Episode 84: Baby Reindeer, Male Abuse & Shame

This week's episode has been sponsored by Oh My Bod, shifting the evolution of pleasure. Hi, I'm Suzanne Noble, and you're listening to Sex Advice for Seniors. And today I'm with Dr. Graham Stevenson, who is a sex and relationship coach. You also do tantric massage, and I want to talk about something that's quite topical. And because you're one of the few men that we've ever had on the show, I think it's also something that we can really, um, get our teeth into. And that relates to a program that I binge-watched recently called Baby Reindeer. For those of you who don't know it or haven't seen it, it's a Netflix series. It's about a— it's a true story about an up-and-coming comic who is doing a part-time job in a pub. He meets a female stalker who is relentless in her pursuit of him, and eventually he has to— he has to go to the police and report her. But during that period of time, he also encounters a comic writer who he's desperate for the affection of. And that man takes advantage of the relationship and, and keeps basically raping him while he tells him that he is going to make him famous. And the— it's that thought of the fame and the craving for attention that makes him keep going back, just as it takes him a while to report the stalker because, again, he's getting all this attention in the form of text messages and all this kind of other stuff. Eventually, the whole situation blows up, goes public, and when he eventually goes to seek basically help from his parents and just get some relief from the whole thing and confesses to his parents what's been going on and the rape that he's experienced from this one man, his father then says to him, "Well, I grew up in a Catholic school and went to Catholic school as a young man." And what do you think happened to me? And the reason that I'm bringing all of this up is that I have met many men of, of my own age and perhaps a bit older who were, um, also sexually abused when they were younger. They might have gone to boarding school, they might have been in Catholic education through the church, um, other types of environments that we know have sometimes, um, been shelters for pedophiles and as a result of that. There seems to me to be a whole generation of men who are living with shame as a result of sexual abuse, and, um, and Graham and I are going to talk about that. So Graham, tell me a bit about your background, and yeah, then let's, let's get into it.

So I was born and brought up in East Africa.

Wow.

And so from a— until about the age of 8. And so my The sexual environment in which I was brought up was very free and open, uh, on, on the African side, was very, very contained on the European side. And when I went to a boarding school in England straight out of Africa, which was a huge traumatic change for me, I got this very strict conformity. I'm very much an outsider, and, and it was I, I guess I, I look back and there was definitely an essence of grooming going on with certain, certain members of staff. And there was, there was also the stuff that goes on between boys as they start to mature. So that was up to the age of about 14. I don't think I, I was aware of the attention, but I was also aware of trying to work out the confusion between these two different, you know, cultural attitudes to sex.

Yeah.

When I got to grammar school as a boarder, that was when I was definitely, I would call, groomed by my housemaster. And that resulted in abuse. And like the person you were talking about, when I eventually got to the point where I actually didn't want to be a boarder anymore and I was asked why, and so I then said, this is why. My stepfather said, well, that's par for the course. And any— so, which just— I was gobsmacked. I just thought, wow. And, and my mother just didn't hear it because I don't think she could believe that the man who had helped get me a preferential place at school could possibly have used that position to then abuse me. You know, he was so nice and all the rest of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I've heard, you know, not to, not to, um, make your situation seem any less significant than I know it is, but it's a story that I've heard so often. Yeah, as your father said, it becomes like a, yeah, well, what did you expect? But I think your— the fact you went to your father, I suspect that lots of these men never told anybody, right? Never. So they're living with the shame. And as a result of that, I know that some of these people have sought to replicate these experiences, sometimes through being in alternative lifestyles. Like, for instance, BDSM, for me, sometimes comes out of that where— not, not always, because, you know, different people get into these things for different reasons, right? But sometimes taking the cane, getting smacked or something starts becoming associated with pleasure. It at that time that you're becoming aware of sexual feelings. And so therefore there's a relationship that starts to take place with some of this. And I suspect also it can inform your sexuality or how you— or the shame around some of the feelings that you might have experienced. And how you process those?

Well, I think that there's two things. A boarding school is a ridiculous place to put young men trying to work out their sexuality. It's, it's— you're separating yourself from the people that you're supposed to relate to and learn to relate to and to give you this, the polarity that you need to learn to inhabit. And so that, that for one thing is, is insane, then you get this confusion going on between attraction, and you get this confusion where your body is responsive, it's hormonally driven. You're starting to, in your brain, you're starting to work, work out what the template of who am I as a sexual being, and the experiences you're getting are utterly confusing you. So that for me I remember, you know, as a, as a teenager, constantly in those days hitchhiking was the thing, and I seemed to end up being picked up by men constantly who were, were suggesting, you know, sort of sexual interactions. Whereas I got to the point where I, I was almost exasperated. The people I wanted to connect with, which were girls— I had no experience, I was really shy, I was confused— the people I wasn't interested in connecting with were seeking me out, were finding me attractive. So, and it was almost like, have I got this completely wrong? And, and, and the answer was, well, the proof is you have. The proof that, that life is giving you is, yeah, you've got this wrong. And, and that is, that's really hard to work to get over that hurdle. All those, the skills that you're not given The education that you're not given about sex, let alone your development, and the— I, you know, I always say you're just thrown out in the world to learn through groping girls in the dark, and whatever was going on that was, that was, it was just hidden. It's a huge, uh, it's a huge indictment of society, mostly the adults that were entrusting their children to a system that they never really investigated or that they projected all their fears onto. Whatever you do, don't let them have sex until they're married or whatever, which is for me is like, you know, no underwear fucked up.

I mean, I, and also I think that most, look, most parents, I speak for friends of mine whose, you know, parents sent them to boarding school like you at a very young age. I suspect that many of those parents thought they were doing their absolute best, right? Yeah. They thought, we are giving you the best education money can buy. We're putting you in these, like, environments with some of the smartest minds in the country, supposedly, and you— and this environment is going to provide you with a network that's going to be useful for life. Yes. And we know that because we know that all of our politicians and all of the senior, you know, leaders in this country have mostly come out of that environment. So they weren't completely wrong about that. But what they didn't understand was all the other shit.

Well, they were, they were the product of the society that they grew up in that said having a good job, being all these things that that kind of education could give you was the right thing. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating that we're currently having, which is we've got minds that have been to the best public schools. They've been to Oxford and Cambridge, and they're making a complete mess of the situation that we're in. And the situation that we're in is that we are disconnected from nature. We're disconnected from our own nature. You went to school to learn how to disconnect from your body. So they taught you sport, they, they caned you, they abused you, and you learned to actually put that aside and then function in an institution to the best of your ability where the outcome of the institution is make these laws, make the bottom line, make whatever it is. And And we've lost the ability to empathize with the consequences, you know, and the other side of the equation.

Yeah.

So I'm not in the least bit, you know, I look at these people and I just think, yeah, I'm, you know, you are a great sort of orator, you're a great sort of person, but actually nobody's taking note of the fact that your private life is a trail of disasters. You've got, you've sired children all over the place, you know, and you think that's a recipe for a society that's actually going to succeed and nobody picks you up on that.

No.

Sorry, I'm on my soapbox. You know, if I get a Hyde Park Corner, boy, would I let rip.

But listen, I mean, it's all, it relates to how we how we, um, how we are human, you know, how, how we relate to our own bodies and how it relates to not just how we relate to ourselves but how we relate to others. And, you know, going back to this whole, the, you know, this whole environment in which you grew up and hundreds and thousands of other young men predominantly grew up It's no surprise that, for instance, my— most of my friends have just decided that they're not looking for a relationship anymore because when they meet age-appropriate men, they're disappointed. You know, they're disappointed. They're like, what the hell's wrong with this person? And frankly, mostly I think what's wrong with many of them is that this disconnection from themselves, this disconnection from their nature, the shame that they feel around maybe the abuse that they suffered from growing up, they've carried with them into adulthood. And unfortunately, they don't know about people like you and, and other people that could help them unravel this mess and perhaps have a, you know, a happy and productive relationship. Now, well, that leads me on to my next thing, which is, of course, you seem to, despite all of this horribleness, you seem to have found a partner. And if I read correctly, if you've been with, with this person for 40 years, is that right?

I'm hopeless on numbers, so I, I usually say 47, 48.

It's a long time.

It's a long time. Yeah, I met her when I was 15.

Oh my God.

But actually we got together again when I was about 18 or so. And that was the lifeline for me, that there was a member of the opposite sex who saw beyond the externals and believed in me.

Yeah.

And that really helped me to find the way back. And, you know, most of my healing has been in the, in the context of this. I have to say this, though. When I met my wife, one of the things that struck me most was that every relationship on her side of the family was monogamously fulfilling over a long period of time. The only, the only couple who'd got divorced went to East Africa. And when I met her, every relationship on my side of the family had ended up in either death or divorce. And the only couple that had stayed together were Christian and had gone to England. And I was terrified of this, this inevitability, the, the momentum of the fact that I couldn't stay together. And so I was absolutely determined to break this chain in my family line. And so we have worked really hard at solving problems.

Hmm. Yeah.

As opposed to giving up and just saying, well, you know, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I'm not as successful as you on this.

No, I don't think success is—

But my parents have been, who are still both alive, have been married over 60 years. And, you know, they're very, very different, but they've worked things out, right? They've just, they've just worked, they've just worked stuff out and I'm, yeah, I get bored too easily and I'm, you know, I'm not great at monogamy just generally.

So I don't believe in monogamy in that sense. I don't have a blueprint. Like Esther Perel says, nowadays you're going to have 4 marriages, 4 long-term relationships or committed relationships, and they might be to the same person.

Yeah.

But you're really going to have to renegotiate them because there's a long period of time in which you've got to live. And I can tell you, renegotiating the relationship that you're in is a lot harder than actually starting again. And I, one point I said, you know, it would have been so much easier if we got divorced and then sat down and said, okay, how are we going to get together again? Because you'd had a blank. I said, it's rather like changing the foundations of the house that you're built, you're living in. Yeah.

Yeah.

Very difficult.

No, and extremely difficult. And again, you know, I think the thing is that I didn't— in my marriage, I didn't talk about sex at all. I didn't have any idea. I didn't have any vernacular around it. And it was only when I left and started exploring all these different lifestyles and getting involved with lots of different people that I just realized that actually it was the— it was it really was so important to be on the same page with whatever I was doing that I wanted to make sure that, you know, I was safe and, and people knew my boundaries and all of that. And so I needed to have— I needed to learn how to speak up, right? I needed to learn how to become confident. And it, and it was through going on that journey that I as I said before we, you know, we started recording, that I met all these men and we just started talking about, you know, growing up and sexual experiences and stuff. And, and all this history of abuse I just kind of uncovered. And I suspect it was because they didn't find me threatening. I wasn't going to judge them. And, but I was pretty astounded as to the scale of it when I started having these conversations, I kind of, I thought maybe 1 or 2 people, but it felt like everyone, everyone that I met that had, that had grown up in a certain environment, that was just the way it was. Like your father said, it was just the way it was. So, I mean, your salvation was your wife. Not all of us, or I don't, you know, I wasn't abused, so I can't put myself in that bucket. But, you know, not everybody is so lucky. To, to, to be able to manifest that type of relationship, remain committed, and go on that journey. How do you, in your practice, start to unravel some of this stuff for men who may actually want to confront what happened to them?

Um, I think just a bit of a background, I think As I said earlier on, I think the reason why you have come across so many men is because in one sense you've resolved sexuality for yourself, and that is a huge plus for men because they are sexually hardwired and, and they are— they— sex means a lot to them in that sense. Yeah. Um, and I think because I was in a relationship which we were determined Every— I'm not saying that we didn't try and separate. We got to the point of packing our bags and, and realized that actually, you know what, this is rubbish, this is awful, you know, we got to solve this somehow. And so we come back together again. So we've been to the point of separation and we've come back again. And, and it gives you a refreshing different sort of space in which to look at things.

Yeah.

And my wife is a couples counselor. I'm a sex and relationship coach. And that arises out of the blood, sweat, and tears of not having people to talk to. Yeah, not finding people that you could open up to. Nobody's really trained in sex. Doctors aren't, and they don't have the time. And, and lots of therapists haven't resolved their own sexual issues either. They, you know, it's there, and yet it's a fundamental aspect of your identity. And so Whenever the two things I do in my work is give people permission, because I'm a doctor, so, you know, I can give you permission to be sexual, it's okay, and normalize you. The fact that you were caned at school and you, you like being caned in BDSM is a really normal, sensible way of dealing with abuse because you're now in a place of control. And whatever's going on, I mean, loads of people, all their fantasies they're ashamed of. And there's so many things, their behaviors they're ashamed of. And when you sit down and say to them, wow, that's a really intelligent way of dealing with a crappy past, they kind of blink and look at you because they're expecting judgment. And I'm saying, no, this is actually survival. This is actually a good way. And let me help you find the way through. Because so often, I suppose I look at abuse in a slightly different way. Sexual abuse is usually you being initiated into sex against your will, non-consensually, before your time.

Yeah.

So you're stuck in an initiation ceremony and nobody's led you through to the other side. And the difficulty is that you haven't taken the route that everybody else has taken. So the people, your people, are not the people who had a really nice time, had a loving relationship, had great sex with whoever they were out going out with at the time. They don't understand you. But like alcoholics and all these kind of people, there is a group of people who would be able to say, oh yeah, that's the way I came. And you can sit down with them and they are your tribe. And you can say, well, I turned this crap into gold. I, I'm, you know, I turned my abuse into my work. It, it gives me an empathy, it gives me an insight into the human condition, if you like, and the, and the brilliance of the unconscious and our amazing ways of survival. That means that I don't— I cannot judge people because I've learned to reframe them in a— what a great way of dealing with that, you know. Congratulations, brilliant. So you really like this kind of kink, and this— that's amazing. Now, either that is your core sexual way of getting aroused, or it's your unconscious saying there's something here that you need to deal with and process. And then your kink will evaporate and you will come into a different arousal system.

Yeah, yeah. And it reminds me of, I mean, as we know, the what turns you on is so vast, you know, and, and I've come across people for whom their kink was so specific because I suspect something happened to them at some point that just flicked a switch in their brain, right? And so it takes an enormous amount of, like, role-playing in a very specific type of way and, and dressing up in a certain way or putting on a specific type of shoe or whatever it happens to be, to the point where I just think, how did they find anybody that's willing to do this? Other than paying for it. Like, how do they get satisfied? I've seen it with people that watch too much porn as well, where they just end up down some weird little rabbit hole somewhere, and you just think, oh mate, nobody's gonna do that, you know. Not, not, no, because there's no pleasure for the other person sometimes, you know. It's just, it's just all one-way traffic. But I think You know, for me, it's when the kink— it's fine if your kink is something which is fairly general. Where I struggle is sometimes where the kink becomes so specific that obtaining it means that it's almost impossible to get aroused by anything because you're just, you're just so focused on this very, very particular thing that I think that's when it becomes troubling for me, where where, you know, it's just too specific.

Well, I think, yeah, you either have to pay for it or you have to try and, you know, see what's behind it. Because if you imagine this is your initiation ceremony and you've got halfway through it and you don't know, you're the one that's being initiated. So when you're halfway through, you go around looking for somebody to complete the ceremony for you, you know, and you go around saying, look, this is where I got to. And, and that's when the specific, you know, is like, can, can we resolve this?

Yeah.

Can we, can we get the other side of it? And so, yeah, I've had clients who've come with really disturbing fantasies.

Yeah.

Worked with them because I've said, don't worry about the fantasy, you know, but it is awful. Yeah. But, but the, the unconscious is amazing at being able to give you these kind of things. But what it's trying to say to you in sugaring it up is deal with this, go through it. And so we've worked together, and then suddenly, you know, I don't have those fantasies anymore. That's amazing. That's really interesting. It— that kind of scenario doesn't have an erotic edge to me, for me anymore. And it's like, well, it's resolved. It's done away with, you know. You've gone through it.

Yeah, yeah.

But, and that can also be in enactments, you know. Where you, where you have an enactment of a, of abuse scene where the person who was vulnerable is now in control and actually calling the shots. So they're able to stop the action at the process of traumatic overwhelm and say, okay, I can deal with this overwhelm. Let me breathe through this. Let me, you know, do this and, and process the the body's responses that weren't able to fulfill whatever was going on. That's really important as well. And that, that's what I think a lot of people are doing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they're either doing that or they're doing nothing, right? I think, you know, there's a lot of people who are just very lonely and, and ashamed. And, and I think especially with older men, I, I find there's just a lot that needs unpacking that feels like it doesn't get unpacked until it builds up to a point where they just can't handle it anymore. Whereas I think a lot of women that I know, when things happen to them, tend to lean on their friends and relationships because we're very relationship-oriented generally. And so we tend to have people that we can talk to and You know, I've— look, as a kid, I was touched up. I was, you know, lots of things happened. You know, the things that when I was walking down the street, people, loads of stuff happened. But it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't something that I, I, I felt was so overwhelming. It wasn't like my first sexual experience was fairly anonymous, but I was in control. I knew what I knew what was going on, right? Even if it was just like in a very quite anonymous sort of situation. So I've never really gone through any of that. And I suspect that lots of people that have had very, you know, traumatic early sexual experiences, some of the women I know are quite clear about those things. The men I know are not.

And let me ask you a question. Would you say that you you are unashamedly in, in possession of your sexuality. Do you own it?

Totally, 100%. Yeah.

And I would say you're a very unusual woman like that.

Yeah.

And so, um, the other side of the equation is that there's a whole societal and cultural way of being a man, which is to be you know, out of touch with your emotions, in touch with your anger, highly competitive, always winning, and isolated from, you know, isolated from other men and isolated from pretty well everybody else emotionally.

Yeah.

So even if you didn't suffer at school and you had this blueprint, you know, impressed on you, you're still going to be at this age emotionally, probably emotionally unavailable to connect with a woman. Yeah, and the woman's side of it, of course, is that you're out of touch with your sexuality. You are terrified of being raw animal passion because that, that side has got loads of social, you know, yeah, downsides to it. Slut, all that kind of business. And the, the great thing about this place in life is that you've you've done the career, you've done the family, you've done all the things for which that training was for, and you've also got to the point where you don't give a shit about the game that's being played or what people think about you. You just think, you know, the next thing I've got to look forward to is a coffin, and am I going to really just conform to make life easier for everybody else, coasting downhill to this inevitability, Or am I actually going to think now is the time to actually make choices and live the life and, you know, find out about these things? Now, for a lot of people, sex is not an issue. You know, their bodies have shut down. Their experiences have been so negative. It's like it's just too much effort.

No, I know. And I meet lots of people like that.

Yeah. And I totally respect that. I think for people who feel like, you know what, I was given a— what was it all about? You know, I feel as if I've missed out. And they want to get in touch with this sort of vitality and creative energy in them that has always been expressed procreatively. And they, you know, those kind of people, I think, yeah, okay, well, let's just get rid of the things that stop you and give you permission and realize that, you know, in the gender scenario, which was so much polarized, more polarized in this generation than the current young people. Yeah, I think the current young people have totally different issues and problems. And you mentioned pornography, you know, the impact of pornography on younger people is far more than it was in, you know, oh, yeah, completely.

And I think also, there's a lot of, there's, we could talk about young people on a completely different show. But yeah, I think, you know, as you say, for me, I, I look, I made a choice after I was incredibly sexual in my 40s. And then menopause was kind of shit. And then I came out the other side and I went, you know what, I'm not willing to say goodbye to this. I know it's changed. I'm not the same horny person that I was before. I know it's different, but it was something that was so much a part of my life. I don't want to let it go. And so I've worked— I've, you know, I've made it work for me in a different way, which actually is, to be honest, is there's no drama attached to any of the situations that I'm in. I do what I want pretty much, and I have a nice time, so I really can't complain. But it was very much intentional on my part. And I think that sex in later life, for not so much perhaps for men, although they have their own issues around erectile dysfunction sometimes and other things, but it was for me, it was quite intentional. And I think that if you are going to be intentional about it, you can, you can have fun.

Yeah.

You know, but it's like you said, as a woman, you have to give yourself permission to, to feel good about it, right? Because society's telling you that you're an old hag and, and there's a lot of, there's a lot of, you know, words that are used against us to try and make us feel neutered. And I think, fuck that. We've still got loads of years ahead of us to just be having fun in whatever way that looks. So let's just go for it. But yeah, I mean, you know, we could talk about this forever, but I think for me, you know, what I wanted really to discuss with you was some of the work around this shame, around the historic abuse that so many men, including yourself, have have suffered from and some of the ways and techniques that you can overcome this, and also to introduce them to you, because this has definitely been one of the most fascinating conversations I've had, and I've done 82 episodes of this.

Thank you very much.

No, no, honestly, I think, you know, people just don't talk about this stuff, and I think it's important, and I think you're so brave.

Thank you. Thank you very much. So, yeah, I think I've also been very lucky, not only in a life partner, but also— and I guess it's also my personality— that I found a group of fellow travelers, both men and women, who are at an age where they, they want to, they want to make the most of what's left in terms of years, and they, and they're interested in personal development.

Yeah.

And this is personal, personal development, like these are my issues. And so you can, you can, I mean, basically it all came out of Tantra, out of my Tantra training.

Yeah.

And so those, and, and that's, that was very interesting because that was a manufactured scenario in which men and women touched each other, learned how to touch each other, did all this training, and then learned to trust each other and thought Well, let's carry on doing this and let's turn this into, let's turn this into a personal exploration in which we can explore our own sexuality in a group.

Yeah, yeah.

Where we don't have to conform.

Yeah, amazing. Well, we've had Jan Day on this program. Yeah, we've had other, we've had quite a few Tantra people actually. Some of them are quite extreme for me. And some of them are more gentle, like Jan, who's for me more around setting boundaries, getting people to accept touch, and, and, you know, creating ways for people to be with each other intimately in a way that makes people feel both happy. So yeah, I will signpost people to that episode as well, now that you've reminded me. But yeah, I will put all your links and things in the bio. It has been, it has been absolutely delightful to talk to you.

And my pleasure too. Thank you very much.