Human Instinct and Emotion Has a Light and a Dark Expression
Before we go any further, it’s important to understand something that applies to every aspect of human nature which is that every single instinct and emotion has both a light and a dark expression.
For example:
- Life energy can become creative or destructive.
- Anger can either protect your boundaries and dignity or destroy your relationships.
- Love can lead to acceptance or obsession.
- Sadness can either wake you up or put you to sleep.
- Etc. etc. etc.
Lust is no different and can either become a ‘light’ or ‘dark’ influence upon our lives depending on how we relate to it in the first place.
It breaks down like this:
At its healthiest, lust becomes intimacy but, at its most distorted, lust becomes conquest.
Regardless of whether it shows up as ‘light’ or ‘dark’ side of expression, the instinct itself never changes and the energy behind it is exactly the same – the only thing that changes is the level of Awareness and Acceptance that we bring to it as this energy rides through our system.
This is really important because growing into your realness is never about trying to destroy your human nature but about learning to understand it well enough that you can consciously choose how you’ll express it.
In short, then, the same life force that fuels addiction and lust can also fuel intimacy, creativity, purpose and love – the difference isn’t the energy and therefore the energy isn’t to be feared but respected as it’s all about what you CHOOSE to do with it.
You’re Not Trying to Stop Being Human
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen men make on this journey into overcoming lust is believing that ‘success’ means reaching a stage where sexual desire disappears completely.
This is just setting themselves up for disappointment because it means that whenever they notice an attractive woman, feel a surge of desire at any time, or notice that lust is unexpectedly arising then they immediately conclude they’ve “failed” and that they’re just doomed for the rest of their days.
This mindset is especially common in men who grew up surrounded by religious dogma rather than genuine spiritual truth because they’ve been conditioned to morally judge and fear desire instead of understanding it.
The reality is much simpler and makes life much ‘easier’ once embraced and accepted as an inevitable part of the human experience:
For the average heterosexual man, noticing attractive women is an instinct because the body evolved to do this.
Whether you choose to explain it through biology, psychology, sociology, theology, or evolution doesn’t really matter because the point that these impulses arise on their own without you consciously choosing for this to happen.
This is ‘good’ news because if you didn’t choose them then they’re not something you can or should judge yourself for – just like you wouldn’t judge trees for having green leaves or the sky for being blue (on a good day, anyway).
Realness begins with acceptance because only if you accept the way that things are can you find yourself standing on solid ground and building something with your life that’s actually rooted in truth:
“Accepting reality” doesn’t mean that you have to approve of every instinct or emotion that arises within you – just that you can start to acknowledged what’s already and inescapably there so that you can work with it in an intelligent and conscious way.
Imagine trying to tame a wild horse:
If you spend your whole life pretending the horse is something other than what it actually is and with the nature that it actually has then it’ll eventually throw you off a cliff or something because if you constantly fight it, it’ll keep fighting back.
On the other hand, if you accept that it’s a wild horse and patiently learn to work with it then it will eventually become one of your greatest allies.
Your sexual energy is exactly the same – the goal isn’t to kill it but to tame and master it so you can ride it wherever you need to go in life.
Lust Is Just Energy in Motion
Another trap that men can fall into is believing that lust will continue forever unless you act on it as soon as possible:
This simply isn’t true because – like every emotion and bodily sensation, lust rises, reaches a peak, and then falls.
(Check out this article about Urge Surfing to go deeper into this: Urge Surfing Desires: Staying REAL and Controlling Desire the Urge and Stay Real)
That’s why emotions can be seen as as “e-motion, energy in motion” and why we can start to cause trouble for ourselves when we interfere with the process.
Most men learn to react to lust in one of two ways that both end up doing this (interrupting the natural process of rise, peak, and fall):
Strategy One: Suppress It
Suppression is essentially about pretending that it isn’t there by distracting themselves, shaming themselves, or gritting their teeth and trying to force the feeling away.
Unfortunately, whatever we resist tends to persist and so suppression doesn’t make the energy disappear – it just sends it underground where it becomes stronger and more unconscious.
Strategy Two: Express It
Other men default to doing the opposite which means that they immediately act on the feeling in an unreal way so that they feel like they’re getting the energy out of their system.
They do this in various ways that only really ‘help’ them in the short-term:
- Pornography.
- Compulsive masturbation.
- Meaningless sex.
- Flirting for validation.
- Indulging in fantasy after fantasy after fantasy.
- Etc. etc. etc.
This creates a temporary relief because tension always seeks release but, afterwards, the underlying emotional patterns remain exactly where they were and so nothing has really changed and the cycle begins all over again.
The Third Way: Staying Real
Luckily, realness points us towards a third option which is to learn to lean into our AWARENESS, cultivate ACCEPTANCE of whatever is arising, and learning to stay present and to notice where certain sensations are living in the body.
When we stay grounded like this then it becomes much easier to watch the wave rise, peak and fall without either suppressing it or expressing it in an unreal way.
Ultimately, this is about learning to allow yourself to experience your lust simply as raw energy – many men are terrified of this, though because they think that if they stop resisting the lust they’ll lose control.
Ironically, the opposite is true because it’s RESISTANCE that usually creates the kind of obsessive or compulsive energy that makes lust so challenging in the first place. .
This is why we can say that acceptance creates freedom because – once the wave has passed – you still have all of that life energy available to you and can now consciously choose where to direct it instead of being dragged around by it.
This is transmutation and so it’s not about getting rid of the energy of lust (or anything else) but learning to be with it so you can redirect it into the places where your life needs it the most.
When Lust Becomes Bigger Than Lust
So if lust naturally rises and falls then why do some people become dominated by it and see their lives going off the rails?
Well, this happens because the lust has become attached to something else that feeds into our self-image – usually (almost always, in fact), that something is shame:
Shame is the painful core belief about ourselves that says “I’m not good enough as I am” and once it enters the picture it inspires lust to do all kinds of jobs that it was never really designed to do in the first place.
Here’s a simple example so you can see what I’m on about:
Imagine a man at the gym.
He notices other men with bigger muscles and immediately starts to feel small, week, and inadequate because of his unresolved shame from the past (in other words, he was triggered and whatever emotional backlog he was carrying sent some ‘stuff’ to the surface).
A few moments later he notices an attractive woman – normally, he’d simply acknowledge her attractiveness and carry on with his workout but because he’s clouded with shame his mind begins imagining pursuing her, winning her, conquering her, and being desired by her because the fantasy temporarily relieves the shame.
For a few moments, he feels powerful again (the opposite of feeling shame-driven) and so now the lust isn’t really about sex anymore – it’s become a self-soothing mechanism to escape feelings of inadequacy.
Concocting and then holding onto a fantasy like this creates a kind of inner tension because the imagined pursuit creates excitement and this excitement temporarily replaces the shame beneath it.
Eventually, the tension demands release in some of the ways we’ve talked about:
- Maybe through masturbation.
- Maybe through pornography.
- Maybe through chasing validation.
- Etc. etc. etc.
For a few minutes, a kind of deadening relief arrives but – once it’s all over – the process soon starts all over again (again!) and so the shame returns and then eventually the lust that follows it – not because the body needs sex but because the ego is desperately trying to avoid feeling “not good enough as I am”.
Many compulsive behaviours survive for years because they’re protecting us from emotions we’ve never learned to face in the first place.
Why Pornography Makes the Cycle Even Stronger
Understanding what we’re saying here about shame and lust can help to understand why so many guys these days get addicted to pornography:
The short-version is that modern pornography pours petrol on the fires of lust because it hijacks the brain’s natural reward system.
What this means is that every new image, video or fantasy offers a hit of novelty, which causes the brain to release dopamine which is the neurotransmitter associated with anticipation, motivation and reward.
The problem isn’t dopamine itself but that the brain starts learning that whenever shame, boredom, loneliness or insecurity arise then pornography is a quick way to feel temporarily better.
Over time, this creates a powerful habit loop where emotional discomfort triggers lust, lust triggers the search for stimulation, stimulation brings temporary relief, and then the underlying shame returns stronger than before.
Once locked into this cycle, the brain gradually becomes conditioned to seek more novelty and more intense stimulation to achieve the same effect – even though what it’s really craving isn’t sex at all but an escape from the shame of being unreal.
This is why lasting freedom rarely comes from simply resisting pornography but from breaking the emotional cycle that made it feel necessary in the first place.
Freedom Comes From Feeling What You’ve Been Avoiding (You Gotta Feel It To Heal It)
All of this helps to explain why trying to solve lust by controlling behaviour rarely works in the long-term:
You can install filters or block porn sites on your router, delete apps, avoid temptation by never leaving the house, or locking your phone away but – unless the shame underneath is healed – the energy will simply find another outlet.
Real transformation happens when you become willing to feel what you’ve spent years trying to escape and to start raw dogging reality itself:
- The loneliness.
- The rejection.
- The grief.
- The fear.
- The inadequacy.
- The sadness.
- The [you name it].
Once those emotions are accepted and integrated then lust no longer has to carry their weight or to distort your relationship with them – instead, it become what it was in the first place:
A healthy instinct.
If you want to go deeper into realness and flow then check out my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace.
Three Steps Towards Freedom From Lust
If you’re struggling with this kind of lust, there are three powerful steps you can begin taking today so that you can reclaim your relationship with yourself and life:
1. Regulate
A dysregulated nervous system makes every impulse feel overwhelming because everything becomes a ‘threat’ and when you’re anxious, stressed, exhausted or constantly activated, it’s much harder to remain present with intense sensations like lust.
You can earn to regulate yourself with things like:
- Slow breathing through your nose.
- Meditation.
- Walking.
- Strength training.
- Yin yoga.
- Time in nature.
- Sleep.
- Real conversations.
- Etc. etc. etc.
Do whatever helps your nervous system settle as regularly as you can because the calmer you become, the easier it is to experience desire without becoming possessed by it.
2. Integrate
Ask yourself an honest question whenever lust feels unusually intense and brings the energy of compulsion:
“What am I actually feeling underneath this?”
“Am I lonely? Rejected? Ashamed? Powerless? Afraid? Not enough?”
Instead of running away from those emotions, allow yourself to experience them fully by feeling them in your body as physiological sensations, naming them, and then accepting them instead of resisting them.
This is where genuine freedom begins because the less emotional baggage you carry, the less your lust has to compensate for.
3. Accelerate
Finally, start to work on building a life that actually reflects who you are in your realness:
You can do this by creating a real VISION for yourself, breaking it down into GOALS, and then cultivating real HABITS that move you forward day after day.
As you become the kind of man who genuinely respects himself and acts in a REAL way then you stop needing fantasies to convince yourself you’re powerful because already know you are.
The energy that once fuelled obsession becomes available for building your actual life.
The Real Goal of Overcoming Lust
The goal isn’t to become a man who never feels lust because that man doesn’t exist and you probably don’t even want him to:
No, the goal instead is to become a man who isn’t ruled by lust and who can notice desire without being dragged around by it.
This is a man who understands that instincts aren’t his enemies and that they’re simply energies asking for conscious direction from a place of awareness and acceptance.
When awareness meets acceptance like this, then action becomes a choice instead of a compulsion which means you can choose intimacy over compulsion, freedom over addiction, and your REALNESS instead of ego.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to gain mastery of yourself and build a real life then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you to start taming that wild horse.
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