De Facto Difference

de facto:
adv.
In reality or fact; actually.
adj.
1. Actual: de facto segregation.
2. Exercising power or serving a function without being legally or officially established: a de facto government; a de facto nuclear storage facility.

Two actions can look quite alike but have diametrically opposite intentions. Fictional plots are full of this sort of thing: the person who tries to save another person ends up on trial for murder because it looks like they killed them, the one in love with another is treated as an archenemy because of the communicational disconnect between meaning and intentions. How often have we heard

I assure you we have no intention of (this thing); we only intended to do this (other completely opposite thing) – which only just happens to look exactly like we intended (this thing).

and feel as if forced to choose between naive (guarded, hesitant) trust of intentions and being taken for a gullible chump, mark and sucker. Things aren’t always what they seem, people’s intentions aren’t always clear and our conscious interior choices can look from the exterior like other things – even things that as a matter of character we would not consciously choose.

Does my wife want a “female led relationship” or does she just want to have what she wants?

Do I want to “submit to her” or do I want to intimately experience and participate in her desire and passion?

Are these at some level the same thing – just different?

Sometimes the point of having such a plot of contraries is to show how different sides are still part of one coin, opposites as aspect and facets of each other and so the author reveals the essential similarities in character, situations, actions and even intentions of the opposite — to love is sometimes to hate, to be an ally is sometimes to be an enemy, and vice versa, etc.

We don’t practice “orgasm management” or “orgasm denial” or “male chastity”. Yet since porn and other women are out and we’ve decided (whether I’m merely deciding to do somethings her way or not) that we’re going to only have sexual experiences that edify our intimacy together, since she doesn’t choose such physical intimacy as often as I would choose it  –and I certainly wouldn’t press such an issue regardless if her reasons are health reasons, that she’s tired, or irritated with me or anything else–, our conscious choices and intentions have amounted to the de facto practice of ”management”, “denial” and “chastity”.

But there won’t be any locks on body parts or ticking clocks on blog sidebars because our attentions, as our intentions, are focused on increasing and maintaining passion and intimacy, not on (near as I can tell) the length and duration of the exercise of force or coercion. It’s not that I think people who practice ”orgasm management”, “orgasm denial” and “male chastity” do not focus on increasing and maintaining passion and intimacy, it’s that I think we do it differently – and that difference isn’t always bad.