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.

My Oh My

Sometime after discovering that one's penis is an instrument of pleasure, we men find that women think so too. Most women, that is, and a lot of them wouldn't go on national tellie saying so, but it's true nonetheless.

This is a milestone in man's life, this coming to grips with the fact that the odd assortment of appendages between our legs has appeal to others. It's like finding that the lame-o rock collection you started at age nine has a purring, soft, sweet-smelling audience of top-flight geologists who can't wait to examine your granite. Purring top-flight geologists in mini-skirts and librarian-glasses.

It can blow your mind, that shit.

Which, for the most part, it does. We spend all our lives henceforth trying to replicate that moment.

It's a quest not entirely without reward, either. That teenaged naïveté never completely disappears. At the special moment, when it's clear she wants to have sex with MY penis, there's magic in the air. It's a warping of space-time, a kind of star-gate to a better universe. We don't pretend to understand the mechanics of this. Nor do we care, for it's a fleeting thing, and by that point other stuff's happening.

Stuff like ripping off my hot geologist's blouse. 

Importantly, this fragment of (good) dislocation happens with wives and long-term girlfriends as much as with that new lady in your life. In fact, it's more pronounced, because of the contrast between that sweet person you like to make coffee for in the morning and the sex-devil she becomes. At one point of the evening you're balancing your checking account, then BOOM she's got her hand down your trousers with intent in her eye.

This is not the same person.........and yet it is the same person. Ah, the wonder of women.


Bottoms Up, Hot Geologists.

Throw Your Arms Around Me

Of all the motivations that keep couples together, I suspect that love - in the sense of romantic love - is the least important. Anyone who has lived through at least one love and falling-out-of-love cycle understands the temporary nature of heart-pounding irrational obsessional love. It's a trick of nature to get us to breed, asap.

So what does keep people together? Despite media hysteria, lots of people find, marry, mate, and stick with one person for many years, if not forever. The secret must partly revolve around choosing the right person in the first place. That choice can naturally be driven by emotion, but relationships so founded require lots o' luck to last longer than their season.

Choosing well means asking difficult questions. All the love in the world won't overcome disagreements over all the other stuff of life, a partial list of which might look like:

~ religion
~ money
~ children
~ politics
~ morality
~ work ethic
~ physical fitness
~ recreation
~ socializing

And so on. No two people will ever agree completely on everything - knowing what are not, and what are deal-breakers is the most important part of all this. That requires clarity on the self-knowledge front, which is quite another field of exploration.

Presuming you choose well and find someone with whom the day-to-day stuff is close to frictionless, there's one more factor that I've learned, and it's this: Happiness and longevity in a relationship occur when folks wake up in the morning and ask themselves how they can make their partner's day better. It might only be making them a morning cup of tea, or sending a chirpy upbeat text for no reason, but the very act of placing someone else's wellbeing ahead of your own creates the right framework.

I think.



Bottoms Up, Huggers.

Man 1.0

Photo credit. 

Civilization depends in large part upon men curbing their instincts. Restraint, self-discipline, filtering, gratification denial; call it what you like, it's all about out-thinking the first reaction.

In a monogamous relationship, it's natural for a woman to want to see a little (or, umm, a lot?) of the unrestricted male. I don't mean violence, of course. That's where trust comes in. But for everyone's benefit, raising the gate on a few more basic instincts leads to a happier experience. How many times have I heard women ask:

How do you really feel?

or

Just let go!

or variations thereof.

Not so easy. Curtailing the civilization software and (temporarily) re-installing Man 1.0 requires practice and understanding. My practice and your understanding.

Now. Where are those 5 1/4" floppy disks?



Bottoms Up, Coders.

Getting To Know You

Photo credit.

How long does it take to know another person? If you're dating with a view to marriage, the magic time appears to be around the eighteen month mark. If accurate (or even close) that leads to a few unavoidable truths.

-> If you have been dating someone for longer than two years, and marriage isn't explicitly on the horizon, it probably won't happen.

-> After dating for longer than two years, if the question of marriage appears obliquely or indirectly, you probably shouldn't marry that person.

-> Excessively speedy marriages ie: those within six months of meeting, are likely to founder because you really don't know the other person.

-> When you're dating and learning about your possible long-term partner, often the only way to smoke out problems is to ask pointed questions eg:

~ do you or any of your family have a history of depression or other mental problems?

~ do you have any addictive traits, for instance alcohol, drugs or gambling?

~ do you want children or not, and how many if so?

~ do you think you can change me (other than perhaps my wardrobe)?

~ will you need me to be with you all the time, or will I have some independence?


Too often we float along in a cloud of denial, thinking that when the time comes, it'll all work out.

No it won't.

Life will throw sufficient variables at you - deliberately taking on stuff that doesn't jive with your own life-story is asking for heartache multipliers beyond that which will test any relationship.

Better to face the difficult questions, then say NO, even if your dreamboat appears to be the One. Leave the fog of fantasy and get tough. Relationships don't survive pussies.





Bottoms Up, Tough Guys.

Love, Sex and Intimacy - Wombatgram #13

Click on Wombatgram to enlarge.

Is it possible that the troika of love, sex and intimacy circumscribe our relationship life?

If so, the volume of each element varies with the nature of each relationship, as does the geometry between them.

We'll all be different.




Bottoms Up, Thinkers.

When is she my girlfriend?

We lack for accurate descriptors when it comes to romantic attachments.

A vast yawning chasm exists between meeting and marriage, a vast yawning chasm chock full of emotion, imagination, miscommunication, good communication, veiled motives, expressed desires, hidden agendas, agendas right out in the open, fear, love, hate, texts, phone calls, emails, dinners, breakfasts, appointments, missed appointments, disappointments, misunderstandings, understandings, mistakes, nights, days, sleeps and exhaustion.

Hmmm. I think I just described male/female relationships.

Q: What do we call someone in whom we're interested, after the first signs of mutual interest?

A: My potential lady interest.

Q: How about between first make-out and first formal date?

A: My impending woman.

Q: And in the area between arranged date and assumed date?

A: (Unsure) My putative squeeze.

Q: Okay, between assumed date and home base?

A: (Resoundingly) Now that's when I can call her my girlfriend!

Q: Between first sex and sophomore sex?

A: God, I hope she wants to do it again.




Bottoms Up, New Lovers!




Emilie Autumn photo from here [link]

Friday Fluffer - Viking Girls

When viking men were off crossing oceans for an afternoon's pillaging, what were the lady vikings up to?

The viking life would be one of sad farewells and glad reunions...perhaps.

Maybe the viking dames were happy to see their men sail over the horizon and not have big boofy blokes about the place with their fishy breath and horny helmets.

And what would dating a vikingette be like? Something like this I guess. Safe For Work.



It's not just me. The world loves Viking womanflesh.

Bottoms Up, Norsemen!

Imperfect Relationships - Wombatgram #10

Getting it right isn't easy.

Click on the Wombatgram for easier reading.



Bottoms Up, Rebounders!

Harmony and Disharmony

Marriage can contain most other kinds of relationships, but when one gets loose: trouble.



Bottoms Up, Musicians!

Previous Wombatgram here [link]