A (Female Led) Progression: Empathy and Sublimation

Occasionally I reread one or two of my past entries and in recently doing so I realized I had three separate and slightly different ideas about the progression of my interior in the choice to pursue a female led relationship. The curious thing about these ideas is that they developed separately (retrospectively) over the two years after deciding in favor of a female led relationship, each idea being the product of a separate and distinct line of thinking, but the essential commonalities of their progression is fascinating: empathy and sublimation.

Empathy:
- Of her desire, passion (physical and otherwise), what she wants
- Of her feeling free, her freedom, her choices, her available options
- Of her (felt) ability to control her present and future
- Of her sense of duty (physical relationship and otherwise), the weight of responsibility and obligation (the [moral] hampering of her freedom, choices and options)
- Of how the weight of duty, obligation, etc. above hampers her active happiness, pleasure, joy, contentment, etc.

Sublimation:
- In valuing her freedom (and etc.) over my freedom (and etc.),
- I experience her approval as my own success (?) and
- I experience her happiness as my own happiness (?) and
- in the successful result (or even pursuit) of her passion and desire (in happiness) I find accomplishment of purpose and
- (vicarious though engendering experience may be) I experience this fulfillment of purpose as numinous (having existential meaning and significance) as any such fulfillment of purpose might be

I have been, am still somewhat am, concerned about this 'sublimation point' in all its manifestations wherever I come across it, that it may not successfully continue to endure the transfer of emotion into meaningful, accurate and adequate, (relationship love) symbols. However, it seems (as part of the functioning of our biologic meaning matrix) entirely reasonable to suppose when such sublimations break down, we naturally search for and find other expressions. I might, moreover, apparently and fortunately take comfort that "psychoanalysts often refer to sublimation as the only truly successful defense mechanism".

The three ideas in original context follow.

~

One idea I was developing was because I was ill at ease with my uxorious nature I was attempting to gain her approval of me by giving her control over the uxorious interaction in our relationship. A (somewhat revised) quote:

I gain her approval of my sexual feelings, urges, desires etc, which I might find otherwise unacceptable or at least uncomfortable, and I thus gain her validation.

By placing her desire before mine as a matter of priority and as a positive template (to follow), and so long as I comply (whether compliance is tacit or overt, whether under her direction and expectation or not) with it (or her), I get permission (even approval) to feel comfortable and accepted (i.e. to be physically intimate, act out my desire) with her. Thus by giving up authority over my own pleasure and gratification, I get and gain her approval of my desire and self. By giving up control (over physical intimacy), by giving up the authority of 'acceptability' to her, and by complying with her (tacit or overt) standards, I get to have 'approved' interactions - with her.

Regarding life choices, it is also the same: by giving up control over my life, I gain her approval of my otherwise 'poor choices in' life, and gain her approval of me.

Another line of thinking (and the only one I'd put a finishing polish on) dealt more with prioritizing her freedoms and passions over my freedoms and passions in order to optimize our happiness:

I want 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.

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 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.

A third line of thinking dealing with empathy and the numinous relationship experience was incomplete at the time I realized the parallel structure of these ideas:

- Sensing (empathetically and through direct conversations) some guilt and dissatisfaction with physical intimacy in general
- leads me to attuning to her passion (away from guilt) and eventually to the
- vicarious experience of her (physical) passion and
- experiencing resultant fitting of purpose with prize as 'meaning' with a numinous quality attached to 'serving' and helping her passions and life lessons
- giving entire relationship numinous sense of service 'meant-ness', of fate and destiny.

Differences in (Female Led) Relationships (Again)

I have previously discussed there seem to be two (or more) different kinds of female led relationships (here: 1, 2, 3, and also here) and a recent email pointed me (back) to Jean Hantman's (rather extrapolated) opinion on the subject. She discusses three types of relationships in terms of the woman's internal motivations and offers the following shorthand (scroll down three-fourths of the page):

-The driving force for women in the worst relationship is CONTROL.
-The driving force for women in the hardest relationship is FAIRNESS AND EQUALITY.
-The driving force for women in the easiest relationship is to be both ADORED AND RESPECTED.

At first glance one might think (as indeed I did at first) she believes women who dominate their men are always in the worst relationship; however, when she says "The worst relationships involve submission out of balance" I think the key qualifying phrase is "out of balance". Hantman characterizes this 'out of control' (my words) submissive relationship as (1) bitter [whether there's much actual 'fighting' or not], (2) having a woman who sacrifices love for the sake of control, and 3) having a man who adores his wife in public but detests and resents her in private.

I do think there are some relationships out there like this, where the man is unhappily acting submissive to his wife, and save for the unhappy part it seems to me quite close to a platform for the '(kinky) sex and control bargained' female led relationship. On one level and for some men it's surely an easy bargain if a rather nontraditional sexuality: he gets the constant (perhaps kinky, perhaps not) sexual attention he craves but quits resisting her bids for control (a resisting he may not have been all so successful at anyway), while she gets the control she craves but must constantly manage and maintain his sex drive, and keep him passion addicted.

But for a man who is not a genuinely submissive man this seems far too much a serious sacrifice to make in order to obtain the sexual symbols he craves, and so ultimately, as Hantman suggests, the relationship would be unsustainable. On the other hand if the man in this kind of relationship is genuinely submissive, it seems quite possible he might at least be 'happy enough' with a more dominant and controlling wife. Such a couple might even progress from Hantman's quiet, nearly unspoken (or passive aggressive) fighting where control is might often be tacitly ceded, to an openly bargaining female led relationship.

And on a still yet another hand, I think a naturally uxorious man fortunate enough to fall in with a woman both loving and dominant will have a relationship with some exterior features similar to the 'worst relationship', but on the interior be more similar to Hantman's 'easiest relationship' category (unfortunately this page is currently 'under construction'; it wasn't always) where the woman is adored and respected in the relationship. While in this case she might clearly lead the relationship as well I think this relationship is less likely to function on any 'openly bargained' paradigm.

After all this is said however, I still honestly believe 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 (kinky ones, female led ones, or whatever) isn’t wrong. And while having significantly different love symbols in a relationship can cause serious (possibly terminal) relationship compatibility problems, I remain certain where these problems exist, in whatever degree they exist, all couples must work out love symbols that work for them until they have enough symbols that work well enough for them.

Honestly, Hantman's ideas make me wonder how many times people presently in female led relationships have been married (and divorced) – and what their characterizations are of their past and present relationships.

(On a different note, many uxorious men wonder why their partners wouldn't want a man to serve their every whim, desire and fantasy; I think Hantman might simply suggest some women are motivated by different things, e.g. 'fairness and equality'.)

Judging the (Past) Content of My Character

I have a dream that my four little children will one day … be judged by … the content of their character. ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have been thinking about regrets (again and again) and how I am fortunate to have so few now, largely because I am happy (enough) and do not want to change my present; but I did recently realize my regrets fall into two, sometimes overlapping, categories.

First I sometimes wish to have known 'then' what I know now, although this is usually because I want to have cleared the obstacles to what I have now more quickly and thereby have more of what I have now and to have been happier longer. This is not seeking to change the course of my history in any respect, it is seeking to be wiser and thereby have had a 'straighter' path. However these regrets do not bother me very much anymore because I believe I needed to make the mistakes I have made in order to value what I value today, finding worth in the things I find worth in today, be the person I am today who is (finally) happy with who he is. It may be true that we do not need to make mistakes in order to learn every little thing, but when it comes to life lessons, I feel certain there are some inevitable mistakes, some things we must learn by experience.

So it is that the regret (it is just one thing for me) still bothering me is when I feel I did not have the (moral) courage to have done something differently than I did before. While this category can be viewed as simply not 'knowing' something, i.e. the (moral) strength, or not having experientially learned something, i.e. the (moral) courage, and so making a mistake, I think this regret is different because it is not so much a regret of 'something done as the result of a choice' as it is a regret of 'a choice as the result of personal character'. Feeling guilty about what once was the content of one's character I think is slightly different than feeling guilty about a choice one once made - although they can obviously overlap.

The Edge of Understanding

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is. ~ 'Yoggi' Berra

Part of the problem with the life lesson intersection is that it 'exists' on the edge of my experiential understanding; I don’t only have the problem of 'experiential compaction', because I also have the problems of 'differential blinders' and 'symbol stagnation'.

The place where thinking about things meets up with doing things is where we (in our common human experience) begin evaluating our experiences by the meaning(s) we gain from them. This process of valuing and discovering worth by insight, intuition and (or) reflection becomes a sort of mental modus operandi, a 'mental framework' that frames our understanding of the world and ourselves.

In life lesson two I referenced how I experience 'differential blinders', when I'm 'missing the forest for the trees' (and possibly also not having my priorities straight) because I am so absorbed in differentiating some minor (meaningless) point. And sometime ago pointed out how I have, in my mental framework, a differentiation predilection; I tend to differentiate needlessly beyond what I meaningfully experience. I think of this 'extra differentiation', and the symbols it creates, as 'experientially meaningless' because it does not have any engendering experience attached to it by which I might value it (evaluate it) and see its worth; I usually end up with concepts, ideas and theorizations that are literally '(experientially) worthless symbols'. Thus it is I rather think I need to develop some sort of bright-line warning system by which I might recognize when I am essentially not only (meaninglessly) wasting my time and mental resources but doing so at the expense (being blinded) of other meaningful experiences.

In 'symbol stagnation' we tend to seek symbols more than the meaning they are supposed to represent, or when we mistake a symbol for its meaning (they aren't the same thing). Those symbols might be love symbols, dominance and submission symbols, religious symbols, national symbols, philosophy symbols, cultural symbols, even language symbols, as no one likes hearing even unintentionally 'hollow words', but eventually I think we find the symbol mysteriously conveys less and less meaning. And when this happens, like passion addicts, we will either try using more of the same misaligned symbol to get more meaning, or we'll try rehabilitating the symbol by reattaching it to the engendering experience (perhaps in the same way as before or perhaps differently).

And of course when at the compacted edge of understanding, finding that 'differential bright-line' and stepping into 'symbol rehab' are just that much more difficult.

Framing My Mental Me

I think and write a lot about mental frameworks, sometimes as if they are not a part of a person, sometimes as if they are a part of a person. On one hand, we do not always make entirely volitional choices about how we view and think about ourselves and the world so one's mental framework seems not very different from one's self; it is just part of who we are. On the other hand, there is some dynamic and volitional interplay that suggests some separation of our selves from our frameworks.

Right now I rather think one's mental framework is merely a mind's modus operandi, the way in which people interact with and think about the world and themselves. As a method and manner of doing things, it thus seems to me one's mental framework is as much a part of that person, and equally as separate and changeable, as anything else they do.

Navigating the Life Lesson Intersection

I have three (main) reasons why the life lesson intersection is difficult for me to navigate.

1) I often want to help my wife with symbols from my own interior, but these are so often symbols she doesn’t understand, and sometimes so unhelpful they create obstacles for her instead.

2) I sometimes get so focused on the train of my interior thoughts (what I think, feel, believe and opine), so excited about what is happening between my ears, that I do not pay adequate attention to my beloved and what's happening to her and between us ("It's like I have no husband at all!"). on the other hand, this imbalance happens in the other direction as well when I get wonderfully attuned to my wife and what is happening between us, but feel as if I am missing the meaningful interior expression and the interior reflection I need to do in order learn the lessons I need to learn. This intersection requires not only attention to my interior, to my wife and to our relationship, but also to the balance and harmony of these.

3) The place where my interior pattern of meaning and our relationship meaning overlap is not well defined or differentiated (see here and here), and in the compaction of the experience I tend to get my symbols crossed:

-the emotions of love and romance,
-the tumult of sexuality,
-the meaning and significance of interacting with her,
-the spiritually numinous,
-the intellectual awareness of my experience,
All these things get compacted together in the experience, often in different combinations at different times, in this intersection.

Life Lessons

The very concept of a life lesson I think is based on a person's pattern of numinous experience and where they consistently find meaning and significance. I already have some things I consider life lessons, but in addition it recently occured to me there's a life lesson for me in learning to balance my interior space (i.e. my consistent interior valuation of interior mental space and philosophic pursuits over material and biologic progress) with helping her with her life lessons.

Life Lesson 1
I have worth,
I have value;
what I think
what I feel
what I believe
and my opinion
--even if no one knows them--
matter.

Life Lesson 2
I learn by loving,
I learn by doing,
and by doing all I can
to help her learn
her life lessons,
by doing what she wants
what she tells me,
I learn more of my life lessons.

Life Lesson 3
Balancing life lessons 1 and 2.