Need

The word 'need' must be the one of the greatest sources of confusion to accurate and adequate relationship communication simply because most people only ever infer (implicitly, contextually) what the goal a thing is needful for, or what might happen if what is needed doesn't happen. Try inserting the phrase "in order to _____" or the phrase "or _____ will happen" - or better yet, insert both. For a frustrating but educating bit of perspective, instead of "I need _____" try using this formula every time:

"In order to _____, I need _____ or _____ will happen."

When it comes to love, our interior spaces and our emotions in general, you'll find not only you and your partner but most people only have the vaguest ideas of what to put in those first and last blanks, yet they are the blanks that make what one 'needs' meaningful.

Reciprocity of Love Widgets

We need to give. Yet we also give to get, get what we need, love in symbols we understand, and so we do what we can: compromise, give and take, consciously and unconsciously 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, those widgets become love widgets, more than mere motions on a stage or lines we speak, 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.
~Octopus Heart

There may some truth (operative word here is 'some') to the common assessment that men are uxorious because they have learned (perhaps from a very young age) to find comfort and security in lavishing attention and ceding control, and women are dominant because they have learned (perhaps from a very young age) to find comfort and security in controlling and manipulating their environment to their advantage.

Admittedly both these suggestions are more than a little reductionistic, yet I think they accurately reflect the tension between the success of finding the comfort and security every human wants and desires and the potentially unhealthy ways in which, and the potentially unhealthy lengths to which, we will go to successfully get that comfort and security.

Moreover, if everyone wants love in symbols they can understand, and if these are the symbols a person understands, then in the feedback need and love symbol negotiation I think it is only right and fitting that we not only want to give our partner what they want (because we love them) but that they get some comfort and security in whatever way they understand.

But should one actively trade? Relationship bargaining, like sex bargaining, bothers me.

I give my wife the help fit for her and her happiness because I love her and want her to be happy. Yet I also do this for my sake - so that I am happy and complete, because being her 'help mate' is what completes me. I do not help her hoping she will someday do anything specific for me in return; in this way my love and help to her is 'somewhat unconditional'. Because on the other hand, I do expect that she will choose to do things that adequately express her love for me, where, when and how she desires, and I expect to receive expressions of love from her - although still I don't think even this is (even an unconscious) condition for the love and help I give. Thus that she would try to force herself to trade or exchange love widgets out of duty or obligation bothers me - because I do not wish her to feel ... beholden. I value her freedom, and the subsequent happiness from her freedom, too much.

Relationship Reality and Role Playing

Some additional thoughts to Feedback Need and Meaning Part 1:

On 'role playing': Part of the problem is we use the word play in too many different ways.

While 'playing at' some thing is not to 'be' that thing, a 'role played' is attempting to fulfill a set of expected behaviors (e.g. husband and wife). Moreover, the 'interactive play' of many people's 'roles played' (kids playing cops and robbers, or adults playing foreman and crew) require a certain 'codependent suspension of disbelief'.

Another thought on the reality of play: A (female led) relationship cannot be real without two people attempting to fulfill each other's expectations (no matter how varied the success), and the relationship becomes real once the two codependently suspend their disbelief in the roles.

Relationship Reciprocity

Way back when I first began showing my passion (also here, here and here) and sharing my erotic truth with my wife, one of the first things she wanted be clear about was while this was fine for me and the way I loved from my interior, it was just not the way she was on her interior. At the time I practically laughed saying expecting your partner to be the same as you in all things, or expecting reciprocity from your partner in all things was a short sighted way to love.

I think this is still true about love and reciprocity and I don't think I ever suspected then just how true it was. For instance, recently I realized part of the reason I have been constantly telling her just how important she is to me, how important our relationship is to me, is because since she doesn't find as much existential comfort from daily stresses in the security of her partner as I find existential comfort from the daily stresses in the security of my partner. I even keep trying to comfort her when she is stressed out about practical things by essentially telling her, "these things will work out, and you have me, so don't worry" - well, this just hasn't been effective, ever. Just as I see that she and I both value comfort in times of stress but seek to obtain it differently, so too should I see that while we both value our relationship greatly, the way in which we value our relationship (and express it) can be quite different.

People are the same and are different; they might think differently about the same things or similarly about different things, or understand the same things differently, find similar comfort in different things, value the same things in different ways or value different things in the same way. Difference alone isn't good or bad; it's just different.

I have talked about how sharing the similarity of two interior spaces is what intimacy is all about, yet while similarity of exteriors might more easily lead to the intimacy of shared interior spaces, I think moving on to the difficulty of sharing similar interior spaces after taking the time and (intentional) attention to get over past and around those exterior differences can result in stronger bonds of intimacy. I have also talked about how it is all right for me not to value my wife's process to happiness the same way she does. Indeed one might argue that valuing her path to happiness in my own unique way is precisely what makes me able to dedicate myself to her so avidly without losing my own sense of self. The differences and similarities of individuals in a relationship is what makes the love symbol negotiation so fascinating and the need for symbol feedback so clear: we give and we take in love, different things and similar things, and somehow, amazingly, the economy of love is yet not reducible to mere widgets bartered.

Being Better from the Inside

In Plato's Symposium, Phaedrus suggests love is great because it makes you want to be a better person; his idea doesn't fare well philosophically. Even today, common wisdom has it that you can't make your life or your self better for anyone else's sake besides your own self's sake; you have to (consistently) want to be better at whatever it is before any lasting permanent change will take hold. I think I agree with this and today I think I noticed the difference between her sake and self sake.

On one hand, I think it can sometimes be difficult to sort out whose wants are who's in a relationship, often enough they overlap. Many times the betterment and standard I want for myself but have a hard time implementing I do eventually accomplish because I know it is also her standard too and the betterment she wants for me as well.

Of course on the other hand, there are those occasions when I am trying to accomplish something almost entirely for her sake; I might think this something is a good idea of itself or fine for other people, it's just not something I would choose for myself. And unsurprisingly these are the occasions I suffer from a serious lack of motivation; I'll procrastinate, and rush the process at the last minute, quite naturally doing a qualitatively shoddy job of it. And of course this inevitably comes back to haunt me (see love symbol negotiation).

However, today I felt and noticed a difference; I started a project for her earlier than the utmost procrastination might have allowed me and I did a decent job of it. I think the difference was I that wasn't doing it solely for her sake. Oh, I was using her qualitative standards for the project (mostly), but my motivation was that I really wanted to be better at being a house husband; her house husband of course, but more as a matter of incident. This is a job I really like and I just really wanted to be better it.

The 'job' description happens to include some qualitative standards set by my beloved wife, and indeed, I rather still think most of the point behind my house husband 'job' (role expectations) is to help her to her happiness (falls under the rubric of life lesson two, see also love's interior meaning for importance of motivation for life lesson two). But within this new (female led) motivation (on my interior) in wanting to be a better partner for her (better 'fit' like glove) is a practical daily life application that I didn't have, or even see, before. (See here for female led motivation she understands.)

When do my best to help her to happiness, I realized it was perfectly all right if she weren't happy in the final outcome - because while she sets many of the standards and the outcome of her happiness is the goal of the process, helping her as much as I am able to help is my goal, and if I only do this, I can be happy with me.

The (Female Led) Relationship Balance

I think an essential problem for uxorious men is the tension involved in trying to interactively balance the pursuit of his (emotional) needs with putting her (emotional) needs first (see life lesson three), without the 'lie' of 'topping from the bottom'.

On one hand, we all know there is a fine line between 'helping my wife understand her options' and 'trying to get her to do what I want', a.k.a. the dread 'topping from the bottom'. Yet on the other hand, there is one very important reason (if not exactly a 'good' reason) why a man tops from the bottom: he's trying to get something he believes he needs.

Indeed the simple definition of 'topping from the bottom' (speaking to other uxorious men) is presenting your own wants/desires/needs as the best way and help for her to get what she wants and needs. It's trying to convince her she can best get hers by giving you yours, although at heart TFB is a kind of lie, because it's a (selfish) anti-intimate misrepresentation of one's motives (possibly intentionally, but not always) instead of a loving and intimate direct attempt at communicating one's perceived needs and desires.

However, (and this is key) everyone, even uxorious men have emotional needs (see life lesson one); my wife has valid emotional needs, and I have valid emotional needs. And there are some valid (positive, intimate, helpful) ways to pursue those needs in a (female led) relationship and there are not so valid (negative, anti-intimate, unhelpful) ways of pursuing those needs in a (female led) relationship. I think it is a good idea to say, 'I have a need' to your partner (and vice versa), although I admit it can be extremely difficult for any person to say, and the fear of rejection has a real basis in their partner's (hard or soft) limits.

Talking it through, communicating (talking and listening) however, also allows us to see things from the other perspective. Because I think an essential problem for dominant women is that there is some serious tension involved in trying to interactively balance the pursuit of her own (emotional) needs with ensuring he gets his (emotional) needs met too, without the 'lie' of 'topping from the bottom' ...

Female Led Motivation She Understands

Apropos of an empathetic (female led) progression, when it comes to life lesson two and 'doing what she wants / what she tells me', I am reminded that uxorious men are often compared to children in the female led 'obedience' dynamic (see my story 'Glint' for example). Yet one thing my wife does not want (along with having "an employee for a partner"), nor would find fulfilling, is to have the (added) responsibility (in life) of a full grown child for a relationship partner.

While I have gone on about my experiential compaction of erotic truth with numinous experience with fate and destiny (cf. life lesson), the way in which my wife best (symbolically) understands my desire and motivation to do what she wants, asks and tells me to do, is that I want her to not feel any extra weight of duty and obligation, from me or anywhere. I just want her to be happy - and to this end I am willing, have already decided, to do what she wants – so that she can be happy. This motivation says love to her; this motivation is a love symbol she can understand.

Meaning Part 3: The Mental Space Spectrum

What a piece of work is man… in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! ~Shakespeare

In order to get a better handle on 'Flow' and 'Fitted-ness' from Meaning Part 2, I began thinking of them as a spectrum and ended up with an intersection of three different spectra, an intersection that I think has the greatest explanatory power over the 'experience of meaning' than anything else I've come up with to date. Simply put: I think the closer one's mental space is to the rim of the circle, the more intensely meaningful the experience is. I also think everything on the rim could be felt, expressed or interpreted as a 'numinous experience'. However, while the numinous relationship experience, for example, I think would be somewhere on arc C (on my interior), there are clearly aspects of the experience that are interactive and closer to arc A.



A few points:

- Area A has the most 'flow' from the most physical of sporting activities.

- Area B has the most 'flow' from the most technical activities (i.e. highly skilled factory workers, I also think chess playing might be here).

- Area C has the most 'flow' from symbol expressive arts (painting, music, etc.) but I think many 'spiritual experiences' might commonly be located on the diagram here.

- Area D has the most 'flow' from interior (philosophic) analysis. (My mind hangs out here a lot.)

- 'Symbol fitted-ness' originates as expression of the interior (area C or D), an expression adequate one's own interior (area C or D) or to one's exterior (area A or B)

- The more consciously aware one is of their experience (the further into the upper diagram 'dome') the less intensely meaningful the experience. (I think; see below.)

- The center of the intersection is probably the most boring place.

- I do not think there is a 'proper' orientation of this diagram; I only placed unconsciousness on the bottom because, I happen to not be an explorer of the unconscious.

Moreover, when an experience 'becomes' unconscious it loses experiential meaning (e.g. trained reflex arc, unconscious [ideological] ignorance of opposing points of view), yet when an experience 'emerges' from unconsciousness, symbols of the experience often pinpoint the experience's originating agency as outside 'beyond' the self, such as luck, God, fate, etc. Upon rare occasions, when experiences emerge from the unconscious right at the circle's rim, the sudden intense meaning of the 'rim experience' is akin to a short circuit of consciousness, and the experience is likely at its most luminously meaningful point. Symbols of such intense 'rim experiences' are often more akin to divine revelation.

I don't think the key to (optimal life) happiness is merely the maintenance of a (perfect) balanced center point in the spectrum (I think that's boredom), but I do think (optimal life) happiness might be a matter of discovering what kind of moments are better (for any individual person) spent at which place in the spectrum, and not spending an inordinate amount of (overall or successive) time at any place within the mental space spectrum. This is what I mean when I say I think one of my life lessons is seeking my individual ('right') balance between the intense (meaningful) flow of the relationship experience and the intense (meaningful) fitted-ness of reflection.

Indeed, as I noted before, conscious awareness of our experiences can change our success by affecting our focus (Meaning Part 1), yet conscious reflective awareness might be integral to long term project happiness. Thus conscious awareness needs to be balanced so it does not detract from our active focus but achieves adequate (optimal) 'mental reflective happiness'. Fortunately, awareness (no matter its affect on focus) does not change the meaning and significance of the experience, or change the sensation of integrated human adequacy and purpose from 'playing'. We still can 'get lost' in the experience of the game after pausing to reflect on the experience, still seek to experience that meaningful sensation of 'playful' 'flow', indeed seeking the flow and rhythm of our own internal cadences may be a requisite part of what makes the experience meaningful.

Life Lesson Three: Relationship Peace and Harmony

The love symbol negotiation in a (female led) relationship is so important; the course of learning life lesson three, balancing the preeminence of my (reflective, mental) interior space and the numinous (uxorious) relationship experience, is an emotional process where (emotional) toes can get stepped on. I am reminded of a quote about Middle East peace, that there are no new ideas about the process, just new combinations and timing, because being at peace, at heart and center, is ultimately about dealing with emotions, your own first and foremost, but also integratedly and dynamically with the emotions of another person.

Meaning Part 2: 'Flow' and 'Fitted-ness'

In retrospect this question of awareness, experience and meaning (part 1) has been exceptionally difficult to parse and navigate. It was my intention to associate the experiential happiness of 'flow' and 'play' with the happiness of the numinous (relationship) experience, however there is a larger gap between these than I initially thought.

The 'problem' (mostly) is that I still (mostly) view meaning as arising from the 'fitted-ness' of any particular experience (thought, symbol, etc.) to one's interior mental framework. On one hand, I think this 'meaning as fitted-ness' theory somewhat relegates meaning to an epiphenomenal side-effect in much the same way some people treat (rather scientistically) consciousness as (merely) an emergent property of biological complexity. I do not think I am being scientistic to think this way about meaning, because I am sticking to what I experience rather than what I believe about my experience. Indeed, the benefit I have by thinking of meaning this way (as emergent of framework 'fitted-ness') is that it has more explanatory power for my personal experience: things have (great) meaning, to me, when they fit (really well) what I already understand.

Yet on the other hand, the fact is I take the meaning I garner from how an experience (though, symbol, etc.) fits into my mental framework and what I already understand and I believe it and function as if it is meaningful for more than just me - that is I function as if those things are meaningful of themselves and (at least potentially) meaningful to everyone, not simply meaningful to me, as if it were (ojectively) real.

Although it is possible (likely even) both could be true to some extent, without understanding the mechanism of meaning I don't think I can have it both ways: either (all) meaning is an emergent property of mental frameworks (a sort of translation of our experiences, etc.), or (all) meaning is innate, indigenous and germane to the object associated.

Regardless (and back to my awareness of happiness problem), this 'fitted-ness theory of meaning' means that meaning is retrospective, and any happiness derived from the 'fitted-ness' of meaning (I think) is therefore also retrospective and not based on 'flow' and 'play', which are experientially based rather than retrospective. I do think we need both things, mind you, experiential and retrospective, but the mechanism of their functional integration still eludes me.