Then She Shows Me Love

It's funny, after I wrote about turning the corner on disappointment and negative waves as quickly as possible my wife gave me an 'award' for being an 'Executive Homemaker', and I can't describe how wonderful this simple gesture was. Clearly I concern myself with these things far too much - and she thinks so too. And so it occurs to me that trying to avoid negative emotions and stay positive is less like Buddhism's cessation of emotions and more like staying positive all the time; and just as one doesn't understand the worth of something until they experience it, I wonder if I would understand the worth of my positive emotions without the temporary negative ones as well.

Disappointment and Other Negative Waves

Always with the negative waves Moriarty, always with the negative waves. ~ Oddball, in Kelly's Heroes

I recently managed to not get something done (well) my wife asked me to do, and I simply cannot express how terrible I feel when (I feel) I disappoint her, or perhaps when (I feel) I am a disappointment to her. Sure it's true everyone has up days and down days, and usually I only wish I could predict them just so I can adjust to what's coming (you know, "today's going to be mostly up with a bit of down near the end"). But it I wonder if I might simply be able to change my real-time point of view to a better (happier) perspective.

On one hand, I have already discussed how, in a way, a mental framework invariably 'addicts' a person to symbols compatible with that framework and since no one can get rid of having a mental framework entirely, I wonder if a side affect of my particular framework addiction is simply that I am overly affected by my wife's emotions. And there are several points to consider here: first my wife usually isn't nearly as upset by my 'failures' as I am, so I (in my framework) might just be over-reacting. Second, even if she is as upset with me as I imagine her to be, considering how temporary her feelings often are I wonder if feeling the full emotional brunt of her disappointment through my framework is wise. And thirdly, if I, through my framework, paid more empathetic attention to precisely what she actually is upset about, rather than what I feel her to be upset about, I wonder if I might realize she is not so upset with me as with some thing, circumstance, or action (regardless of my contribution).

All three are a matter of perspective frame changes, but the first two are emotionally distancing with a general idea of taking 'the larger picture' of either my failure (e.g. "it's a process", "it's a work in progress", "I'll get over this") or of her emotions (e.g. "she'll get over this"). And while there is something to be said for increasing my self supportive and self reliant symbols (and personal motivation and responsibility symbols) in my framework, I would rather not do so at the expense of decreasing our intimacy. Of course, this makes me wonder if more 'me reliant' really equals less 'she reliant' really equals less intimacy, just how much any relationship is a simple matter of emotional (inter)dependency and addictive thinking.

Yet the third one is increasingly (and unsurprisingly differentially) intimate, but here's the rub: I think such immediate reframing and real-time acceptance takes two people. And of course it may be the point that one person can reframe, or will be willing to reframe, only so much perspective in a relationship. But if this is so, it makes me wonder how to turn the corner on relationship negativity more quickly, because these small scale irritations, disappointments, even failures, do and will happen.

And then again on the other hand, perhaps I treat the stress of temporary 'negative waves' in a relationship too seriously; this isn't so much the 'maintenance of loyalty' as it is the 'maintenance of romance', or perhaps the 'maintenance of intimacy', or perhaps even the 'maintenace of positive waves'.

A Perfect House Husband Madness

Yesterday my wife suggested that as a house husband I might suffer from what Judith Warner described as modern motherhood's "perfect madness", and I realized that although I have always thought mothers generally felt the weight of gendered social standards far too heavily, it never occurred to me I might suffer from that same weight as a (female led) house husband and father. The more I think about it the more I think she is more right than she realizes: I intently desire to meet my wife's standards (because I want to make her happy), but I have some unrealistic ideas about her standards because I have been unconsciously using and incorporating the readily available ideas of society's gendered and stereotyped 'perfect mother' as a template for being a 'perfect house husband and father'. And that even she possibly has some unrealistic standards for me for the same reason only underscores the need to actively avoid reliance on stereotypes in (female led) relationship communication. 

AND it is particularly disturbing because I do not like to kink on gender stereotypes, and now must suddenly wonder if I, even though unwittingly, have been.  And more: I have lived an interior other than my own before because of my mental framework and symbols, and though I have no desire to ever to so again, I must suddenly wonder if I already have been.

(It seems far too simple to have overlooked this. I have even held this book in my hands and contemplated its central ideas in the vein on contemporary feminism, but never once thought about it in terms of my personal experience.)

Differentiation Predilection

I was wondering last night on the possibility that all female led dynamic symbols are nothing more than 'accidentally eroticized' (metastatic) symbols, when I suddenly, surprisingly and happily wondered why it mattered. After all, what works works, so even if female led symbols aren't perfectly reflective of 'objective reality', what matters is that female led symbols be accurate to the reality of a person's (or to a couple's) experience, that female led symbols be transparent and accurate enough.

However I think this interestingly illustrates my predilection for increasingly differentiated symbols, even when the differentiation is unnecessary to adequately and accurate portray my experience. On one hand I think this tendency reflects my natural human curiosity about the nature of things and demonstrates my desire for my symbols to be true (e.g. make sure they are adequate and accurate to my experience), yet on the other hand I also think it shows a certain academentic prejudice for differentiated symbols over compact ones.

Realistically there is always going to be metastatic spillage between symbols, because symbols will always be more finite than our human experience; communication with symbols will always be an imprecise 'science'. Realistically we only need symbols good enough to reflect experiential meaning and significance, not good enough to be experiential meaning and significance.

I say 'academentic' because I think it is one of the peculiar dementias of academia (and to some extent western civilization in general) that once we learn the valuable skill of differentiation applied to our environment (e.g. science, technology), we continue to needlessly (and sometimes heedlessly) apply this skill to all our human experience. Yet when we ignore the many meaningful non-physical dimensions such as emotions and spirituality (and this is partially why many feel they're 'missing something' and 'return' to more compact 'new age' worldviews), it only illustrates how paying attention only to differentiating phenomena at the expense of experience makes our lives feel meaningless.

Empathy and Other (Female Led) Notes

First I should point out that while I have believed in the past that moving from a differentiated awareness 'back' to a compact awareness is nearly impossible, I was glaringly and obviously wrong. I myself managed to re-attune the differentiation of some parts of my worldview perspective to a more compact experiential mode by reattaching more essential, more emotional, more experiential, meaning to the existing symbols that worked for me and eliminating symbols that in their differentiation no longer held experiential meaning for me.

I think of the process as threefold: (1) realizing other ways of arranging my 'interior framework' existed (this was the difficult as it involved admitting 'previous mistakes'), (2) realizing I was able to rearrange my 'interior framework' (a difficult matter of self esteem and gumption), and (3) finding an 'interior framework' more congruent with more of my experience (i.e. congruent to both my reasoning capacity and my emotional compass, c.f. empathy below; this was difficult in its time consumption and demanding patience). However, the compacting movement can be made, and for the sake of increased meaning and significance should be done, and there are people who accomplish this (with varying degrees of success) all the time.

Contemporary society's academic aspirations are usually towards differentiation, yet there exists a large contemporary 'new age' trend 'back' towards a more holistic, and often mystical, compact worldview. Yet neither of these is better than the other, for regardless of this spectrum, the best thing is to have a worldview, a mental and spiritual framework, that adequately reflects all of your experience, including both your interior and exterior experience.

I have said in the past 'female led' relationships, like most relationships, defy any rigid categorization; while my (female led) relationship is based on love, romance and empathy, there is, of course, the kink for control sex bargaining female led relationship (see also here), and a myriad of intervening possibilities and combinations. I think it is the similarity of the external view, despite the widely varying internal differences, makes the female led symbol difficult to interpret in any singular manner.

I usually view female led relationships now as simply one kind of system (a catalyst) that works (for some people) at getting (back) and sustaining that transcendent magic and 'fire' of love and romance. Our relationship is far more 'centered on she' than that 'she leads me'; in many ways she's merely a higher ranked 'co-captain' on our ship. Yet when I think about 'female led' as "a particular, forced (and perhaps reinforced 'til engrained) or natural dynamic of empathetic interaction (with a very important feedback loop) that somehow maintains a transcendent love and romance that occasionally becomes erotic", (believe it or not) I still sense something not quite accurate enough for me.

For instance it seems easy to say the female led dynamic becomes erotic because of its effectiveness as a purveyor of romance and love symbols, but my experience is that sometimes the dynamic, the love symbol itself, is eroticized. And while this may simply be metastatic spillage, while one might explain such submissive 'surrogate bliss' (or 'sub space') as sublimation through semi-opaque symbols, one must hold the female led power dynamic as (comparatively overly) transparent for love yet simultaneously semi-opaque for another thing. It seems an overly complicated resolution.

Moreover, there is the experience of the fateful and predestined 'confluence of spiritual purpose' I describe above as being co-captains on the same 'spiritual boat'; surely this often happens to many people not in female led relationships, if perhaps to different degrees, and surely some of those people who journey together only do so for a brief time and later part ways. And while I believe we will be different based largely based on my experience, I think I missed something about the macroscopic, holistic, love-blind, accepting, perspective: empathy.

I already described how my newfound acceptance of other people is based on my newfound self-acceptance, but how I moved from self acceptance to human acceptance was through empathy. My wife empathetically values my freedom and so often does not want to tell me what to do, does not want me to change for her. I think a passion positive attitude is another application of empathy in response to everyone's need to obtain meaning and significance, because everyone is passion addicted.

I used to say I didn't care what other people thought and did, yet really I did care because I believed they were wrong about most things. Now when I say don't care what other people think and do (for the most part), it is because whatever it is may be functional for them and they may have (the pursuit of) happiness by it - and I hope it is so. I think the difference here is one of empathy for other people's positional experience in their life and the possible differences of life lessons people are destined (or fated) to learn; I realize not only that it is not my place to judge them, that I do not have the wherewithal to judge them right or wrong, but by empathy I am predisposed towards hope and belief that they are right, if only right for themselves.

I previously suggested some rather negative internal motivations for choosing a female led relationship (guilt, lack of self-esteem, dependency) and while I believe these motivations may exist for some people in (female led) relationships, yet do I continually survey the positive internal motivations, the erotic truth of spiritual co-captaincy. (And the final important point:) I think the difference between these is not only a clarity of the female led symbol to purvey love and respect (whatever actions this may entail), but also an intense attention to the interior compass, and just as I discovered my emotions could be a part of my internal compass needle, so also do I believe (female led) relationship empathy is a valid part of our (relation)ship's compass needle.

(And now what I think may be the next stop:) In the constant struggle to maintain loyalty, I wonder if I might be able to apply a(n) (empathetic) change of perspective (as I did with my interior, with society and other people and with my spouse) to anything I want in my life. (1) Know there are other ways of viewing a thing (or even a person?), (2) Know I am able to change the way I view that thing, and (3) find a perspective more congruent with my internal experience (all my internal experience).

Prioritization of Her Freedom

I began thinking today perhaps I do not want her to 'lead me' so much as I want her to have 'final authority in our relationship', after all I do not feel so inadequate to life and the living of life as to 'need leading', or that she is so superior to me that she is able to make decisions for life my life better than I am able. Then I thought (again) it really has less to do with authority or leading so much as wanting her to be actively happy chasing her desire and passions, since if she were actively happy we would then be happy together because I know I am happy just to participate in the process of pursuing her happiness together.

And this led me to this (general) idea and theory of my particular uxorious erotic truth: I often saw my wife valuing individual freedom (hers or mine) over relationship concession or compromise, and valuing the individual pursuit of desire and passion (hers or mine) more than any compromised joint pursuit of desire and passion. While I myself continued (in general) to value passion and desire over individual freedom (or perhaps to value passion and desire as the primary reason for valuing freedom), I think I eventually learned to generally value and prioritize her freedom and desire over my freedom and desire in most things, to sublimate some gratification of my individual desire to the gratification of her desire. (I think this theory is at the border of having conscious explanatory power (and note here too)  for me so I'm not sure quite what to think of it yet).

I wonder if neither of us want her to 'lead me' so much as to simply not have her individual freedom impinged upon by having our lives lived together, by having our desires living together, our passions alive together.