Practical Dynamics & Meaningful Purpose

You know it’s my suspicion that a great many men desire a Female-Led Relationship (FLR) for the sake of kink and eroticism, but if they looked at my life closely they’d see little more of either than any ‘traditional vanilla’ couple. ‘Course we’re not in an FLR for those reasons (in so much as the label accurately applies to us), so perhaps it’s all apples and oranges.

I’ve made a joke out of complaining about exercising, about the exercising itself mind you not the fact that my wife has told me to do it everyday (and told me on multiple occasions including when she made my New Year’s resolutions for me). So I’ll call her up before, during or after exercising and say something like, “people who do this for fun are either insane or part of the conspiracy of aliens trying to take over the world.” She’ll laugh and say, “yes but you’re doing it anyway because it’s good for you and I don’t want a saggy flabby man who dies of a heart attack at 50.” And I’ll jokingly hem and haw, and finally say something like, “Aye Captain, obeying orders.” And she’ll say something like, “Good. And you should. I have good ideas and you need me to make sure you stay on track.” (Yes, I often call her ‘Captain’, but sometimes when she’s delegating she’ll call me ‘Captain’ too.)

Well there’s a kernel of truth here: I don’t particularly care for exercising all that much and probably wouldn’t be as diligent about exercise as I currently am without my wife’s expressed interest –she’s always been more health conscious than I. But on the other hand: I certainly don’t really NEED her to “take care of me”, I’d merely find some slightly less rigorous standard of maintenance and stick with it because **I** don’t want to be flabby, saggy and dead at 50 either. And neither is she forcing me in any to do that extra bit of exercising (up from my standard to her standard), I’m choosing it because I know it makes her happy, because doing so feeds the fiery self that she is and that I love so much.

You know, most of the things that she actually tells me to do (which admittedly often takes the grammatical form of asking but again it’s about an understood dynamic) probably boil down to she and I having slightly different standards on something. We’ve just agreed that when this happens that ‘we’ll compromise’ by my ‘obeying’ her (fiery, willful, want, desire for her own) standard instead of my own –instead of oh say, me **arguing** for my standard and both of us ending up unhappy. Though again admittedly my opinion, ideas, and feelings are heard first, and admittedly we’re both certain that if I felt strongly enough about something (also admittedly rare) that she’d bend to my standard simply because she wants me to be happy too.

Perhaps a lot of this is simply about getting and staying on the same page as it were. Perhaps our dynamic is ultimately just a way to maintain mental and emotional closeness throughout more aspects of our lives together than the closeness we’d manage without this dynamic. Perhaps it just gives me a reason to call her up in the middle of the day and talk for fifteen minutes about something so uninteresting and mundane as exercise.

There’s a thread on the She Makes the Rules forum titled “sexualizing the mundane” which at first blush again might highlight slightly different motives –kink/eroticism vs emotional intimacy– but honestly I think of people’s focus on kink/eroticism as their way (path/manner/symbols) for achieving emotional intimacy. The kernel of truth I see is that the meaningful and abstract (‘transcendent’ if you will) experiences of love and intimacy between two people that we may WANT in a relationship must still happen amidst a daily context of mundane, material, NEEDS. The integration of of these semi-dualistic aspects (mundane v transcendent, need v want, meaning v. drudgery, etc.)  probably happens differently from couple to couple, to varying degrees, incorporating different and varying aspects of their relationship, and of course with varying degrees of perceived satisfaction. But perhaps the process of working out the manner of that integration might be more directly labeled “making the mundane meaningful”. Or “making practical life a basis for meaningful relationship intimacy”. Or something along those lines, and to this extent perhaps ‘kink’ and ‘vanilla’ isn’t all so “apples and oranges” after all.

Um, let’s see, my wife told me on Thursday evening (and reminded me Friday morning) to clean out the fridge and make a preliminary shopping list as she was doing the shopping Saturday morning. I used to do the shopping during the week because I wanted to spend more time with her on the weekend and not have her run errands after working all week, but she usually does it now –because she’s more naturally more health conscious, she enjoys making health choices more than I do, and she likes having her standard met more than I care about not having mine met. So when she tells me what to do to help her get dome what she likes doing I of course say, “Aye Captain” and just do it. But we still discussed the myriad grocery choices, ideas and planning for the week before the final list was made this morning and our conversation was probably indecipherable from any other couple’s conversation about such a thing.

Aaaand just now she stopped back in after hitting two stores and I can see that she changed the bread I’ve been using in my diet regimen. I might have made up my diet regimen, but just now she –without asking, without consulting– changed the bread I eat. Because she decided her choice was more healthy than mine. Aaaand she only told me to try it, and after I expressed my sincere concern that I mightn’t like it she said ‘then we’ll freeze the rest, I’ll eat it eventually and you can go back to your less healthy bread’. I tasted it and true to form I don’t think it’s as tasty as my bread, but I also think it’s tasty enough to eat instead of the bread I choose –because it’s not something (i.e. as a standard) that I care enough about to change. Especially when her choice means so much to her, when her choice has such clear reasonable benefits, and when I enjoy participating in her fiery, willful existence so intimately.

So how different is this from and vanilla couple’s dynamic? Possibly not so much at all. But it’s what works for us. I figure some people find more kinky dynamics to be easier for expressing their emotions and intimacy, some don’t, and some are in the grey area in between the spectrum’s poles. For functional relationship intimacy in the “making mundane meaningful” area, whatever works –well, works. And I think that’s the point.

047 never more certain

.

Perhaps by now you deem it true
but never am I more certain than
whenever I am far from you
(or upon reflection closest too)
the place that I am meant to stand

is by your side no matter how,
doting, adoring as best I may,
to love and feed your fire obey
so much more than any vow,
so much more than times allow.

.

Fire: Passion & Choice

How does one, no matter the obstacles, maintain loyalty, maintain focus on the love in their relationship? It is no easy thing, but I think by the constant attunement to [read 'choice of']  love, by the constant orientation [read 'choice'] of the interior compass upon love… that a lover’s loyalty is maintained.
~ OH, The Maintenance of Loyalty

But my wife doesn’t think my desire … to love, dote upon and adore her, my willingness … to clean and launder to her standard -cook to her pleasure, … my excitement over obeying her every whim wish and desire in an all-effort to please her as best I can and make her happy because I love her – is any different than those who … are interested and excited by their particular hobby … I simply happen to have made a different choice.
~ OH, Passion, Love: Odd Choice

…but I do seriously love my wife … So I made a choice way down in the center of myself, a simple choice really if difficult to make …
~ OH, The Soul of Porn

I love her will to power…
~ OH, Erotic Truth

I believe passions are a direct link to our soul, they are part of the fire that makes us alive…
~ OH, Passion Positive

Having and doing are different. There are people who want to have good health, want to have knowledge of a different language, have a different job – and there are the people who want to lose weight, who want to learn a different language, who desire to find a different job. Choice without the ‘will to power’, without drive and passion, is a vague and apathetic decision not only likely to result in failure but in (continued) unhappiness.

Out of passion for my wife I’ve been motivated to do many things and to keep doing them. Keeping our relationship porn-free is probably the most easily citable example, but it has occurred to me that choosing to pursue happiness by my passion driven uxory is another such choice. In a way it’s not much of a choice to choose between seeking self-fulfillment and continuing to limp through life trying to avoid my own personality, but –considering the amount of fear, anxiety and self doubt that was involved– choosing to ‘follow passion come what may’ was not insignificant.

That interior place where we make such a decision, before inevitably act and follow through, when there’s only the inner choice to focus one’s self in a direction and the leaning of the will, where there’s only a suddenly congealed resolve on the cusp of action, I suspect this is the beginning point of alignment and attunement to self through one’s passion, that is the point of the interior compass and the link to our deepest self and soul.

And in this manner it occurs to me that my electric and erotic truth that recognizes her fire, her drive, her will to power and her passion – every moment I continue choosing to focus my interior on uxoriously loving my wife is another seeking out of her soul through the conduit of our passion, another meeting of souls through the lens of our passionate actions, another mating of our souls through our passionate, intimate interaction.

This is the essence of what I began been calling the “numinous relationship experience” elsewhere

…on the very event horizon of our consciousness, on the ‘rim’ where we occasionally perceive, intuit and experience the cosmos/universe above, beyond and past our five normative senses, things take on the sheen of the sacred, of the highly meaningful and significant…

… I regard my wife with the utmost esteem, love, respect and honor, and I do love her intensely and deeply – and in, around and amongst these (my experiences) there is something powerful and profound, something so significant and meaningful that it is in some ways and in some aspects numinous, sacred, worthy of recognition, reverence and deference.
~ OH, Adore: Sacred or Sacrilege

I don’t really understand very well how passion’s fire, choice, the experience of the sacred, meaning and significance are (inter)related, but I do know that though our passions need be hemmed and tempered by reason, in the “direction”  of these things lies the real power behind letting your passions lead and motivate you in life and love.

The Mystery of Bodies

My body, I usually don’t give it a second thought – or as my wife will attest, often not even a first thought. I sometimes feel like an alien in my body, but sometimes I feel completely at home here, sometimes I’m awed by its complexity or amazed by its ability, sometimes I have wonderful fun because of it and even the occasional transcendent experience in it –sometimes many or all of these things at the same time or more.

But I wonder, as has I think probably every one of us with a body: Am I only this flesh?

Well, judging by how affected we are by its illnesses and injury, I have to say we certainly are our flesh in some very important ways. And because we perceive our bodies as both sacred (design, complexity, ability) and mundane (composition, excrement), it’s no surprise we wonder whether there’ll be anything ‘here’ after our flesh, whether there’s an ’afterlife’ for our ‘soul’ or a (D)ivinity to ‘shepherd’ that ‘soul’.

We’ve all had experience with religion’s absolute claims, claims increasingly difficult in a pluralistic society, but one ‘argument’ religion has going for it (as far as the ‘imperishable soul’) is the individual experience of the mind/body duality. Although I’ve heard even this seemingly basic experiential duality hasn’t always been so prevalent in western civilization.

I myself have suggested more than once (though pluralistic as I am, I too shy far from absolute claims of truth), that the search for and making of meaning is one of the most important motivations for all human life. And because meaning and its making seems to mean very little to the biology of bodies, I tend towards thinking of our time on earth as the playing of a very complex yet educational game matrix, where billions of souls (of all kinds and stripes) have a bodies (of all kinds and stripes) to interact with other incorporated souls (of all kinds and stripes) while we search for and make up our own meaning for the living of our game-matrix lives.

And yet even so, though I have this theoretical framework with great explanatory power for me – the mystery of bodies persists.

~

Relatedly: I sometimes wonder if there’s a waiting room for unincorporated souls somewhere, a place where they look upon the world of physical form with anticipation and excitement saying things like, “Oh, I can’t wait to do that!” “Wow, that looks liek so much FUN!” If there were such a place I think  it would help explain children’s sheer delight in running nowhere as fast as they can while sending out those ear-piercing squeals of delight.

Adore: Sacred or Sacrilege

“I (positively) adore you.” I say it all the time. Just last night when I said this my wife replied, “Good - I like being adored” and I felt a wonderful sense of completion — a sense of completion sadly broken a moment later when I started thinking about exactly what the word meant. (Didn’t someone somewhere once say you can think or be happy but not both?)

Like most words, its meaning can be slippery and depends on context, intent and people’s general predisposition. I’m reminded of the word ‘submissive’ and how some people dislike and object to the meek/weak/less than/servile/’sub-human’ connotations on principles of equality – occasionally even voicing distaste for the implied superiority as well. Yet other people, Shadowlady not least among them, defend the word for the connotations of choice, of an offering or proposal, even of an application, and see it’s principle of choice and of difference working together.

By and large to these sorts of preferences I simply say different strokes, different people, different meanings, intentions etc. Yet similarly I think there’s something interesting behind the principles with the word ‘adore’.

From Dictionary.com Unabridged: verb, a·dored, a·dor·ing.

–verb (used with object)
1.  to regard with the utmost esteem, love, and respect; honor.
[World English Dictionary: to love intensely or deeply]
2.  to pay divine honor to; worship: to adore god.
3.  to like or admire very much: I simply adore the way your hair is done!

–verb (used without object)

4.  to worship.

—Origin:
1275–1325; < L adōrāre  to speak to, pray, worship, equiv. to ad- ad- + ōrāre  to speak, beg ( see oral); r. ME aour ( i ) e  < OF aourer  < L

—Synonyms
1.  idolize; reverence, revere, venerate.

—Antonyms
1.  abhor.

First off, while perhaps in the 13th century to ‘adore’ your spouse wasn’t too far different from ‘worshiping’ them as a Divine Lord, but times have changed – and thankfully. Neither my wife nor I want her to be my ‘Divinity’ with a capital ‘D’. I have mentioned in the past that for me there’s a numinous quality to the experience of uxoriously living my wife as I do, but even I am wary and careful of my words because -again- in no way do I want to collapse the divine/mortal relationship in our marriage. My wife doesn’t even want to “be on a pedestal” or even idolized — she certainly doesn’t want to be someone’s religion.

Actually and interestingly that ‘idolize’, ‘reverence’, ‘revere’ and ‘venerate’ all have semi-religious symbolism at their sociological/etymological hearts points to the difficulty in separating the ‘sacred’ from the ‘divine’. Many religions have an acknowledged evil, non-sacred, (semi-)divinity, and while there are many who tout “life is sacred” only Christianity claims full divinity for a human and only that one particular human as a singular exception – one hotly argued in the millenia since. Even when Shakespeare only said “What a piece of work is man! [...] in apprehension how like a god!” it was clear — in one way man is like, and only ‘like’, a (indefinite) god. Even Achilles’ rage (again, single character aspect) was only “god-like”.

The fact is, on the very event horizon of our consciousness, on the ‘rim’ where we occasionally perceive, intuit and experience the cosmos/universe above, beyond and past our five normative senses, things take on the sheen of the sacred, of the highly meaningful and significant – even though as a matter of principle not all those things should be mixed. Thus one may find something sacred about their children, about their wife, about sex, about nature, about political representation and/or a host of other things, but yet desperately want to keep most or all of those completely separate from each other in their life.  That we perceive things as having numinous and sacred aspects or dimensions does not mean they themselves are completely divine or that they should even be mixed with any other thing we perceive as having numinous and sacred aspects or dimensions. In Hebrew, the word for ‘sacred’ has the connotation “separateness” or “kept set apart” (and so therefore) “dedicated”, “holy” — mixing and matching, even of various kinds of sacred, is strictly a no-no.

In fact such mixing and matching of the differently sacred only highlights their mundane aspects by juxtaposition, and we can more easily see something is out of place, out of knit, “rotten in the state”, and more easily see that the sense of something-is-where-it-does-not-belong is the very essence behind dissonance, profanity, sacrilege and blasphemy.

So yes, I regard my wife with the utmost esteem, love, respect and honor, and I do love her intensely and deeply – and in, around and amongst these (my experiences) there is something powerful and profound, something so significant and meaningful that it is in some ways and in some aspects numinous, sacred, worthy of recognition, reverence and deference. Nothing more, certainly nothing less, and I definitely keep these experiences ‘set apart’. And my wife likes it that way. And now, I’m going back to that sense of completion.