So… this is version “c” of my posting. Version “a” had lots of great information about how I heard about Nate/Samson Society, what I like about Nate/Samson, and what’s wrong with women (which I’m sure would really interest most fans of Nate/Samson), but I struggled with it. And it was boring.

Version “b” went overboard listing out lots of great things about me. Too many, apparently.

I think the problem was that yesterday a friend of mine who had just checked out the site sent me an enthusiastic email, essentially stating, “Wow, that Nate Larkin is such a GREAT writer!” So I got a little nervous. And a little jealous. And a little stuck.

Unfortunately, this is a common theme for me. My whole life has been about performing. About trying to project an image of beauty and control and achievement so that people will like me.

For ten of my nearly 39 years my desperate need for approval took the form of an eating disorder. Before that – and since – it has been preesnt in less obvious ways.

Like the fear I feel when someone doesn’t respond to an email I’ve worked so hard to carefully craft. Or in the way I avoid certain people in the halls at church because I don’t feel I look my best.

It keeps me up at night when I’ve made a mistake – however minor – which may cause someone to be disappointed in me. And it’s the voice I hear as I’m preparing for these first dates Nate and I will do together in just a few weeks: you’re not going to get it right, it taunts.

The weird thing is that for most of my life I’ve been pretty successful at most anything I’ve tried. My husband recently reminded me of this when I was down in the dumps about something related to my work. But as surprising as it may sound, beneath all my achievements, I have spent most of my life believing I was bad. To the core. That at any given moment this fact would be revealed and everything – and everyone – would disappear.

It turns out that there are two pretty common responses to shame. One is to prove everyone right by giving up and playing the victim. The other is to prove them all wrong by becoming the superstar. I’ll let you guess which one I chose.

But a little-known secret is that often the greatest superstars feel like victims too. Like a beautiful woman who averts her eyes when gazed upon, our gifts and talents may benefit and even impress others but they are powerless to soothe the ache in our hearts for relationship – the real kind.

To me, the coolest part about working with Nate to expand and combine our respective audiences is that we all have so very much to learn from each other. It turns out that guys take signals from women that we aren’t even sending. For that matter, so do other women. As a result of this, combined with our own shame, we send signals we don’t mean to, to virtually everyone we meet, while trying desperately to control those closest to us, especially our men. Before we know it things get so funky and frustrating and scary that we all retreat into our little corners, too fearful and ashamed to venture out into a world larger than our coping mechanisms.

This isn’t a gender issue. It’s fact of our human condition.

The good news is that God has already paid a magnificent price for our freedom. The question before us now is, are we willing to risk embracing it?

I've been speaking to male audiences for years, mostly at conferences and retreats. Most of the time I talk about recovery from compulsive sexual behavior, and I usually wind up telling my story of addiction to porn and hookers. It's a subject I'm comfortable talking about -- especially when the only people in the room are other guys. Guys understand.

If my wife doesn't accompany me on a trip, I always take another guy along, and sometimes that fellow joins me on stage. Again, this is something I'm very comfortable with. Guys love road trips. A guy can be ready to go anywhere in five minutes, and he brings very little luggage. If we want to, we can talk about baseball the whole way.

But this time I'll be working with a woman. And we'll also be talking to girls.

I'm bringing another guy along on the trip to Indiana too, of course. My good friend Scott Phillips, a dazzling talented musician who has covered many miles with me over the years, will be there for the whole thing. Scott will play a song or two, and we'll have a good time together.

But this time I'll be sharing the stage with Constance Rhodes, who just happens to be a woman. We'll be speaking to audiences of men and women, and we'll be talking about the most secret and shameful struggles women and men face.

Right there. On stage. Together.

A few things about Constance:

• Constance is a mom, and she's married to a friend of mine.
• Constance is considerably younger than I am, but she has already written more books than I have.
• Constance likes to make fun of me because of my age, but deep inside she's envious of my superior life experience.
• Constance doesn't make fun of my weight. because she's sympathetic to that kind of ridicule, even though she's skinny.
• Constance was the first person to suggest to me that the typical male obsession with sex and the typical female obsession with weight and appearance are actually RELATED — that men and women do different things for the same core reason.

Constance and I kicked this idea around for awhile, and I eventually became convinced that she is right. We've been segregating guys and girls for years because we've believed, wrongly, that their struggles are completely different and they will never be able to understand each other. As a result, we've helped to perpetuate a cycle in which men unwittingly aggravate women's misery while women, entirely without realizing what they're doing, aggravate the misery of men.

This has got to stop. Which means we've got to do something different.

So now ... I'm working with a woman.
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