Deeper Dating ft. Ken Page

Steve welcomes Ken Page to share his experiences with Deeper Dating and the struggles queer and sober individuals face when it comes to finding love.

Thank you for listening. Please join our Patreon family for the post-show where Ken and I discuss Sex and Dating, along with more exclusive content at www.Patreon.com/gAyApodcast

Check out all the information on Ken at https://www.deeperdating.com/

Find Ken Page on all the socials @deeper.dating and follow us while you are at it  @gAyApodcast

If you are interested in sharing your story, getting involved with the show, or just saying hi, please e-mail me at gayapodcast@gmail.com 

Transcript

Steve: 0:03

Hi everyone, and welcome to gAy A, a podcast about sobriety for the LGBTQ plus community and our allies. I'm your host, Steve Bennet-martin. I am an alcoholic and addict, and I'm grateful for feeling valued at work. As of this recording, I am 809 days sober, and today we're welcoming a guest to share their experience, wisdom, and hope with you. I had the pleasure of getting to know this amazing and wonderful guy at this year's Gay and Sober Men's Conference. Their workshop on deeper dating was one of the highlights that I didn't get to see firsthand, but everyone was raving about afterwards. So I cannot wait for you all to get to know him. Welcome

Ken: 0:39

Ken Page. Oh, I'm so glad to be here. I want to thank you for the work that you're doing for celebrating sobriety, for celebrating the community, for adding resources, support, and hope. I just love all of that, so I'm really glad to be here.

Steve: 0:53

Yeah, and we had you as the conference person to lead the Deeper Dating Workshop, but while you were there, you also participated in won tickets. How was Once Upon A one more time.

Ken: 1:05

Oh, that was a lot of fun. That was unexpected. And we got these Britney spear bobbleheads. Mm-hmm. Two of our three kids really, really wanted them. Mm-hmm. And so we gave those away, but we really enjoyed the show. It was delightful, and it was a complete surprise to win that raffle.

Steve: 1:21

Yeah. That is awesome. Well, what would you say is your favorite part of being a member of the queer community today?

Ken: 1:30

I think that queer people in so many ways are at the cutting edge of world evolution, and I think that, one of the ways is that we have been crippled in countless ways by gender role rigidity that has been torture for men, torture for women. Torture for non-binary trans people. Just torture, torture for the world. And that gender binary has locked people in in the most ridiculous ways. And the clearly the queer community is on the absolute forefront in this, on this planet today of helping people understand that the expression of self is a beautiful, rich spectrum. It's not a binary and so that means how we love who we love. So I'm so grateful to be at the cutting edge of the world. And what I would say about that is I'm 66 years old, so when I came out it wasn't so easy. It wasn't as hard as it was way before that, but it wasn't so easy. It was really a leap that made me a lot stronger and I got to witness early. Stages of queer liberation, which, I'm so grateful for. I was at the cutting edge and I experienced both fear and inspiration and all of that as a gay man. And now our youngest child is transgender and she gets to be on the cutting edge of this both scary and exciting new place in the world. So It's a wonderful thing to be on the cutting edge of world evolution. Yeah,

Steve: 3:05

I can certainly agree. It used to be something growing up, I remember being one of the things I was ashamed most about. Now it's one of my most proud qualities. Mm-hmm. That and being an alcoholic and addict myself I know that that's kind of what inspired me to this journey of helping and trying to do things like this podcast to help other alcoholics and addicts. What inspired your passion for helping our community?

Ken: 3:27

I had a mentor, his name was John McNeil. He wrote the church in the homosexual. He was a dear, dear friend, and a great, brilliant teacher. And he used to say that he felt that the greatest spiritual movement going on in the world today was happening in church basements. And I really agree with him. Meetings are going on in Zoom and all over the place now, but he was of course referring to 12 step programs and so. For me, my best friend was in a relationship with an alcoholic who, and so my best friend joined Al-Anon. His partner in time joined aa. I watched their world transform. I got so much wisdom from my friend Michael as he was experiencing this, and I developed a deep, deep love for program. Then for me being codependent I codependents anonymous helped me profoundly and was a part of my life for a good amount of time. Then coming up in the queer world where our entertainment, our way to find love, our adventure for many of us in New York City, all of that came from Back rooms hooking up, that whole kind of sex world, which was a part of my world and was addictive and compulsive and not good for me. I was a psychotherapist at the time in the gay community and I felt not, So safe going to SS c a meetings'cause my clients would be there. So I didn't have that benefit of those programs. But I loved those programs. I worked with a lot of clients who were in those programs. Then I worked with some clients who were in, I'm just gonna be blunt here, essay, which is at its highest levels, somewhat homophobic. And that was a painful thing to see. I have also been a member of Families Anonymous, which has been really helpful to me. So, to me the 12 step programs are some of the most beautiful, hopeful, powerful things I know. And I'll just say one more thing about that. And this is a kind of strange thing to say, but in my many years as a psychotherapist, I worked with a lot of people who were not addicts and had a deep, intense amount of self involvement and weren't, and couldn't be aware of how that self involvement, that self-centered fear actually was really hurting them. And I thought to myself, If they were an alcoholic, they would go to AA and they would be able to heal that in a way that I, as a therapist couldn't begin to touch in my role. So, I have a deep and personal love of 12 step work. I. And my husband and I often, when we go to bed at night, we read from a 12 step book for couples. Mm-hmm. So that's what I have to say about

Steve: 6:28

that. No, that, that's really awesome. and I agree. I feel like one of the benefits of working in programs and just in general working on yourself consciously and consistently, whatever that looks like for someone it makes your connections with other people. So much more real and so much more genuine. I feel like there are people where I'm like, you could use a program even because you could learn how to love yourself and appreciate things and accept the things you can't change and change the things you can, and all of those things that we learned that that have nothing to do necessarily with our alcohol or addiction per se, but can be applied to making just real life

Ken: 7:05

easier. So much. One of the things that I love most about program people, Is that so many of them have gotten over this hump of embarrassment about their character defects and their flaws, and they'll just freely acknowledge this stuff. I mean, that's liberation. That is so beautiful. And that comes from program. And so many people outside of program are so far from being able to do that, to step on that terrain and acknowledge these things. So that's another really beautiful, beautiful thing to say. and then another one is, A spirituality that is really healing and powerful and also radical because 12 Step Spirituality is so radical. It's not 12 Step spirituality is not about spiritual accessorizing. It's about the basics. It's about the core. And so I think it introduces people to a very organic, rich, gorgeous sense of spirituality. I think that the promises are one of the most beautiful pieces of literature. I really put the promises up there with some of the most beautiful pieces of literature ever written.

Steve: 8:17

Yeah, I love that. My nightly zoom meeting ends with it, so it's my way to wind down uhhuh. But outside of the rooms or even in the rooms, we had you in to talk about dating. As someone who's married myself, I know that one of the best things about getting proposed to is I was like, great, I can forget all the rules and tricks and everything I ever had to learn about dating now that I've tricked someone into being with me forever. So, especially as someone who is like married, why did continue this passion or interest for dating?

Ken: 8:45

Oh, right, right, right. I think the reason why to a large degree is twofold. One is when you're in the ocean and a wave hits you and it carries you a long way, it just moves you and moves you, and moves you and moves you. The decades of pain and longing of my being single are still carrying me and still moving me and motivating me to do this work because I was what I called chronically single for decades, and I was one of these people who really, really wanted a relationship. So many nights. I remember visiting friends who were couples and being in the guest bedroom and just thinking of things like. Wow. They have like a little bag where they keep their toothbrushes together when they go away on trips. Like, to me, that seemed like such a miracle because I had never, for many years, been with anybody for more than six weeks. I was not able to sustain it. And so, this is how I thought of it. I thought these people have something that I don't have. I don't know what that something is, but I don't have it. Maybe they were less superficial than me, so looks were less important or maybe they had a stronger sense of grounding or maybe they were just more attractive than me, or maybe they were more confident, but there was some it that they had that I just totally lacked, and I believed that down to my bones. At a certain point I was on my knees and I realized it was a powerless place and I realized I had to become a student. Of what the hell I was doing wrong. And I started really learning and, I was a psychotherapist and a teacher, so at the same time as I was learning it, I would lead groups in retreats.'cause I used to run spiritual retreats for gay men. And I would do a workshop on loneliness and intimacy and half. This huge group of people would come to that workshop because so much loneliness, so much desire, so much longing, and I realized this was stuff that we all had to learn and. As a professional, I spent decades really putting together a path that is about self-love, that is about the inner journey of finding love, that combines spirituality, psychology, and self-love. And I learned things that were just nothing short of magical to me. The key thing being that the very parts of ourselves we're the most ashamed to reveal when we look for love are the greatest keys to our being able to find healthy love. Those are what I call core gifts. Those are like the essential parts of our being and the formula. That I think is amazing is the degree to which we champion and cherish those parts is actually the degree to which we get attracted to and attract people who are good for us. Nobody taught me that I. And the reverse, the degree to which we like, shove those parts of ourselves down or try to airbrush them or change them or be something different is the degree to which we're gonna end up being attracted to people who aren't good for us and be and attracting people who aren't good for us. This is huge. This is just huge. And so this is magical to me and so I do. Deep, deep work with the people I work with mostly in six month intensives now, where we work on this material really deeply and really closely. And it's just an amazing joy to me to see that the stuff that happened for me is happening for so many other people too. So these are the reasons I'm so into this. I've spent a lifetime of work kind of creating a map, and it's a map based on hope that really has changed a lot of lives.

Steve: 12:42

I know that we love, love, even reality TV about dating and finding love or breaking up marriages or getting married. It's this huge industry. But what would you say are some misconceptions or issues the queer community uniquely needs to overcome or that we face when it comes to deeper dating?

Ken: 13:01

Oh yeah. Yeah. So I think that men, women, and non-binary, trans people face kind of different challenges. Very different challenges. So I'm gonna share just some thoughts about each of those groups. Sure. So gay men, of which I am one. Gay bisexual women. I think that, there's still a lot of shame left for a lot of us. I know that I am still pulling pieces of shame out from inside of me around being gay after decades of doing this work. So I think that shame is a piece of this. I'll say one thing that's really, really, really big, which is all of us share a similar thing that the straight community deals with too, which is superficial ways to meet that actually sculpt. Bad behavior that leads us away from love. Most online dating, sculpts bad behavior that leads us away from love. It teaches us to just go for like exactly what a person looks for. It's kind of like the kind of thing of like, and, and I think this is particularly true in the, in the gay men's community, but it's like, Who am I totally hot for? And maybe that person will be a great guy and love me back. That's not the way to do it. That is not the way to do it. This kind of process needs to be reversed. We need to look for goodness and character. First, yes. You have to be attracted and you have to cultivate your own goodness and character. And here's something I wanna say to the sober community. Everyone who is doing their sobriety work is 20 steps ahead of that normal game because they've done and they are doing like deep, deep character work. The skills of sobriety are, the skills of dating are the skills of love in so many ways. So, People in recovery are doing the work already, but that work is, well, here's a concept that is very binary, and I think very true and very useful. This was the piece that Oprah pulled out from my book and excerpted all over the place. This one concept, which is that we all have. Two circuitries of attraction, just basically two. And one is what I call attractions of deprivation, which are hot and sexy and compelling. And those are people who we're like physically attracted to, but at the same time, they love us, but they don't love us fully. They commit to some degree, but they don't commit fully. They're kind and respectful and then they're not. I. they like us, but they don't love us fully. Those kinds of things. And what those things do is they grab us in the earliest places of our psyche where we didn't feel we were loved enough, and they make us wanna get this person who has now become a representation of the people who didn't love us enough to get them to love us. And it's like the feeling is if I get this person to love me, I'll have everything and I'll be lovable. But in fact, these are attractions of deprivation and they look sexy as hell, but they're the path to pain. And we don't get taught this, so we just go for who we're attracted to and it often ends in disaster. But we have another circuitry, and this is a circuitry that I'm so excited to share with. Anyone who is on the sobriety journey, it's what I call the circuitry of attractions of inspiration. You gotta be physically attracted to somebody that is absolutely essential. You can't, you can't force that stuff, but this is when you get attracted to somebody because of their goodness. When you get attracted to them because of their consistency, because they're real, because they have a generosity of spirit. Because the way that they touch you, the way that they look at you, the way that they treat you, fills your heart and not on and off, where sometimes they totally don't, but in an essential, basically consistent way they do. These are attractions of inspiration and the greatest learning for anybody on this intimacy journey is like this process of saying, I am gonna say no to my attractions of deprivation, no matter how fucking sexy they are. I'm only gonna look for attractions of inspiration and I'm gonna make that commitment. And when we do that, our heart begins to relax. We begin to organize ourselves around dignity and self-love and the best parts of ourselves. And when we do that, we draw. The kind of person we're looking for. So I say this to everybody, but I say it in very particular ways to queer men because I think that our wounding makes it harder for us and also our programming and our culture teaches us to look for who's hot as opposed to who's inspiring, kind, and decent. And here's the thing I wanna say to everybody, but particularly to queer men is. When you get that kind of relationship where you're attracted to someone, but there's goodness and decency and safety, that's where you wanna build your home in the world. I mean, that's a really good, good place, and that's what we need to be looking for. I think that's something that queer women tend to understand better. I do, but I think that, that there are not anywhere near enough venues for queer women to meet and to connect and as the whole world goes online, online I think that that's a problem because those are online venues don't sculpt those inspiring behaviors. So I think that's a really big deal. And for non-binary and trans people, there is a journey I think of claiming, claiming a level of freedom, of bravery that is profound working with trauma because people who are non-binary, less and less, but people who are non-binary, who are transgender, have been through a lot more trauma than a lot of other people and what they call large T trauma. And small T trauma as well. So there is like a cultural claiming of self-love that is so important and I think that environments for trans and non-binary people to meet, to support each other are just so critically important. And now, It's like a rainstorm of trauma with all of the right wing horror going on in relation, especially to trans and non-binary people. Anyway, those are the things I wanted to say in, in response to your

Steve: 20:07

question. Yeah, and I can certainly understand that, and in general, with queer events that I go to. Normally there's alcohol everywhere. If you go to the night events, yes, there's drugs in the corner. What kind of struggles do you find that alcoholics and addicts might have, especially when it comes to

Ken: 20:22

dating? I. This is what made me create deeper dating. One of the big things that made me create deeper dating in the first place, which was, so there I was in New York City and I created this event for men, gay and bi men who at that time, who were living a more values-based life. And we're looking for people who were committed to deeper values. And so the 12 step community started really coming, to those dating events because they were kind, they were safe and there was no alcohol. And in fact, I remember early on A big entrepreneur came up to me and said, I wanna really sponsor this and really fund this and make this big. And he said, I'm gonna hook you up with my associate who's gonna help make that happen. And the associate said, there has to be wine. There just has to be wine. There has to be wine at this event. And I said, no, there doesn't. So I lost that deal. And I'm glad that I did. I actually have a site that I have created with my husband. It's early, but it's very real. It's called deeper dating.com. And there are, a good number of gay men on that site. And I am now creating events for queer men to meet and connect online in a way that is safe. Warm and intimate using zoom, answering questions that touch people's hearts and just connecting in all different ways. And, people can find out more about this by learning about my work, but I also lead free workshops for queer men about intimacy. So these are things I'm trying to do to help men who share these values meet. Mm-hmm.

Steve: 22:01

Yeah, and especially in the early days of recovery, I know there's a lot of mysticism depending on what way you're working, what kind of program about dating in the first year? Where do you

Ken: 22:11

stand on that? So this is what I think about that. I think you listen to your sponsor. If you have a sponsor, you trust, you discuss it with your sponsor. I won't give a blanket answer except to say that it does seem like the common wisdom is that people say, don't date during the first year of your sobriety. I tend to lean toward the wisdom of that. But there are different cases for different people. Somebody could be in early dating and then get sober and they might say, I met someone really wonderful. I don't wanna end this now because I'm starting to be sober. So I think this is where this is like stuff to be discussed with a really good trustworthy sponsor. But by and large, I think that program Wisdom is program wisdom and should be listened to. Yeah,

Steve: 22:58

agreed. And a friend and listener talked with me recently about how they were. Coming to terms with the factor, entertaining, the idea that they may just be single for the rest of their life, and coming to terms of being happy with that. What kind of advice do you have with people who might have that headset or mindset or fear that they might not find someone?

Ken: 23:18

Oh, okay. That's just a fabulous question. I'm really glad you asked it, and I'm gonna answer it in a few different ways For some people. Coming to peace with that possibility is really an important step in their own journey. Like you know, whether I find somebody or not, I can have a happy, rich life. Yeah, that is really good. For some people, that would not have been good for me. That would've been the most depressing thought in the world for me. So for many of us, that is like an expression of despair and discouragement and I reached out to the people in my mailing list and I said, what is for you the most painful part of dating and looking for love? I got 200 responses and the thing that re that, that was the biggest, biggest you know, the most highly. Stated issue was what somebody coined discouragement, fatigue. Like how exhausting it is, how depressing it can be, the experience of getting your hopes up and then the person's an asshole or ghosts you and, you know somebody cheats on you or, you know, whatever. Or just like nobody's interested in you or whatever. I mean, I know all of these things and I know that pain from my own dating life. So, so what? I wanna say is if somebody throws you into a room where you have to do complex math, but they never taught you how to do it, you're gonna be screwed. The search for love is not necessarily a complex thing, but it's a challenging thing. And if it's not, if you're, if the way you are dating is not healing you as a human being, Teaching you self love, teaching you bravery, teaching you self honesty, teaching you intimacy skills, then you're not dating the right way and you can't expect good results. The journey to love is a wisdom journey. It's a spiritual journey, and we need to tackle that. So the two things we need and here's what I would say. There was there's a book called Change or Die by Alan Deutchman. It's a really great book. It was a New York Times bestseller, and what he did was there was this group of people who all had coronary incidents. They had strokes, they had heart attacks, but serious, serious ones where the doctor said, listen, if you don't change your diet, you will die. Everyone said they would change their diet. After a few years, 95% of them went back to the same way of eating, and Alan Deutchman studied the 5% that made it and that actually made this change. So for all of you that are considering, I. I'm gonna start looking for love in a wisdom based way, a way that honors who I am. I'm gonna really, really take this on. I'm not gonna do that same old crapshoot. That culture teaches me. I'm doing this as a wisdom path. I'm gonna do this for every one of you. The two main things that he discovered for those 5%, for this, you find a template and a structure and a path that you believe in. You don't do it alone. You find a community with whom you get support with whom you can fail and try again. Experiment, grieve, explore. This is the wisdom of 12 step work. It is also the wisdom of any deep habit that you wanna change. So to all of you, I would say there really is a path of hope, and if you do these steps, you will learn self-love and the kind of people you're attracted to and the kind of people you attract will change. That is a beautiful, amazing thing, but don't try to do it alone. Look for a path that you respect and you believe in. And there are a number of teachers that are teaching material that is based on the real skills of intimacy. Not this crap about how you can seduce other men and how you can be sexier and you can like fake confidence and all of that crap. Stay away from that. A path that's really based on radical, profound self-acceptance. Like the 12 step work is find that and don't do it alone.

Steve: 27:46

That, those are great advice and if someone wanted to hear more, learn more, how would they find you?

Ken: 27:54

So the two easy ways to find me to find out about my work, to find out about my intensivess and to get tons and tons of free resources are you can go to deeper dating gifts.com. And then you get a beautiful audio meditation, a personal journal, and an ebook of kind of the key ideas of mine that have gone viral on psychology today. Or you could just go to deeper dating podcast.com and there's 164 free episodes talking about so much of this. And when you go there, You can also sign up for my mailing list and get the same three gifts. So that's the easiest way. But of course I'm on, you know, social media as well. And if you do this, you join my mailing list, you'll be hearing about a lot of other courses and resources that I offer. Excellent. Oh, and let me just say too that I have a book called Deeper Dating, how to Drop the Games of Seduction and Discover the Power of Intimacy, which was an Amazon number one bestseller in the field. And you can go to deeper dating.com to actually fill out a profile and it's in its early stages, but, but also meet a good number of other queer men.

Steve: 29:07

That all sounds awesome. I'll add it all to the show notes. So thank you so much, Ken. It was a pleasure getting kind of a little taste of what you might have talked about in conference.

Ken: 29:19

Steve, thank you so much. I'm, I'm honored and grateful to be here.

Steve: 29:23

Yes, and listeners, while you're following Ken on all the socials and websites and fun stuff he just gave, follow us while you're at it at Gay Podcast. And for more time with Ken and I head on over to our Patreon page where I'm going to ask him and learn where he feels sex comes into dating with deeper dating. You can do that by going to patreon.com/gay a podcast. And until next time, stay sober friends.