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.

.

Power & Passion: Partner/Dynamic Balance

This is the fourth of five in this series on relationship balance:
1. Symbol Distance
2. Metaphor Direction
3. Self/Other Diametric
4. Power/Passion Dynamic

~

As Richard John Neuhaus puts it [in 'American Babylon'], ‘libido dominandi’ is “the lust for power, advantage, and glory.” It shouts, “My way or no way!”

This lust for domination doesn’t just characterize politics in the City of Man, it characterizes each of us. The libido dominandi is that within each of us that plots and strives to have our own way and force others do as we say.
~ James Tonkowich, Libido Dominandi: St. Augustine and the Lust for Domination (emphasis mine)

Of course power and passion are close cousins in human experience, we can see how close by looking closely at the word ‘ambition’:

Ambition:
an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction, as power, honor, fame, or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its attainment

Synonyms:
appetite, ardor, aspiration, avidity, craving, desire, drive, eagerness, earnestness, emulation, energy, enterprise, enthusiasm, hope, hunger, initiative, itch, keenness, longing, love, lust, passion, pretension, push, spirit, striving, thirst, vigor, yearning, zeal

I might like to think of myself as a passionate ‘sensitive guy’ but it is no secret men often have their interior experiential want and desire for things egotistically attached to their sex drive as if their will-to-power‘s force of self were the very fist of their phallus.

It’s why St. Augustine called it ‘libido dominandi‘, “the lust [to dominate and] for power, advantage, and glory”. So it is I wonder if my interior “desire for” is comparatively merely more attached to ‘emotional requite-ment’ of passionate (romantic) love, rather than to lustful (orgiastic?) climax of powerful domination. In a way this topic could easily be about ‘sorts of uxory’ and the difference between uxory and submission, however rather than compare kinds of relationships I think this issue more educational about negotiating a functional power-passion dynamic within a single relationship.

For I don’t think libido dominandi is always bad (certainly not always “sinful”) in and of itself; the libido dominandi by another name might be Nietzsche’s ’will-to-power’, something neither moral nor immoral but merely essential about life and living. And if some women like a sensitive man, I can also see how some women find the sensitive man “too (emotionally) needy” and instead prefer a man with more ambition, drive and will-to-power. In fact such grit, moxie and determination is sometimes thought courageous, independent, self-reliant and oft idolized in ‘the rugged individual’. And of course, not only is there going to be a range of behaviors among men and expectations among women (or vice versa) along this spectrum, but there’s certainly also variance within any particular individual character from time to time – and such variance of personalities and expectations  within a relationship dynamic means (re)negotiation, adjustment and coping.

And if some men like a sensitive woman, I can also see how some men instead prefer a woman with more ambition, drive and will-to-power. I think my wife manages to minimally define any other person when she says “I want” – rather than forcing another to do it “my way or no way” she more often simply says ”I just want what I want – and you can do what you want”. But if I happen to like ”her will to power” more than “her power over me”, I can surely see how other people might prefer something further down the spectrum and may even experience a more dominating dynamic as something more intimate, loving and functional – for them.

Moreover what I might label my “passionate, emotional sensitivity” (or ‘emotional requite-ment’ of passionate romantic love) my wife sometimes labels with a simple “emotionally needy”. This mismatch doesn’t happen often enough to be a serious issue for us (though it can in some relationships) and when it does we adjust and negotiate: I find a balance of self and other that’s right for me (as does she) and each of us (with our partner in mind) try (re)negotiating our love symbols in order to attain a balance that is functional for both of us. And of course we don’t get everything we want right away and we often end up coping with whatever unmet desire (for ‘more of the other’ or for ‘more space’) as best we can. I always try to remember that she doesn’t always get everything what she wants either, when she doesn’t get all the relationship ‘space’ (or the immaculately clean home) that she wants (from me) she has to cope with possibly having more guilt and less freedom than she wanted.

Finding the balance and dynamic of power and passion that works for both people in the relationship is a process probably best approached with patience – and also with some recognition of the interconnectivity of these four different relationship balances. In a very real sense each of these balances are merely different perspectives, each highlighting slightly different aspects and nuances, of the intersection between two individuals in an intimate relationship.

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.

Differently Beautiful

For six months he had moped until even he was tired of himself and now these ten pounds were an integral part of his plan to get his mojo back. Finally exterminating the extra poundage had become synonymous getting up, getting out and getting rid of extra baggage.

Actually he hated jogging, it just wasn’t fun; but as long as he was putting one foot in front of the other on the park path he wasn’t thinking about his ex, and that was something he did like. It wasn’t her fault or his fault, fault actually didn’t enter into it; their interior spaces just hadn’t been compatible.

He was looking for what he called ‘the X-factor’, he wanted a strong-willed woman, an intense woman who wanted things intensely, a woman whose intense desire would cause him to fall forever in her gravity well. With a woman who’d love having him in orbit and enough fire and passion to fuel the launch into orbit, he knew he’d be content to never have his feet on earth again. Yet though his ex certainly was a strong woman who knew what she wanted, she simply didn’t have any x-factor gravity to give him, having someone in her orbit just wasn’t who she was.

What she was was beautiful; it was the first characteristic anyone who saw her agreed upon: she was heart-stoppingly, preternaturally and classically beautiful. Within a week of meeting her he realized there was always going to be some sort of modeling agency hanging round, vying to be the one to ‘discover’ her. Of course he quickly figured out she’d never do it: the second characteristic everyone unvaryingly agreed upon was she wasn’t the sort of person to ever ‘use’ her looks for anything. From an early age, her beauty had made her an unalterable, if admirable, egalitarian who would only ever settle for a binary solar system of equals. Just because her beauty looked distant and dominating didn’t mean she was, and after a limping few years together they both finally knew it, and finally ended it – together.

So it was that he stood alone at the end of his run, huffing and panting, walking in circles, cooling off, and finally eying the car that as it passed him suddenly veered across the oncoming lanes to reverse into a spot in front of him, on a street of empty spots. From behind heavily tinted windows stepped the smiling woman he’d bumped carts with at the local grocery store. As she walked over to him he laughed, hard, realizing he’d been holding his breath.

He briefly thought how he wanted the second sentence he addressed to her to be better than “Excuse me”, but gave up and went with the obvious: “I hate to sound cliché but what’s a warm, beautiful woman like you doing in a cold, deserted place like this?”

“Oh, why thank you, but surely you know to somebody somewhere this is an ideal place and perfectly beautiful day – it might even be me.”