Be Yourself. Really?

Dating advisors will tell you: for dating success Be Yourself.

Worst. Advice. Ever.

You, like me, are a sloppy mess of insecurities, half-understandings, moldy old baggage, soiled laundry and fear. A delightful and sexy melange of those elements, but still, we're all rocky road muffins.

I hardly need warn you about revealing too much of the truth about yourself on a date. Dating isn't based on truth; dating's based on outfitting our dates with our fantasies. Ignoring non-compliant data allows us to dream the dream.

However, matters can progress. Date the right person long enough and you'll find that they've either figured out the stuff you've been avoiding, or they're ready to hear it. In either case it's a milestone to know that:

a.) There's no need to withhold any more, and

b.) Someone still thinks well enough of you despite them knowing the awful truth.

That's the time you'll find yourself being yourself without being conscious of it. 







Bottoms Up, Flawed Ones.

Friday Fluffer - True Love

In an antidote to the brutal, here's a very sweet article about true love.

Sometimes, in the glare of relationship horror, it's nice to know what we're aiming for.

From the Houston Chronicle.

Safe (and recommended) for work.





Bottoms Up, Harmonizers.

The Green-Eyed Monster

Most monsters have at least one redeeming quality. King Kong had a weakness for dames. Vampires are hipster fashionistas. Even those funster Zombies forever enjoy cinematic popularity despite their BO. But the Green-Eyed Monster is unmitigated awful.

The fact that Hollywood and Burbank haven't found a way to popularize the Jealousy Beast tells us how bad it is. Every story arc needs a slice of hope; but this....this thing has none.

Aside:

I hadn't heard jealousy referred to as "the green-eyed monster" until I dated one. I was chatting to a female colleague/friend at a party when this ex dragged me away and demanded an explanation. After she cooled it, that's the terminology she used to self-describe. This episode struck me as completely weird, and was a crystal-clear harbinger which I ignored. To my cost.

End Aside. 

Jealousy - at least the romantic kind - is tied up with self-esteem, trust, security, honesty, sexuality and faithfulness in one giant ganglia of hot blood and mean tricks. The dictionary keyword here is 'resentment', a telling description if ever.


We like to think we can intellectualize any human behaviour...at least I do. But jealousy is one of the few emotions for which there is no logical back-door. It's visceral, animal, and therefore almost uncontrollable. And it speaks entirely to the emoter, not the emoter's target.



Bottoms Up, Reactors.

Pillow Talk

If you drew blood after sex and examined it under a microscope, I'm sure we'd find it was full of rainbows, starbursts, heavenly choirs and popping champagne. Researchers should investigate this immediately.

The breathless effects of the sex last a while; awesome. It's a Zone apart from everything. In The Zone comes the pillow talk, which is not to say that PT requires The Zone, only that it's better.

I like the pillow talk. I like it because it's about as intimate as talking can get, meaning that we're both more vulnerable and free of everyday thinking than usual. In a way, it's the opposite of arguing, where one or both sides operate from a bunker of hurt or manipulation. When you're in bed, both in the moment, there are no agendas or power-plays. It's a time for innocence. It's a time to meet.

However. Nobody will ever warn you about the dangers of pillow talk. Because of the mental nudity involved, one might spill stuff, stuff that should probably otherwise stay hidden. Little secrets, small indiscretions, gossip; all the bullshit daily human mud that we normally filter - in the interests of harmony - can slip out.

So beware. Sex is wonderful. Pillow talk is beautiful. Being positive keeps it that way. Best not to drag the outside world in to share the moment. 






Bottoms Up, Happy Horizontal Chatters.

Dating for Dummies

Wouldn't it be awesome if a Date Store existed for failing or unsatisfactory romances?

At the Date Store - beautifully appointed, BTW, in complementary shades of slate and shiraz - the smart folks at the People With Experience and Perspective Bar would diagnose your love life. Within a few minutes, the details of your relationship would be downloaded, inspected and prioritized. Long-term red flags would top the list, grading down to the fact that she flosses in public.

If, in the sad case that Date Store determines that you and your sig. oth. are in the "terminal" category, those sensitive souls will take you out back and break it to you in a special You're Done room. There, you can cry in peace and mourn what you thought might have been. Then, when you're all cleaned up, they'll give you a script to use to actually break up with the person, and recommend a replacement model better designed for your needs.

~!oOo!~

People seek and use dating advice in approximately the same way they buy and use toilet paper, with more or less the same result.

Only financial commonsense and earthquake tips are ignored with the same energy.

What I think most people are after is affirmation, some kind of backstop so they can continue in the same direction. Most folks don't actually want honesty or even-handed feedback because I know me, and I'm a reasonable person, and you don't know what I know about her anyway. So there. She's the best and I'm gonna stick with her.

I'm at least as bad as the next person at relationships. Ignoring truth and reality to keep it going is my specialty, I know how that shit works. But at least now I know I suck. In that counter-intuitive way that life has, it's the best place to be.



Bottoms Up, Justifiers.

Butt me no Buts.

Dr Sadie Allison

Going to college will never be the same. It might not be Ivy League, but the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality sounds like a mighty fine place for anyone to take a few classes, let alone achieve a full Doctorate. One wonders what original research remains after thousands of years of practical application by everyone who ever lived, but it sure as hell would be fun finding out.


Such musings are for another day, because I want to introduce the latest work by a graduate of the IASHS, Dr Sadie Allison. Her book is called "Tickle my Tush" and it's subtitled "Mild-to-Wild Analplay Adventures for Everybooty." My copy was sent to me free.

Firstly, let me say that some of my most memorable sex and orgasm highlights stem from the time I spent with a woman who knew her male anatomy. She was fearless (and determined) in figuring out how to get to both of our pleasure centres, both mind-based and body-based. What set her apart from lots of women was her understanding of the prostate, what Dr Sadie cleverly calls "The He-Spot."

Here's the thing: the He-Spot is best accessed via one's anus, a concept loaded with pre-conceptions, stereotypes, misunderstandings and multiple other psycho-anatomical baggage. Indeed, it took me a while to relax into the idea that the arse, in this context, is just an access point, no more, no less. The point is: WOW, the H-Bomb-Quality orgasms left one radioactive for days. You rapidly overcome any reticence when your universe explodes like that.

Then there were her orgasms, which looked and felt similarly thermonuclear. All that from a little bit of self-knowledge anal-wise (and a willing student.)

Secondly, it is unusual how well edited and constructed this book is. Many of the (surprisingly numerous) books I receive to review don't even make it to a blog post draft - if the author and editor cannot, for instance, complete a table of contents with accurate page numbers, or maintain a consistent tense, or understand possessive apostrophes...then I can't be bothered either.

So. This book is thoughtfully and consistently laid-out, beginning at the middle, proceeding logically to the end. That's refreshing.

Thirdly, I'm just gonna say it - this is a great read. As our good Doctor suggests, I would take it to bed with my sig. oth. and read it with her both for the fun and the education. There's no cuteness here, just simple ideas and instruction wrapped in an attitude of telling it like it is. The tone is a model of neither talking up nor down to the reader. It's a straight-gazed effort at a sometimes tricky topic.

For anal newbies and wannabes or experienced operators, this is a concise commonsense reference to keep you safe, happy and orgasmic.





Bottoms Up, Choccy Starfishes.

Respect

In my previous post about trust, I pondered whether we would not be better off replacing the concept of 'love' with 'trust'. [link] A few reasons come to mind: love is often confused with other feelings, like chemistry; love is prone to a quick peak and a long decline; love is a catch-all word for a lot of interpersonal stuff, like sex.

Trust, on the other hand, appears to me to be more tangible, if less easily described. Trust often starts slowly, and improves over time. Trust can exist between any two people even without other relationship connections. And trust builds upon itself, with or without love.

Thinking about these two leads me to believe that they need a third leg to create a triumverate, namely respect. In this circumstance, the noun respect I stipulate to mean:

...esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability.

The key phrase there is sense of, because nailing down precisely what is respect, is not easy. Slippery beastie, this respect. One way I've figured to describe it is thus:

If I have respect for someone, I value their opinion approximately the same as mine. If I really respect them, I will likely put their opinion above mine. The subtext to this is an assumption that some people can be given the benefit of the doubt - those we respect - and some cannot.

And there we are, edging into the territory of trust again. If we trust someone, and we respect them, we're likely to let them adjudicate the big life decisions. Less respect than trust, and we'll listen to what they say. Less trust than respect, and we'll listen, but act on our own. In a sense, they're like the bass and treble control on a radio, they're variables of a greater whole.

The idea of the three of them forming a tripod on which lasting relationships grow appeals to me.

Clearly, I'm still unable to articulate precisely what's going on here. In general though, in relationships, I think the ideal progression is:

Respect -----> Trust -------------------->Love.

Funny, that looks like the (admittedly few) really good relationships I've experienced.




If you want a lot of words and some glimmers of understanding, here's a philosophic description of respect .[link]

Illustration from here. [link]

Trust

Trusty is a brand of dog-food, and dog-food is what you'll end up if you trust the wrong person. Trust improperly placed leads to anger, unhappiness, self-doubt and sexually transmitted disease, and I guess a hundred variations of these things. You know what I mean if you've eaten from that particular bowl - the aftertaste can last for a long time.

I see trust as a more tricky creature than love. Love has positive overtones - even falling out of love has a romantic side, but falling out of trust is deadly. Wouldn't relationships look different if we replaced the word 'love' with 'trust'?

~ I think I'm falling in trust with her

~ He's so trustable I could squeal

~ Every day I wake up and trust her more

He's a sneaky varmint, too, that trust, because he has a self-destructive streak. He often works against those who are closest to him, acting and thinking contrary to his (and their) best interest. One day he's a docile household pet, the next he's sneaking home at all hours smelling of drug-store perfume and rum. And yet it's impossible to lock him up and tame him, because trust is as much about the trustor as the trustee. Trust exists, and can thrive or die, in a mutual space.

Actually, forget the trust-as-animal analogy. A better thought is to liken finding trust to underground mining. The idea is to find seams of gold or opal hidden amidst tons of other rocks. You keep digging away, day after day, and with each discovery of a nugget comes joy, and hopefully an addition to your bank- (or trust-) balance. That sounds about right to me. Trust is often found unexpectedly, often hard-won, and accumulates over time.

If there's another way, I'm unaware.






Photo from here. [Link]

Trust and Respect

It's all so bleeding obvious really, and yet we keep making the same crappy mistakes. At least I seem to.

I asked Maryanne how a woman will know she's with the wrong guy. Her reply - and I'm paraphrasing - is that you need to test for trust and respect.

Trust is straightforward. An honest gut-check will provide you the answer.

Respect is more nuanced. Respect goes to motivation and intent, tricky animals to flush out in ones-self, let alone in someone else. Respect is easier to judge in retrospect, if you'll forgive the word play, most clearly seen in the rear-view mirror. And that takes time.

My assumption is that this works for men as well as women. If it doesn't we're in more trouble than I'd figured. And I should make it clear that even if shared trust and comprehensive respect exist within a relationship, it does not mean that match is perfect. There's always the unknown X-Factor that make these things work.

Ah, the X-Factor, that fugitive from logic and reason.