As instructors, we have noticed that sensuality is a difficult topic for a person to confront, even when they have decided to go for their goals and have done everything it takes to attend a course. For many, it helps to have examples of how others have broken through and have come out winning. Here is one such example.
Rob Kandell, a student of the Welcomed Consensus in the late 90’s and co-founder of the successful OMing community, One Taste, recounts his own personal journey of discovery and understanding. The realization, I’m a Chauvinist?, wasn’t always easy to face.
“Do you know that you are a classic chauvinist?”
I blinked at this comment and became more confused. Me, a chauvinist? What? My ego sprang to life, and the lines of defense came instantly.
“Um, I don’t think you really see who I am sir.”
“I’m a nice guy. I’ve always been a friend to women. I’ve never hurt a woman in my life.”
“Do you see the way I treat ‘C’ (my first wife), Um, she’s like a princess, I cater to her every need.”
(Insert about 50 more self-protective rationalizations)
It was a cold day in January 2000, and I was at the beginning of my personal journey that would eventually lead me to dedicate my life to helping people live free, expressed, authentic and unHIDDEN. However, at that moment, I was raw exposed, and I wanted to escape.
My teacher, RJ, of the Welcomed Consensus is a powerful man, smart, intense and vastly experienced in the ways of interpersonal relating. My three-month program was at a tipping point and in this particular session, I was already triggered, confused, and mentally exhausted. He knew it. He could feel that my ego had been bypassed and there was an available doorway for me to walk through.
Weakly, I responded, “uh, what do you mean?”
He told me what he noticed about my behavior towards C and what he knew in his core to be true. The language I used, the posture I took, and my viewpoints on my relationship. He tore apart the facade of my biased view that I was not indeed a chauvinist. He was right, and I knew it.
During my journey, I learned an important lesson.
It wasn’t my fault that I was a chauvinist, I was born and raised to become one…
I progressed through school, found a woman who I perceived was a “broken-winged bird,” got on my white horse and rode in to save the day. We fell in love and got married and followed the scripts handed to us by society. Then, she decided she wanted more.
Her desire for more led me to that crucial moment with RJ when he reflected to me the hardest truth I had ever received.
The newfound reflection and viewpoint that I was a chauvinist took many years to integrate. After years of working with RJ and his team, I started OneTaste with another powerful teacher, Nicole Daedone, who continued to show me the depths of my chauvinistic viewpoints. During this tenure, I add a second charged descriptor to my resume: “misogynist”… Ugh.
For the next several years, I engaged with these parts of myself. Where they lived in my shadow, I confronted them, saw their origins, untied how they influenced my judgments and worked hard to become familiar with them. I experienced shame, fear, laughter, and joy. I started to see how I related to women, I also saw how I could pick alternative viewpoints that would bring me closer to the women in my life.
Today Rob is a successful consultant who brings his down-to-earth knowledge to audiences on a multitude of topics. He brings his enthusiasm and acumen to his weekly podcast, Tuff Love, on subjects around relationships, intimacy, communication and gender dynamics.
You can read Rob’s entire article You Are a Chauvinist And you’re not a bad man at The Goodman Project.