Reclaiming the Erotic Life: Fundamentalism and Men

Silhouette of a man with headphones celebrating at sunrise, symbolizing reconnection to his body and life force

“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.” — Audre Lorde (1978)

When Desire Became Dangerous

We were told purity would save us.
But what if it made us strangers to our own bodies?

I recall the first time I felt desire. It was a visceral punch; his beauty fused into my cellular memory—a moment I still remember over fifty years later. In that exhalation of breath, I knew shame and fear. I was just a teenager—and all it took was a glance, a moment, a dream.

For a young gay man growing up in a fundamentalist Christian environment, this fear had a specific name: lust. It was the great, lurking predator of my soul, and my mind was its hunting ground. So began my exile from my own body, my desires, and the vital, life-giving force the ancients called Eros.

Desire was a test. The body, a battleground. To feel was to fail and allow the Devil a foothold.

This is the quiet devastation many of us carry from fundamentalist systems. We may have left the doctrines behind, but the exile remains—etched in our skin, hiding in our bedsheets, haunting our intimacy.

Religious Trauma and the Erotic

Trauma, as Peter Levine (2010) writes, is not held in memory alone. It lodges in the body, in the nervous system. When fundamentalism declares our desire as sinful, it does more than shame us. It cuts us off from the very force that makes us feel alive; this is religious trauma.

Fundamentalism isn’t just restrictive. It is violent. It severs us from our internal world. From impulse. From longing. From love in the name of purity.

Even long after leaving fundamentalist spaces, I lived with that exile. I was a ghost in my own erotic life. Going through motions and nodding at the right words. But something essential was missing—not just a feeling, but a knowing: that my erotic self was neither broken nor shameful, but deeply human and profoundly sacred.

My Erotic Life Was a Ghost

For decades, I lived with a split between a self that was fluent in theology and a body that was shut down. I was praised for my preaching while silently starving for erotic truth. Sensuality felt dangerous. I was present but not fully embodied; connected, yet disconnected from the deep, life-giving intimacy.

My mind became a constant state of surveillance. Fleeting thoughts or involuntary reactions were evidence of sin, requiring swift confession and repentance.

I lived in anxiety, constantly trying to control my body and my thoughts. The internal war was exhausting.

We learn to dissociate from our physical selves, retreating into our minds to police our thoughts into purity. But desire cannot be policed into non-existence. It can only be suppressed. And suppressed energy always seeks an outlet—often in distorted, shame-filled ways.

What Do We Mean by Erotic Life?

When I speak of the erotic, I don’t mean just sex. I mean aliveness. Vitality. A fullness of presence in the body that has nothing to prove and nothing to hide.

Eros is the principle of creative, connective energy. It is the yearning for wholeness and union—not just with another, but with life itself.

It is the fire behind art, the courage behind vulnerability, and the pulse of intimacy. When belief systems tame sexuality, they don’t just contain desire—they contaminate the wellspring of Eros, leaving men spiritually dehydrated, emotionally stunted, and profoundly alone.

Audre Lorde called the erotic a source of power—an embodied, creative force that connects us to truth. It is not performance or conquest. It is presence—the capacity to feel deeply and truthfully in our bodies.

For men shaped by fundamentalism, the erotic is rarely named as sacred. It is something to conquer, manage, or avoid. In that disconnection, something vital is lost.

When we disconnect from Eros, we disconnect from our very pulse. Our joy dulls. Our ability to encounter others as mysteries—not roles—fades. Over time, we call that dullness maturity or holiness.

But it is not holiness. It is exile.

How Fundamentalism Disembodies Men From Eros

Fundamentalism doesn’t just shape what we believe. It shapes how we feel—or how we don’t.

Fundamentalist masculinity is rooted in performance. A man is expected to lead spiritually, provide, protect, and model moral strength. This identity is built on external action and rule-following, not on emotional authenticity.

This pressure follows us into the bedroom. Whether we are straight or gay, sex becomes another area for performance, not presence. It’s about fulfilling a role, not entering shared vulnerability. And Eros—which thrives on spontaneity, play, and embodied knowing—is suffocated.

This mindset creates deep internal shame (Bradshaw, 1988): a split between the “spiritual” self and the “sinful” body. For many men—especially queer men like myself—this split was a survival strategy. We mastered abstinence but never learned embodiment. We practiced sacrifice, but not self-acceptance.

The Cost of Erotic Exile

What happens when we spend a lifetime cut off from Eros?

  • Emotional Flatness: Joy feels dangerous. Play is trivialised. We become efficient, “godly” machines—internally hollow.
  • Fear of Intimacy: Connection triggers shutdown or performance. We either detach to feel safe or overperform to be loved.
  • Loss of Erotic Agency: We forget how to feel, ask, or receive. Consent becomes conceptual, not embodied. Hypersexuality can emerge—but without erotic integration, sex rarely satisfies.
  • Relationship Loneliness: Even partnered, we remain strangers to ourselves. Our lovers sense the absence.
  • Spiritual Dislocation: The body becomes a threat to holiness rather than its expression. We pray without presence and seek God, but cannot feel.

Therapists like Levine (2010) remind us that trauma disrupts our body’s rhythm and pleasure systems. When Eros is suppressed, we lose the very mechanisms that regulate our nervous system and restore our wholeness.

Where Mentoring Through the Maze Begins

In my mentoring work, we don’t start by trying to ‘fix the problem.’ We begin by listening. Slowly. Gently. With compassion.

We explore the old beliefs that created the split.
We grieve what was lost in the name of purity.
We reframe desire not as danger, but as a doorway.

Together, we create a safe and sacred space for you to feel at home again. To come home to your body. To let your erotic truth speak—without needing to perform it.

Mentoring through the maze is not about achievement. It’s about returning. Reclaiming. And becoming whole.

What Becomes Possible Beyond the Split?

What happens when we heal?

When we believe Eros and soul were never enemies we begin to:

  • Reclaim Aliveness: Moments become textured. Breath returns.
  • Build Intimacy from Truth: We meet, not manage.
  • Honour Sensuality as Sacred: We light candles not for seduction, but for reverence.
  • Trust the Body as Home: We listen, rather than override.
  • Practice Embodied Spirituality: We discover presence as prayer.

This isn’t about sexual liberation for its own sake. It’s about soul reclamation. Returning to what was never meant to be silenced. Becoming whole—not by escaping the past, but integrating it.

Practices for Reclaiming Erotic Life

  1. Name the Split
    • Ask: What messages did I receive about sex, desire, and my body?
    • Journal: What parts of me were exiled in the name of purity?
    • Acknowledge complexity. This is about naming, not blaming.
  2. Reframe the Erotic as Sacred
    • Explore sensual rituals: oiling the body, practising slow breath, and experiencing sacred touch.
    • Speak to your body as a beloved companion.
  3. Grieve the Lost Years
    • Mourn the decades of disconnection or suppression.
    • Light a candle for the boy who didn’t know his body was good.
  4. Work with the Body
    • Try somatic therapy, dance, and breathwork. Reconnect through sensation.
    • Notice where you hold tension. Ask what it wants to say.
  5. Unshame Desire
    • Practice voicing wants without judgment.
    • Let your longing speak. Permit desire without performance.
  6. Seek Witnessing, Not Correction
    • Find safe spaces where your story is seen, not fixed. Healing is relational.
    • Your erotic truth deserves light, not silence.
  7. Reconnect to Myth and Meaning
    • Read myths and sacred texts that honour the erotic.
    • Meditate on Rumi, Hafiz, or the Song of Songs. Let poetry reawaken what doctrine silenced.

Returning to your Erotic Power

The erotic was never the threat. It was always the invitation.
We were never meant to choose between soul and body.
We were meant to walk as one.

Your soul remembers how to feel.
Your body remembers how to pray.
You do not have to keep them apart.

Let the shame fall like dead leaves.
Let your longing become liturgy.
Let your breath be your beginning.

Your erotic life is not over.
It is waiting to be reclaimed.

References
Bradshaw, J. (1988). Healing the shame that binds you. Health Communications.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. Routledge.
Jung, C. G. (1959). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self (Vol. 9, Part II). Princeton University Press.
Levine, P. A. (2010). In an unspoken voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness. North Atlantic Books.
Lorde, A. (1978). Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power. Out & Out Books.
Moore, T. (1998). The soul of sex: Cultivating life as an act of love. Harper Perennial.
Rohr, R. (2011). Falling upward: A spirituality for the two halves of life. Jossey-Bass.

 

 

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