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.

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'.)

Passion Addiction

Of course between our desire for something and what we think we desire there may be some wiggle room. The missing puzzle piece on the interior may be love and affection but we may think what we need is sex and sexuality; perhaps we have specific love symbols that work for us and unintentionally focus on the symbol more than the love. Or perhaps we intentionally try to use something like sex as a substitute symbol, even though we know the interior 'hole' is for something different, because we sometimes can only use the symbols that are currently available to us.

And sometimes our mental wires just get crossed, we might even know they're crossed and simply cannot manage to uncross them; we may know our interior need and inside need is for something different than what we find ourselves wanting, but we cannot manage to stop wanting what we desire even if it doesn't wholly fulfill that 'hole'. In a way perhaps sometimes our frameworks addict us to certain symbols because it just isn't flexible enough in some area to accept other symbols; and all frameworks have areas of comparatively more or less flexibility and even the occasional blind spot. Thus a symbol may fulfill our needs just enough to keep us going back for more in a sort of symbol addiction of the mental framework.

Yet we all want meaning, need meaning, in symbols we can understand, and in this regard I rather think we're all symbol addicted, we just don't usually use the word 'addict' to describe it because we're all in the same boat, all having an interior reference framework telling us we're missing some semi-specific piece of lived life coherency, some particular experience, value and worth. And though many of us may be addicted to symbols involving behaviors less than physically or mentally healthy or sometimes to behaviors and symbols that do not actually fulfill the interior 'hole' very well at all (porn or other women, etc.), yet when a symbol really works for our interior need and desire, it really works and we know it.

I recently read "I do have a sexual addiction. By this I mean that I'm not totally on control of when I seek out sexual material and I think about it way more than I would like to". I immediately saw this as an interior description of a 'need' for symbols one can understand (all actual behavior aside), and it made me wonder if we only use 'addict' when we understand, or are suggesting, the interior symbol the external behavior represents isn't working well enough, or clearly enough, or healthy enough, etc.

Yet when the external behavior is working for our interior symbology and mental framework, we may make cheeky reference to 'addiction' but we don't really mean it and we'll go on to try describing the ineffable goodness of effective exterior symbol to interior symbol through mental framework fitting: "The fact that we were there together and that she was really truly enjoying herself […] was what satisfied me. […] It's not that I'm selflessly giving her pleasure -- it's that she's sharing with me her sexual energy and getting so into it that she is ... Something. I can't really express what it is about that moment."

I can't really express what it is about that moment either, but I know what he means because I too have experienced it, and this is why I rather don't think of it as sex addiction or even an addiction to sexual energy; sex by itself does not equal the erotic truth or the desire dynamic I experience. I (now) think of it as a passion addiction, and this I believe is the culminating point of this past week's worth of posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6): as all people have their framework symbol addictions, the particular form of my framework symbol addiction is to want, desire, and love passionately my wife, and to want to experience the same (or a similar) desire and passion of my wife. (I wonder if this compaction of our simultaneous separate passions is related to, possibly an expression of [?], the sensed unity of partners that we express as 'being soulmates', cf. Love's Fate, Love's Destiny)

And I rather wonder how true this 'passion addiction' is of submissive, uxorious, female led men in general - regardless of the variant exterior behavior symbols by which they express and communicate passion with their partner.

More Than Two Ways

I once thought there were only two kinds of female led relationships, the 'bad' female domination of 'fear and tears' and the 'good' female led of 'love and respect'; and I believed only love symbol differentiation and clarification would help the former become the latter. I thought the 'fear and tears' was nearly always an ineffective and love symbol-obstructed, symbol-metastasized, version of the 'love and respect' goal (always beware of standards). However, I've changed my mind because 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 isn't wrong.

Now I still think many couples aren't really communicating with love symbols, aren't really attaining (enough) intimacy with the love symbols they have, perhaps only interpreting what they can, when they can, as a symbol of love so they can emotionally get by as well as they can. I think this often why many people desire their partner to give them the symbol love they want regardless whether that symbol is functional for their partner, whether that symbol means love for their partner. Of course, no one can silently suffer and sublimate their unhappiness for very long, and if we ask our partner to try, they are sometimes successful in learning a new love symbol, but how long can we ask our partner to try some specific love symbol before we decide love symbol effectiveness with our partner is more important than any particular symbolic expression?

Obviously, a person who instills fear in their partner (through whatever works for them) may have a functional symbol to express or feel whatever it is they seek to, but is it an accurate and adequate love symbol for both of them? A person might functionally feel and express love best when they feel humiliated, or spanked, or helpless, or overruled, or commanded, or other things in varying combinations, but are these accurate and adequate love symbols for both of them? The answers could be yes, and different isn't necessarily wrong. It doesn’t matter what they are doing, it matters what they are meaning by their actions and whether they effectively and adequately understand each other to attain the intimacy they desire.

Perhaps an erotic truth is only the discovery of love symbols so effective, so much a part of who we are, that they bypass much, if not most, perhaps all of a person's conscious awareness, yet a relationship needs functional love symbols for two people. And it may be that relationship compatibility is at some level actually about erotic truth compatibility, but it is certain all couples, must work out what love symbols work for them until they have enough symbols that work well enough for them.

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.