Story: Uxory and Society

(Note: there are many posts absent from this miror blog site, these posts can be found here.)


But you were too tired to rub my back last night - it would have just been doting laced with complaint, which you know I can't stand.
~My Wife

Mostly this blog is about interior experience and intimate relationships and as a rule I do not comment here about society as a whole or even very much in part. Today I have something different, though not too different since my purpose in opining a little on society is to ultimately inform a fairly new symbol (my symbol) to this outlet, that of 'a good story'. To do this I begin in a well explicated spot for I've been talking endlessly about the inadequacy of some typically used symbols to describe the great thing my wife and I have. And while I do believe I have finally figured I may not need more adequacy (right now) than "Doting is to Octopus Heart and the Love-of-his-life", the point of this assay is not to differentially search for such a label again, but rather to trace a path untraced here before, or at least the first part of that path, about passion, society and towards 'a good story'.

I've already talked a great deal about passion; I am in fact an advocate for passion and am 'passion positive' because passion is where we get meaning and motivation, piece by piece. I firmly believe passion is a good thing:

and we both, like we all, are ensorcelled
and enlivened by passion’s power; ’tis
a destination, a motivation,
a dedication and a devotion:
to the beauty of passion that fires our soul.

Yet there are also 'passion negative' things - such as the definition of uxorious:

- having or showing an excessive or submissive fondness for one's wife
(OxfordDictionaries.com)

Excessive, not 'more than normal' or 'above average', but 'excessive'. Implied is fondness beyond standard, necessary, or prudent passes into the realm of 'submissive', and 'submissive' (for a man) is 'excessive'. This is one of the nicer standard definitions; other definitions are clearer about submissiveness. (I won’t even get into the obvious misogynistic nature of a society and language where there isn't an opposite of uxorious, a woman who loves her husband greatly, because no one thought to label "the ordinary way things ought to be". Indeed the only word that comes close is 'wifely'.) Some of those definitions with less than pleasant connotations:

- excessively attached to or dependent on one's wife
(Collins English Dictionary)

- foolishly fond of or submissive to your wife
(TheFreeDictionary.com)

- greatly or excessively fond of one's wife, doting
(The New Short Oxford English Dictionary)

- dotingly or irrationally fond of or submissive to one's wife
(Webster's New World College Dictionary, Third Edition)

Ignoring the obvious stereotype violation that a woman's supposed to be dependent on her man, not vice versa, (a stereotype finally seeing its comeuppance incidentally), together these definitions seem to say 'greatly loving' someone is 'excessive', is too 'irrational', and that 'greatly loving' someone means the same thing as to "yield or surrender (oneself) to the will or authority of" the one you love.

And while I ultimately disagree with the connotation here, I readily admit that in a very real sense it is true; any time anyone loves or cares for another, they are possibility subjecting themselves to the vicissitudes of rejection, spurning and loss. What if your beloved bikes in front of truck? Or witness Romeo and Juliet, the infamous cautionary tale of impassioned 'star-crossed lovers', who each kill themselves at the thought that their beloved is already dead. Their sheer grief of love's loss, the overwhelming pain of beloved's absence, seem to say they were truly destined for tragedy because they loved so greatly and so passionately and shouldn't have; and the story merely came to an end deserved for the foolishness of excessive fondness.

Yet I say no, tragedy is not the height of passion's embrace, but rather fear is the depth of tragedy's embrace. We fear of falling out of love, our partner falling out of love, perhaps not divorce so much anymore but we certainly fear the 'I told you so's' and the 'sour grapes' of buyer's remorse over a passion that for whatever reason didn't last, and that now we therefore must believe couldn't have lasted because it couldn’t have been true.

~

Which brings me to my minor point about postmodern society: we may put the skeptical, cynical, knowledgeable face on postmodern dispassion and disinterest, but (as I can’t resist reference to a book I love) I agree with Wendy Steiner's suggestion postmoderns don't enjoy good things 'too much' when they have them because to do implies they have bought the falsity and trickery of mere relative assigned value.Of course, her book Venus in Exile is about twentieth century society's rejection of beauty in art and literature.

Yet in my experience, we are individuals who know beauty –and passion– by direct experience, not by indirect analytic interior construct. Quite aside from the dissonance of having any interior construct deny one's immediate experience, the reversal in relationship between experience and interior construct is at the heart of what is true for any person. For philosophy, 'truth-loving', is having your immediate experience form your interior constructs, and adjusting your interior constructs to adequately express and explain your experience. And if having your interior constructs filter your immediate experience is unavoidable to some degree, intentionally forming one's experiences to fit their interior constructs, intentionally truncating and curtailing experiences to fit, is the Procrustean essence of ideology.

And if we live openly and truthfully to our experiences, including experiences of beauty and passion, yes, we invite the inevitability of 'bad' experiences - such as grief. And I have known grief and the terrible wasting depression that comes with it, and honestly I'm more than sympathetic to it. Yet if in the face of fear I said (uxorious) passion was for those already standing on their own two feet, so also I believe passion is for those able to face their own fear and life's differences and changes with courage and a positive attitude. Living in the openness of reality may be a difficult thing to do because there are realities we don’t want to see, but it does not mean doing so isn't of worth, value or true.

And so despite the word 'uxorious' giving me the impression that in the collective unconscious of contemporary postmodern society to 'greatly love' someone is necessarily synonymous with the irrational stupidity of willfully entering into a bondage of the mind and with a foolish and silly enslavement to passion, what I really sense is the pervasive individual's fear of meaningful immediate experience.

~

The last two definitions of uxorious above are included in Kate Moses' enjoyably literate and intelligent essay about the word. Moses clearly thinks uxory isn’t for everyone, but everyone would agree with her on this point: different people different passions. Yet she also suggests "it may be something wasted on the young" and (if you can) you should "take your uxory where you can find it" (i.e. while you still can) because someday its passion going to end up 'a broken ring in your jewelry box in need of repair'. And this where I part company - with Moses and with society's collective unconscious if I must - because for me this essentially negative attitude towards immediate experience, this skeptical, cynical, postmodern opinion of passion, is not only detrimental to the individual (in dissonance), but is problematic for attaining a balanced mode of meaning that leads to a positive perspective, one oriented on growth, happiness, well being, that is open to experience and treats experiences as real and valid.

When I saw my first definition of uxorious, "foolishly fond", I didn't see it as a bad thing at all (perhaps I couldn't have seen it as a bad thing); I thought it was great that human experience required the English language to have such a word. But now I realize that for the most part other people look somewhat askance on long-term romantic 'passion sensibility' as a rather childish, immature, puppy-love-ish Romanticism, something that is at best 'quaint' or 'old-fashioned' in today's times, despite the fact that many of those same people want more meaning, romance and passion in their lives.

Which brings me to point of communicating such manner of meaningful immediate experience as passion, without falling afoul of prevailing sentiment towards irrationality, without burying the meaningful experiential content in analytic differentiating dissection. Which brings me to the idea of 'a good story' (poetry, movies, television, any format or media) as a 'sideways symbol', as an indirect expression able to sidestep the 'direct' explication of experience through interior or social constructs and communicate with an individual's interior sensorium of immediate experience - and speak its native language.

~

N.B. Incidentally, my favorite standard definition of uxorious still does not escape 'unusual' or 'excessive' is "characterized by doting and unusual excessive fondness for and often submission to a wife" and my favorite related nonstandard definition of 'uxory' is (1.) passionate attachment to a spouse (2.) perfect blend of love and lust.

Darkness: Perpetually Dissatisfied

(Note: there are about 30 posts absent from this miror blog site, these posts can be found here.)

I have been talking about how motivation as a matter of value and worth, how desire and passion as a matter of 'individual will', are indicative of our common and individual humanity at some essential and meaningful level so that I may ultimately shed some light on (my) interior darkness and (my lack of) heroism.

Throughout most of my life I have found very little to be of 'lasting value and worth', consequently I've always been very uninterested and unmotivated compared to other people. Even now, I don't watch television or film (or movies), I don't 'entertain', drink or smoke, have a hobby, garden, collect anything, or even have any 'friends' most people might consider worthy of the name. In college, my professors believed I was good at understanding the necessary shadings of difference that make a good student when I applied myself. But that was the problem, so very little struck me as of lasting significance, value or worth that I spent most of my time shunning education and even most forms of 'fun' in favor of searching for something 'better' and more fulfilling. If I managed decent grades on strength of good memory and sheer cleverness, I was never a very good student, and today, though I am not 'searching' as diligently as I once was or even for the same sorts of things, in some ways my 'persistent perpetual dissatisfaction' now finds even less to be of lasting significance or importance than ever before.

And such a maximizing 'search' has its price; as my wife often remarks, I don’t seem to enjoy life very much and worse, my abiding lack of interest in nearly everything has been often (mis)perceived as an evaluative and reductive dismissal, earning me something of a reputation for being arrogant. And to some extent, I think both assessments are correct. I've said before I think of myself as a differentialist, seeing difference and similarity everywhere, but I suspect it's precisely such constant analysis that leaves me with a somewhat dark attitude about living and enjoying the activities of life. By taking and enjoying so little of life at face value, I find much of life little of value.

~

In my defense, I do point out that I do enjoy reading and writing, that a good bit of my reading and writing is quite life affirming – but of course some of it is really a continuation of my 'negative differentialist search'. Differentiation inevitably has its shortcomings, but in the course of separating life affirming analysis from the more nihilistic that I discovered how such negativity is detrimental – even in a life affirming relationship.

I also enjoy my 'occupation' and truly feel being my wife's partner, homemaker and stay at home father is my 'avocation', my 'calling in life', so unsurprisingly there are a great many things about 'doing what I'm doing' that make me deeply happy and satisfied (whether I am good at them or not). But I've been trying (as possibly many uxorious men do) to use the 'powerotic' passion I have for my wife to get me motivated to do things I wouldn't otherwise have the motivation to do, but the 'bait and switch' tactic of trying to get my wife to demand that I do things I don't want to do (ostensibly so she'll be happy) violates some pretty basic realities of an honest, intimate love symbol negotiation.

And this is what I meant about true heroism: I may be happy now merely to be on the path I'm on and 'doing what I'm doing', but in order to have the most happiness I can have in life, I'm eventually going to need to do something about this darkness. But my darkness, my shadow self, can only ever be faced down and conquered by me. My wife will help me of course because she loves me, but she can't, powerotically or otherwise, do it for me. If I'm ever going to manage my own idea, hope and standard of 'standing tall', one less selfish, lazy, uncaring, unsympathetic, unmotivated and nihilistic, then I've got to be brave and be my own hero.

The Meaning of Meaning - Part 1

Assessment: When I first saw a possible connection between the numinous relationship experience and the human experience of meaning itself, I quite thought I mightn't have much more to say about (female led) relationships at all any more. I was (happily) wrong; see especially here, here, here, here and here. In my last segment about the nature of the human experience of meaning I think I either burned myself out or finally managed a functionally accurate (enough) theoretical framework with adequate explanatory power (for a while anyway). However, although in this analysis of the 'biological meaning matrix' I've hinted at how to do this, I haven't yet adequately connected the human interior experience of meaning (and passion) to the numinous (female led) relationship experience.

Theory: The experience of numinousity is similar to 'flow' and 'play' in that it results from action or passion (nearly) completely 'filling up' the 'space' within a given (no matter how they are 'derived' or 'created') set of rules, borders or limitations.

Yet the experience of numinousity is unlike 'flow' and 'play' in that it's meaning has an aspect of 'revelation' or 'epiphany', akin to a 'short circuit' of consciousness, that (I think possibly) results from a large scale 'fitted-ness', like (a large number of) puzzle pieces (all at once), of symbol/experience with one's interior mental framework.

The numinous intimate (female led) relationship experience is thus particularly interesting because the dynamic (I think) is one's partner becomes (to a large degree) the set of rules, borders or limitations (through empathy and sublimation) that one (nearly) 'fills up'. The result I think of as a 'relationship synapsis': the perceived intimate 'lining up' of two people's interior spaces and an intimate sense of 'fitted-ness' that also has qualities of 'playful flow'.

This is an emotional 'rim experience' on the mental space spectrum but since it happens (is at least perceived as happening) on both one's emotional interior and interactively on one's exterior, this lands on arc C or D (depending on how compact or differentiated one's mental framework is) and arc A.

And, to answer another question I had, I do think meaning is both an emergent property of mental frameworks and used as if functionally accurate for the objectively 'real'; thus meaning is (or at least can be) simultaneously concurrent to experience and retrospective.

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 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.

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.

The (Female Led) Garden Hose

Like a garden hose (flr dynamic) with a nozzle (woman's control) under water pressure (man's passion), it is true there is tension - the force of water (man's passion) pushes against, and is constrained by, the hose (e.g. the rules she makes). Yet there is also amazing harmony, at the nozzle point, where one might think all the 'really cool action' happens, but just as there can be variations in the woman's control (nozzle), so too can there be variations in the man's passion (water pressure). And while clearly the tightest metaphoric nozzle control and the highest metaphoric water pressure have some desirable experiences, I think other possible combinations can meaningfully illustrate more accurately some real life relationship interactions (e.g. when the hose 'springs a leak' ).

I personally think I experience this harmony, this 'playful flow', as something spiritual, something numinous and powerful. I have to resort to ideas of divinity, of fate and destiny, to the idea of soul mates and souls mating, to adequately express it.

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'.)

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.

Gendered Frameworks

My wife and I recently had a 'disagreement' and we had the following imagined conversation afterward to explain our points of view.

She: This sweater is itchy.
Me: You can take it off if you want but I don't think it's the sweater because the material is designed to not be itchy.
She: It's not very helpful when you just disagree with me.
Me: But it is helpful to contribute salient and relevant facts.
She: Except that people generally don't want help solving things; they can solve things on their own and if they need help with that they usually ask specifically for some kind of 'solving help'. What they really want normally is supportive help.
Me: Supportive help? With a sweater? I can understand Supportive help with the death of a loved one, but with an itchy sweater?
She: Yes, even with little things like with itchy sweaters.
Me: But that's the most obnoxious and crazy thing I've ever heard, look if--
She: (Looks meaningfully at me.)
Me: Yes, Dear.

For the record I do not believe men and women are from different planets, or even simply communicate as if they are from different planets. I might accept men and women may occasionally demonstrate sociologically statistically significant (if only slightly so) different motivations that could be accounted for by evolutionary theory - but who cares, because we are ninety-nine percent more alike in our common humanity than we are different (i.e. neither sex or gender are aliens to the other, see also the human biological meaning matrix for some real basic elemental and meaningful gender sameness).

Thus, I rather see the difference here as one of frameworks, one framework being more compact (hers) where often differences (facts) are seen but ignored because they not experientially meaningful (see worth), the other framework being more differentiated (mine) where often not very meaningful non-experienced differences are observed, catalogued and filed away for future problem solving reference. And naturally people can only listen to the symbols they understand, so she wouldn't 'hear' the 'help' I was giving her, and I wouldn't 'hear' her request for 'support'. (Actually seeing frameworks in action like this, or inaction as the case may be, is so fascinating.)

I also think this is why educating people, of any gender (race, age, creed, etc.), against their will is never very efficacious; people need a certain amount of experiential meaning to 'relate', and that certain amount will vary person to person as their frameworks differ. Every framework has strengths and weaknesses, even blind spots, but this seems as if it is something all frameworks have in common.

After Female Led Comes...

I began my thinking about female led relationships (in my very first post) with the observation that different people label the dynamic differently, and with the hope that this was because the symbol and mental framework meant different things to different people; but I didn't take into account changing ideas about female led relationships, such as I believe I have done myself.

A recent comment about how poor an 'advocate' for female led relationships made me realize I am not an advocate for female led relationships, that if anything I am an advocate for passion. And this led to the realization that despite how my uxorious erotic truth initially made the concept of a female led relationship very exciting for me, I now realize it wasn't any specific relationship power dynamic that excited me but rather being in this powerful emotional and mental state when in a specific relation to my wife - because of who she is.

I went on a bit about this in my last post, about how numinous and powerful, fateful and destined, 'that experience' is - yet I rather think that moment is not relegated to female led relationships. Early on in my thinking I was concerned about gender bending, about porn, about female domination, about kink, now as I think little about these things I also notice I think less about the 'female led dynamic'.

Partly I think this decline has been because I have finally realized that, for me, female led has been a useful mental framing device (if much more useful than say gender bending and femdom), useful to 'get my mind around' and accept the emotional and empathetic parts of my interior (the uxorious parts when pertaining to relations to my wife). Yet I think I have now internalized as much of its symbol set as is naturally functional within my mental framework - and relationship. And where a frame remains the frame, the essence remains the essence.

So while my direction is now away from 'female led' as a 'framed dynamic' because I am continuing towards the unframed powerful numinous experience that merely has some female led aspects, this blog will continue to be first and foremost about what I label 'interior experience' and 'relationships'.

An Uxorious Frame of Mind

It occurred to me last night that part of my endeavor to maintain a positive attitude and framework (or avoid a negative one) may be more accurately described as, or is in part comprised of, my desire to maintain (and enlarge) a certain specific mental space within my mental framework. I know many will simply attribute this experience to 'sub-space', the endorphin rush of a submissive in situ, but such symbols and descriptions have never worked for me, neither submissive nor scientistic biology.

For me, this 'state' is when I feel perfectly at peace with my wife, perfectly one with my wife, when I feel I was born to love her (c.f. Love's Fate, Love's Destiny), when I feel I am 100% there for the purpose of participating in her happiness process. And, well, I want that frame of mind for me, for my sake. It is a beautiful passionate moment, it is like getting to safely stand on the sun, it's a powerful and numinous thing, and I want to feel this way all the time - because it's when I most feel as if I am fulfilling my purpose in life, doing what I am supposed to be doing here on earth, learning the thing I am supposed learn here on this earth.

Yes, in an intellectual way I realize I may be collapsing spiritual and romantic symbols with the erotic, yet equally so I intellectually realize I can only use whatever symbols I have to adequately and accurately describe represent my experience - so this is what I have.

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).