Emer O’Toole’s Ten Things Feminism Has Ruined for Me in the Guardian is a well-written satiric yet sincere read on what feminism has spoiled–mostly fun–for this writer from her cat to Catholicism to marriage and monogamy. While humorous, she raises some insightful conundrums in compromising that space of the political to enter the more relaxed place of “Hey, it ain’t correct, but it feels good, so I’ll just shut my mind off.”
More than the insights and complaints, I love how she works through her queries in writing, watching the process of working through each dilemma. Here is just one example:
You’re a feminist. You’re questioning the gender-related norms in the world around you, trying to figure out which ones are oppressive (eg, sexual objectification; domestic violence; workplace discrimination) and which ones are OK (lipstick). And you begin to feel that a social system in which people claim rights of sexual ownership over each other’s bodies, and get very angry when these exclusive rights are violated, is a system so deeply imbued with patriarchal capitalist ideology as to make gender equality impossible.
So she recognizes the inherent intransigence of an institution, monogamous marriage, so deeply embedded in the larger socio-economic practice and mindset of a country that values possessions including others’ bodies, which is rife for abuse of women in a patriarchal society. Men still run things around here. Marriage based on ownership filters down to men owning women and children, which was literally true only about a hundred years ago. Women were chattel as Kate Chopin’s ‘”Story of an Hour” reminds us.
Though, I do not doubt that two people can agree that they each have equal “ownership” rights over each other’s body and enjoy those rights, even with jealousy and possession as the basis of policing that arrangement. Two individuals cognizant of their needs and boundaries and respectful of the same in the other certainly can make monogamy work within the patriarchy of capitalism and monogamy. Like everything, it depends on the people entering into and honoring the agreements they make with continuing communication and monitoring about their arrangement when it is not working.
You take your head out of the theoretical clouds and look at the grounded reality of monogamy. You see lying, cheating, shame, even violence, and you think: is this because of love? Or is it because of the idea that we own the sexual function of the people we love? Love should make us happy (I’m looking at you, Anna Karenina). Yet jealousy, so often an excuse for abuse, is romanticised by the logic of monogamy, while love is vilified. Surely, with compassion, commitment and communication, we can find the courage to love differently. Polyamory is the future!
I do not know that romanticizing jealousy correlates to vilifying love, unless she means generally monogamy leads to jealousy and people focus on the keeping possession of bodies rather than the love that binds each to such an arrangement in the first place. Unless she means that love that someone can give to others is curtailed by having it wrapped up in only one other being. There are so many people one comes across in life, many lovable people, and yet many bargain away their love in an exclusivity contract, which seems rather unnatural and doomed as insurmountably contrived and unnatural.
Polyamory, she applauds as the solution, though too quickly. The same kind of honesty and open communication, continual monitoring and negotiation that works for monogamy pertains even more so, even more than doubly so, to polyamory where there are more moving parts to consider. More people means more agreements, which inevitably means more of everything good and bad. Polyamory is not for the lazy or the self-deluded. It is not an excuse to go fuck anyone you want as some do parading under the banner of polyamory. You know who you are.
Compassion, commitment and communication are a lot of bloody work, though. Primary partners, secondary partners: all replete with complex emotions. Sometimes, at 1am on Friday night, when you just want to be out dancing with your friends but are, instead, “processing” with a partner new to poly, you wonder, ‘When did life become one long conversation about everyone’s feelings?’ You remember being 21, and trying to stop your boyfriend from punching a bloke who asked for your number while he was in the jacks. Brutal, yes, but alluringly simple.
Right. Sometimes you want to just fall back into easy patterns, even ones designed, implemented and perpetuated by patriarchy. The familiarity of it is enticing and the noble notion of chivalry is romanticism we have been fed since birth.
Conscious choice to engage in agreed to relationship roles is what it is all about. A feminist is someone who believes in entering into relationships of any form or context, personal, career or academic, armed with information and analytical skills to see through the sedimented, unthinking practices of our culture. That practice does not have to be a battle within the self so much as a vigilance, an intellectual awareness directed to many aspects of life, not just spotting abuse. We are not dupes to advertising when we know what advertisers are up to, and yet we submit and purchase what’s for sale knowingly and willingly.
Relationships of any kind are no different. I may submit my body to my partner’s jealous possession knowing all the implications and consequences thereof, and still sleep at night. The problem is not so much monogamy as much as it is about fairytales’ forever after. Humans want to nail down something for life: this is the way it’s going to be so that I don’t ever have to think about that again. It’s an insecurity thing. Again, it takes honesty and constant checking in with the self to see if the same old patterns are actively and consciously working or just mindless habits. That practice of checking in is a constant of good living. That is feminism in practice.
Happy Anniversary! Now Let’s Break Up.
Today is the first anniversary of this blog. I embarked on the WordPress train a year ago on a whim, an undeveloped plan and foggy urge to write in hopes of something undefined. Having never blogged or even read blogs much before, I plunged in, posted a few portraits, a poem or two, and left it for six months, life having ramped up ridiculously like a nightmare on steroids. Some of the hardship of the last year–my world upturned in too many ways to list–inspirited and compelled me to pick up the strand I left six months prior for this endeavor, consciously choosing to capitalize on the lessons learned and the beauty that is born from horror sometimes.
Like anything, even getting up each day, it takes faith and courage to believe all will be all right, so long as I conduct myself with open heart and mind sprinkled with a little savvy. To illustrate more concretely, I was approached by a woman at the gas station adjacent to a Motel 6 today. She was a fairly well dressed young woman who asked me with polite but firm insistence for a ride to a mall 20 minutes from there. I knee-jerk declined, pretending to another appointment destination in the opposite direction, but she persisted–not with tears or sympathy, as she gave no reason for her request, but with sheer calm insistence.
She forced me to that place of challenging my beliefs. She needed help, I had time and means to provide it, but I had an in-built reaction of mistrust. After a quick assessment of my motives and her size (I thought I could take her in a fight), I leapt in faith that helping another human being in need (or even no need) was worth the assessed small risk of harm befalling me, and that my instinct was correct in her sincerity.
The choices we make tell our story to ourselves and others. Some might tell the story of picking up a stranger as a lucky escape from potential danger, one that would be terribly lopsided in risk to benefit. My children could have been orphaned over something terribly easy to avoid, had she robbed or killed me. Others might tell the story of picking up a stranger as a good deed, one performed in calculated risk, which is contributive to the larger world–mine and others’.
If I live in mistrust, my world is less free. If I help others when I am able, those I help may teeter over the edge of consideration, airing on the side of helping too, expanding rather than contracting connection. My choice reflects who I am, and knowing who I am determines the choices I make.
Reflecting on yesterday’s question of befriending an ex lover, the adage of knowing self, having faith in and love for the self, is requisite to loving another. Sometimes the same gut instinct, knowledge of a sort, that agrees to chauffeur a stranger in faith chooses to end a relationship in faith. Breakups are called breakups and not pauses or hiatuses when it is time for a relationship to end. Whether amicable or not, breakups are painful, making friendship nearly impossible.
How many people are strong, logical, self-aware, honest and forthright about their own shortcomings and strengths as well as others’? How many know the difference between self-delusion and following true desire, loving the self like no other? How many would live lonely rather than enjoy the comfort of the familiar company and intimacy regardless of the potential for danger, justifying it as compassion?
I read an article about breaking up first thing this morning on my daily journey through the Internet.
Rebekah McClaskey, an intuitive relationship counselor specializing in breakups, according to her bio on elephantjournal.com says breakups are hard in The Laws of Breaking Up & Getting Over It. No shit.
She says more, however, offering intuitive advice, which appears to be a combination of homegrown knowledge, common lore, and researched Internet offerings. Of 29 points, 14 interest me, in particular:
1. The grief you now feel due to the separation has less to do with the past and more to do with grieving over what could have been, which makes moving forward seem near impossible. Also known as: Break-ups kill the future dead.
Fantasy is a powerful motivator and critical component to our pleasure and pain, and I don’t mean just sexually. To make things work, whether we are poring over in our mind the prospect of a new job or a new lover, we imagine ourselves happily or at least contentedly in that imaginary place in order to choose that position or partner. And once we choose, we continue to construct the relationship by filling in what’s not there, pushing some things to the shadows and others to the forefront. In other words, we craft our world to fit our needs. That makes for prettier pictures but hard letdowns when the painting turns out to be a poor imitation of reality.
We try to make things work especially if we see shiny objects that attract our attention and desire. I have loved men who read poetry or debated philosophy, deeply affecting my heart and desire, while I sublimated those other traits I saw but didn’t measure as highly, like their propensity to fuck other people, or their lack of ambition or care for my safety. I closed my eyes until they were forced open, and the relationships eventually ended.
2. You did your best. No, really you did and continue to do your best. Your personal best can also look way different than choosing wisely.
This speaks to forgiving the self for being human. Yes, we do fool ourselves often despite our best effort to make the best choice with as much information possible. I have stayed with partners who could not give me what I needed by rationalizing that there were so many other good things the person brought to my life, have allowed myself to be fooled into believing I could overlook another’s crucial incompatibilities, even as I knew better, and had suffered hurt because of the selective blindness. It’s easy to self-flagellate for the sins of loving the wrong people, but accepting our own imperfection, that we are all just trying to make things work the best way we can, is much more difficult.
3. ….we are all just faking it.
Yep. We think we have the answers, got it together, but in braver moments, sit down and face that we are all frauds to a large extent. We don’t know shit. All we do is try to figure things out as we go along to get what we need.
6. Unconditional love is just letting go of what could be or could have been by appreciating what you have now.
Acceptance is hard–not just word dedication, real acceptance. This is self-love. It alleviates the crazy making of she will change or I will change or learn to live with this or that because it is a worthwhile trade off to something else. We bargain when we should just open our eyes and see, to accept.
7. There is no cure for pain. It is just a part of living.
Enough said.
10. He is not coming back. She is not coming back. And if they do it is just part of a cycle and not actually a new beginning. (That is a hard one to admit out loud.)
AKA the extended breakup. The scales tip for or against staying with someone, and at some point the liabilities outweigh the benefits. When it’s time, the breakup should be fast but is too often prolonged for that most evil of betrayers–hope. And some people love to pick scabs until they bleed. At least they can control the pain, as opposed to one that overtakes and overwhelms uncontrollably, like loneliness.
12. A friendship that occurs within the first year after separation is not going to be functional. It just won’t be. I’m not joking about this. What I am saying is that a full year must go by before a healthy friendship can take place.
I have known this to be true and untrue. Some people just didn’t bring me anything more than they already had and so had to disappear from my life.
15. There is no replacement for sex or intimacy or intimate sex. It is okay to miss these things.
It can be borne. Hold out for more than a quick fix.
16. We learn by being in relationship (even after it ends).
Yes, we do. So long as we keep our eyes and ears open.
18. Having sex with your ex is like sticking a fully loaded heroin needle in your arm. It will kill your soul.
Ahhhhh, yes, it will kill you slowly but surely. Only, heroin is a real physical need, sex with an ex is imagined. But the analogy hits home hard.
20. At some point, everyone is immature; not just your ex.
It’s not true (stomping my feet)!!!! 😉
25. It could take your whole life to learn to love yourself. The best time to do it is now.
To repeat, knowing the self is foundational to knowing what to expect in others. Since life is lived in our heads telling ourselves lies we believe, knowing the self takes work, a tremendous vigilance and attentiveness that is exhausting for its subtlety and dividends paid in agonizingly barely perceptible increments. It takes a life-long practice to unfold yourself from what has been socially constructed to find the real you, your voice. You are your relationships.
27. Contrast is our greatest teacher and similarities are what bond us together. Everyone is both all the time to different degrees (brain warp!). A.K.A Right person + wrong time = wrong person.
But what’s logic got to do with it? We’re talking love.
Why We Do What We Do Sometimes: Compartmentalization and Fantasy
credit: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com
There are many reasons for infidelity, such as revenge, boredom, the thrill of sexual novelty, sexual addiction. But experts say that a large majority of the time, motivations differ by gender, with men searching for more sex or attention, and women looking to fill an emotional void…. Women tend to have an emotional connection with their lover and are more likely to have an affair because of loneliness.
I googled random words that popped into my head yesterday, only a few that I recall now that I have wandered far from my original search–crisis, conscience, fidelity, causes–and found the above webmd answer to the inquiry, “Why do women (and men) cheat?” Having researched infidelity endlessly in the last six months, I was pretty sure I knew the answers. Yet, as each new search yields slightly different results, I keep returning to the inexhaustible topic.
Paraphrasing here, despite feeling guilty and regardless of how “the other woman” compares to their wives, men cheat when emotionally dissatisfied, i.e., feeling under appreciated or unloved, according to Dr. Gary Newman’s study of 200 avowed strayers. The proposed solution: Wife, get out of yourself and pay attention.
The article teases out the commonplace and dresses it up with officialdom in a reader-friendly version of the study findings. There are few details of the subjects, questions or demographics. But do we need a study to come to the banal conclusion that marriage breeds contemptuous familiarity, human nature tends toward the unconscious and ungrateful, and daily presence and gratitude is the answer to so many of the questions?
Presence:
How can I be kind to my husband and show him how much he means to me with the daily do’s grinding me into the ground: work, kids, parents and the myriad other balls I juggle to keep it all going, each taking huge chunks out of my time, patience and happiness on most days?
Simple, I remark to myself. Stop, breathe and re-set. Do the enormous work of superhuman strength to take ten minutes out of the day for a gratitude inventory: people who care deeply for my wellbeing, who would suffer horribly if I died or fell gravely ill, even if it doesn’t seem like that most days. So that when I mindlessly knee-jerk react to my husband’s insignificant screw up, I can at least apologize and salve the wound. And just maybe avoid the knife altogether next time. It takes practice.
So the next time he goes out to get 2% milk and gets nonfat instead without an inkling that his kids would never drink that, I refrain from laying into him, complaining how clueless and checked out he is. No one wants to feel dumb. No one reacts well to unkindness. I marvel at how I give strangers on the street more kindness than I give my people sometimes. Just unjust.
But kindness is not a panacea and presence is not easy. Some cheat even if they feel good about and are well-treated by their spouses–to what degree I have no idea, but articles abound with studies attesting to infidelity even among avowed happy homers. People stray for as many reasons as there are people, my weak math brain speculates, as each individual comes to a relationship with his or her own nature and nurture.
Compartmentalization:
The human mind copes with conflict in unseen ways. Mindfulness–a condition for catching self-deception in action–is tricky when it comes to danger triggers and survival mechanisms. I have observed that clandestine relationships survive largely on compartmentalization, which is only one tool in the human arsenal of coping skills.
We parcelize ourselves in order to make sense of what we do. For instance, I have been known to be an overly conscientious mother and daughter but a neglectful wife, at times, and I rationalize that deficit by focusing on the surplus.
Likewise, a man in a strained or dying marriage may justify an affair by weighing his acclaimed superior fathering and provider skills against the undeniably less superior husband skills attested to by his wife and his own admission. But since he is a good father and provider, he believes he compensates for the few failings as his wife’s lover, friend or supporter. She gets her due, so he should get his.
That is just one example of guilt-alleviating separation that keeps folks moving along through their days and in their marriages until either or both terminate. But it’s not just for cheaters. Many sites I consulted on the subject such as Psychology Today and Webmd, cite professions that necessitate compartmentalization. Soldiers, for example, seal up the killing to survive the mental anguish.
Compartmentalization is often survival, no doubt, especially for those with high powered jobs widely responsible for others’ safety like police officers, doctors and lawyers. A doctor could not work without burying the constant threat of lives lost at her hands.
To a lesser or greater extent, we survive emotional infidelity by splitting ourselves into bad and good, justified and unjustified. This disassociation answers the question of how she could fuck her lover each afternoon and then spoon her husband to sleep each night. But is she aware of the division?
Fantasy:
We all come to situations as we are. No kidding. Some of us are, and I do include myself, if not outright addicted then highly reliant upon fantasy to prop us up through hard times or as the go-to coping mechanism. I know I dealt with teenage loneliness in fantasy. It gave me the endorphin boost I was later addicted to in distance running.
If I imagined that someone to whom I was attracted also found me attractive as THE object of desire, I smoked those elaborate imagined scenarios with that special someone who found me irresistibly witty and charming, and so, so deep. I would inject the role of lover in love songs, succumbing to the bitter-sweet surrender of being someone else, somewhere else for a while. It was release.
Some people use love to obtain that high even into adulthood. While life sped up for me so much that I lost the luxury of hours mulling in my imagination–school, work, real relationships that were not so ideal and took a lot of rolled-up-sleeves ugly work–I still had spells of disappointment or a generalized ennui that was relieved by lapsing into fantasy.
Specifically, when I found myself in a restricted relationship by borders of time, emotional commitment and opportunity–mistressing, for example–fantasy played a huge part for me and my partner. It sustained the relationship and certainly heightened the sex.
Intention:
There is an interesting thing about daydreaming and fantasy: Sometimes it works to manifest what you want in life, and other times it keeps you stuck in your life. What makes the difference?
The difference has to do with your intent. Are you consciously imagining what you want from a place of inner connection and joy, or are you using daydreaming and fantasy to avoid your feelings and avoid reality?
When you consciously and joyously imagine what you want, you are participating in creating what you want. However, when you use fantasy and daydreaming as a way of avoiding your feelings and avoiding the reality of a situation, you are using them addictively.
So says Margaret Paul, PhD in “Addiction to Fantasy and Daydreaming.” I agree. Intention is everything–almost. Fantasy spans the poles of medicine to poison.
When abseiling the steep slopes of rocky terrain–deep, existential loneliness or disappointed dissatisfaction in a life partner choice–unhealed lovers or spouses find respite in the life-supporting ropes of daydreams or fantasies of another’s possible meaning or potential in some improbable space and time of the imagination.
This human tendency, whether for avoidance or enhancement, as addiction or inspiration, no matter how dilatory to healing a relationship or the self, was certainly pronounced in those who made me mistress. That is one of the things all lovers had in common: being in love with feeling love and their projected ideal–in me. And I did the same for them.
My illicit loves were all drenched in rich fantasy, which has made each relationship both an irresistible draw and a resounding alarm. While I heard all I desired, all the tailored words and acts calculated to keep me–or my image–I placed a padded, porous cotton circle of safety around my heart.
Because in time I knew that I knew. Looking at myself from the outside as if in a metafictional moment, an actor slow turning away from the scene to wink at the unseen, unknown audience, I broke the fourth wall. I toggled the strutting and fretting between falling in and out of my heart’s desire in dangerous liaisons, which accounted for my enjoyment and sanity within them.
Of course, there is living in the moment and then there is all the rest. When I was with my lover–in that room or car or restaurant–looking into the eyes of the object of my reciprocated desire at that precise moment, there was only the thickness of amniotic warmth, need and desire in perfect balance.
And the other pole–fear, longing, insecurity, conscience, dissatisfaction–drifted in and out of the majority of hours spent without my lover, sometimes striking me with a punch and other times with contemplative concern.
Most times, however, I just went through my days attending to what was directly in sight. I still do. And hope that sleep, my most beloved and ardent lover of all, returns a new day with answers, insight, solution or simply more of the same as all the other yesterdays–practice.
Presence, intention and study are disciplines that enable me to dip into the copiousness of heart pumping inflow and outpouring. Some days it is easier than others to see myself and others with incisive clarity. Others, I fog over.
However, the intention is always there. Struggling with the practice, sweating the line of possibility and decency, creation and destruction, I awaken each day resolved to do the best I can even as I want to do better than that. And so I get up, falter in a slight sway, and get on with the business of another first step to somewhere.
First and Lasting Love
Social Science Says Lasting Relationships Come Down to 2 Basic Traits, one of today’s The Mind Unleashed selections gave me a warm feel-good flicker of recognition in resonating truth, though so simple and time-worn as to appear trite. The article”s review of a study on long-term marriages concludes:
In most marriages, levels of satisfaction drop dramatically within the first few years together. But among couples who not only endure, but live happily together for years and years, the spirit of kindness and generosity guides them forward.
Sure, kindness and generosity make the world go round, so this makes sense. Now, I cannot say that I have always remembered this prescript in my own lengthy marriage, but the daily practice is important to better the odds of not forgetting.
If I were to give my daughters advice on choosing a life partner, I would tell them to love someone kind and generous–to them as well as others. Hopefully, my daughters won’t need such advice in earnest for a while, though they inch along nearing that precipice of desire.
My soon-to-be-19 year old daughter is falling in love, probably for the first time. I assume both in light of her uncharacteristic giddiness over today’s “date” and the missing catalyst to such annoying behavior previously. Unlike her mother, she is starting out on her love life journey later. She is probably better off for that.
The challenge for me, for any mother, is what to say when. Does today’s second date provide the opportunity to donate wisdom, the benefit of my years? Unsolicited, yes, but shouldn’t a mother do that for her charges, give without being asked or even being appreciated for the offering? So many hats a mother wears, teacher is certainly one of them. A teacher instructs and shares, gracing her students with the benefit of her education, training and life experience, whether the course is English or Accounting and whether the education is received and utilized.
I took the chance, risked rebuff and spoke. An “in” presented itself after a simple line of questioning of plans and whereabouts.
She answered, “I told him I like surprises, so he is picking me up and taking me somewhere. He hasn’t said where.”
“So, he seems interested in you, since he paid attention to what you said you liked.”
“Yeah, I can’t figure out why he does,” she shrugged with a cynical but glowing smile.
I bristled at her statement and wondered why it had to be this way for young women, skepticism and self-doubt, insecurity. Was she being coy or humble? Considering her audience, she didn’t need to make a showing of such virtues or strategies. The mother bear in me overreacted immediately.
“Don’t say that. It’s demeaning to someone I love.”
But then, backing off, I monologued a bit, and she was gracious to listen. I pondered before her attentive eyes: Is it possible for us to develop a healthy love at all with what we are fed by our parents, our culture? I explained to her what my mother told me about sex: Don’t do it until you’re married, boys are only after one thing, and your life will be ruined if you get pregnant. Did I communicate that same defensive posture to her?
I told her the early impression of sex I inherited, one I wrote about on this blog before: women are fortresses and men the invading armies. While the aim of it–precaution–is sensible, especially to young girls of little reference or information from ages 10 to 17, the attitude engendered is one of suspicion and so sex and love are regarded as dangerous.
“The trick is somehow to balance self-preservation and good sense with wonder and openness to some of the best of what life offers. That takes believing in your own worth and risking hurt in exchange for an opportunity to experience euphoric connection with another.”
That was the best I could offer. Fortunately, she is a solidly emerging woman, smart and selective. She has often chosen to be alone rather than be with others who add too little to her life or too much, those toxic relations. But this is new territory, one that tests the mettle of anyone’s constitution to keep one’s head and heart in proper alignment. Generally it takes the burns and bruises of time to calibrate the right give and take, how much and what to sacrifice in exchange for what is gained: the typical cost-benefit analysis applied to almost everything.
She is embarking on this heart adventure much older than I entered the love arena. I was always ready to jump into love and sensuality often and early. My first kiss was in first grade by Artie with the big ears, and even then I felt special. By fourth grade, I developed breasts and the teasing attention of boys. By sixth grade, I longed for the attention of the popular girls who had boys’ silly antics surrounding them and landed my first kiss with a spin the bottle birthday party.
The melt into soft fleshy lips and the scent of another’s closeness, was all it was cracked up to be in my imagination infused with popular lore and far too many books.
By 7th grade, I was going steady with a French kisser and it wasn’t long after that sex entered my life–as both war and weapon. A painful void of information with which to frame a comfortable sexual identity invaded my vision of love up to that time, one concocted from my parents, television, books, songs and neighbors, and fractured it.
Desire and the lure of divinely natural impulses battled fear of heartbreak, exploitation and pregnancy. Sex and love became divorced. And I think it stayed that way for far too many years until I navigated enough relationships to negotiate a re-integration–refashioned and reformulated.
I found that sex and love could be a continuum and an extension of one another. But, ultimately, all winds back to me, my understanding of self in conjunction with others. And not just self-love=ability to love others. That formula glosses over the details, the delicate balance of a hundred or more moving parts, only a few of the major ones being acceptance of humans as largely immutable, education through books and life experience to understand the human condition through behaviors and underlying motivations, and a brave belief in and awe of mystery.
With that in mind, I gave her my best advice–leap, but look both ways before doing so and keep your eyes and ears open. Whether that means something to her or not, I may never know. I still think, however, she has a leg up on me in having waited longer, farther down the life timeline for more brain, body and heart growth. She will have had a longer time living with herself and so a better sense to deal with inevitable disappointment and hurt.
But today will be about exploring and the exhilaration of learning about another–and herself. There will be assessments, inventory taking, chuckling, maybe hard laughs, anxiety and curiosity. There will be self-doubt toying with confidence. The heart will burn apace in the heat of desire and the speed of wonder. And possibly the deep surrender to the womb of the unknown.
It makes me hold my breath and bite my nails for the possibility of the story’s unfolding. I know for certain I will be there for the fallout, great or small. Such is a mother’s love of a daughter, which is nothing if not a devoted practice of kindness and generosity.
What Love Is
Love cares what becomes of you because love knows that we are all interconnected. Love is inherently compassionate and empathic. Love knows that the “other” is also oneself. This is the true nature of love and love itself can not be manipulated or restrained. Love honors the sovereignty of each soul. Love is its own law.
So says Deborah Anapol, PhD in The Seven Natural Laws of Love on exhibit in a Psychology Today article, which is a quick, worthy read. She sums up that love is mistaken as sex and marriage and many other things that couch it, but love is its own law.
On this day before Christmas Eve, I made a short list of things–not necessarily people–I like and appreciate, things that make me feel the love in the natural law of loving life.
What I like: joking with my kids, eating in restaurants that have a great variety of vegan foods, when my mother smiles while looking in my eyes, making my great nephews and nieces laugh, laughing, books that I wish would continue on after the last page, books I never want to climb out of, books, when my father says I love you to my mother, writing something with a few well-turned meaningful phrases, writing poems, time to write, making love, being a lover, being a wife, being a mother, being a daughter, being a friend, being a sister, when someone is inspired by what I write, good comments that provoke a stimulating conversation, salmon, art, photography, Stone IPA, fine pinot, a French white burgundy like a merseult or chassagne montrachet, cooking when I have time and ingredients that are exotic and fresh, organic, being home alone, quiet places, long into the night conversations about people, love and life in a car parked at the beach, watermelon on hot summer days, fresh strawberries with fresh cream, pineapples atop soft serve vanilla ice cream, yoga, smoking with a beer, wax, running with Kiah, the ache of loving someone so hard, orgasm, the unobtainable, P’s laughter, my daughters’ laughter, watching my daughters play soccer, being out on a soccer field on a dewy summer morning, snowboarding, swimming in the Caribbean, being a friend, looking at love in someone’s eyes, slow bicycle rides along the water at dusk, finishing a marathon or half marathon, when playing soccer was fun, when playing tennis was fun, when running was fun, when swimming was fun, floating on a waveless warm sea with my ears immersed and eyes closed, Samasati, snorkeling in Tobago Cays, summer camp when I was a kid, warm feet when it’s cold, unexpected gifts in the mail, good strong flavorful coffee, when I was friends with M, Louis CK, movies that make me think about them or feel them for a long time afterward, Joni Mitchell songs from Blue and Court & Spark that I can sing every word to, long movies that go by quickly, teaching, a tender kiss, a strong character, passion, being invisible in a crowd, crossword puzzles, Halloween teen night high at the cemetery that was really Mordar, the pleasant surprise of not being disappointed after seeing The Lord of the Rings, not being afraid, the idea of love at first sight, book stores, people in heroics, the scent of an infant’s head, the epiphany of understanding that the earth, stars, space and humans are made of the same stuff, randomness, that the components and shape of DNA molecules in plants, animals and humans are the same.
The mountain woman sleeps in the forest green.
A mountain of a woman, she is the sleeping green of the forest.
Oh, mountain of my dreams, oh womankind, you are the green of my forest sleep.
caption: vuing.com
Should a Cheater Confess?
Cheating: a lot of people do it, but hardly anyone talks about it.
Now, thanks to Whisper — a free online app where people anonymously share secrets — we have a little more insight into an otherwise private situation.
That is what I read in The Huffington Post the other morning while poking around the Internet. Apparently this anonymous confessing site is not the only one either. This idea has been around for a while on postsecret.com, which asks its participants to send in postcards with secrets–so I learned from my girlfriend.
Now what could be the benefit of an anonymous confessional app or space? I know the power of confession is great, a purging, and the anonymity allows for the confession, but how does that change anything for the confessor, the voyeurs looking on, or the couple? I can understand the voyeur part, as misery loves company is not a cliche for nothing, and perhaps the redeeming factor for such a site is for those who peer into others’ lives not just for vicarious thrills but to shore themselves up to do something about their own cheating or their significant others’ like confront or confess to the real live partner.
But as for the cheater confessing, what does that do other than provide a momentary relief of built up pressure that comes with holding in a really big secret. Does it alleviate the guilt associated with the act by justifying that others have done so too? Does it allow someone to reduce the self-hatred that comes with the act by seeing that he/she is not alone or the only person who has ever cheated? I can see how some would benefit from such a site. But for the serial cheaters and sociopaths, this site may actually be a narcissist’s delight; look at my exploits.
I believe the real need for confession comes in not merely commiseration but in communication and validation. If one carries a dark shameful secret, it works the mind of the carrier into shame and guilt, distorted thoughts of proportions from “I’m a bad person “to “no one has been as evil as I am.” If someone on either end of the scale confesses the secret and the hearer does not run away or burn up in the hearing, or the confessor does not explode, then the test of validation has occurred. He or she thinks in relief, “I said this terrible admission but the other is still looking at me as if I were a human being. Or, maybe, even sympathy or empathy.”
Human beings need continual confirmation that they/we are all together in being human. It’s lonely living in your own skin. There is no perspective, no context sometimes. The human egocentric being will distort the degree of horribleness of his crime or sin commensurate to how he feels about what he risks losing in having done that shameful deed: dignity, moral standing, trust, stature, jobs, friends, lovers, spouse and/or kids. For marital strayers, the need for confession depends upon that experience of projected loss and degree of guilt, whether religiously or secularly framed.
Confession as therapy has a long history from Freud’s “talking cure” and later Jung’s stages of wellness. Jung believed confession was integral to therapy and was one of the specific steps to recovering wellbeing. Others, philosophers like Michel Foucault, saw the confession as an institutionalized demand by society’s officials, the confession recipients. Whether criminal, medical, psychological or religious, confession is an extraction of personal details for the purposes befitting the one with greater power, the confessor’s hearer, i.e., police, doctors, and priests, according to Foucault. By the act of confession, one person is dependent upon the other for the hearing, the pardon, the judgment or non-judgment as the case may be, the punishment. One of the two-party configuration is in a position of power and the other is spotlighted in the gaze of the other, awaiting her fate.
When it comes to ‘straying’ spouses, should the offender confess to his or her partner? The answer to that question will vary according to the agenda or, not so cynically, the orientation of the advisor. Religious advisors may consider the moral character and state of the soul of the offender as paramount, whereas a psychologist may consider the long and short term damage to either or both spouses and the marriage itself.
In the small sampling of articles I perused on the subject from marriagehelper.com, psychologytoday.com, time.com and spiritualityhealth.com, the answer seems to be: it depends. Only one of the aforementioned seems intransigently prescriptive: in other words, here is what you have to do to make this work, regardless of the circumstances. The other articles weighed the grave injury to the non-offending spouse against the need for honesty and seeking for forgiveness of the offending spouse.
Some argued that it may be best not to tell for the irrevocable injury it would cause to the innocent spouse (I use these terms bluntly and descriptively only) not only in context of the marriage, which may well break up, but future going for the next relationship he or she enters, trusting issues, for example. Others advocate risking the injury and the probable breakup for the power and virtue in honesty and the contrition with which the honesty is given. Most agree that each case is different, which makes sense since each couple is comprised of specific individuals, not a common class of people.
Confession in itself is a rich source of contemplation, its ubiquity (Isn’t all social media confession?), its therapeutical properties and ritualistic sedimentation in cultures throughout the world, as well as its artistic value. One of my favorite poets, Sylvia Plath, harkens from what has been termed the Confessional Poets of the 50s and 60s, along with Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton, characterized by very personal subject matter such as domesticity, relationships and sexuality: novel for its time but pretty old hat now. Who doesn’t write the personal?
To delve in more deeply and expansively, I consulted the Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion and found an interesting morsel in an abstract of an article by Morgan Stebbins titled “Confession”:
The act of confession either begins a process of reparation or affirms the subject’s relationship with the transpersonal. That is, one can confess wrongdoing or confess one’s faith. In most religious traditions, the former is accomplished through ritualized admission, absolution, and repair, while psychologically it begins the formation of therapeutic trust and unburdens the subject of poisonous secrets….The word confess is made up of the Latin com (together) and fateri (to acknowledge), indicating that a process of change begins both with another person and by admitting that which is in error.
Getting back to C.G. Jung, in The Journal of Religion and Health, Elizabeth Todd in “The Value of Confession and Forgiveness According to Jung” describes confession according to Freud’s successor, as one of need by virtue of being human:
Man, a naturally religious being, has a need to confess his wrong and to gain forgiveness of one sanctioned to absolve. The curative effect of confession has been known for centuries. Without confession, man remains in moral isolation. Priests, ministers, and rabbis, as well as psychotherapists, attest to the universality of this human phenomenon. Confession is located in that place where psychology and religion meet-guilt. Jung’s views on confession bridge the chasm between psychology and religion.
Confession is relationship by its very nature. One confesses to an other, human or deity/spirit. Implicit in someone unburdening a wrong committed against the hearer is the hearer’s consequent carrying that burden; confession is a complex configuration of moral, ethical, and personal obligations and considerations of fairness, rights and compassion.
Does one who cheats have the right to feel better by unloading the gnawing secret on the one on whom he cheated or is he nobler to suffer quietly the burden of that dark knowledge and guilt so as to keep the other unharmed? If morality and personal integrity is the sole consideration, then isn’t the secret holder/strayer obligated to be honest regardless of the consequences for the ultimately highest purpose of integrity and rebuilding trust, i.e., if I confess the impossibly difficult, I show you I am capable of being honest going forward? What role does the other play as mere listener, forgiver and rebuker? Is honesty always the best policy? Your thoughts?
Obsessive-Compulsive Narcissism
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.
Guest Post by Edgar Paul – The Doll
[Image: The Doll by Hans Bellmer]
Gregorio woke from his nightmare with a start. The sheets stuck uncomfortably to his sweat drenched body as he fought free to sit up in the darkness. He placed his hands over his face and massaged his temples, then reached back hoping he would find her in the absence. The pillow was cold, reminding him that her weight and warmth no longer rested there.
He glanced up and away from his loneliness and caught the glimmer of moonlight in glass eyes. Across the room, still and silent she sat, the beautiful doll, Marion. She had belonged to his wife as a child and had been passed down to their daughter… before they both were lost to this world.
Gregorio stopped himself from thinking of it and stood, approaching the doll slowly. Her glass eyes watched his every step curiously. He knelt and stroked her hair softly, imagining his wife and daughter’s fingers tracing the same path through those golden tresses. This was how they were all connected now, all he had left, memories shared through the porcelain flesh of this doll, and her silken hair.
Gregorio struck a match and lit a candle so that he could better examine the doll. Marion had been crafted by the finest doll maker in the realm and was given to his wife when she was a child after her sister had drowned. It had been made with the idea of becoming a replacement of sorts, to calm her anxieties of facing life without her identical twin.
Now facing his own tragedy of loss, Gregorio saw just how much Marion favored his wife’s appearance and by blood extension, their daughter. He stroked the lines of the doll’s face, tracing his large fingers over her brow and cheeks, down the bridge of her nose and longingly over her lips. He lingered there for a moment, looking at her face reflect the candlelight, and gazed into the depths of her brown glass eyes.
Gregorio sighed and picked up the doll, carrying her gently in his arms and placed her into the bed in the place of his wife. Marion’s green dress bloomed out with lace like petals of a flower, and he stood over her, gently unfastening the wooden buttons of her blouse. As he parted the fabric above her breasts he could see the delicate joints at her shoulder and neck, the skin underneath pure, unpainted and white. Gregorio moved the candle closer and gently slipped the layers of fabric off her arm.
The joints clattered as he placed Marion’s hand above her head. It was then that he noticed small nipples had been painted in red on her breasts. He stroked the mark softly with a thumb and then checked the other side, repeating his motions across the porcelain nipple. The stain was permanent, as was the memory of his wife’s sensitive nipples.
He’d been fond of teasing them with his fingers, her soft nipples growing stiffer against his grip. He continued to roll his hand absent mindedly over the doll’s breasts softly as he removed Marion’s right arm from the sleeve and placed it above her head.
Sliding his hand down her smooth belly he gently removed the dress and bustle to reveal Marion’s crotch, thighs and legs. Her torso was one solid piece with joints for the appendages. Her arms and legs hung on bits of old string, as tattered and frayed as his broken heart. Examining her holes and estimating the strength of those strings, Gregorio left the doll on the bed alone for a moment and disappeared with the candle to rummage in his workshop.
Marion lay there in the dark, naked and cold. The doll maker had cursed her so that she could not move without having someone else manipulating her body. Her eyes fixed on the ceiling and watched the shadows of the leaves chase through the moonlight. She remembered the past fifty years fondly, her time with Gregorio’s wife and child, but her Mistresses were gone – dead. Marion understood that he was the Master now, and she knew she would have to do exactly as he said.
He returned with leather straps of various sizes and a knife but was unable to detect the glint of panic in her eyes. Gregorio set straight into work, spreading Marion’s legs apart and taking another look at the joint. He pressed the knife gently against the string of her left thigh and cut deliberately. Too much pressure, he feared, would shatter the thin bit of porcelain that was to hold her together. Freeing the first string he moved to the second and third, until he was able to remove her leg completely. Marion had felt safe in his arms, secure in his protection and comforted in his gaze – but now she screamed silently behind her dusty and crackled skin, afraid of her fate. His machinations were soon revealed as he began to inspect the ceramic of her torso where he had amputated the leg. His fingers pierced inside her wound, sliding into a spot she’d never felt a man before. Marion struggled to remain still. He held a warm cloth, cleaning carefully around and inside the hole, she was relieved that he’d forced her face into a position he couldn’t see. Her eye lashes fluttered with the pleasure she was experiencing. Marion felt a strange energy growing inside her as he took up a soft bristle brush and scrubbed softly against the edge of the joint.
Once she was clean and dust free, Gregorio lined the inside and outside of her torso with a leather fold, protecting the ceramic where it would come into contact with her leg. She loved the feel of his fingers against her, and the sensation of the leather against her skin was remarkable. Her face flushed and her lips tingled.
He continued the cleansing on the inside of her leg; she could feel the wetness from his cloth dripping down her thigh. Next Gregorio lined the inside edge of her leg with leather and fitted the parts back together by punching holes through for leather straps to replace the old string. As she felt him draw her leg back in place with his knots she struggled not to moan. His touch made her cold flesh feel like no one else’s touch had before. Gregorio repeated the same technique to remove, wash, and pad her shoulders, elbows and knees. His fingers felt wide and warm inside her; she struggled to remain still, parting her lips to moan softly. She barely managed to withhold the noise from him.
As Gregorio finished securing the final tie on her leg, she winced sharply. He had pressed too hard as he tied a knot in the leather straps and the ceramic of her crotch cracked. A cleft formed a roughly curved line up between her legs from the joint where the two halves of her torso met. He cursed and gently examined the fracture. The pressure from his fingers caused slivers of porcelain to fall away, leaving a small uneven diamond shape behind.
Taking his warm, wet washcloth he pressed it into the jagged crevice between her legs, leaving soft folds around the edges. Gregorio tested the pressure, making sure the rag would prevent the fissure from spreading any further up her belly. It seemed to provide enough padding, and he traced his finger softly along the edges of her new folds, feeling where the doll’s torso had split. He carefully tucked the fabric over the sharp ceramic edges.
All these sensations were new and overwhelming to Marion. She lay still, panting from her open mouth, licking her lips. Her body felt warm, wet, and tingly; it was a feeling she’d never known. Gregorio was adjusting the wetness between her legs, his fingers pressing inside her and pulling softly at those folds. She could feel his flesh against her flesh, a pressure building between her thighs as he manipulated her. She remained as still and quiet as she could, a rush of pressure and pleasure roaring in her.
She was close to her first orgasm when he withdrew his hands.
Gregorio sat back and looked at her. Marion’s legs were spread before him, she was now dressed as if in leather garters, her nipples rouged, her porcelain skin parted between her legs, inviting him inside her folds. Her face looked different in this light, her cheeks flushed red, mouth pursed in anxious anticipation. His erection was throbbing as he gazed at his wife’s porcelain doppelgänger.
He cursed himself, blew out the candle and crawled into bed weeping with sorrow over his deceased family; overcome with embarrassment by his desires for this doll.
Marion lay there stunned, feeling his weight against her, his arms pulling her tight against him as he sobbed into her hair. She listened as his breathing calmed and deepened. After a time, Gregorio had rolled away from her and fallen asleep.
She discovered to her delight that she was able to move her arms. She lowered the hand furthest from him down against her breast. The nipple was still sensitive and felt as if it burned as she pressed her fingers against it. She rubbed and teased and felt the porcelain go from cold to hot, returning to human flesh as she teased herself. She moved her hands down to the damp hole between her legs that he had created and explored delicately with her fingertips.
Marion stroked at the bottom of the folds and found an opening; it was quite pleasurable to insert her fingers inside. She pressed them in deeply and felt the fabric squeeze in against her fingers when she pressed her hips up. At the top of her moist folds she found an area that made her shiver and moan in delight as she massaged it. The sensation of her fingers against that spot was intensely pleasurable, an amazing mixture of pain, pleasure and surprise. She wiggled her hips softly and arched her back as she sighed deeply at this new flood of feeling.
The fabric and ceramic had become flesh, transforming her from doll to woman.
“Gregorio” she moaned as she played with the wetness between her legs. “Greeegooorrrioooooooooo,” she purred, managing to complete the orgasm that he had started earlier with the sound of his name on her lips.
“I must be dreaming,” he said, having been awakened from his slumber by her masturbation. He had rolled over to watch her, admiring her beautiful body.
“I am no dream.” Marion replied, moving her hand to stroke his face softly. “Your want and desires have made me real, broken a curse I’ve been under for half a century. You’ve given me pleasures I’ve never known.” She kissed his lips hungrily. “Now use me, put me into the positions you enjoy and let me be your toy. I have had enough of little girl’s tea parties and playing princess – make me your slut, Gregorio, for I am yours.”
They embraced and kissed passionately, his fingers discovering her skin was now warm and soft. He fondled her breasts gently and then kissed his way down her neck to her nipples, pulling against them hard with his teeth. Continuing to suckle and nibble her breasts softly, Gregorio moved his fingers down her belly and explored the wet warmth between her legs.
“Roll over and get on your hands and knees.” He demanded, standing at the side of the bed with one hand idly stroking his cock. He watched as Marion complied and then pressed his throbbing against her mouth.
She furrowed her brow and looked up at him with concern. “I don’t know what to do with a man. You’ll have to show me.”
“I plan to.” Gregorio replied with a sadistic smirk, pressing his fingers against her chin to open her mouth and placing his erection inside. “Good girl, now massage me with your tongue and suck. Gently!” He admonished her as she inhaled sharply against him. “Gently…good.” He moaned and moved his fingers into her hair. As he began to move her head up and down his shaft, Gregorio moved his hips in matching rhythm as Marion moaned around his girth.
Feeling his cock inside her mouth was amazing. She could feel him throbbing against her tongue, her mouth watering for more and more of him inside her.
Marion’s eyes shot wide as he plunged himself deep into her mouth, as if reading her thoughts. She struggled against gagging and choking, feeling her spit sloppily drip down her chin as she took him into her mouth fully. It was a feeling of total helplessness; she was consumed by him, controlled by him. His cock filled her mouth as he roughly fucked her lips, tongue and throat. She felt his strength forcing her to take his cock, and knew his desire.
As He withdrew she coughed and gasped for air, a long trail of her spittle trailing on his dick and dripping off to fall against her neck and breasts. It was a humiliating feeling to be used that way and she loved it. She wrapped her hand around his cock and moved her mouth for more, but he pulled away from her slightly. “I want more!” She purred, pouting.
“Good girl.” He said stroking himself and removing her hand from his shaft. “Don’t move” Gregorio circled to the other side of the bed and admired his handiwork. Marion’s crotch had been an androgynous flat surface of seams and ceramic before, now her pussy glistened in a glorious celebration of her womanhood. He teased her wetness gently with his cock, rubbing her from behind so that the tip pressed across her clit.
Marion arched her back and moaned. Gregorio’s touch against her was many times more pleasurable than her own. He reached up and wrapped his thick fingers against her hips before pressing himself slowly and deeply inside her wet, tight little pussy. She found he was considerably larger than her own fingers had been, and she could feel his bulging veins and his swollen cock head hot inside her, filling her up. Marion’s pussy contracted and clamped around him as she screamed in pleasure.
He took her slow and steady at first, letting her feel his shaft slide fully in and out of her. Then he slapped her ass and pressed in harder and faster, feeling himself swelling up inside her. She thrashed into him, moving her hips to match his seemingly angry motions. He stabbed his cock into her savagely, watching as she struggled against him. She fell face down into the bed and moved her arms back to try to push his body away slightly. “Be a good little doll and take it,” he growled. She accepted her fate and spread her pussy open for him with her hands as he fucked her.
Gregario didn’t remember his wife being this tight, nor wet. Marion’s pussy also felt hot like he’d never known in a woman. He reached down to pull her hair hard as he struggled to concentrate; the feeling of being inside her was intense, magical.
She felt his orgasm inside her, his hot juices blowing against her walls. Gregorio collapsed against her back and kissed her neck before sliding his dick out from in between her legs and rolling off her. Marion could feel his cum dripping out of her as she lay down satisfied, astonished, and happy.
It wasn’t long before she was again listening to Gregorio sleep next to her. Soon she felt her own eyes getting heavy and going glassy.
Marion began to feel her skin turn cold and firm, it was drying up and changing back into stiff, fragile porcelain. She stood cautiously as her body was transforming and redressed herself, stepping back into the bustle of her dress and fastening herself into the comfort of modesty.
She did not want Gregorio to wake and see her cold, stark white porcelain skin. She wanted him only to remember her warm, pink flesh.
Making her way clumsily back to the chair across the room, Marion looked back and tried unsuccessfully to crack a porcelain smile at her master. Her face and body had almost entirely returned to solid form as she settled into the chair.
Marion rested her head back and shut her eyes as she drifted into a dream state. She dreamed of running freely through a field of flowers, the grass tickling at her ankles. She would giggle and laugh at the butterflies, chasing them. She heard music in the distance, and could smell the smoke of a nearby chimney.
These dreams were partly fantasy and partly a memory of Marion’s youth. They were remembrances of the time before her parents had sold her into slavery and before the doll maker had cast his spells upon her.
Gregorio dreamed of his family, of his wife’s kisses, his daughter’s laughter. He dreamed of sharing a meal all together, sitting at the table. He could taste the food in his mouth, and could feel the warmth of his wife’s hand in his. Her eyes were brown and full of life. Her generous smile warmed him. Marion was there too, laughing with them, enjoying her dinner. He watched as Marion poured his wife a glass of wine, the twins kissing each other hungrily, their fingers pressed against each other’s faces.
Slowly waking, Gregorio rolled over and reached for the woman who had been in his bed last night. No one was there.
Had he been dreaming?
For Passion’s Sake Separating Self from the Other–Esther Perel on “Mating in Captivity”
Esther Perel, rooting out the cause of sexual boredom in marrieds in her essay entitled “Mating in Captivity”(http://www.powells.com/essays/perel.html) directs married couples to rebel, to actively challenge fear in order to balance desire against love and thus recharge their sex lives. She challenges each to see the “other” in their partners.
She begins her article defining the problem, “the dilemmas of desire”, long term married couples experience, when passion, and thus sex, is murdered by the inherent contradictory needs and conceptions of love versus desire. She says, “couples around the world are chasing the desire dragon” trying to keep desire alive, which takes reconciling the need for security and familiarity with the need for newness and separateness. She affirms, “To sustain desire toward the other, there must be an element of separateness,” a creation of space that requires each of the couple to let go of, or at least suspend, fear. It takes foregoing the security of familiarity and sameness and the conception of love as sweetness and intimacy, and allowing the “mystery” in the other to flourish by seeing his or her otherness. The recognition and appreciation of otherness incites eroticism. That takes distance–scary.
Most people’s conceptions about love are based on “reciprocity” while desire is more “selfish”, and passion, in long term marriage, is traded for security, leading to boredom, both of which–passion and security–Perel says, are illusions. Of course, she advocates in the end devoted time for sex, even planned, and invites fantasy and rebellion as a mindset for charging up the mental loins. She ends with a cleverly conceived concluding conception: “Like the child who jumps off a mother’s comfortable lap, running off to discover and explore, before returning to the safety of home base, we adults continuously seek to balance our contradictory needs for connection and freedom, comfort and fear, the grown-up version of hide and seek.”
The draw of this essay is not so much the novelty of the information or advocacy to give up the illusion of the oneness of couples and to be brave enough to realize that we are all essentially, in the words of Brian Doyle in “Joyas Voladares”, “alone in the house of the heart”, but in the writing of the essay. She has an ease in her prose that comforts the reader, creating lovely imagistic analogies to convey the essence of her message, one like her last simile of the child running from the mother’s lap. She uses discreet bits of well-turned phrases to illuminate the more poignant points. I especially enjoyed this passage:
These elements we seek, the ones that combined, light the flame of eroticism, exist and thrive in a space I think of as otherness. The best intimacy is the one that respects this otherness. Individuality and difference are accentuated, and you actually see the other person as a separate being. As expressed by the great narrator, Proust, ‘The true voyage of discovery is not about discovering new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes.’ In those moments we stand on opposite ends of this space we see each other with new eyes. Our separateness is what allows for risk, vulnerability, and erotic charge of the unknown.
Standing on opposite ends of a space and “the erotic charge of the unknown” are two notions and phrasing that made me sigh in contentment upon concluding this piece. She takes what could be cliche’d psychological dicta–give each other space–and infuses a phenomenological dimension to the psychological.
The general patterns of behavior are underscored in this essay–we tend to meld into and conflate our spouses with ourselves–but individual perception is put in relief, something I call the gaze, in a more general and not historical-theoretical context.
Walking through daily life, people depend upon their anonymity and interior-absorbed space. They walk through streets in the anonymity of a crowd, invisible, thinking of where they have to go and what they have to do. It is only when someone recognizes the walker/thinker and calls her name or looks in her eyes with an i-know-you look that the comfort of the invisible world of thought and “self” is shattered. The reverie is interrupted and the self is pulled from her space into the world of another, into the community.
We forget about this general condition and comfort of lone self when we dive into marriage or any relationship to escape what some mistake for loneliness, most probably due to the fear of that conception–loneliness–or an angst about one’s own self worth. Am I doomed to be trapped in my mind, with my thoughts? Me? To zoom in, when the lover is in the gaze of her other, this separateness is capitalized. It is a nanosecond recognition that she is an object–of desire–a body, a repository of fantasy and fluid, a separateness, as Perel serenely states. She is seen. Maybe not as she “truly” is but as a strangeness that comes from not being a part of the self, like seeing one’s hand floating in space, disconnected from its arm. That space allows for possibility–what can I do to or with this other?–because this other is not me, doesn’t think like me, or fear like me. What does she want/like? The gaze turns the trite plea for space, I just need some space, to the reality: we are each alone in this world, and that is fucking hot!
Psychology of a Mistress
The links in the reference list may potentially be interesting.
In the gaze of the other 