Tag: mistress

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“Confessions of a Former Mistress”

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A Warning From a Former Mistress: Confessions of a Former Mistress on the site called theindiechicks.com is dressed up as an advice piece (anonymous, it seems) to those considering the mistress role. She starts off: “This is a warning from a former mistress to anyone who thinks it’s worth the risk to get involved with a married man.”

Her effort at the start seems genuine and straight forward. She has a case to make. Her claim is clear in the last sentence of the first paragraph. She also establishes her ethos, her credibility, and accurately assesses her targeted audience, who she knows will be critical. Since she knows most people will be wary of her as a former mistress, she anticipates the guarded reaction and attempts to disarm the reader positing herself as a credible (she knows of what she speaks because she has been there) and self-aware source:

I know this isn’t an easy topic for a lot of people to relate to and surely not one that will elicit a lot of sympathy for me and that’s okay. I am who I am because of the decisions I have made in life. I am not proud of all of them but they are still a part of me. I know that despite how you may feel about my decisions you will at least respect my honesty in regards to this topic, I thank you for that. So here it is, a warning from a former mistress.

She borders on defensive when she declares her own satisfaction with her life decisions but equally sensitive to audience sensibility; she preempts vilification with her own tempered version of light self-flagellation. She is also gracious in thanking her reader in advance for appreciating her gift of honesty. So far so good: protocol of moderate tone and first elements of an argument are met, well done.

Our former mistress then goes directly to the advice she has to give, again courteously and with the gravity commensurate to the urgency of her advice:

If you think that you want to get involved with a man in a relationship or a married man PLEASE realize that you’re gong to have to deal with the following:

You often feel like shit about yourself
One or the other will eventually start to feel “more” and somebody’s feelings get hurt
There is no way that it can last forever. In the end somebody decides it doesn’t work for them anymore
The person not in the “serious” relationship is left alone at the end of this tryst and the “committed” person goes back to their “happy” relationship.
You have no right to be angry when they say they want to “try to work things out” with their significant other.
You are left with no leg to stand on and somehow your feelings don’t seem to matter
There is often a heightened sense of emotion and passion that will not last once the “thrill” of the affair ebbs.
Your tears go unshed until they aren’t around because nobody wants a mistress who sobs all over them, we are supposed to be eternally patient, sexually satisfying, fun, and devoid of the stresses of reality. (Read-unfeeling fuck machines)

And then she loses me. So this is not what it is purported to be after all. It was just a guise, a set up, and I, like other readers, fell for it. She isn’t offering advice to everyone, only for those who are exactly like her and her ex-lover. And if I read the title and introduction correctly, this is purporting to be well-meaning advice for someone–anyone–who even thinks about getting involved with a married man.

Some of her list of mistress woes is mere common truths attributable to any relationship: unequal love between lovers, passion that fades over time, and loathsome cry baby acts of finding out the man she loves is not what she created him to be. The other items, her deal. Not much of her list pertains to any old mistress, and so, in argument terms, her argument is a fallacy of hasty generalization.

This is not a warning but a confession. She chose the wrong man to love because, by adding up the complaints in her account, he was a selfish, callused user. She admits she was allured by need, desire, excitement and passion, probably good looks, and ignored the glaringly obvious: he was married–and not to her.

This is a confession of someone who loved and lost, and it’s an age-old story. She offers nothing to the wannabe mistress here, but she does unwittingly offer general advice to anyone about to fall in love: keep your eyes open and clear. Don’t fall in love using only your heart and loins. Beware of your own susceptibility based on your needs and weaknesses, so that you can protect yourself. Isn’t that the advice a parent gives her daughter?

Not all married men go back to their wives, however, unless you consider divorcing the wife to marry the mistress who is just another wife, and remarkably much like the one he divorced. Not all men are heartless and are unconcerned about the suffering of the mistress, only wanting her to be fun and sexy and carefree. We don’t get the picture from his side. Maybe he felt the double guilt of deceiving his wife and depriving his mistress. Maybe that guilt was too much for him and the story of going back to his wife was pre-textual.

In the article, she admits to being reckless about who she falls in love with. She admits to knowing what she was getting into with a married man, but wasn’t careful. Yet she details how bitterly she endured the teary nights alone when she had a bad day and the joyful moments alone, not even able to share by phone, in her times of triumph and happiness. Even as she excuses herself for being foolish or blind, she wants the reader to both condemn and forgive her; she wants to atone and so offers her advice to spare others. That’s the contrition surrounding confession.

So why am I sharing this?
I know I won’t garner a whole lot of sympathy here. After all, I did know what I was getting myself into. I’m the home wrecker, the destroyer of relationships. I deserve to feel like shit…I should feel like shit for what I am doing to these other women. That’s what anyone who has been cheated on is thinking/feeling and you have every right to. I guess I just wanted to say to those women who are on the edge, considering entering into an “other woman” situation…please don’t. Please think long and hard about it.

I don’t buy it. The unburdening confession relieves the confessor at the expense of the hearer or reader. She feels guilty (not about the wife it seems) and stupid because, ironically, she was deceived. She duped herself into believing something other than what was right in front of her eyes, and so is guilty of emotional self-mutilation. Yes, he was guilty of not taking responsibility for she who he knew was in love with him, but she maintained the tryst until it hurt good enough to quit.

This is her confession. I will make one of my own: I sympathize and empathize with her. Likewise a former mistress but also a wife, I understand the stigma attached to that role, one that threatens social order as well as individual injury. It’s not playing by established rules. It’s unethical and immoral in some minds, often in the mind of the mistress herself. I believe I have presented many viewpoints on this blog from the vulnerable parties in a mistress relationship. This author brought one more viewpoint, that of a specific mistress.

If she were not an admitted mistress but confessed to having fallen in love with the wrong man who made her suffer because of her poor choices, sympathy and empathy would be forthcoming. Readers know it’s human nature to be somewhat self-destructively blind in love. However, because there is sin, social stigma, jealousy and deceit associated with her, judgment overrides sympathy for the mistress. Clearly the wife was unaware of the affair and apparently he was not forthright with the mistress or the wife.

However, there are mistress relationships that scaffold marriages, if not in the short run, then in the long run. I would like to believe I was in one of those mistress relationships that helped two people stay married. The need for passion I fulfilled in my married lover was a charge to keep him going, maybe long enough to realize that his wife, the mother of his children, long-time mate, friend, and partner was invaluable. Or maybe he discovered what some people do: there isn’t all that much out there better than what he had. My trade value was unequal to what he had already.

I met Wayne in grad school when he was married with young children. I was married too, but separated, amicably and consensually. My husband needed to explore his sexuality. And indeed I did my own exploring. However, getting involved with a married man was not my intention. We were in the same class together, goofing around gigglers passing silly notes, and were study partners. And then, after a few beers in a pub one night, it happened. I had gotten my ass kicked in class in a mock trial sort of exercise, and he was friend enough to console me, buy me a beer.

It was irresistible passion in an instant that appeared to burst forth spontaneously, uncontrollably from nowhere. Afterwards, we carried on an affair for the six years or more I was separated with my husband. Wayne and I were all about passion, adolescent rediscovery of sex and intrigue. We had the commiseration of struggling students with stressful sabotaging spouses. He complained about his wife not understanding, thwarting his efforts, bored with sex…the usual. He felt like a desired man again. I was in love. He was in love. He struggled, I think, with leaving his wife, but looking back, I seriously doubt he ever could. He adored his kids and loved his wife of 15 or 20 years at that time too.

At first I was jealous of her. I wanted him to myself, to leave his wife, but never dared to demand that. Such a drastic decision had to be his; I never wanted to be blamed for inducing that. He had to live with his conscience and take care of his own. I was open about the affair with my husband, and I knew it hurt him very much. Even though we were separated upon his suggestion and for his needs, he was deeply hurt by my affair with Wayne and I felt guilty for hurting him, though I did not feel as if I were betraying him.

It was complicated. Perhaps I was self-deluded, but I did not feel my part was wrong. Yes, there was a deceived wife, but I felt that was Wayne’s deceit and I had no obligation to be honest to her, only to my husband and me. Until I met his wife.

The first time I met Wayne’s wife and kids, ages 7 and 11, it was in their home. We had been studying in the library until late in the evening, and I honestly cannot remember why he wanted me to go home with him, but I did. There is something strange about that desire on his part: an almost confession or provocation. Did he think his wife would somehow sense the affair palpably and possibly demand a divorce so the decision would have been made for him? Was he tempting fate?

While his daughter was congenial as was his wife–both have that personality–the son, older, was more wary and brooding about my presence. Children have an inarticulable sense about situations that adults do not, generally. They sense something out of place. Dad brought home a young (I am 7 years younger) woman who is his study friend. Hmmmm…And for a boy, there may have been an unconscious defensive reaction to protect his mom. I could have imagined all of this, but I can state undeniably that I was horribly uncomfortable. I felt I oozed the secret, flashed it in neon.

I later saw his wife and kids on a few occasions, and though my presence was more familiar, and I was more inured to being in the presence of my lover’s family, the huge question mark hanging in the air never disappeared for me. Did I feel guilt? Yes. Did I feel shame? A little. Did I feel as if I were betraying her? No. She was not my responsibility in any real sense, only in the abstract sense of one fellow human being’s duty to protect another from injury. I didn’t believe then that she suffered injury since she didn’t know about the affair. In fact, I thought she was getting both the better and worse end of the deal. She had him every night and every morning, except for rare occasions I could count on one hand that I spent the night with him.

Did I suffer as did our confessor mistress? Definitely. I felt hurt, lonely, aching and jealous when I could not sleep with him at night, when I longed to feel his breathing body on mine. I shed tears of disappointment, fear and frustration, although I had then as I do now friends and family to confide in. I soared the heights of ecstasy too and learned so much about my own sexuality, my own body.

The relationship deeply satisfied my sense of adventure and romance, my need to be consumed and desired that was lost over time or was never there with my husband. But after several years, it was just another relationship that was growing fermented like used car love, the settling in kind, dinged up with lots of negotiated curves of disagreements.

He wanted monogamy, even as he knew he had no right to demand it. But we humans do that sort of illogical dance, don’t we? After realizing he was not divorcing his wife any time soon or ever, I wanted to date others during my separation. It was the year–my 30th–I discovered orgasm. Since I married my husband when I was just turning 20, I had some catching up to do. For a precocious girl with early sexual experience, I knew nothing about sex or my body. My formative years may have been in the sixties and seventies, but my parents’ heyday was the fifties.

Wayne and I did eventually break up. Maybe he thought I didn’t withstand the test of time to warrant leaving his wife for me. Maybe he never told me his intentions about us being more or nothing more than an affair. Maybe I kept my options open, impatient for something more concretely promising from him. In any event, we were growing older. I needed to settle in with a partner or a sperm donor or forego having children forever.

When my husband and I moved back in together, I was four months pregnant with our first born. Wayne and I remained good friends and still are today. Our families have spent holidays and other occasions together since we were later colleagues.

The time Wayne and I spent together was medicine. When we dropped the expectation of a future married us–when we opened our eyes to see what we really had and not what we invented–we enjoyed each other until we could no longer. In six years, we each had moments of mismatched expectation, but when we were aligned, it was good: just two people loving each other.

Gathering all of the evidence and speculation, I believe I helped him survive his marriage by providing the escape valve, relief from frustrating and castrating neglect and loneliness that comes with long term marriages with kids. A wife and lover who becomes a mother often becomes temporarily or permanently less of a wife and lover. Her devotion of time, effort and love shifts from mate to children, forgetting that he gave her those gifts. Much of my own physical need for affection was fulfilled by my children when they were little, so I was touched out by the end of the day with little of me left to spare.

Like so many neglected mid-life husbands, Wayne needed to feel loved and appreciated. He also needed a return to the wild of his glory days, to get it out of his system and to re-realize that all relationships are work and look the same with the seasoning of time. I’m guessing. Maybe those are my projections and conclusions. In any event, his kids are grown with kids of their own, and he is still married twenty years later.

So not every mistress story is about falling for the married man who abuses her, exposing her great lack of self esteem. That may be part of the story, but you can be sure that isn’t the whole story. Any relationship is made of distinct parties that bring a mix of genetics and history unique to that constituted whole of a couple or a triangle.

Contrary to our confessor, I neither advocate for nor condemn the role of the mistress; I merely offer an experience for consideration, to be read, evaluated, and/or judged as the reader will. Some may say the mistress always deals in dishonesty. However, honesty is a virtue that is never exercised indiscriminately, and the trust developed in a relationship is one prescribed by the parties, their specific agreement to acceptable parameters. There is no one size fits all formula for living, loving and learning a long life intertwined with others.

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Holiday Mistress Blues: Revising Snow White

credit: deviantart.com
credit: deviantart.com

Gina Barreca, PhD, has a clear agenda writing about the mistress during the holidays in a 2010 Psychology Today article entitled The Mistress at Christmas. It is under the site section “Show White Doesn’t Live Here Any More”. She paints the profile of a mistress (the proffered everyday mistress), who is single and involved with a married man, and relies on stereotypical mistress-life facts to tell the story of a coming to conscience during the holidays.

Barreca tells the story of the circumspect mistress in whom conscience and self esteem triumph over delusional love, repressed empathy for her lover’s wife, and low self-esteem. She portrays the mistress who realizes that the game is not worth the candle–she has sold herself short. Though this holiday epiphany belongs to a recognizable type of mistress, the one of an over 35 year old who is not married herself but wishes to be, it is not a one size fits all moral realignment applicable to all mistresses.

The persona in the article is the conscience of the mistress, but the psychologist behind the persona is a critic making a case for the misguided one’s recovery. Story crafting is a great way to hammer some message home subtly and clandestinely. The reader gets a story–and who doesn’t love a story?–without suffering the heavy handed pedantic writer’s moral. And there is a clear moral to this story.

The author unravels the details of the mistress’s situation slowly; she is not unlike many other “typical” mistresses who are pining away for their men, lonely and disillusioned or hopeful about marrying her lover–eventually. They are also self-deluded in thinking that they have “the best of him” and of all worlds.

If she’s over 35, she probably suspects she isn’t getting that ring.

Maybe she tells herself she doesn’t want it: After all, she already has a full life and why clutter it up with a full-time relationship? Where would she find the time, the energy, the metaphoric and literal space? She gets the best of him and his wife gets the rest.

But this reflection, the reader soon discovers is a trap. The writer will steer the reader down the path of silently nodding in agreement or grimacing in revulsion with this assessment–best of both worlds–before she undercuts the mistress’s mere self-justification, as it turns out.

But holidays make it harder to find a safe place in her head. It’s as if the world conspires against her from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day.

Innocent enough observation by the mistress, but Barreca’s project is to advocate for the mistress’s rehabilitation, not support her cheating ways. “It’s as if the world conspires against her,” sounds like someone very egocentric and unrealistic. Yes, it is metaphoric and not meant to show the mistress as a paranoid delusional, but it certainly suggests self-absorption, even if as just a passing thought. She feels the outside, uncontrollable forces are responsible for her predicament, her loneliness.

Halloween is her holiday, with masks and disguises, with catsuits and pirate outfits. She’s a shape-shifter, a plunderer, a thief, and she knows it.

Call her all the names you want, and you’ll discover that she’s called herself worse. It’s not like you’re telling her something she doesn’t know. She’s the backstreet girl, the booty call in perpetuum.

She’s Jezebel. She’s Little Suzy Homewrecker.

And there it is: the out-with-it shame and judgment of the mistress by her own internalizing of society’s mores. Yet, while the good doctor is working her reader’s sympathy (not empathy) in reminding the reader that yes, this mistress has a conscience and suffers from it, she is also reinforcing societal notions that the mistress, any mistress, is all of those: shapeshifter, plunderer, thief, booty call, Jezebel and home wrecker. All of those names encompass the socially accepted and reinforced moral dimension of a three-person relationship: deceit, plunder and self-debasement. She cheats the wife of time and money, steals it as her relationship is not legitimated morally or perhaps even legally in the court of public opinion and religious indoctrination, even as she cheats herself of pride, self-respect and open, “valid” public love.

So she makes the round of holiday parties, makes cookies and makes pies, makes jokes and makes new friends. She makes nice. She is nice. It’s not bad, but there’s a blanked-out figure where the man she loves should be.

Why does he need to be there? Is it her need or one she believes she needs because there is a constant bombardment of messages that remind and convince her that the holidays is a time for family and loved ones, and you can not be complete unless you have an other that is acceptably, normatively yours to exhibit. How can you be validated and happy and fulfilled, unless you can show up to holiday parties with a man? Where is the cheer in that holiday cheer?

Now, I am not implying that the mistress is wrong in feeling lonely and lost without a mate she can show up to parties with or that Barreca is profiling a mistress with aberrant ideas and feelings. What I question is how the mistress even knows how much is her belief and picture of herself and how much is her societally derived perception of herself in her unconscious or conscious absorption of the judged self.

Regardless of the speculated cause of her self-vilifying, there is no doubt that the mistress is an outsider and her relationship is inconvenient, frustrating and lonely–in fact.

She can’t call him; too risky. She can’t email him; anything in writing is out. She’s tempted, at her worst moments, to drive by his house in order to catch a glimpse of him through the window when his home is brightly lit after dark. Is his car there? Is she there? The wife?

She is an onlooker from the outside and wishes to be inside. Or does she? What is the measure of the frequency of her wanting to stay on the outside and enjoy the best of him against the frequency of her wanting to give it up for something full time and exclusive? The holidays are a mere smattering of days compared to the rest of the year.

Finally, Barreca shows the weighing mistress mind examining the endearing traits of her lover, what has drawn her to him and had her risk so much to be with him, against the sacrifice on her part to enjoy those alluring qualities.

In the past, she’s always found that little-kid-with-a-secret-look endearing. But today she’s less impressed. Maybe she looks at the wife, a woman more like herself than she’d care to admit. Usually she thinks of her as the woman who has everything and doesn’t appreciate it, but today his wife looks restless, tired, overworked, needy, a little frantic around the eyes. She looks older, but then who doesn’t?

Can this really be her rival? Is this the enemy she cries herself to sleep over on those nights when she can’t convince herself that she has the best part of the deal?

Well, it seems the scales are so obviously tilted that this mistress must be an idiot: “that little-kid-with-a-secret-look” versus crying herself to sleep at night “on those nights when she can’t convince herself” of her good fortune. Her attraction to his cute ways is juxtaposed to her painful self-delusion.

The picture might look different, however, if she quantified how often she lost sleep, one night a year or every night? It would also be another article entirely if the qualities the mistress gloms onto in her crisis of conscience are his traits that complement and fulfill her, like his ability to love her like no other can because of their compatibility in every way except for his being married and not to her. Perhaps she has never met a man who could kiss her in the exact way she could not even have dreamed of before because she didn’t know it existed until he named it with his kiss. Or maybe they love the same movies and find humor in exactly the same situations, let alone that they share the same world vision, values and goals. She may have not met anyone else like him before for the way he makes her feel so deeply loved. Oh, and he has that cute little boy look too.

But this is the doctor’s fiction, her probably anecdotally-derived composite of a certain mistress.. She wants to focus on that mistress who makes poor choices and, in doing the cost-benefit analysis, concludes that the costs to others’ lives and hers are not offset by the benefits because there is no prize–him/marriage–at the end.

She thinks about how the only thing to do when you want to stop going in circles is to stop.

And upon this rational thought, she, like the skaters on the ice before her lonely view on her lonely holiday walk, can joyfully whisk away her troubles and cares to a new life of legitimate love. Which is true, right? She can do better–maybe. But if she wants to have the kids and family like “the wife” has, with all of the drudgery of frictional living as well as the shared painful losses and ecstatic gains that come with coupledom, she needs to move on.

This is a story of a species of mistress, not a specific mistress. It is tailored to fit the message sculpted from the given details, and is merely a thin slice of the mistress pie. What if both were mistresses/misters? Does the distribution of power or deprivation change the equation? The question is not geared to elicit the cliche’d response that two wrongs do not make a right.

If a reader comes to the mistress story, any mistress general or specific, with pre-set notions of absolutes on the question of religiously-induced, societally induced, individually-realized and/or family-enforced rules, the accepted right and wrong of it without further indulgence in details, then those readers are resolved to condemn each mistress without exception. If, however, a mind can meet the material of each case as an unbiased observer of cultural, philosophical, psychological, social, scientific and spiritual facts, she might find that discrete individuals enter into discreet relationships, not types, and that all relationships, legitimate or otherwise, are a cost-benefit analysis.

I want to tell a mistress tale about a woman who is petite and strong with red hair or brown hair and adores both her lover and her freedom, whether she is over 35 and single or 55 and likewise married with children. She understands that the relationship comes with grief, conscience clutches and inconvenience, but she feels the situation is right for her at this time as it adds to her life goals more than it detracts from them. Perhaps she is in a sex-less marriage and her husband secretly or openly wants her to stay with him but satisfy her needs elsewhere because he can no longer do so. Perhaps they have great communication and connection but have outgrown each other as lovers even as they have deepened their well-seasoned friendship.

In this story, the wife of her lover is secretly or unconsciously grateful her husband gets his tiresome sexual needs satisfied elsewhere while she gets the benefit of his name, economic security, friendship and fathering of her children; she closes her eyes to her husband’s dalliances on the side because it takes no noticeable time away from her and the kids. Yes, he is more distant emotionally, but she still gets the day to day rote gestures of affection of the peck on the cheek and pinch of the ass. And from time to time, they do have intensely intimate moments that only marrieds can have by virtue of suffering failures and successes together and raising their kids. She may feel lonely at times, the loneliness that comes with not having all of someone in all ways, but she is not alone.

And he gets the same from his wife and mistress as they get from him. All around, the parties are satisfied for the time being if not for the long run, but none can tell the future, and the kids get to grow up with their parents in truce, or peaceful co-existence if not in marital bliss. The only glaringly volatile risk to everyone involved is the arrangement’s public disclosure with resulting judgement that causes the participants to act according to what is expected of them. Then everyone is screwed.

This is one fictional story of another account that is neither aberrant nor atypical in the human domain of mistress-dom and monogamy. I merely present a competing version to consider. And before I get accused of mere advocacy of a moral relativism, I remind my readers that my campaign, if I can be ascribed one, is for consideration of the specific over the general, the study over the selective moral quipping, and indulgent compassion over unmindful condemnation.

Some people are what they are accused of: a wicked poisonous-apple-toting witch of a stepmother. Some are not, not entirely or not at all. Was Snow White innocent or stupid to trust a stranger? Does she get a free of judgment pass for naiveté, for representing an ideal of innocence pure and sweet? After all, she did steal into the bed of a stranger in an empty house. What was she thinking?

The magic mirror shows you the truth you want to know. The more fruitful option is to question, to work at ‘seeing’ by paying attention to the details as well as the big picture. To withhold judgement until all pertinent facts are present takes strength, a healthy skepticism. The Snow White of my idyllic tale is not the innocent goddess of ignorance but the mistress of doubt, compassion and curiosity.

Those scenarios, hypothetical musings in a magazine or real experiences of the newsworthy, that cause knee-jerk powerful reactions in us are the ones that afford opportunities to test our beliefs and flex our mental, moral and empathic muscles. These muscles need a daily workout to keep them strong and healthy. Stories are the workout gyms in which to sweat it out.

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Branden and Rand Together Again?

 

credit: graphics8.nytimes.com

Apparently I missed the news that Ayn Rand’s former lover and protege, disciple or sycophant, depending upon your tolerance for Ayn Rand, Twentieth Century philosophy and/or cults, died. Luckily, I have friends looking out for me, so I was tipped off to the story, which I found, among other papers’ accounts, the L.A. Times article summary of the life, death and love affairs of Nathaniel Branden (formerly Blumenthal).

Of course, the article focuses on the most famous and all encompassing love of his life, Ayn Rand, best known as author and purveyor of her own brand of philosophy, Objectivism, and someone long embraced and cited by Conservative Republicans, most notably in recent history by Paul Ryan in the last presidential race. In fact, she is one of the “staples of the modern Conservative canon,” according to Beverly Gage of Slate.com in her intriguing August, 2012 article entitled, “Why is There No Liberal Ayn Rand?”

Fortunately and unfortunately for Nathaniel Branden (he changed his name to include “rand” in it), his life’s sum and legacy is dependent upon Rand. His story is only interesting by virtue of his involvement with her as first fan, then disciple, then lover, and finally nemesis. According to the Times, when Branden and Rand found themselves in love, the ever rational Rand insisted that their spouses be sat down and informed:

In 1954, Branden and Rand, who was 25 years his senior, started their affair after summoning their astonished spouses to a meeting.

“We’re not Platonists,” Rand reminded them, in Branden’s account. “We don’t hold our values in some other realm, unrelated to the realm in which we live our lives. If Nathan and I are who we are, if we see what we see in each other, if we mean the values we profess — how can we not be in love?”

How Rand. Reading the above passage in the Times article, I was caught once again in Rand’s net: that simple, affirmative, rational and adult-like composure to fiercely defend natural human want, desires of the flesh and the heart–by the head. I was very drawn to her ideas, her promoting the will of the intelligent, rational being as prevailing above all, when I read the Fountainhead at age 14. I was not aware then of her philosophical agenda.

For Rand and Objectivism, the here and now (the real world, the one that can be perceived with the senses) is all there is and the ultimate moral objective for humankind is each individual’s rational pursuit of his or her own happiness:

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute (Atlas Shrugged)

She spoke out against anything remotely ‘socialist’, which is what she considered the payment of taxes (one of the three pillars past of Republican principles: taxes, defense, and anti-Communism); she was for anything diametrically opposed to the communism of her descendants’ Cold War Russia. Thus, the Republican lure.

Politics aside, of course it makes sense that two people would fall in love if they are passionate to the point of obsession about a cause, an idea. And isn’t Rand to be applauded for her forthrightness and honesty to tell the spouses, hers and Branden’s, about their intention to engage in a love affair and the reasons? How mature and insightful about the human condition. After all, people get married at specific times in their lives to others who fit their needs. But needs change. Partners do not always change together, keep their goals the same. Those facts should be clear and common sensical. So why not acknowledge that as just another fact of the human condition? Why not acknowledge the unreality of monogamy as a viable institution, right? If folks were just practical…

The couple announced they wanted to be alone in Rand’s New York apartment for one afternoon and one evening each week. Over the next few years, Rand’s husband, Frank O’Connor, started drinking heavily and Branden’s wife, Barbara, began having panic attacks.

Ultimately, both couples divorced; Branden and Rand went through their final, searing rupture after he revealed his intense, secret relationship with Patrecia Scott, a young model and aspiring actress he later married. She acted under the name Patrecia Wynand, a surname drawn from “The Fountainhead”.

Well, there are good ideas, and then there are behavioral realities. How does a philosophy work that is based only on what the rational self can produce? Whose rationality? Rand would dismiss the idea that there is more than one rationality, that there is no such world produced by individual minds, only the one physical world. But that does not jive with lived experience. If you asked my brother and me the story of our childhood, he (2 years my junior, same parents and home) would bemoan the poverty and deprivation, missed birthday presents, whereas I would express gratitude for a carefree, want-for-nothing childhood. Whose reality is the real one?

My egocentric young teenager self was attracted to Rand’s thinking, deliciously indulging my belief ultimately in my own intelligence, strength and determination as the tools for my future success (Tomorrow, Pinky…the world!). But there was an unease, a coldness about that rational world that even I could not fully subscribe to or believe. In fact, Objectivism, it occurred to me later in adulthood, was only appealing to me as an idealistic, selfish adolescent inexperienced in life’s ass kickings delivered by human beings with diverse interpretations or completely devoid of rationality, reason and/or logic.

Even Branden, a psychology student and PhD, finally figured it out: that the world would be great if we could all just sit down like rational adults and reason this affair thing out–but that’s just not the way it works–especially if some other hottie comes along to derail your principles and your rational lover and guru turns irrational (but logically so) in a rage of vindictive jealousy as a result thereof.

I guess that’s why in the articles I read, Branden’s successive work, after Rand, published books on self esteem, gets footnoted almost, with a hint of an ironic wink, a chuckle and a nod.

And I suppose that’s the fate of the mistress, sometimes, when he/she is caught or even up front about the ‘other.’ People may get hurt in the schism between reason and emotion. Certainly society’s eye will sneer and smirk at his/her downfall.

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Obsessive-Compulsive Narcissism

creidt: psychassignment.weebly.com

Two terms were hurtled at me this week, one from someone who knows me fairly well in terms of years and intimacy, and the other from one who doesn’t know me at all except through what others have said or written about me or by my blog. One term was compulsive and the other was narcissistic. One I was a little puzzled by and the other made me bristle a little, both reactions triggered most probably by my disposition toward the accusers. Both terms can be seen pejoratively or neutrally. Neither seemed flattering.

Upon hearing (or reading) that a friend thought me compulsive, my first reaction was “Really? Let me think about that because it does not resonate with me.” Then I thought about certain “compulsions” I have had like running marathons, collecting educational degrees, teaching 11 classes one semester, and reading nearly every book I could possibly read in 9 months about pregnancy when I was pregnant the first time.

Then there was the training or more aptly the studying my first marathon. When I planned to run my first marathon in 1992, the L.A. Marathon, I read everything I possibly could about training, form, schedules, journaling, and nutrition. I hit Galloway on schedules and form, Fixx on mental attitude and Higdon on shoes in Running Times and Runner’s World as well as countless books, including the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. I read Brody on nutrition and a host of others who have ever taken to the pavement in running shoes. I read and trained for a year, from the very first step of running ever to the last step of the marathon.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I read all about schools of thought on labor and delivery from Spock to Lamaze to Bradley, physician-led births to laboring couple directed births. I read parenting books from Spock to Sears, two physicians from opposite ends of the spectrum, one advocating traditional AMA-endorsed practices and parental control/conditioning, the other advocating Attachment Parenting with child-led weaning from breastfeeding and family bed. Soon after my baby was born, sleep-deprived and shell shocked, I suffered advice–some of it was painful though I listened to it all with urgency and respect–from my mother and mother in law and other veteran moms who often advocated letting the baby cry it out (instead of picking her up) or scheduling the baby’s feedings (instead of feeding her each time she wanted).

But I was a La Leche League devotee and read everything on their and other breastfeeding websites that supported a philosophy of breastfeeding and letting the child decide when it was time to stop breastfeeding. I remember so many looking askance at my breastfeeding toddler, including those who would ask outright in obvious discomfort or barely contained disgust, “How long are you going to let her breast feed?” My smart ass reply was always, “Well, I don’t know of any college bound breast feeders…” And I ached too hard to hear my babies cry.

When my kids were growing up, I read every book mothers in mommy and me groups were recommending about behavior and parenting practices, including Raising Your Spirited Child and a book called Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child: The Heart of Parenting. When it came time to vaccinate, I read the AMA’s stance and unofficial websites of advocates of choice, citing the connection between autism and vaccinations, plugging anyone I encountered in park groups or toddler-focused activities, relatives and friends, for information and experience. I read. I asked. I listened. And I respected others’ ways of being a parent but, in the end, quietly followed my own learning and instinct. Still do, only now flying by the seat of my pants with teenagers.

But back then, I wanted to know it all. So maybe I was compulsive. Compulsive or obsessive?
Wanting accuracy and clarity about the word ‘compulsive,’ I went to the dictionary online and found the following:

com·pul·sive
kəmˈpəlsiv/Submit
adjective
adjective: compulsive
1.
resulting from or relating to an irresistible urge, especially one that is against one’s conscious wishes.
“compulsive eating”
synonyms: irresistible, uncontrollable, compelling, overwhelming, urgent; obsessive
(of a person) acting as a result of an irresistible urge.
“a compulsive liar”
synonyms: inveterate, chronic, incorrigible, incurable, hardened, hopeless, persistent; obsessive, addicted, habitual; informal pathological
2.
irresistibly interesting or exciting; compelling.
“this play is compulsive viewing”
synonyms: fascinating, compelling, gripping, riveting, engrossing, enthralling, captivating
“it’s compulsive viewing”
Origin
late 16th century (in the sense ‘compulsory’): from medieval Latin compulsivus, from compuls- ‘driven, forced,’ from the verb compellere (see compel). Sense 1 (originally a term in psychology) dates from the early 20th century.

Okay, so obsessive is a synonym for compulsive. Obsessive may fit. Still, I don’t think the definitions of compulsive apply, though I cop to two terms, one in the synonyms offered and one in the etymology at the end: persistent and driven. Those two terms seem true. While the drive to read everything–everything–I can about a subject may be obsessive, it is not unconsciously so nor uncontrollably so. The need to be not just informed but thoroughly informed may grow from insecurity, perfectionism or thirst. But I have never felt like I had to read everything, just wanted to. I love to read and learn as a teacher and student all my life.

Teaching 11 classes in one semester, insane as that was, did not derive from an addiction or unconscious desire to destroy myself, but from the need to test limits. If there is one tag line I can ascribe to, it would be to test limits when you can. Not that I am a huge risk taker, but I do like to see what the climate will bear in many situations. And I won’t consciously do something that I know will bring unnecessary suffering to me or my loved ones, or anyone for that matter. I am a mindful and conservative risk taker, at least for the majority of my days so far. On occasion, I have gone too far and risked too much.

However, I don’t believe as a general rule that when I am healthy and in my right mind I am overrun by habits and unconscious drives, though how am I to know? It’s hard to analyze the self accurately. I do battle with tobacco, an on again off again kind of fencing with a destructive force, but again it’s limits testing. I toy with the idea of controlling the poisonous intake by measured doses, a cigarette a day phase punctuated by long stretches, months sometimes, years sometimes, of not touching a cigarette. Then one day out of the blue I will smoke a half a pack. All right, I’m not sure who or which has the control: Am I playing with tobacco or is tobacco playing me?

Maybe I have a few compulsions, but am I narcissistic? The fact that I am writing about myself in a long-winded journal entry that I may possibly publish to a blog would indicate the truth of that accusation. The very act of writing–revealing the self–for others to mirror back in some fashion whether relating to or denying the author’s words may very well be narcissistic, if I think of the term as looking for mirrors. What does narcissistic mean?

nar·cis·sis·tic
ˌnärsəˈsistik/Submit
adjective
adjective: narcissistic
having an excessive or erotic interest in oneself and one’s physical appearance.
“a narcissistic actress”
synonyms: vain, self-loving, self-admiring, self-absorbed, self-obsessed, conceited, self-centered, self-regarding, egotistic, egotistical, egoistic; informalfull of oneself
“she was never happy in the narcissistic life that her press agent and manager had crafted for her”
relating to narcissism.
“narcissistic personality disorder”

In writing about myself now am I excessively interested in myself? I have a blog, so does that count as excessive interest in the self? I guess it depends upon what I write about. If my blog were one that solely gave recipes or tips on how to get a house clean, I probably could not be accused of narcissism by the pure donative nature of the blog alone. However, my blog is not exclusively an open journal like some I have read, which are diaries of the day to day events in a life. Something in between, I say.

I don’t offer advice or tips, but gather others’ advice, experience and opinions. I offer what interests me in writing styles, art and ideas, in the hopes of providing readers enjoyment, inspiration or thought. There is no question I subscribe to some viewpoints that I push for like tolerance and compassion, and thus blog more about some subjects, i.e., labeling, than others.

On the question of the mistress in its most common or popular understanding, the woman on the side, not the expansive definition of whatever owns you or is owned by you–people, ideas, predispositions, traits, habits, desires, etc.–I simply provide all sides and viewpoints, or at least aim to do so.

The ‘mistress’ is a complicated affair and concept and makes us all focus on the nature of relationships as well as challenges our notions of fairness, honesty, ethics, love, suffering, marriage, children and sexuality. My experiences as a divorce lawyer, spouse, mistress and human permit me to offer and question the topic, which encompasses the deepest and highest of all that is human. That is why the topic interests me and hopefully interests readers.

When I teach college students how to write essays, particularly narratives of the self, identity pieces, I tell them above all to be charitable: to be generous, to give to and be considerate of the reader, to show not tell the reader what happened and who you are, show the reader what you did so the reader can decide for him or herself who you are, to write with the reader in mind so that every detail, every word is written for that reader. I tell them to ask, “Will my reader understand me given that the reader has never lived behind my eyeballs? Is this a journal entry written to myself for my own pleasure or do I have something to share with one human being from another, something that taps into the universal human need, concern or condition? That is the job of the writer: to share, to give.

Now, the writer (and I mean nothing more than someone who writes) may again sound narcissistic, egotistical, to think a writer is in a position to give anything to anyone else, but lived experience, anyone’s experience no matter what life that experience is derived from, is valuable to another by virtue of it being shared even if only to provide commiseration, understanding, connection and companionship, a momentary relief from aloneness, let alone insight or education.

Am I conceited, self-centered, self-loving, egotistical, and excessively interested in myself, erotically or otherwise? Sometimes, sure. Other times, I am under-appreciative, insecure, self-doubting, self-deprecating, self-defeating, and many other self-(supply destructive term of choice). It took me 54 years to let anyone read a poem I had written, so sure I was that it wasn’t good enough.

Am I narcissistic because I write an online blog and not in a locked journal? Some might say so. One did. Perhaps, I am. And so.

Is it compulsive to carry on about it for this long? Probably. But I will leave it to the professionals. According to one Dr. Sam Vaknin, who wrote Malignant Self Love on narcissists, in FAQ#30, “The Compulsive Acts of a Narcissist“, writing a blog post questioning others’ judgments does not appear in his list of behaviors. Certainly, the extreme familial, genetic, behavioral and environmental factors discussed in the article are inapt for my narcissist label.

Somehow, I suspect, however, if I read compulsively on the subject, I would find that I could be a compulsive narcissist or a narcissist with compulsive behaviors. But I’d much rather scour my Facebook page for cat videos.

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Nephilitic Silence: Holidays for the Mistress

credit: fc08.deviantart.net

Your silence pools
in my intestines
and threatens
to spew plasmatic entrails
but stops short,
stifled in my breath
and trapped in my gullet
like a knob of malignant obstruction
to my peace and extensive stretch.

Silent days are death
to a long distance relationship,
not one spanning miles but minds;
silence severs
conjoint knowledge
wringing smiles
from the depths
of pelvic gurgling
and ancient arrows
of cherubim, plump
with the secrets
of gazing mouthful men
and averting ample mammarian women.

An image licks my museful morning
like my mistress’ tongue
languid and fierce
of aural treasures
buried long
and seafaring leagues
away in a land of the forbidden.

As if the nephilim are still among us
in their gigantesque
voracity and violence,
appetites that angrily expressed
devoured all they loved
and hated and nourished,
banning them
from all they desired
by an uneven hand
stronger than their own.

God’s winged visitations
consummated my hunger
with destiny’s dread desire too.
Only the silence of sleep
and death beget
not fated giants
but the stillborn genesis
of potentates with stone silhouettes
that speak nothing
of tremulous beating beings.

Your silence is like the path
obscured by shadows
of the overgrowth at dusk
pixilated with the sediment
of floating spins of detritus bits
lost from flesh-torn inhabitants.

Speak my name
and make manifest
confirmed minds
in trust
where memory’s remains.

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Burn Blue

credit: pic.pilpi.com

We are never so helplessly unhappy as when we lose love. ~ Sigmund Freud

Fringed in blue like the Israelite Jew
Shades of true, of you my baby blue
Capris and violet blue coats of denim
Your azure sky dreams my attention.
Glaucous eyes brimmed with the sea
to embrace the cold chalice ardently
and drink in the cerulean ceilings high
in the after-shadowing bloom of sighs.
Ultramarine me beyond your dreams
can only a southerly sensed vision be.
Acid monastral bubbling seething bliss
etches the skin sorrow of my mistress.
Sing a finch’d cornflower autumn song
of my thanksgiving hands a lithe strong
to travel me home again in zaffre smelt
in cobalt measure of springs long unfelt.

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The Sun is My Mistress: Icarus’ Flight

credit: island-ikaria.com

Every day is a climb to a troubled peak
ever in sight, never in reach.
It hovers nearly above my height
and follows my journey just in half sight,
a hand’s distance to grasp with miles to go,
luring my feet on though ascension is slow
to illusory destination and a doomed flight.

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New series ‘Mistress’ shines light on ‘the other woman’

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Sarah J. Symonds, apparently the Ann Landers of mistressdom, is bringing her advice columnist for mistresses who want to get out of mistressing, to her own cable television spot on the Discovery Life Channel according to a New York Post article of today’s date. Is she plying her trade as an angler exploiting the prurient interests of the populace or is she an earnest do-gooder? I wonder. Like most, the curiosity will make me tune in.
Twitter nugget: When mistressing goes mainstream.

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Guest Post: “The Mother as Mistress” by Jim Caron

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There is something between a son and his mother that I cannot explain. Some sort of bond that relates to all women, the way men thrive on acceptance from that special female, whether it’s mother or mate. That is the essence of a man, acceptance whether through love or status, it is his most valuable currency in life, rich or poor.
However, there are those men who never leave the scope of the womb, the childhood home, their mother’s sphere. Some men to the point you sense something bizarre, perhaps a bit twisted and fodder for the likes of a Psycho movie or an incest fest.
I see it in that long time schoolmate, Jeff. Through the years, Jeff never moved beyond his mother’s house. You may know the type, never married, still at Mom’s and past 40, never in the company of a woman or significant other male partner. This particular schoolmate lived across the street from my parent’s house. Same age as myself, we attended the same Junior High and High School. I suspect it was his way of acquiring property by simply out living his parents, as opposed to the careers we were steered towards in every class we took together.
He lives there still, alone as far as I can see after driving through the neighborhood recently. Watering the lawn, he stood in the front yard as I went by, smiled and waved as I am wondering what his secret life might be like, what weird twisted kind of sex life he may have. Perhaps one of those guys has sex with pool toys, or maybe cold liver from the meat counter, these choices running through my mind as I’m rounding the corner, I won’t be stopping for a chat.
Howard. His mother dies and he becomes obsessed with psychics in an attempt to relieve something within himself he never vested in, and instead, relied on his mother to provide. He never married, kept to himself, women found him creepy, he was. I still can’t figure the man out. He was the anal sort that would paint outlines of his tools on a peg board in the garage. You would go into the kitchen and open the “junk” drawer and everything in it was carefully arranged. There were also a lot of guns, he liked guns. His mother’s inheritance bought a number of weapons and a truck load of ammo which he and I indulged at the Huntington Beach shooting range on a daily basis.
I became an excellent shot, could hit my mark with most types of pistols shooting with either hand. As with any mistress, first or second string, the newness of Howard’s guns wore off and he realized this new mistress did not provide the warmth and acceptance he received from his mother. Howard was always a geek, the boy all the others teased and made fun of, his mother was able to fix that for him. Despite being the ultimate nerd, Howard constantly proved himself as a talented musician when we were in drum corps, but never gained social acceptance in any circles. Whether in the corps or later on, when he left the army and became that lone hippie geek with the bell on his pants that would wander into my night club, staying all night, barely saying a word. During none of this time did Howard bond with a woman, he was the weird loner who never had a girlfriend, always close to mother, an only child.
A man obsessed with his dead mother, what sort of twisted mistress she must be. His father, was still alive, a cranky old coot that his mother divorced after a public scandal at the Garden Grove City Hall. The head of the recreation department and his secretary caught in a love nest, in the 1960’s it was a death knell, Howard was only 9. The father had a more traditional approach to the mistress concept, Howard bonding with his mother rather than venturing out to seek acceptance from a mate. Howard held his mother in saintly regard, she never remarried or bonded again as far I knew of, so Howard saw her as some sort of “Virgin Mother” and never forgave his father whom he neglected for the rest of the man’s life.
Howard became more sullen and reclusive as he got older, going to the psychic more often and becoming more depressed over the loss of his mother. He did not seek to re-invent himself or look for a new horizon, he chose to whither and so he did. He also began to get pervie, following around girls from my band trying to look up dresses, leering and such that we had to exclude him from events with the band. He began bragging about buying crack whores on Harbor Boulevard. We cringed with disgust, it seemed to empower him as he spoke, watching for our reactions.
Howard then began collecting and keeping high powered weapons, assault rifles, lots of ammo. I remember taking one look at his newest acquisition and deciding to never return to his house again. Why take any chances?
I could look at my own mother and say with assurance she had a power over me I still cannot explain. Not in a sense of love, but of commitment to family, ideals, rules. When it came to these things, for her it was business. I realized only after she died, how much she controlled my young life, her mental power and influence over me. She was more of a specter in life than death, constantly watching and evaluating, wielding nothing other than the wrath of her disapproval. That alone was enough to shake me to the core, far beyond any physical threat or beating my father ever offered. I cannot explain why or recall when she programmed me that way, it was some kind of voodoo, black magic or witchcraft that could subdue me in an instant and far beyond the sting of any corporal consequences.
However, I knew no matter how much trouble I might find myself in, she would come get me, put me back together after accident or idiocy. It seemed to me the essence of the mother son relationship, a relationship I really did not understand until after she died: she owned me, but I needed her too. It was the perspective of death and distance that allowed me to see the relationship for what it was. She was the lawyer that stood between me and the court of life. I could not stay out of trouble, she was the only one could or would fix things and always was. You can’t have that with a wife and keep her respect, maybe her love and sympathy, but not her respect.
That is a vital point for me. I believe this is what men find as the wedge that eventually divides them from their commitment to a wife. Her instincts will see you as weak and your instincts tell you she will, she can say what she wants, but her female senses will change her opinion of you. Let her deny it, but believe it. I think men can be weak with a mistress, cry on their shoulder and get their little boy stuff over, that stuff most guys will cycle through from time to time if they have a cry baby relationship with a woman. If you want respect as a man and a strong image around the house, you have to have good publicity, no scandals or losses that bring you home tawdry and in tears. No matter how she may coddle and cuddle, say she loves and supports you, deep down you are no longer the man she was originally attracted to. Admit it girls, admit it guys, I think we’ve all had an episode here and there to demonstrate the truth of Motherly or Mistress acceptance as opposed to a wife’s long term, true respect. It’s just how a man has to play it, if he is too weak to cultivate his mate, their situation, the currency of their relationship, he will face the same losses or success any man might find in business. You get what you pay for and invest in.
I would conclude by asking again, what power is it in a son that a mother holds? It is certain to be a testament to those things that bond us beyond what we can see. I know it’s true. Men dying on the battlefield call for their mother, it is a universal thing at those moments. What home is it in a mother that men find? Acceptance beyond your weakest moments, forgiveness for failures, those things you can’t take back or fix. Being given another chance, a place to hide, regroup to fight again. Seems these are the same things a man might seek in a mistress, but never in a wife. She would judge him as a weak partner and it will eventually manifest in her feelings towards him. Women can get very cynical about a mate over the years and I believe this is where most husband complaints find their origination, moments of failure and weakness. It’s Darwinian in some strange way, I prefer to believe and follow these concepts rather than depend on the superficial words of those trying to be polite or are unaware of the forces that drive their thoughts and words.

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For Emma

Is it true what they say about you, Emma?

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They betrayed you, didn’t they? Everyone marching you down the line from birth to death used you even as they propped you up, the precious rag doll with the delicate fine porcelain mask you were. Your feckless foe and charms–your beauty and your sex–betrayed you. How could you know?

I could imagine your life that way, narrate it so. Or I could finger-trace the lines of the stolen silken bodily moments with your lover–impassioned with danger and secrecy, danger of the war with impending loss of your lover and the father of your child, as well as the secrecy of your affair. Your story.  Who were they to take your lover, your secrets, your letters and your world with so little regard, to throw you in a prison of injustice and debt? The iron of your manacles was brutal in hypocritical cold, the jailers murderously callous. They took your love, money and life. I hate them.

I dreamed your dream once, was your dream, a sister from ecstatic vision and prescient sight, warming your mind like the lynx enwrapping your belly. The sweetness of half-lit rooms and pleasant chaise-lounge velvet bethroned bodies bathed in halogen bulbs of passionate witness. Give me your seed. Implant your vision of Veronese wood tables engraved with curled tresses that beckon our baby’s bonneted hair and make my cells crave yours in hours of the early morning upon awakening from suffering sleep. I ache. Take me with you. I will dust off your prison hurt and make your beauty mesmerize love again.

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