If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else. ~ Yogi Berra
redtigr sent me a thoughtful and thought-provoking response which gave me the insight and perspective to perhaps conclude this series. She obviously put much time and thought into her reply and I am immensely grateful.
After reading her email, I realized that this inquiry is not about sexual morality, but about the love and sex dilemma that has plagued me since puberty. It is about finding love in a sexual relationship and putting sex into a loving relationship. That may read really strange, considering that most people inextricably link love and sex.
If insanity is doing the same things over again and expecting different results, then depression is trying to maintain two or more conflicting beliefs. In part 3, I wrote about my perceptual bias being the right way to get what I wanted. Living under that umbrella meant striving to do right – which never gave me what I wanted, and getting what I wanted – which always left me in sin.
Growing up, my experience of love from my mother was that I only got it when I was what she wanted me to be. Even when I tried to be that, most times she still saw in me those things she least liked about herself. My mother felt unloved and unlovable. She was not capable of giving more or other than she did. Nevertheless, she passed to me bad programming, false lessons, and it is hard to disregard more than 50 years of a lesson – particularly from a primary caregiver. So, I have rejected love, out of fear of trying to meet someone else’s expectations and knowing I will fall short and feeling that the multi-faceted person that I am will be lost in the process.
Then there is sex. Sex is first of all a physical connection. It feels good; it seems almost congruent to engage physically with one with whom you connect intellectually and emotionally. I’ve written previously that when I am enjoying the company of a man, I have a desire to merge. I fall a little in love.
The good thing I learned after my imperative self therapy was that I could enjoy my feelings of being in love and enjoy the sexual desire that came along with it without actually engaging in sex, if I so chose. I decided that expressing who I am, meant that there would be no alcohol involved in the next encounter, and that I would only have sex with someone whom I wanted. Bear in mind that I came of age in the mid seventies when free love, open marriage, and if it feels good, do it were the order of the day.
Conflict – and hence depression -- for me comes with the belief that sex is an expression of love and love is expressed in sex – the making love is far superior to just sex principle. It is a belief most people hold the closest. Love is what makes sex moral for many, maybe most people. For me, I have often prided myself on separating the two. I think like a man, I tell myself. That is until I encounter one of two situations.
There are the men who I think might actually be capable of loving me and who want to court me respectfully. I impart to them a desire for me to be chaste – and I fear being loved by them.
Then there are those in whom I see myself mirrored – and my desire to love and be loved is so overwhelming that I become obsessive – and my intensity scares both them and me.
Those few men in my life whom I loved and by whom I felt loved, were all unavailable in some way. In fact, I might be able to say that about all the men with whom I was ever intimate or even desired. I believe on some level I knew that about each and every one of them.
I see my challenge for morality, love and victory over depression as modifying my beliefs and facing my fears, opening myself to give and receive love, and to making love as a thoughtful and considerate lover. I think that is where the line of sexual morality is supposed to be for me.
I watched Rigoletto this past weekend. Gilda is Rigoletto’s motherless child. He shelters and protects her. She goes away from her home only to worship at church. The duke is a philanderer. He sees her at church and desires her. He bribes Gilda’s maid who allows him into her home. He listens as Gilda sings of exactly the man she wants. Then he becomes that man. He is a classic player.
There are two dangers to opening up on a public forum like this. One is scaring away all the good guys. The other is attracting all the players who now know my vulnerabilities. I guess I’ll take my chances.
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read more blogs!
Blogs by lacyvsq:
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| Sexual morality -- Part 6 and Love -- Part 6 |
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alivenwell351
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Oct 5 @ 11:03PM
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If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else. ~ Yogi Berra
I like George Harrison's too~~If you don't know where you're going,any road will take you there...
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redtigr
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Oct 5 @ 11:03PM
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I wouldn't worry -- a man who would go to the trouble of learning your vulnerabilities for ill, would likely be confounded by your intelligence -- and if he reads your blogs, he'll not dare to "play" with you unless he plays nice...
The people I have known in my life who have the most trouble being loved and loving, were those who did not receive unconditional love as children. And unconditional love is unattainable as an adult - so the deficit leaves a void that is nearly impossible to fill. Anyone we meet as an adult who says they love us "unconditionally" probably lies.... or is damaged themselves, and the cycle continues...
Self-knowledge is the best road to understanding and loving ourselves... and that is the best place to start any relationship. Excellent post.
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biggreywolf
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Oct 6 @ 9:45AM
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Sometimes enlightenment comes slowly. It sure did for me! Many of us recieved poor or even bad programming (life coping skills) as children. Just realizing that and accepting it is a huge step toward reprogramming one's self for a healthier happier life. Both my parents were unavailable to me as a child and therefore my social life has always been a mess. I have always known that sex is not necessarily love and love does not always include sex but I could never figure out the lines between. Just nine months ago I finally realized that the problem was me. Now I have two stepchildren that learned that same bad programming from me and I cannot reprogram them. That is something they must decide to do for themselves. So it is true, the sins of the father do follow the family, generation after generation. You are so right Redtigir. Great blog Lacy. Intelligent thoughts. Do not get depressed if your new line of thinking does not take soild root immediately and you have a relapse or two. We are after all just human and mistakes we do make. Habits are not broken on the first try but by the determination to keep focusing on making the change. Again, thanks for the blog. It has been great reading.
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Martin666
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Oct 6 @ 10:33AM
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I agree with redtigr about the men who may read your posting--few of them will get past the third or fourth paragraph. Not that I would ever say anything bad about my fellow male sojourners, but they just won't. And to be fair, an equally high number of woman will probably not read far ino it as well, even though they find their own lives impacted by the issue.
In my own twisted little world, sex is amoral...it's simply a physical act, like speaking. Is speaking in and of itself moral or immoral? And if an infant happens to pick up a sharp object and hurt someone nearby, is that an immoral act? Most people would say "no", that the infant was incapable of performing immoraly because it was incapable of understanding the ethical net we construct around behaviors that have come to be defined as having a moral componant. In that sense, a baby is "innocent" until it comes to the age where we, as a society, feel that it should have learned both the moral componant of hitting and the ethical constraints we place on that act, and have the mental capacity to understand and act on both awarenesses.
In the same way, sex was an "innocent" act with no moral attachments. Then Eve ate the apple (as my christian friends would say), and innocence passed away from us in the same way that inncocence will someday pass away from the infant. And you can't go back--except maybe through a severe closed-head injury :)
Issues of morality are "attached" to sex, but they are not an inherint part of sex. Once morality becomes attached to sex, we are left to proliferate the kind of ethical conundrums that you have talked about for the last several postings. But in the end, these have nothing directly to do with sex--these have to do with our relationship with ourselves and others (these are the foundations of morality), and sex is simply an amoral act on which we (society, church, etc) have hung a number of mantles.That's why I found the title of your postings interesting--"Sexual Morality." There is sex, and there is morality, but I don't think there's any specific thing called sexual morality.
So about sexual relations, we construct lurid and densly woven ethical mazes within which we manage mostly just to ensnare ourselves, all the time thinking that sex itself is the cause of concern. And we get trapped in these mazes for various reasons. And here is the one point that I disagree with you on: in an earlier post in this series, you mentiond that it was not possible to simply transform one's thinking from one thing to another. I completly disagree. If transformation were not possible, then why get up in the morning? Why try to improve our lives? Why try to resolve the ethical quagmires like the one you're talking about here? The drive to truly transform is the basis for the soteriological componant present in all religions, and it is inescapable from issues of morality and ethics.
Any single thought or feeling that a person can have in their head is dependent for it's existence on a pre-existing thought or feeling, like an endless row of dominos. If you change one, you can change the dominos that follow, absolutley, and that can change--transform--a life.
OMG, I'm blabbering... :)
Bottom line, I think you're doing exactly what you need to do in terms of trying to untangle this thing, and that you should hold out for the result you want and not sell yourself short. Transformation is possible, resolution is possible, and the only people who can't find either are the ones who don't have the courage to try and stick to the trying. But maybe the paradigm will shift, transform, more fully if you disentangle sex from morality?
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lacyvsq
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Oct 6 @ 11:26AM
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Obviously I did not make a couple of things clear that were in my head -- but then there was so much swirling for a time.
I realized after reading redtgr's email response to me that I was not inquiring into sexual morality -- that it was my internal, personal, bad programming that was my issue -- and so I left sexual morality out there -- it really was no longer relevant to me -- perhaps because Martin is right -- it is amoral.
Certainly I believe that transformation is possible -- just that it is not simple -- at least for me. I have identified some of my conflicting beliefs. I initially thought the conflict lay in the religious rules, but ultimately for me they do not. In a round-about way perhaps... I hear my father saying to a friend of mine, "I think children should feel guilty if they are not living as they were instructed by their parents, don't you?" It is perhaps not so hard to throw out the old beliefs -- though they are pretty deeply imbedded -- the difficulty is in determining the new beliefs -- filling up the hole so the old programming doesn't reinstall.
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redtigr
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Oct 6 @ 12:47PM
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Any single thought or feeling that a person can have in their head is dependent for it's existence on a pre-existing thought or feeling, like an endless row of dominos. If you change one, you can change the dominos that follow, absolutely, and that can change--transform--a life.
Martin calls this blabbering?? He is way too modest...
I call this words to live by...
Great sharing of thoughts and ideas... thank you. 
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Somerled
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Jul 20 @ 8:52AM
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Belatedly, I comment: speechless, depressed, the conflict never ends.
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observed50
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Jul 20 @ 10:24AM
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a bit different twist maybe...
Might it not be 'belief' itself that is the chain on the mind's capacity to roam and see and perceive and understand what simply 'is?' Is not any question of morality a question in abstentia of the others with whom one's life will have impact and thus an empty question, a self-absorbed question. Is the question 'what am I to do?' or is it more encompassing to ask, 'what am I to do here, now, with you?'
The Bible, and other ancient holy texts have served as fortress walls behind which hundreds of millions of people have hidden while slaughtering the children of others. 'What am I to do" sends them scurrying to a dead text to impose their 'to do' on others, rather than simply turning to the other and asking, 'what am I to do here, now, with you?' Is not your own root in the Dutch Reformed Church which gave Africaaners the 'moral' frame for Apartheid?
Why is it so hard for us to live in the here and the now, the 'what am I to do here, now, with you?' Can we understand love through a muddled monologue in our head, or must it not be a dialogue with those with whom we relate?
Is the challenge to 'improve our lives' or to simply be alive? Is it not the implicit measurement in 'improve' that we find in all social measurement that helps us feel small, inadequate, and imprisoned in the tools of measurement? Is not all social measurement laid out for us in 'beliefs' psychologically violent, making us aware at all times, we are inadequate? Yes...conflict amongst beleifs, but more profoundly, conflict between all beliefs and reality.
It is perhaps not so hard to throw out the old beliefs -- though they are pretty deeply imbedded -- the difficulty is in determining the new beliefs -- filling up the hole so the old programming doesn't reinstall.
When you quit believing in Santa Claus, did you have to recreate some new gift-giving daddy to fill in the hole left by your disbelief?
I would suggest the effort to find new belief is a woefully imprisoning effort in which you are wandering a desert seeking for someone to give you new chains and locks by which to hold your mind prisoner to your deep fear of inadequacy, a prison where there is little to drink, but ohhhh...the comfort of believing.
ALL BELIEFS are built in our unknowing, attempting to say we know enough to assert. They are built in our fears, and tethered to our past in which we were led to believe that beliefs were critical to our mental health. Are not all beliefs a testament to our foolishness in front of an immense universe in which rather than sit in unknowing awe, we feel compelled to have some sort of conclusion about something?
The holes created by the loss of Santa Claus are not always filled in by new gift-giving daddies because we SEE that the belief itself, and all the social structure around it were suspect and meant to help control kids. Some take on gods of all kinds to be new gift-giving daddies, punishing and measuring daddies. But then to understand that there are no boogiemen beneath the bed is not a hole...it is freedom.
And for most humans, real freedom, mental freedom from the chains of beliefs that hold you and measure you to behave, is a very difficult freedom to encounter, because first you have to surrender to unknowing and its discomfort. Give up being the unique story and its unique lines of detail. The mind is a tool, and it works in ways that allow us to predict and encounter one another, naked or not. Watch the tool and its desire to be and do, and create beliefs, and measure itself by its desires. Watch the flow of fear that follows desire, the discomfort with unknowing and the desire to delude oneself just to feel like one has arrived...i.e., one is 'okay.'
Morality, ethics, beliefs...all prisons if all they do is serve as measurement markers. Good enough? Smart enough? Loving enough? Transformed enough? In a nanosecond is the realization Santa Claus is make-believe. That is how close freedom is from the prison of what we have come to believe.
In inquiry...that is without belief. In awe...that is where the mind is quiet enough, humble enough, to allow itself to be. In relation...that is freedom.
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