Ok, I'm trying to remain quiet, but dang it all, I just can't. I don't think my frankness, or what ever you call it, is appreciated.
Your wife should like you to look at beautiful women, after all you picked her. Shows good taste. Shows you are alive. If you didn't want to be with your wife and trying in that regard it might be a different thing.
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Quote: In effect, they can not trust because trusting others only HURT them earlier in life.
That's a big BINGO, Cemar. And so is the need to be "squeaky clean." The deal is, while I am far from being a total jackass, I'm not squeaky clean, either. This expectation of perfection on her part has got to go.
Quote: Divorced parents, suffering through abandonment, the unability to trust others, since the adults in their lives pretty well failed them. So who wants to want? As the experts say, women that grow up in dysfunctional familes tend to be dysfunctional themselves. I read these experts and it is like they are writing about our wives. It like they can not trust us because they could not trust others early in life. THey LOOK for reasons to justify their position. The fact is that their wants as children were never met, so they learned to KILL those wants to avoid the disappointment.
This is absolutely true and applies to both sexes. Last week my bf hung up the phone from one of his very trying conversations with his mother and said plainly, "It's no wonder I don't trust women!" Having met his mom, I agree. Counseling may or may not be the answer. We're in counseling, and the counselor told me last week that people who don't trust the opposite sex have a very hard time with sex. She said this may not be fixable and that I needed to consider that if sex is a deal-breaker, I might need to find someone else.
It's been a couple of days now since your W went off on you. You might want to try the following:
"Honey, the other night you got really mad at me while we were watching TV. I'm sorry if I offended you, and I'll try not to do it again."
What does this accomplish? She knows she overreacted and she kind of hopes you'll sweep it under the rug. By mentioning it now, she'll know that it really did bother you and that you are paying attention to her. ALL her rants are designed to get your attention.
Thanks for the pointer, Paul, but the Vic Secret incident actually happened months ago. I think I resurrected it to provide an example of something, but now I don't recall what that was.
However, when I do things like what you suggested, it doesn't usually end things on a nice note. She will not accept an apology for offending her. She wants an apology for my innermost thoughts and the way they offend womankind. And she usually also wants an apology for all the ills that have been visited on women by men for all history . . . and prehistory. Oh, and she wants my gonads on a plate, seared in a white-wine sauce. (You know, Gonads, the Other white meat.)
But your idea, to apologize for offending her, is something which would work most of the time with most of the people.
I understand that I want to let her know that she got my attention, but the sizzling testicles are usually enough.
As a Prof. she nurtured, directed and controlled the students. In her practice there might be some of that but not to the extent of say 90 kids/young adults.
She had a whole mess of ppl doing exactly what she said or they'd fail. Life in Accademia is a bit different from "main stream". You think she enjoyed the charm of the university?
Might there be a teaching position close by, maybe a night school class to help satisfy some of the missed attention/control/interaction?
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I think you gave me the very best compliment I've ever had on this board: you called me HD!! Whoo-whoo!!! Actually, I came to this board as an LD. And while I now consider myself to be a reformed LD, I would never go so far as to claim myself to be HD.
Hairpup:
Mu, pronounced as the sound a cow makes, (interesting that you should bring that up) is what Buddhist's call a Koan. The word Koan or Ko-an comes from the Chinese term kung-an, literally "public notice," or "public announcement."
Basically a Koan is a paradoxical utterance used in Zen as a center of concentration in meditation. The paradoxical nature of Koans is essential to their function: The attempt to break down conceptual thought. Koans are constructed so that they do not succumb to conceptual analysis and thereby require a more direct response from the meditator, or in this case, your wife.
When we practice Koans, we often only deal with what is immediately provided by the translator (your wife). We rarely investigate other sources and dig below the surface. And there is always a lot more to a Koan, or any barrier for that matter, than first meets the eye.
Often your wife puts you in a position, through her questions or statments, which leaves you in a damed-if-I-do, damed-if-I-don't situation. You cannot respond either yes or no, agree or disagree. Quite the paradox for you. So rather than wade into the morass, you simply utter "Mu."
To answer Mu is to answer neither yes-nor-no. The reason the answer is neither yes-nor-no is because your wife's questions/statements set up misleading categories for you, similar to Avyaakata in the sutras, which do not apply to the situation being examined (for example, when your wife said to you, "I didn't know you were a man who would divorce over sex" -- this has nothing to do with the issue, and she well knows it.)
The difficulty with answering this question in any way for you is that the question itself sets up a misleading picture of things. The question implies the existence of something that has never taken place and any response only seems to place you more firmly within that view of things. The correct response is to question the question: To ask for an alternative way of seeing the issue. This is also implicit in the notion Mu. To answer a question/statement with Mu (to say neither yes-nor-no, to neither agree nor disagree) is to deny the validity of the question/statement itself.
Mu is a call for the question/statement to be unasked/unuttered. It is a call to look beyond the limiting conceptualisation implicit in the question/statement (in this case, her view that you are merely a sexual deviant trying to objectify her and exert power and control over her through sex). In fact, Mu is more extreme than this: It is a call to move beyond the limiting perspective of conceptualisation itself to a direct contact with ultimate reality via pre-reflective awareness. (Meaning, it is a call to examine the real issue, not the illusion(s) created within her mind).
Once upon a time in a land far away lived a poor uneducated, mentally challenged man who tended a herd of cows for his master. He happened upon a meditation teacher and was very taken with his calm, loving, gentle and happy nature. He decided he wanted to know that experience first hand. And so he went to the teacher and begged him to teach him a way to achieve the inner peace that radiated so obviously from the teacher. The teacher accepted him as his student but quickly found that the man couldn’t understand any of the philosophical points he was making and as a matter of fact couldn’t even remember the Mantra "OM" when he tried to teach it to him.
The teacher lovingly said, "My oh my, you don’t seem to know anything at all, can’t be taught, and can’t remember anything. You are devoted and sincere in your desire to gain happiness though, so I will try to help you. My son, what do you know?"
The man said, "Oh great teacher, the only thing I know is cows. All my life I’ve spent caring for cows, making sure they graze, are milked, and are kept clean. Yes, for me, everything is cows."
"Well, that’s alright," said the teacher, "then you know what sound the cows make."
"Oh yes," said the man, "they say moo."
"Very well then," said the teacher, "for you, moo will be your mantra. All you have to do is say moo continually and you will reach freedom from suffering and know real bliss."
So the man chanted moo, moo, moo when he took the cows out to graze and he chanted moo, moo, moo when he milked them, and he chanted moo, moo, moo when he cleaned them. He chanted moo all the time and very soon merged with that vibration, which is Om backward, and reached the highest heights of joyous understanding and lived happily ever after.
So there you go, HD. You can now join your daughter in her Moo Mantra, and together reach the highest heights of joyous understanding, and live happily ever after.
Now you have to memorize all of this (which I know you can do cause you're a smart lawyerly type), and when the moment is ripe, you will utter "Mu" to your wife, explain your Buddhist knowledge when she challenges you... and then watch what happens.
Corri: Wow. First, I was going to correct Lou when he called you HD, but I figured you'd set him straight. And you did.
Second, I think I get Mu. It's kind of like when the lawyer, on cross-examining the husband being sued for divorce, asks, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" In philosophy, it's called a complex question. In the legal arena, the proper objection would be, "Assumes a fact not in evidence." But Mu is even deeper than that, as I understand your explanation of it. If one were to say, in answer to the "beating your wife" question, "Mu," you would be asking the lawyer not only to "un-utter" the question, but, additionally, to search inside himself for the underlying reasons why he would even consider asking such a question. As usual, my analogy is breaking down (where's JJ when you need her?), but, in my wife's case, saying "mu" to her is asking her to consider why she would even say such a thing as "I didn't know you were the type of guy who blah blah blah."
Mu is asking her to search inside herself for the answers to why she seems intent on pushing away a man who loves her and who has endured her constant testing of him. Why her fear of abandonment has turned into an expectation of abandonment. Why her fear of intimacy has helped her construct obstacles for those who love her.
Mu, indeed.
Thanks for the explanation, oh long-winded one.
Hairdog, who can't wait to turn around, say "mu" to his wife, grab his crotch, and say, "meditate on this, oh castrator of horses!"
Why indeed. Why does she allow her fear of abandonment to potentially create abandonment? Why does she create a situation that removes the closeness that is necessary to intimacy? - Why does my H do the same?
What I would give to be a fly on the wall when you mu in her general direcion.
Inferential leaps this morning: 1. Thinking about the last time I got her something from Victoria's Secret, and her telling me that VS products are for "younger and thinner women." which led to . . . 2. Thinking about getting her something from Lane Bryant (guys, that's for "plus-sized" women), which led to . . . 3. Thinking about what to get her, which led to . . . 4. The obvious, given today's discussion:
A mu-mu.
Hairdog - who's so glad he has a government job that allows him to leap about inferentially.
