Reciprocal Intimacy (via Empathy, Sympathy)

At the level of our common essential humanity, empathy and sympathy are wonderful tools to generally understand people – and on a general level of social interaction our actions based on reciprocity work wonderfully well. However, once we venture into a loving intimate relationship with a specific individual whose interior thoughts, feelings and motivations are specifically different from our selves and from other people, general level reciprocity through sympathy and empathy will work far less effectively. (I’ve talked about relationship reciprocity before here and here.)

Both sympathy and empathy have at heart the “another person’s shoes” concept of reciprocity, though sympathy is more related to an imaginative or intellectual understanding of another person’s situation and interior, and empathy is more related to an emotional and passionate understanding of another person’s situation and interior. Yet because emotion and passion (see also passion addiction) are what drive and motivate everyone’s interior spaces and choices (and therefore their exterior actions), people generally understand empathy to result in a stronger, deeper bond. People who empathize are more likely to act on another person’s behalf*, and empathy as a tool will usually bring a person into a more intimate relationship than sympathy will.

However, every tool, no matter what kind of tool it is, is only as useful as the manner in which it’s employed. And the tools of sympathy and empathy, and even of reciprocity itself, are used differently on the specific level in an intimate relationship than when used on the general level in general human social interactions. On the intimate level one must attune their sympathy and empathy to what they already know of their partner, attune with what they already know about the specificity of their partner’s interior spaces, thoughts, emotions and motivations. Tools are only adequate substitutes for knowledge to a certain degree, and only to a certain degree will sympathy, empathy and reciprocity be qualitatively equal substitutes for knowing one’s partner well enough to know what is specifically happening on their partner’s interior, and know exactly how their partner’s interior differs from one’s own interior and from the general interior of other people.

On the specific and intimate level relationship, I think the tool of reciprocity is only most effective when using sympathy and empathy to determine what your partner specifically desires. It is better to reciprocate specifically to our partner’s passion¸ rather than falling prey to the fallacious assumption that they will generally want what we want in the same manner and symbols we want them. “Just as I want to have the things I want and in the manner and symbols I want them, so too does my partner want the things they want in the manner and symbols they want them.“

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* The relationship between emotion and motivation is why people often “play on other people’s emotions” in order to get them to (re)act in desired ways, and why doing this is often deemed ‘mere’ sophistry, rhetoric, or propaganda compared to addressing an issue intellectually and answering it ‘head-on’. Emotion and motivation are even related etymologically in Latin: to move, shake, stir one’s interior (feelings), and such an interior movement as a cause of our actions.

 This is not to say one can’t intimately understand how a person thinks (as opposed to how they feel) through sympathy. Academia is probably rife with such examples, might even be itself an example. Yet even such intellectual sympathetic intimacy is also based on a kind of familiarity with what makes someone unique.

Uxorious: Easier or Just Right

 Today on She Makes the Rules a man suggested the reason he became submissive was because his wife was naturally dominant and, since he didn’t like confrontation, it was easier to simply learn to enjoy, and eroticize, the feeling of disempowerment. The thought reminded me of a time before my wife and I were married and had kids; back then it took me a long time to listen, really listen, to her – and I think I only ever decided to listen because I gave up trying to get her to listen to me. (In all fairness, my idea of her listening to me might have been tantamount to her wholecloth assenting to my point of view.) She was (and is) too strong an individual to simply back away from her point of view, her opinion, her desire and passion.

The thing is, It was only when I stopped and listened, really listened to her, that I realized not only did she have good a points, but that strength of character, that solidity of self, wherein she stood her ground against me hell and high water, was one her most attractive features. Yet here is the point, I had to feel helpless, disempowered against the sheer force of what she wanted, before I discovered I liked it.

I admit, some might say I only liked it because it was easier, yet again, I prefer to focus on what I consciously experience and feel, and what I felt then (and still) is as if I were fitting right in, and coming home.

Passion or Disempowerment

I have heard the opinion that ‘submissive men’ find feeling disempowered erotic, and while on one hand I have disagreed with this somewhat, preferring the slightly different idea that ‘uxorious men’ find their partner’s empowerment erotic, yet I rather think in my last segment eroticized disempowerment suggests itself again.

 … it’s my desire she expect I could refuse her nothing, expect my passion addiction within the designs of her ‘garden hose‘ be such I couldn’t refuse her anything … I am conflating the symbol “tell me what you want me to do” with the symbol “tell me what to do” because I’m trying to tell her my passion for her is so strong that for me these two symbols might as well be the same thing…

And although the difference between “my disempowerment” and “her empowerment” seems akin to looking at the different sides of the same coin in a relationship, when you are one side of the coin I think it’s different – it’s more like the difference between “seeking my disempowerment” and “seeking her empowerment”.

Again this conundrum is reminiscent of the “for you is for me” dynamic (also  here and here), but I rather think the primary conscious purpose of the interior that drives one to action is the experientially important one. Thus again if one feels as if they are seeking their own disempowerment or their partner’s empowerment (or feels as if they are kinky or not kinky), then that is what is happening – until they feel differently.

I happen to (still) feel that (if anything) I my erotic truth is about passion, about experiencing my wife’s passion and desire, her wants and even her whims, however she happens to express them, however I may passionately get to participate in them.

The Expectation of Symbols

The little difference between “tell me what you want me to do” and “tell me what to do” is significant; when I say “tell me what you want“, my wife expects I will listen to her, exercising my free will and choose whether to do the thing she wants. In fact this was my original example of what ‘says love’ to her when I originally wrote about love symbol negotiation. And negotiate we do and must, for on the other hand I have a love symbol so strongly functional for me it seems to short circuit and bypass my consciousness awareness: when she tells me what to do and (because she has such confidence in my love) she expects I have little choice but to choose to do it for her. Indeed, it’s my desire she expect I could refuse her nothing, expect my passion addiction within the designs of her ‘garden hose‘ be such I couldn’t refuse her anything.

But I think when I use “tell me what to do” I hope to connote and promote a tacit agreement over boundaries and limitations, tacit agreement whatever is wanted will surely be done, and all that’s left is to do is to name the thing she wants done. I think by blatantly changing the paradigm from her wants and my free will to a consensual expectation of garden hose passion addiction I hope to ‘adjust’ how love symbols are being used between us.

Yet I also think while I am busy conflating the symbol “tell me what you want me to do” with the symbol “tell me what to do” (because I’m trying to tell her my passion for her is so strong that for me these two symbols might as well be the same thing), she feels I’m eliding a very significant part and putting in something somewhat less respectable. Because if a person finds the inability to exercise one’s free will to be slavish and unrespectable, they’re less likely to find an adequate love symbol in commanding such a person to fulfill their desires.

Where I seek to demonstrate my passion in a love symbol, my wife looks for free choice as a measure and symbol of her worth to me and of my love for her (and of love’s worth to me in general). This is why I usually use the phrase, “what may I do for you?”  instead of the above choices – for while I don’t always get the expectation I hope she would show, the truth is such relationship expectation can take time to manifest (if it ever does). Moreover, single-handedly ‘adjusting’ our love symbols won’t make her feel differently, and ultimately such a symbol is useless to me if it doesn’t convey real intimacy offered from her interior.

Besides, “what may I do for you?” does everything I ‘need‘ it to: it allows me to show my interest in her whims wishes and desires, it shows my desire to do what she wants, and as a love symbol it works for both of us because it shows both my passion and my free choice.

My Desire, Once She Shows Me

Kissed and often
and I know how,
once you show me
never let you down.

Sometimes there are outright triumphs a relationship’s love symbol negotiation (see also here); I had one this weekend and it feels wonderful.

(EDIT: It is important to note it’s my desire to “never let you down” not my promise.)