Why Powerful Men Risk It All for Sex

Stories involving men, sex, power, and scandal have been catapulted repeatedly into public awareness over the past seven years. On the day the news about President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky broke, I received five phone calls from journalists asking the same question: Why would he do that? Why would someone who is doing so well risk it all for a sexual liaison? Why would Bill Clinton take the risk of having a sexual affair, with Paula Jones’ lawsuit staring him in the face, with its “pattern of sexual harassment” twist that would allow Jones’ lawyers to investigate Clinton’s sexual past and present?

While on the surface this was but another chapter in the story of “Bill Clinton’s character” that has dogged his Presidency since the beginning, at a deeper level this is part of the story of men, sex, and power—a story that periodically bursts into public consciousness, and then disappears before its complete meaning has been fathomed, usually with the conclusion that “he” (fill in the blank here: Clarence Thomas, William Kennedy Smith, Mike Tyson, Magic Johnson, Woody Allen, Bob Packwood, Hugh Grant, Dick Morris, Marv Albert, Michael Kennedy, the men of “Tailhook,” Okinawa, or the Aberdeen Proving Ground, or those of Mitsubishi or Wall Street) had a flawed character or deep psychological problems, and was therefore different from the rest of us who (it is assumed) would never contemplate doing such a thing.

But, in fact, a great many of us contemplate such things, and many actually do them. The difference is that few of us men are well known enough for our actions, if exposed, to create a national scandal. For 25 years as a psychologist specializing in the psychology of men, I have worked with many powerful men—bankers, lawyers, physicians, politicians, investment professionals earning seven figures, and Fortune 500 corporate executives—who have risked losing it all for a brief moment of sexual ecstasy. These are men known and respected in their localities, states, and professional communities, who have spent 25 to 30 years building their reputations. From this base of experience I have developed some understanding of the story of men, sex and power. To begin to understand this story we must first grasp how powerful sex can be in men’s lives.

For most of us, sex is a core theme in our lives, a “default setting on our computers,” to which we endlessly return. We contemplate it every day, several times a day or more. It is often the first thing that enters our mind whenever we see an attractive woman, in any context—business, social, or simply random encounters on the street. What man has not found an attractive female body so compelling that he could not look? Some of us specialize, and look at only certain female body parts: breasts, buttocks, legs. There is a way women’s bodies cross our visual fields and become intrusive images, propelling us from a state of peace of mind to one of agitation as we encounter the host of disturbing thoughts that occur upon our discovery that we find this woman sexually attractive. In addition, we have the unjustified sense that we are entitled to look, as if an attractive female is public property, or at least that we—as men—are authorized to look. Madison Avenue surely knows that the best way to capture a man’s attention is to show an image of a scantily clad shapely young woman, which is why they use these images to pitch such male-targeted products as beer and cars.

What do men experience when they have sex? Clearly, we experience the release of our sexual urges, the gratification of our sexual fantasies, and the fabulous sensation of orgasm.

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But imbedded in our fantasies and sensations are other needs, hidden from our conscious awareness. During sex we gratify our needs for closeness, caring, connection, intimacy and affection—needs that many of us are uncomfortable openly acknowledging to others (or even admitting to ourselves). We also satisfy ego needs—that is, we reassure ourselves about our adequacy as men when we have sex, continuing a tendency that developed in our adolescence, when we learned to prove our manhood by “scoring” with girls. Power combines with sex.

Thus, however compelling it may be, men’s appetite for sex does not completely explain why some men risk everything for sex. Power is also a central element in the current sex scandals. Power, of course, sets Bill Clinton (or Packwood, Kennedy, Thomas, and many of my clients) apart from most of us. Power, in complex ways, tends to drive men to take risks for sex. It increases opportunity for sex partners while not exempting powerful men from a nearly universal need to continually prove their manhood; and there is no better to way to prove oneself than by demonstrating one’s sexual prowess. It also fosters a sense of invulnerability that allows these men to deny the downside of risk.

Power, and the fame that goes with it, confers choices and possibilities that are not available to the common man. Power is a magnet to the star-struck, which dramatically increases the availability of potential sexual partners. Young women tend to be drawn to famous musicians, actors, politicians, athletes, and other celebrities. When Magic Johnson (who reported having “thousands” of sexual relationships) announced that he was HIV-positive, newspapers provided vivid accounts of the post-game ritual, where hordes of young attractive women lined up to meet the basketball players as they exited the stadium. Bill Clinton apparently had similar opportunities according to the Starr Report, which stated that he told Monica Lewinsky that he had “hundreds of affairs.” A recent story in the Chicago Tribune put it very well: “The ultimate in power is that you can have not only power to make important decisions, but the power to go and pick any woman you want, when you want.”

Many, if not most, men experience a need to keep proving themselves. This often lasts for a lifetime. Why is this? A recent anthropological study found that, across a wide range of cultures from the neolithic to the modern, manhood is viewed as an achieved state, one that requires the passing of a series of tests. But, most significantly, the tests for manhood are never considered finished. It is thus impossible for a man to feel that he has found a permanent place among the community of men. In fact, Native Americans referred to manhood as “The Big Impossible.” Most men believe, consciously or unconsciously, that they can always slip back over the line, losing their manhood and suffering shame and disgrace by failing the next test, which gives rise to a never-ending need to prove oneself. Powerful men are not immune from this, which seems quite paradoxical because, one would wonder, after attaining high government office or sports immortality, what else is there to prove?

Finally, a sense of invulnerability that comes with power may shield powerful men from considering the consequences of their actions. Powerful men often survive setbacks in their rise to power, which helps develop the conviction that nothing can harm them (this may be the case with Bill Clinton, who earned the reputation of being the “comeback kid”). In addition, the trappings and amenities that go with high status positions serve to reinforce the feeling that no negative consequences can befall them. Consequently, although risk is implicit in these actions of powerful men, the sense of invulnerability allows these men to rationalize or deny the dangers, freeing them to court it for the thrill that a high stakes poker player experiences. Relatedly, powerful men often experience a sense of self-importance, by which the man feels entitled to special privileges or exempted from the rules that others must follow. This can lead them to trauma which I shall next discuss.

Sex and power are a heady combination. Together they can account for the behavior of many men who take risks for sex. But there are some behaviors that cross a line at which even powerful men might hesitate, such as repeatedly having oral sex with a person thirty years younger in a busy office setting while being sued for sexual harassment. Deeper dynamics are usually at work in such cases—dynamics which may be the result of childhood trauma.

Like Bill Clinton, some of the powerful men that I have treated have experienced a traumatic childhood. For many, the trauma resulted from the loss of one parent through divorce or death, or the uncivil war of the two estranged parents, or the uprooting from the

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community they grew up in that divorce so often brings in its wake. For others, it resulted from the effects of their mother’s remarriage to a stepfather who set new rules and may have been abusive, or perhaps new half-siblings who got all of the attention, or a general feeling of not being wanted. For still others, it resulted from parental alcoholism, mental illness, neglect, or abuse.

Regardless of the cause, this traumatic set of experiences is rarely addressed and worked through, but rather is carried intact into adulthood, leaving my clients vulnerable to a wide range of psychological problems. One theme stood out, however, and that is that many of those clients who suffered a traumatic childhood grew up to be adults with a profound sense of “entitlement”—the unconscious belief that people in one’s adult life are required to make up for one’s childhood losses or traumas. I think that this sense of entitlement is the driver that pushes some men across the line that others fear to tread.

Together, these effects of sex, power, and trauma—the looming obsession with sex, the availability of women, the need to prove oneself in that most elemental of ways through exercising the power to have any women you want, the sense of invulnerability, the adrenalin rush of the risk itself, and the sense of entitlement wrought in childhood trauma—allow men to cross the line and act on those thoughts that the rest of us share in some degree but don’t dare act on.

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