More Than Two Ways

I once thought there were only two kinds of female led relationships, the 'bad' female domination of 'fear and tears' and the 'good' female led of 'love and respect'; and I believed only love symbol differentiation and clarification would help the former become the latter. I thought the 'fear and tears' was nearly always an ineffective and love symbol-obstructed, symbol-metastasized, version of the 'love and respect' goal (always beware of standards). However, I've changed my mind because there are an infinite variety of relationship love symbols, female led or not, and while there are always differing levels of accurate and adequate love symbols in any relationship, having different love symbols isn't wrong.

Now I still think many couples aren't really communicating with love symbols, aren't really attaining (enough) intimacy with the love symbols they have, perhaps only interpreting what they can, when they can, as a symbol of love so they can emotionally get by as well as they can. I think this often why many people desire their partner to give them the symbol love they want regardless whether that symbol is functional for their partner, whether that symbol means love for their partner. Of course, no one can silently suffer and sublimate their unhappiness for very long, and if we ask our partner to try, they are sometimes successful in learning a new love symbol, but how long can we ask our partner to try some specific love symbol before we decide love symbol effectiveness with our partner is more important than any particular symbolic expression?

Obviously, a person who instills fear in their partner (through whatever works for them) may have a functional symbol to express or feel whatever it is they seek to, but is it an accurate and adequate love symbol for both of them? A person might functionally feel and express love best when they feel humiliated, or spanked, or helpless, or overruled, or commanded, or other things in varying combinations, but are these accurate and adequate love symbols for both of them? The answers could be yes, and different isn't necessarily wrong. It doesn’t matter what they are doing, it matters what they are meaning by their actions and whether they effectively and adequately understand each other to attain the intimacy they desire.

Perhaps an erotic truth is only the discovery of love symbols so effective, so much a part of who we are, that they bypass much, if not most, perhaps all of a person's conscious awareness, yet a relationship needs functional love symbols for two people. And it may be that relationship compatibility is at some level actually about erotic truth compatibility, but it is certain all couples, must work out what love symbols work for them until they have enough symbols that work well enough for them.

Differentiating Her

I wonder so often how my wife knows what she knows, sees what she sees, does what she does, with such a compact worldview that can eclipse and compact mere difference with wrongness. Not only is individual human experience a progression from a baby's compact experience to mature adulthood and old age, but even the arc of human history has moved from compact early human civilizations to our more differentiated present civilization.

I myself have believed in the salvific power of scientistic differentiation. I grew up in a large family in a rather cluttered house, and I probably learned early on to identify the most important and essential things because only a few things could be wholly and completely mine. I honed my natural simplification impulse towards the essential and aimed like a laser to the heart of the matter, eliminating everything else in the way. Even today I've theorized the reason I like a good story while my wife likes a good biography is because non-fiction compacts disparate aspects into a holistic portrait while fiction creates a holistic picture to highlight a specific differentiated point.

Yet now not only do I wonder how well I have ever differentiated anything if in the process I have been missing some important things, because after all, as my wife points out, no one lives their life on a single differentiated point. We experience things compactly and later differentiate them, and while some people, such as I, find meaning in later attention to categories and labels at the expense of the compact holistic experience, other people actively ignore the differentiating impulse in order to maintain the present experiential meaning, such as my wife. And I'm in love with my wife, and a little in love with how she sees the world, how she knows the things I don’t know; and we've had more than a few laughs over my ironical and comical attempts to understand her better by trying to differentiate the essence of a holistic, compact experiential worldview.

Ultimately any symbol, all symbols no matter how compact or differentiated, can only be appraised by their effectiveness, their adequacy and accuracy to the task and experience at hand.

Anyone with a worldview, philosophy or framework where it is difficult to fully be who they are knows the necessity and power of self permission and self acceptance. If we view ourselves as monstrous in our own minds, we'll need a gatekeeper to give permission for the unaccepted interior to frolic and keep the frolic appropriately contained; any conscientious and self-aware monster knows it needs rules.

Upon discovering my uxorious erotic truth I wondered if I suffered from some psychological inversion where my mother was (too) demanding and (too) overbearing and so after becoming monstrous in trying pleasing her, I later learned in romance to be monstrously pleased when pleasing 'her' monster. I might decide my partner must be a monstrous enough match for me to be pleased; I might try enticing her to more monstrosity; I might encourage her to unchain and release her interior kraken, encourage her to stop differentiating loving me and between loving what I do for her, encourage and entice with the lure of power of being a gatekeeper, my gatekeeper. I'll lure her into celebrating our interior monsters together, into a monster frolicking relationship in which I can be whole with my monstrous self, accepted despite being a monster, have self-worth from the praise of pleasing her, and have the intimacy and surety of her gatekeeping permission.

No, I don't really believe I do this, but I fear some men might and that in my desire to participate in my wife's pursuit of happiness and pleasure, I could. I often hear men discuss 'subspace', this bliss of being female led, as their drug, and well let's face it, every addict needs a dealer helping them to the next level. Yet a parent, a gatekeeper, a dealer, a god, enjoys a love hate relationship with even its most loyal and childlike of junkie worshiping subjects, and such rule is only had by the god-maker's permission. For when parents are only godlike to their children, divinities only monster-like to humans, when symbol confusion leads one to love power exchange instead of loving one's partner, the resulting relationship becomes philosophically untenable if not functionally untenable as well.

While I am comforted by my constant effort to make love symbols clear and transparent from one interior all the way through to the other interior, and avoid symbols that stop at mere power exchange, I also tread with fear and trembling as I differentiate between erotic truth's self discovery and addiction's meaningless abyss.

Compact and Differentiated

Often despite differing worldviews a couple remains compatible with high intimacy and functionality because they differentiate concepts similarly. For example, the way they distinguish the compactness of a 'myth' into the component aspects of 'story', 'philosophy' and 'religion' might be similar, though one person may have a religious worldview and the other an atheistic.

Since my wife's worldview is often more compact than my own, I have learned compact isn’t less intelligent, less modern, or less enlightened, just different, more holistic; while I easily see categories, systems and dynamics, she easily understands the shading of subtlety, inference and the bigger picture. More fascinatingly, my wife will frequently understand a differentiated concept intellectually yet pay it little attention because the concept does not have clear symbolic significance or meaning to her. Thus while my wife understands people might do different things than she for the same interior reasons, those people often remain meaningfully indistinguishable to her from people who do not have the same interior reasons as she.

And this is the point: while symbols can be transparent and meaningful across differing worldviews and even different levels of compactness and differentiation, if a love symbol is not clear enough for your partner to understand it, then the symbol is meaningfully indistinguishable from your not loving your partner at all. Thus good relationship communication isn’t only self expression well enough for you to understand, or even well enough for your partner to understand; good relationship communication is self expression well enough for you to understand your partner.

Quitting Or Winning

Often people believe getting older means settling for less in their relationships, yet I believe that same sense of settling may not be a quitting but a winning where it counts. We are quick to compare and see failure in our relationships before the perfect standard, yet few of us, possibly none of us, actually know anyone successful with this popularly held relationship ideal.

I think in our youth we found the bar already set too high for reality, and in looking for the 'perfect partner', the 'perfect relationship', we lost many opportunities to grow in other perfectly fitting and functional relationships. When we're a little older, we begin to realize 'what works works', with age we're more easily able to see what works, and we're less eager to restart functionality in a new relationship just to try to trading up, but we might also realize learning to live and love with what we have can be a puzzle with its own satisfactions.

Despite a high degree of relationship happiness and functionality, sometimes people want some specific kind, level or symbol of intimacy but discover it's something their partner isn’t able to give, or give easily, or well. Without trading in any of our well earned and learned symbol tools and functional intimacy, we might try channeling this unmet desire or try getting it piecemeal, but in either case we need not see this situation as relationship failure. We've only failed to recognize some standards are unattainable, or that it's perfectly acceptable not to reach the standards created only for aiming purposes. In relationships 'what works works', but as far as standards go perhaps we should remember 'what doesn’t work, doesn’t'.

Fitting If Differently Equal

Much of my youth remained unfulfilled because I believed my 'perfect partner' would be my 'perfect equal', a person identical to me in interests and desires, and then when the reality of humanity eventually forced me to give up this idea I spent some time believing I might attain sufficient intimacy piecemeal. I discovered the problem with piecemeal intimacy quickly because the lack of time and effort spent on sufficient symbols clearly resulted in insufficient paths of expression from interior to interior.

But it took time to learn identical interests and interior spaces, or even just largely common interests and interior spaces, is not the same thing as intimacy, though such commonality may afford similar starting symbols and so more easily facilitate the communication and understanding passing from interior to interior that is intimacy. Thus in relationship mathematics one plus one does equal one, but those ones need not be equal and identical in shape, personality or interior, and the fitting we feel in a relationship does not depend upon 'equal' as identical in nature, or even similar, or even congruent. Just as there are different kinds of equality, there are different kinds of fitting matches; a left and right glove match, but so do two left gloves, or different color gloves is the same size, or vice versa, or even the proverbial hand and glove.

Difference from other kinds of matches does not necessarily mean less functional, or less quality, or less happiness, than the popular ideal; if the sense of relationship fit and functionality is retained, their relationship is just different. Besides, since there are certainly some who have the popular ideal of high partner commonality but who aren't very happy, we should likely remember, whether our relationship is differently handed (or gloved) or not, 'what works works.'

Love Symbol Negotiation

Often my wife discerns my present devotion to her by not telling me exactly what to do, because despite the fact it's easier for me to know and do what makes her happy if she simply tells me, such faithful following orders doesn't demonstrate careful observation and loving attention to her person and character. She feels my interior space dedication level is proportionate to the level of consideration and planning my choices display, so by not telling me precisely what to do she allows me the freedom to demonstrate the level of my devotion in a method and manner, in a love symbol, she understands.

Since I prefer her telling me what to do for her happiness and showing my interior space dedication and devotion by my willingness and continuing commitment to doing those things, obviously some love symbol negotiation is necessary. Unsurprisingly, much of our compromise consists of my learning to effectively deliver in love symbols she understands because by doing so I often manage my love symbol of participating in her pleasure, yet she does her fair share for me as well. I have found making these adjustments often affords us more opportunities for greater intimacy but also improves the accuracy of our already functioning love symbols.

Perhaps the point is more about the compatibility of love symbols, for where relationship love symbols are not already adequately compatible, communication and negotiation, whether verbal or not, tacit or not, recognized or not, is eventually going to be necessary. This often means we do not always get enough of the love symbol we want exactly the way we want it all the time. Rather than simply allow our heart's reception atrophy upon what has always worked for us, we must adjust our interiors, expand our love horizons, act with a will towards the dynamic maintenance of loyalty with our partner rather than rest in an atrophy of love symbols and remain unfulfilled.

Promises, Promises

Often we pay less attention to our interior spaces, and ignore adequate relationship communication, because of some promise one of us has made. Within the concept of a promise there's an element of controlling, fixing, regulating the unknown because the future is unknown. Sometimes the only way to ensure a promise is kept is to occlude a part of experiential reality; if I am not experiencing this thing, then no promise need be broken in response to it. This is usually a recipe for unhappiness, if not disaster, and someone somewhere once suggested it was better to never make a promise than face the social and spiritual repercussions of breaking a promise.

I rather think a promise should be nothing more than a declaration of earnest intent, a well recognized level of earnest intent, but better it were less than binding upon something so unknown as the future. Some time ago I felt the need to express my earnest dedication and eager devotion to my wife and eventually gave up on any binding schema related to a promise, contract, vow, pledge, etc. After I removed as much emphasis as I could upon future, I still used the word 'sworn' but used it only to describe the essential emotion in the present .

sworn

In this great thing of us,
our ever improvised
choreography,

I am sworn this day
to do all I may to love,
honor, adore you,

to cherish you dear,
dote without fear, to increase
your peace, your pleasure,

to follow your lead,
to listen, to heed, your joy,
your bliss, to treasure.

Scrub, Not Sublimate

If sublimating unhappiness is ultimately untenable we'd better learn relationship communication, better learn how to ask so it's understood whether words are used or not; I just wrote a story about this very thing. The story is based on something my wife said yesterday morning, "This floor needs scrubbing" and that afternoon I really did start scrubbing it, but everything else in this story I just made up and doesn't have much to do with my interior process.

Mostly I was thinking about what made it hard for me to motivate myself, again, and so imagined a scenario in which a guy conquers his 'acknowledgement demon' and a woman get her way. Like most fiction, real life doesn’t work this way, doesn’t get resolved this way, but also like most fiction, I think the point here remains the point: if we pay attention to our interior spaces, in time we can have more meaning in our lives and better relationships.

What Works is Functional

Of course we are all partner-dependent to differing degrees and achieve intimacy in various ways; if a couple's level of dependency works for them, why gainsay it? Problems only occur with sufficient relationship inadequacy and unfulfillment: not enough shared symbols, or shared interior space, or shared understanding, to maintain enough intimacy in the manner desired. And we try to get what we want from our partner, in either good or bad ways, with good or bad communication, effectively or not, successfully or not.

Problems are about choices: what to do, what to give, when to give it, when to give up. If we're unwilling to give up on the relationship but not on the problem, we often find something to channel our remaining, leftover, unmet desire. And since we're used to channeling minor relationship dissatisfactions that don’t really affect our overall happiness, a little extra channeling from whatever unhappiness we have is often easy to do.

Yet whether channeling unhappiness works is a different question for certainly there is always a limit, though it's different for everyone. I write because I find meaning in adequate expression and it helps me understand better. Yet since I don’t want to burden my wife with appeals for more of anything, I also channel minor dissatisfactions through writing too, because it works for me. However, I never want to sublimate unhappiness because I believe it's ultimately untenable; better to knock and ask than await silent suffering's explosion.

Functions of Guilt

So I end up wondering if certain stories, certain fantasies, appeal to me, are more true than others to me, precisely because I like to make my wife happy so much. I like it when she is happy, better when she is actively making her self happy, best when she demands I be a specific part of her personal happiness process. I feel as if being her personal 'Spousal Happiness Facilitator' is my career, my calling, my vocation. But what such stories of human experience are only appealing because of a simple lack of self esteem?

While she has made me so happy, happy with having her as my wife and partner in life, perhaps I feel if she does not reciprocally derive equal happiness from having me as her spouse, then I must be doing something wrong. Sure people are different and different things make them happy, but perhaps the whole female led malarkey is only a function of guilt and poor self confidence.

In the character comparative with my wife, I might just feel guilty such a great personality has given up so much (any) of her self, her goals, her dreams for me. Guilt drives me to do anything for her in an attempt to work off my debt of sin against her, to somehow obtain her forgiveness, perhaps to somehow prove to her that such a trade off wasn't so bad, that gaining all my love and all the things I'll do for her somehow show that her sacrifices were well worth while.

And of course if it works, if I can make her happy this way, participate in her happiness this way, and she becomes at least happier, well then, I will have been worth while, I will (therefore) have worth, and my self esteem (therefore) will increase, despite the perfect cycle of dependency.

A Good Story

Fantasy isn’t just a daydream, it is also a genre of fiction, the written word, stories that we buy, borrow and sell. Some stories we like and think them good stories; some we don’t like and think poor stories. Perhaps a good daydream, a good fantasy, is merely a good story written more personal. Perhaps a good story, no matter the medium (one's own daydream, another's daydream, a novel, a myth, fiction, nonfiction, etc.), is only 'good' because it reveals accurately what happens on that person's interior, reflects adequately the spirit and emotion of their interior. Perhaps a bad story is simply one that isn't accurate enough or adequate enough a reflection of that person's interior. 

Yet there are classics; there are stories (nearly) universally held as highly accurate depictions of human experience, and so we might speak of some stories as being truer than others, more adequate, more accurate, than others. But what do these other stories, daydreams, fantasies, lack? Perhaps it is akin to the difference between philosophy and ideology; the former loves and seeks the truth whilst the latter loves and seeks their particular systematic vision. Perhaps a story, a daydream, a fantasy is good for an individual because it has more interior truth than systematic vision for that individual.

Perhaps this is why daydreaming bothers me once it loses its accuracy to who I and my wife really are; it then becomes a fantasy, a vision, without much truth, an ideological inadequacy with only escapist entertainment value. Entertainment value is a value mind you, just not one I'm willing to confuse with the truth of our lives together, so just as I don’t read stories that aren't true enough for me, I'll continue skipping the poor daydreams in favor the good fantasy, the good story.

Relationship Fantasies

Occasionally, while facing forward and paying full attention to my wife and our lives together, I'll suddenly start dreaming our love and lives a little different, perhaps we've met earlier in life, have more money, are more successful at something or another, and often with different levels or corridors of intimacy. However, I've recently discovered daydreaming too often wants me to be different than I am, or worse my wife to be different than she is.

When I was younger this wouldn’t bother me so much; I could have wonderful fantasies about a partner who was, well, not really my partner. These days once I recognize a daydream as veiled excuse for variety's allure, the fantasy suffers terminal failure. Without true love, imagination's sheer multiplicity holds little real relationship appeal, probably because it faces backwards towards prideful sex game tabulations.

Yet I believe in positive daydreaming, good fantasy that builds on what's immediately present and moves further along the current path. It can help us recognize what is acceptable, what will work, and what our parameters are. Such fantasy helps us feel our way forward helping us understand ourselves better in the dynamics of intrapersonal relationships and it strengthens us.

The Sex Game

Yet the sex game goal is gaining social status, and it often has such gradual change it leaves many bewildered players looking back unsure if they haven't already lost. They feel as if they've lost something anyway, and if they aren’t quite sure how they lost it, neither are they entirely sure what it was. When suspecting it's sexual currency or social worth, they hope it's not entirely lost, perhaps only partially off the market because currently they're unsure what the rules are for getting it back on.

Of course, the game has never had any unbreakable rules, partly because though sex is fun to play, it's more than just a game, possibly not a game at all. Obviously when we're already using our market worth to hold down whatever social status we may have already gained with it, we can't continue to use it for gaining more on the market. Yet while occasionally we later feel marketability loss, we shouldn't forget we're currently using that worth for more than staking a social claim with bragging rights.

For while desire is the unavoidable fate of every human interior and woven within the very flow of our lives, love is but one interactive destiny we have the freedom to seek as a culminating fruition of our inmost desire. Let us not confuse the two, for whatever game of desire we've had, once we get where we're going, we must face forward, learning love as an act of destiny.

Intuitive, Instinctive, Gradual - Change

Perhaps because we intuitively understand our need for genuine and earnest interactions, we don't take on roles we can't play well, roles that can’t become a part of us and be roles no longer. Perhaps we intuitively know how much we're willing to give, as well as instinctively know which love widgets we're able to give and yet remain ourselves. And when we don't listen to our self knowledge, our interior compass, things usually end badly.

So I don’t think my wife should give more than she does, I'm not even sure I should give more than I do because we, like everyone, inevitably want more than we're able to do, have, handle. Sure change will gradually happen, but change is inevitable, and gradual is often the best way for change to happen.

Feedback Need

Actors choose roles, but those roles have planned end dates when the role is finished. No one wants relationship role playing because relationships with planned termination aren't really relationships. What we do want is love from our partners in symbols we understand. While we need to give (period), we also give to get what we need, and so we do what we can: compromises, give and take, do things in certain ways simply for our partner's satisfaction. And such things are not solely widgets bartered, because we do them out of our love and for our partner's sake.

We choose like actors, but unlike actors our choice of roles becomes part of us. And as the relationship becomes a part of us, those love widgets become more than lines we speak or motions on a stage. They become the currency of our relationship, the currency of our love; they become love symbols and we become a person who loves by those symbols.

And yet there are always limits to what we're willing to do for widgets, whether hard limits or soft parameters. I want my wife never to sell short of her desires, never to compromise, never to take less, certainly never for my sake. Of course this is unrealistic, so I have a soft goal with just enough of her active pleasure, to make me feel her interior isn't changing too much for my sake. Yet even this requires me to know, guess, assume, how much desire she has for, how much happiness she derives from, any particular widget.

On the other hand, she doesn't want the obligation to constantly tell me what to do and exactly how to do it; it's a rather exhausting role, and one few people truly want to play. Thus quite quickly the loop becomes a matter of communication and feedback, in both directions, how to most effectively get everyone the love they want, in love symbols they understand, without role play artifice, in either direction. Perhaps the most difficult love symbol is to simply feel earnest and genuine with your partner while perceiving they likewise feel earnest and genuine with you.

Gender: Kinked, Bent, or Straightened

As an adult who recently discovered his erotic truth, I found very quickly I needed to question that truth in terms of an eroticized gender role switch. Since gender is a social construct, not an anatomical or biological difference (though there is no lack of theories connecting the social differences to biological differences), I realized I could be eroticizing the 'taboo' switching of a social role.

There are, of course, people who find switching gender roles (various dress-up, sissification, forced feminization, etc.) kinky and erotic, and well, hey, that's okay. However, I think for me there's too much disconnect between such sexuality and the idea of gender equality.  And whether it's gender prejudice or discrimination, mixed-up gender fears and phobias, or even gender attraction and sexual desire, we each make our peace with gender equality, whether that peace is consciously made or not.

Personally, I do not believe there should be such well-defined gender roles, thus much of the arousal, taboo, guilt, humiliation etc. based on breaching such socially recognized gender roles just doesn't have much personal value. Even the mere titillation of 'bending' gender a little bit bothers me because I don't believe society should be so rigid as to easily see gender as being 'bent'. Even 'erotic cross-dressing' (i.e. not transgendered psychology) seems to somehow fall afoul the idea that clothing makes the man, or the woman, or is somehow a significant difference between them.

This is not to say words and concepts like 'emasculation', 'sissification', or 'feminization', do not hold meaning for me; I certainly understand what people mean when discussing such ideas. I just look forward to the day when they generally have more historical value than contemporary. I don't believe my erotic truth has much to do with society, or gender roles, or their switching, but ultimately, I can’t help but think perhaps gender in society needs no play, no drama, no 'role'.

Motivation

On the other hand procrastination does not work. It's terrible but if I cannot adequately connect the work at hand to the experience of her active pleasure, I remain unmotivated for that task, procrastinating indefinitely if possible. Work not involved with passion by contrast becomes drudgery, and I just don't seem to have enough self-discipline to do what must be done. Yet with a simple word from my wife about the expectation of accomplishment, or even my failure to accomplish, suddenly I am ready to tackle the world again.

Although the problem is akin to simply wanting more push back, there's no octopus pride here. It's a bit distasteful, but I'm more minded of an unmotivated five-year-old who must either be constantly encouraged or scolded. Of course, the 'simple word' is a wonderful symbol effectively communicating active pleasure, and so I conversely end up wondering how much we as adults are no better than children, unconsciously assessing the worth of the workload as investment against the promise of paying approval. Or worse, consciously assessing.

And while I now wonder if children sometimes behave badly just to feel the affirmation of their parents' desire, such economy of interest in an adult, even in unconscious motivation, seems to also betray the limits of the maintenance of loyalty. Moreover, I don't want to act like a child, I want to act, you know, like an adult, one with his own readily available supply of interior motivation.

The Intimacy of Symbols

These points I've made about freedom, about passion and desire, about active and passive pleasure, about self-imposed restrictions, about kink and porn (or the absence thereof), about truth, erotic truth, pride and loyalty, relationship push back and communication, about love and the symbols of love, all these things are ultimately about the intimacy and the desire for intimacy.

Intimacy is knowledge of a person, their interior, their love, their passion and desire. Intimacy is the sharing of our hopes, fears and dreams - all these things and thereby it is sharing of our selves. It is easier for a couple to become intimate when they have common interests and passions, because it is easier for them to understand those pathways down into the self of the other. The symbols to understand each other are already closer to adequate and accurate, and those symbols communicate their interior spaces more easily.

Those with fewer symbols in common should remember symbol commonality is not the road to intimacy, communication and understanding is. The creation and use of adequate and accurate symbols between two interiors leads to intimacy. With more accurate and adequate symbols, greater intimacy is possible, and with a wider scope of effective symbols, a greater interior space may become intimate.

And people use all kinds of shared experiences, shared histories, shared jobs, shared entertainment in music, movies, and television, and all manner of various shared kinds and types of the above, as bases for creating pathways to interior spaces, bases for the creation of intimacy. Sometimes it happens accidentally, sometimes intentionally, sometimes spontaneously, and quite often people do not become as intimate as the efficacy of their symbols might allow, perhaps by choice perhaps by chance. Yet always people become intimate through adequate and accurate symbols.

Sometimes people become intimate without love; well matched enemies may share and understand a great deal of each other. Sometimes people become intimate without much interior space similarity, and where the spaces are similar, sharing and understanding happens faster. But we share and understand, even love and appreciate, spaces unlike ourselves all the time, and often such bonds have great strength because great effort and great patience themselves are great symbols of love.

I haven't a game plan for the further creation of intimacy with my wife, and though sometimes I think perhaps I should, we value spontaneity as an honest truth disseminator. It works, for us, and perhaps that's the point: 'intimacy happens' and 'what works, works' - both good things, for all of us.

Passion Positive

People are beginning to use the label 'sex positive' and I use it as well, but I only use it because I am first 'passion positive', a label no one uses. Labels, symbols, words, arrows, the pointings toward the thing we mean, they only work when others understand them. Of course, this is the problem with neologisms. 

But I believe in the power and positivity of people's passion. I believe they are a direct link to our soul, they are part of the fire that makes us alive, and if we listen to them closely I believe they can help us discover and understand purpose in our lives.  When I fell in love with my wife, it was the first time in my life I felt truly passionate about something, and I began to order my life accordingly.

 And suddenly it was easy to accept others who were following their passions. Where I was socially and politically conservative I became suddenly quite liberal, because while I believe we need some restrictions to help people not injure each other, I also believe all people should have the freedom to follow their passions, their dreams, their souls. May everyone finds theirs as I found mine.

The Desire Dynamic Difference

I seriously wonder, often, if my interior experience and erotic truth, what I am and what I want, really qualify me as an uxorious man or not. After all, for me it’s not her domination but her desire, not her control but her drive to control, not her power over me but her will to power, not her leading me but her desire to go where she will. And I don’t think I just have an attraction to confidence, although my wife does come by confidence naturally. I just like it when she desires something – when she loves me, wants me, or wants me to do something of course, but more basically I just want her to want things, anything, deeply.

I know everyone is different and that in any category there always remains a range of variation, but the label you accept is the label used. So if I feel ‘female led’ isn’t quite accurate enough, is there a more accurate label, symbol, or phrase? I am 'foolishly doting' and uxorious is accurate enough for what it describes, but it also continues to carry a context of submission, so it’s not good enough, not adequate enough, to indicate the difference between the power dynamic of female led and the desire dynamic of loving my wife.

Of course on some level I don’t care about labels; I have good reason to believe ‘that which we call a man by any other name would still be as sweet’ to his wife.

The Push Back

I normally have no problem with wanting to do whatever will make my wife happy. It’s the way I want our lives and relationship to be; I want her to relax, do what she wants, and enjoy life. However, on the rare occasions of my octopus pride, I really have no idea what I really want, no idea why I’m saying what I’m saying, no idea why I’m doing what I’m doing.

After the fact I usually realize what I most wanted was for her to not put up with my nonsense, just push back at me with her expectations, push back at me and maintain an attitude of insistence. Just like any and every other time she wants something, I want her to just insist I do whatever it is she wants, do whatever it is her way. Even when at my worst, I still want to glory in the glow of her desire more than anything else.

On some level this ‘push back’ is reminiscent of the ‘female domination’ many men desire, and I also think men in any relationship want their partners to push back at them a little bit. In any relationship pecking order fight, the push back shows strength of character, and that’s good to have in a partner – except the female led man often fights to lose. He wants his partner to give some recognition of their relationship power dynamic because it’s a love symbol he understands, even though this is like throwing a temper tantrum to get the authority and attention of parental punishment. Something my wife recently said made me think I might merely have unreal expectations, and then just being unaware of my internal emotions leads me to act a little like an idiot and a little short of social expectations. I’m not sure if being an idiot is better than being a child, but I don’t think it matters.

Whether domination or something less than domination, riding roughshod over me is not her style, not something she actively enjoys, and I’d rather have her do more things she actively enjoys than have the push back. And I don’t want to act like a child or an idiot; if there’s a problem, I want to figure it out and communicate, you know, like an adult.

Relationships need adequate and accurate communication and symbolization, for everything from an effective ‘I love you’ to an ‘I want you to do this.’ What I want and what she is willing to give both have to be communicated and negotiated, probably constantly evaluated and ever adjusted, in order to consistently best meet both our needs. If I want an adjustment, I want two to tango on a two way street, not temper tantrums or idiocy until accountability or ’punishment’ is achieved.

So the sooner I learn to stop my octopus and listen to my interior compass, the better.

Octopus Pride

I sometimes wrongly read the right symbols.

There are many things my wife doesn’t want to deal with and I have carte blanche to get the desired result any way I want. Of course with some things my wife isn’t even interested in the reasoning behind my way of doing it, she just wants it done her way. On these occasions, I sometimes I feel a blow to my pride, for without first understanding my way, it’s as though she already decided my way wasn’t valid, decided I’m invalid without first understanding me. It is a crime of extreme prejudice, and since perpetrated by the one who is supposed to love me most, a crime most heinous.

Or, perhaps I just want all my thoughts and ideas to have great value to her simply because they are my thoughts and ideas. I want her to value my opinions as much as she values me, so surely some inversion must also be true: the value she places on my opinion must be the value she places on me.

Of course, it’s all faulty logic and just not true. Everything you don’t understand is of lesser immediate value simply because you don’t understand it. We usually value the logic of own opinion before the unknown opinion of another. And when she has not the time or inclination to listen and compare ways and reasons, or if it’s an issue she feels too sensitive to leave to unknown logic, it is entirely understandable she would want me to do things her way, it’s the way she most confidently trusts.

In fact it may be the case that two people in a relationship both want their way to be the ‘default’ about the same thing. Then they have to communicate, negotiate, and work it out, but my wife and I have already done this, and (barring safety and some other important and obvious circumstances) we’ve already agreed our default is her way on anything she wants it.

So if I’m more than happy to do things her way, and pretty much whether or not my way and reasons get discussed at some other time, what’s the real problem here? Well, honestly, I think my way really is for her to stroke my ego a little before I go do it her way. I really just want it both ways at the same time, her to have it her way and me to have it my way.

Really she is giving me the right symbol and it’s nothing like a crime, quite the opposite: not only is doing things her way an expression and symbol of love that I use and understand, it’s one we’ve agreed upon. It’s just in the random appearance of octopus pride, I read the right symbol wrongly.

The Maintenance of Loyalty

And how important the interior compass is, for many uxorious men the power dynamic of their relationship is not just the way they show their love and feel their partner’s love, it is not only the context or functional symbol of love, it becomes what love is to them. Thus they attune themselves to this power dynamic rather than to the love it may represent.

Yet a partner may have a slightly different set of symbols for love in the relationship, and without communication and the differentiation of the internal compass, an absence or lack of the symbol they do understand is simply perceived and experienced as an absence of love itself. Then in the perceived vacuum they inevitably search for filler, perhaps porn, perhaps an affair, perhaps something else, but they are sidetracked from the course of love in their relationship; loyalty is not maintained.

And there are always problems and obstacles like these in any relationship; what if you had a long distance relationship and your love were divided by an ocean? My wife watches a television program in which the lead character has a very supportive husband. He is always one hundred percent behind her, and while neither the character, the program, or much of television is very believable, my wife always appreciates the demonstration of loyalty. Loyalty. How does one, no matter the obstacles, maintain loyalty, maintain focus on the love in their relationship?

It is no easy thing, but I think by the constant attunement to love, by the constant orientation of the interior compass upon love, and not simply upon the symbols of love, that a lover’s loyalty is maintained.

Active and Passive Pleasure

While my wife never does anything she doesn’t want to do, the soul of our relationship is not female domination. Yes, she has a dominant personality, but she is not dominating in any way reminiscent of 'femdom' and she certainly is not a ‘dominant’ or a ‘domme’.

She occasionally does things for me, or does something my way, simply because she loves me and she’s a great woman who wants me to be happy, who is happy to make me happy, who is happy even just to see that I’m happy. I rather think of her enjoyment in these instances as a ‘passive pleasure’. Of course most times she does what she wants, does things her way, her way born of her own interior desire, and her ‘active pleasure’.

Once upon a time my enjoyment of my active pleasure wasn’t particularly fazed by the status of my partner’s pleasure; not only was I was young and oblivious, but I probably never had a relationship long enough to notice my partner’s pleasure and enjoyment. Now I have a devil of a time enjoying my own active pleasure unless she is also enjoying her own active pleasure – if she is doing something for me that is only passively pleasing to her, it is difficult for me to actively enjoy it very much. Often I don’t ask her for things because I don’t want to impinge on her active pleasure, and usually if I do ask for something I ask only once in the most nonchalant manner I can muster.

On one hand I know some beauty in life comes from the making of choices and compromises, and to live everyone needs to make them. So if she chooses a passive pleasure well then, I try to let her do what she wants to and not try to make do something different and active simply to increase my passive pleasure. Yet on the other hand, with her dominant personality I often think she would be happier if she felt more free to choose active pleasures more often. Perhaps the real problem is that out of our desire to be individually happy we are both trying too hard to make the other one happy.

But perhaps that’s the real point too. Perhaps the motions of our relationship solar system are powered by the gravities of our desire, and in our love for each other our individual enjoyment can no longer be full without (or separated from) the other’s enjoyment, no matter whose pleasure is active and whose pleasure is passive. The center and soul of our relationship cannot be summed by any one word or phrase; it is a nexus between us, a matrix of our combined gravities, a complexity of love we can know only by its direction on our individual interior compass rose.

The Soul of Porn

There’s no point in denying that porn is appealing, after all I’m a man and sex is appealing, period. But if my wife is the Sun, porn is Pluto.

I didn’t always have a sex positive attitude but I did when I quit my porn habit, and at the time my wife put her foot down I didn’t feel there was anything seriously wrong with porn. In fact, I still don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with porn per se, I'm happy for those who have no problem with it and I wish them the best. However there’s a good reason I quit, and quit cold turkey with no tricks, no gimmicks, no filters, no nannies, no oversight, just quit and permanently. I can’t even remember how long it’s been since because it’s something I rarely even think about anymore.

On one hand I was never really into “hardcore porn” in the first place, but what I did I rather thought was, well, ‘fun’. And yes, sex can be fun, perhaps even sex should have ‘entertainment’ value. Yet obviously sex can also be something more, something intimately shared with someone, a physical intimacy reflecting the love and respect you have for that person, a symbol showing the beauty, grace and soul of both your selves and your relationship.

This was probably something my wife knew without ever having to learn it, and though I wasn’t listening very well at first, I shortly made the brilliant realization that she was saying she knew what she wanted concerning sex in our relationship. Yes, well, that’s the first thing that put me on pause, I saw her desire for something here, and better yet she wanted me to participate in achieving her desire.

Of course, we know old habits die hard and porn has some addictive qualities, but you should also know my wife is smart. She made a bright line with very serious repercussions, no exceptions. This was the second thing that put me on pause, and with all the pausing I was doing I had time to finally realize what she already knew: porn is soulless. It is desire without spirit, release without freedom, sex without love.

I don’t believe everything we do in life has to have spirit, freedom and love, but I do seriously love my wife and when I listened to her about how she wanted our sexuality to be an intimacy shared only when with each other, she was making a lot of sense. So I made a choice way down in the center of myself, a simple choice really if difficult to make. Now, scientists’ decision the definition of ‘planet’ didn’t include Pluto took years to make, and at least I didn’t take that long to decide my wife was right: the solar system of our relationship has a soul, and one whose definition we’ve decided will now no longer include porn.

Erotic Truth

I suppose a lifetime spent hiding one’s erotic truth could have a cummulative renunciatory effect.  Sexual shame is in itself a kind of death.  Ulysses, of course, was banned for many years by people who found its honesty obscene. ~ Alison Bechdel

Actually the material I’ve found most helpful hasn’t been online or even about female led life and culture. I think some of the best lessons from the social history of sexual repression are about the undeniability of an individual’s erotic truth. I didn’t manage to hide my female led epiphany from my wife for very long compared to what I’ve read in other places, but for me the dissonance between my inside and outside over just three months was horrific. Sure, I could have lied when my wife confronted me, but I was already looking to simply be honest, looking to examine and understand why my erotic truth was seeing and participating in my partner's attainment of her desire and pleasure. So even after initially coming clean with my wife, I’ve continued to try to explain and to pay close, honest attention.

While it is true I love it when her passion and desire is so intense she [bends me, demands me, insists me?] to her pleasure, even when her desire and passion is far less or about something passing, ephemeral or mundane, seeing her process of desire and obtainment has an erotic edge. Sexually or psychologically, metaphysically or mundane, it doesn’t matter. I love seeing inside her, seeing into her primal experience of desire, seeing how her desire, her most interior self, demands me and everything around her to her measure. It’s the way she loves, lives and desires; it's how she presses forward on her inside path toward her pleasure and personal good.

Female led relationships are mostly discussed in terms of dominance and submission, but ’power exchange’ is beside the main point for me, the occasional mere price I pay for the pleasure of seeing and loving her inside self as much as I can. I love her will to power more than her power over me. The point of letting her have the final word on the situations and circumstances of our life together is so she can do what she desires to do and I get to participate in her process of obtainment and pleasure as she makes herself happy. It’s like getting to safely stand next to the sun and revel in its glory. Who wouldn’t want to?

To Kink or Not to Kink

Speaking of watching my wants, kink is surprisingly not a question. On my list of wants to watch out for, it surprisingly doesn’t even rate. It’s surprising because ‘female domination’ and kink seem to go together so well with ‘female led,’ it’s like potatoes and gravy or peanut butter and jelly (and for some people it’s the same thing). Yet here it is: I am not particularly interested in bondage, anal play, water sports, forced male chastity or any of the rest of the mounting tactics of the wild human. My lack of interest in kink is half the reason I felt I had to start writing down my ideas - so I could have space to read and think without being constantly confronted with other people’s kink (or worse other people’s porn).

My favorite explicitly female led source is She Makes the Rules because they are tireless in pointing out female led relationships are a kind of category and so come in all kinds of varieties and there is no one right way to do it. While I defend the right of those who are kinky to be kinky, I think it says something that as a site about female led life and culture SMTR had to have a section dedicated to kink and that they have to moderate so well all the time. I admit I might be missing something by not being kinky, but I can’t help feeling sincerely thankful since I’m not sure I handle what I have well enough to handle more.

Anyway my point is, sometimes I wonder what the essential difference is between myself and the vanilla guy, or the kinky female led guy, other than that I apparently prefer potatoes and jelly. (Or is it gravy and peanut butter?) I just want my wife to be happy, actively happy, and so I want her to call whatever shots she wants to call for us and our lives together such that she is happy and actively so. And finding other adequate, non-kinky, female led expressions to help me do my best in this, well, that would be nice too.

Contradiction in Frustrated Tears

But this thing, this concept has an oxymoronic nature in wanting to be a female led man. I often find myself saying things like, “I want her to want,” right - why would I want her to want anything other than what she actually wants?

Of course, I think the idea and hope among is “once she understands it is okay if she wants this or tries that, well then, she might like what I want her to like and want what I want her to want.” But then I find myself so intently trying to explain what I want in terms acceptable to her, so busy saying “I want you to lead, live and love my way,” that I am not really listening to what she’s saying she wants. Besides I wonder if there would ever be an end to my saying, “Why don’t you try this? How about you learn like this thing I want you to want? Why don’t you just start doing all the things I want you to want to do, whether you like it or not?”

It’s either a devious and tyrannical attempt to control your partner by first insidiously convincing them that you are really under their control so they won’t suspect, or it’s the good monarch’s plan that accidentally takes the first step to the dark side and makes “I was just trying to help you understand all your options” somehow sound a lot like “oops, it seemed like a good idea at the time.” Not only is your partner likely to be smarter than that but for her sake, your sake and the sake of the land, you probably want her to be smarter than that. I do.

So I suck it up and try to keep a close watch on my wants.

Why Female Led?

They call it a female led relationship, or wife led marriage, or who knows what by someone else - I’ve seen enough terms, phrases and acronyms to realize there is no hard and fast codification. Sometimes when I think about all this, I just end up wondering why all the descriptive baggage. Let’s face it, it’s only called female (or wife or woman, or whatever) for the contrast with traditional ‘male led relationships’, or ‘husband led marriage’. Yet making either distinguishment, male or female, has always seemed unwieldy to me, perhaps because when it comes to what I want to do in my personal relationship I just don’t really care so much what is or isn’t ‘traditional’ by the majority or what even what the rest of the minority might be doing. I just want what I want.

And as far as names go, I want to believe this defies perfect codification precisely because there are more shades, tones and variables within what people want for their personal relationships than can be accounted for in the base ideology and gendered stereotypes that lie behind such a woefully inadequate grouping of words. That is rather than simply believe it’s because so few people have ever heard ‘female led’ differentiated from the leather clad dominatrix before. Perhaps I’m really bothered by how lackluster ‘history’ and ‘tradition’ seem as excuses for the false dichotomies used to represent human experience.

And of course on the other hand, sometimes a label is just a label, just a temporary net designed to catch just enough meaning and haul it across the void between persons and sometimes what we receive isn’t quite what was sent. After all, although it is something slightly different for me, when I start describing what I want with the one I love, I still start with this thing, this concept, however it is people name it.