Introduction to Working with Men

by Layla Martin

So coaching with male clients is something really special in my opinion. I

used to work with more male clients than female clients back before I was
online and I was always so touched by how they received the work and
the importance of it to them. I find right now that men by and large feel
very lost in society. They feel very uninspired. There aren't that many
amazing male role models around. And there hasn't been a lot of work for
men to really define masculinity for themselves. So while women have
kind of run ahead in these leaps and bounds with the feminist revolution
and all kinds of new ideas around what it is to be a woman in business, in
a way because women have been so repressed for so long, we got to
define our role. It was almost like starting with a fresh space and getting
to create what womanhood is in the modern era. We've gotten to redefine
what it is to be a woman in business, what it is to be a woman in the
bedroom, what it is to be a mother, what it is to be a woman spiritually.
We almost have said, well, hey, you kept women out of all these areas for
so long. And yes, women got warped and repressed by the patriarchy, by
the trauma of civilization like so many of us did. But we're being creative
about what it means to apply a woman's role to all these spaces, what it
means to be a woman in leadership. There's kind of been this exciting
burst of creativity and redefining and re-imagining what it means to be a
woman in all these different roles. And men, for a variety of reasons, have
not reimagined their roles in society. If anything, there's kind of a
underlying guilt or sense of ill adjustment for a lot of men, and there's a
profound alienation from society, especially, well, actually across the
board in all different ages that I see, there's an alienation in much older
men because times have changed so rapidly. And there's so much kind of
women's empowerment and, you know, shifts around what it means to be
a man. There is alienation and middle-aged men because everything
again is shifting so fast. The roles of father, the roles of leader, the roles of
just what it is to be a man are all up in question. And in young men, so
much of what used to define manhood, being a warrior, defending your
country, believing in things, being part of a tribe has been very fractured.
And there's so much to distract male attention, things like video games
and pornography and things that have nothing to do with being out and
being active. So even though women are being distracted in similar ways,
they're often distracted with different types of things. And there really is
this loss of male identity, but unlike for a lot of women, there are far fewer
spaces for men to get together and to really discuss this and to express
what's going on for them. And most importantly, to chart a new course for
manhood in the modern era. What does a modern integrated man look
like sexually? What does he look like as a leader? And so getting men to
ask these questions, to do this work, I think is such a tremendous gift to
society. And it's often very challenging for men to find people who are
doing this work, who are working from a holistic and integrated space in
service of men. So there's a lot of misconception around masculinity.
There's a lot of sort of turning the definition of manhood into something
predatory or a lot of telling men how they should be and who they should
be. I see that a lot in David data and the Pickup Artist community and
being an alpha, there's kind of all these rules that get put on men. And
one of the things that I'm really passionate about with our coaching
methodology is giving men the tools to connect back to their freedom and
our authenticity and letting them redefine manhood, letting them decide
who they are deep down inside and who they want to be to help carry
society into the future in a way that's in alignment with their vision and
their values. So bringing this work is just incredible and many men don't
have spaces to turn to, to guide them in relationships, in marriages, to
guide them in their sexuality, to guide them in their ability to love and feel
intimate. And I think a huge lie that society tells itself is that men are fine
and they don't need support. We have this sense of helping everyone else
out in society. We definitely have a sense of helping women sexually and
relationally and women even have an identity of helping themselves in
those areas. For a lot of men, it doesn't exist. They don't even know to
necessarily ask those questions or get that support. And what I've seen
over and over again is a lot of men are in a lot of pain and they don't know
how to share it and they don't know how to talk about it and they don't
naturally form communities the way that I see women do. Doesn't mean
they can't form community, but it doesn't happen nearly as naturally. The
vulnerability doesn't happen, the sharing doesn't happen. They're not
conditioned to do that. I don't know if it's biological, but they can be
brought into it. It's just they often don't form that kind of conversation and
bond that's so necessary. So offering them a safe space to go within, to do
this level of work and depth and transformation is so important for our
society. And we can't do this work without men. We can't do this social
evolution without men. We can't change the way that we have sex and the
way that we relate and the way that we raise children and the way that
we love without men. So I do, there's a special place in my heart for using
this work in service of supporting men.

So many women who want to coach men ask themselves, why would men
want to work with me? Or wouldn't they want to work with a man instead?
And you will come across some men who only want to work with a man on
these topics, but mostly you'll come across men who either are totally
happy to work with a woman because of a woman's opinion, a woman's
touch. In some ways you are guiding them in secrets and awareness and
connection in the way that only a woman could. And for a lot of guys,
they're just looking for the best coach. So there actually aren't a lot of
people out there doing this work. There are definitely not a lot of men out
there doing this work that are properly trained. So if you are offering high
quality service, if you are relating to men in a very deep way and getting
them results, then they're absolutely going to work with you. So I have not
seen in my own work that men are unhappy working with a woman. If
anything, they really appreciate the perspective, the guidance, the
insight. that a woman affords and you may not be the only coach they
ever work with. Maybe sometimes they work with a man, sometimes they
work with a woman.

There's a particular value in working with a woman. A certain je ne sais

quoi that happens. I've seen it working with my own male clients. I've
seen it in workshops that I led that were all men and just me. There was
something about the quality of the transmission and the quality of the
interaction. It's just different. It's not better, but it's different than working
with a man. And so there can be this kind of almost sensual, insightful,
connected quality that you can get. That would just be different than if
you worked with a man.
So when working with men around their sexuality, around their
lovemaking, around their relationships, there's a couple of issues that I
see come up over and over again that are of particular interest to men.

The most important one over and over again is, I wanna be the
most outstanding lover. There is something in men where they really
want to feel like they are deeply satisfying their partner and that they
have a level of confidence and mastery over their sexuality. So these tools
and techniques are so valuable for men who just want to feel good in the
bedroom. They want to feel confident. They want to feel like they are
deeply satisfying their lover.

So most guys want to feel sexually attractive. They want to know

that they can be out in their lives, at a bar, on a date, and be magnetic to
men or women inside of their lives that they are sexually interested in. A
lot of guys want to be sexually successful. They want to feel like they can,
you know, sleep with the people that they want to sleep with. We're
talking consensual sex, but there's definitely a lot of guys who are like, I
want to know how to have people want to have sex with me that I want to
have sex with. It's a really big issue for a lot of men.

Guys, do you wanna know how to have a successful marriage and

long-term relationship? There's a lot of suffering out there of married
men, of men in long-term relationships, where they feel sexually stifled, or
they feel like their partner has a really high libido and they're not
interested. They feel like they're in a sexless marriage. They feel like
they're suffering from some sexual health issue and their partner doesn't
understand. So there's a lot of guys who are like, help, I need to know how
to make my relationship or my marriage work.

There's a lot of guys who want to know how to heal sexual health
issues in a holistic way. So a lot of guys dealing with erectile
dysfunction, what they think is premature ejaculation, feeling, you know,
like they can't stop watching porn, feeling some kind of challenge.
Something that is really common with men is they tend to misdiagnose
themselves. So a lot of men think there's something really wrong with
them if they like lost their erection once or twice or you know, they watch
porn three times a week or something like that. So some of working with
men around sexual health issues is normalizing their experience and
helping them to understand it. And some is identifying men who genuinely
do have a challenging time getting an erection or who experienced
premature ejaculation or who have other health issues that they are
struggling with. Sometimes they have, you know, health issues like
diabetes or prostate issues, things like that which hinder their sexual
functioning. And so learning holistic sex techniques can be really, really
empowering and nourishing for them.

A lot of men wanna master their sexual performance. They wanna

feel like they understand their ejaculation, that they can last as long as
they want to, that they feel really connected to their body and that they
are achieving kind of optimum sexuality.

I have worked with a lot of men who wanna learn how to connect
love and sex. So they feel like their heart and their penis is disconnected
and they are not sexually attracted to the people that they're in love with
and they don't feel like they love the people that they lust after. So doing
this kind of deep integrative work to help them feel inner alignment.

Lots of men wanna learn how to feel empowered in their

sexuality. So lots of men have received conditioning that you're taking
something away from a partner. A lot of men have received conditioning
that, you know, you're hurting someone if you go too intense or there's
something wrong with their sexuality or you know they are the gender
that rapes and pillages and causes pain and so a lot of men in some
conscious ways have actually shut down their sexuality and they don't feel
empowered to just follow their impulses and be wild in the bedroom. So
obviously they want to do this with a consenting partner. But a lot of men
carry a pain around not being fully sexually expressed or fully sexually
empowered.

And lots of men want to unwind conditioning around their

sexuality, around sex. A lot of guys grew up with religious conditioning.
A lot of guys grew up with a sense of, you don't do that. Don't treat
women that way. That's not a kind way to treat a woman. A lot of guys
grow up with a lot of conditioning around, you know, you're gay if you like
your butt being touched or you're gay if you are interested in your partner
wearing a strap on and having sex with you up the ass or you're gay if you
like your prostate being touched. There's a lot more control on men
around what their desires are and a lot more fear often around being
bisexual or gay and sometimes it's helping a man get in touch with his
genuine feelings, normalizing those if he does have bisexual inclinations
or gay inclinations. And sometimes it's helping a man see that, you know,
loving your butt being touched or loving your prostate being touched or
fantasizing about a man every once in a while doesn't make you gay or
doesn't make you bisexual. So helping them reclaim their body and their
sexuality outside of all these rigid rules that get placed on them by
society.

So I wouldn't say there's like huge difference in coaching men than

coaching women. There are a few things I noticed that by and large men
tend to appreciate more. The first is simplicity. So the simplest way
that you can explain something in the smallest amount of words can really
speak to a huge amount of men. It's okay to have a simple copy. It's okay
to state things super simply. It's okay to really just help them get there
and to make it crystal clear. So one of the things that I always notice
working with men is they tend to, a lot of them talk in much simpler
language. So it's much more rare to get a three paragraph opus magnum
about a man's feelings and what he experienced and how something
happened. It's much more common to get one or two sentences with a
pretty direct like A happened and then B happened and this is it. So
speaking simply can speak to some men. You don't want to lose them by
being too overly descriptive. But again, this really depends on the
individual man. Also men tend to be very interested in results. So
talk to them about the results they can expect, talk to them about what
you're going to get them. There is a desire in men to connect emotionally
and to feel connected to you, but as far as a kind of gender differential
goes, men to a certain degree are totally okay working with you as long as
you get them results and they don't necessarily need to feel like you
completely love them or you're creating like ultimate safety for them.
Again, it's not true across the board, but it's something to really pay
attention to that for a lot of men, the emphasis is more on results than
relationship. Although relationship is really important. So if you think
about it in reverse, for women results is important, but a lot of women will
really almost put relationship first. I've tended to see that less with guys,
although again, you know, you can never know when you're talking to one
individual what they're going to be like.

So remember that with men's coaching, you can use all of the practices
from quarter two. So you already have a tremendous storehouse of work
that you can do with men. And these additional modules are going to help
you understand a few practices that are very targeted towards men
around their freedom, their power, and their love in this module and then
working with men's sexuality specifically. So really going into the specifics
of what's different about men, the anatomy of men, how to talk to men
about sex in a way that we didn't fully cover in quarter two. But don't
forget that you already have a whole foundation of practices to work with
men with.

I think one of the biggest things to communicate to men is that you are
going to show them how to get what they want in a way that's truly
empowering for them. So instead of giving them a whole bunch of rules, a
whole bunch of directives telling them that they need to be something
that they're not, you're going to empower them to connect with
themselves so deeply that they can listen to their own impulses, that they
can really hear themselves. And one of the things that I find as well
that men tend to enjoy, again, not across the board, but they
tend to enjoy it, is challenge. They actually thrive from a sense of
being challenged to step up, to grow, to get curious, to stick to their
practice. There's something in that that excites them. So don't be afraid to
challenge them to the exercises that will encourage them to grow. It can
be really actually exciting for them to inspire them to be more.

Sometimes in working with men, it's the subtle exercises can take
a little bit longer, but they're very capable of going there. Also
tapping into emotions and feelings can take longer. So you'll find, and one
of the things that I find is if I invite a woman into an emotional exercise,
she will almost always get it pretty quickly. For men, some of them will get
it quickly, and some of them, it's really overturning such a strong
conditioning that they shouldn't feel, that they should always have
everything under wraps, under control. And so it can be a really, really big
deal to help them feel and to guide them into that and to let them know
that they can be safe, they can still be empowered and in control in their
life. They'll just be more connected deep down inside. So this work is
really about helping men redefine their role in society and letting their
power not come just from a hierarchy, not come from having power over
others, not come from having power by taking from others, but literally
helping them to see power comes from within and that they can be
powerful, sexually alive men and still be in service to society and still
actually feel good and integrated and connected and like they can create
a life that they truly, truly desire. So I am so excited for this work to reach
as many men as possible. And all the men that I've worked with in my
men's sexual mastery training, I have seen such incredible results and I
have been brought to tears over and over again by how much this work
really, really means to men. So if you have the calling to really serve men,
I would, you know, not worry too much about if you're talking to them the
right way or if it feels foreign, just let yourself reach them with the work.
Just be yourself, just be natural, connect with them, and you'll see how
much they are willing to apply themselves to this process and how
profound their transformation and results can really be.