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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.