I gotta tell you guys...besides DBing...flylady is the most influential in my life right now..........it's toooooooo cool .... and making me happy..............so thanks to you guys for recommending it!
sg Love is PATIENT, love is KIND, LOVE never fails / DB since 2001
Yeah, FlyLady is great. She is on my permanent lifetime bookshelf along with "The Tighwad Gazette" and "Making a Living Without a Job" and , of course, "SSM"(though I do have the dustjacket turned inside out on that one- LOL).
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Well Kids, I'm sure you'll be happy to hear that this weekend I had pretty much the best sex of my life. I think this is because I have almost completely detached my "drive" from my "sex". It's like my sexuality used to be a river and now it is a lake. Still, huge (LOL) but passive rather than active. Somehow, I connect this with the feeling of wanting to be "in love". When I felt "in love" with my H, it was like the river of my sexuality was rushing towards him. When he hurt me and I no longer wanted to be "in love" with him, my sexuality was like a river desperately searching for a new channel or direction in which to run. This also has something to do with "differentiation". Because I no longer want to be "in love" with anyone, it is easier both to stay in or to leave my relationship.
Okay, enough of the analysis and analogies and back to real-life anecdote. My H and I had some absolutely fantastic sex. Afterwards, we were flipping around the channels on the TV. We tuned into "Good Fellas" during the scene in which Karen (the mob wife) is yelling "Whore, whore" into the intercom at the apartment of her H's mistress. In the next scene, Karen is straddled on her H holding a gun to his head. The voice over lets us know she is thinking "I was going to kill him, but I was still very attracted to him. Why should I let her have him?". My H turned to me and said "Did you ever feel that way about me?". Thankfully, I was able to honestly reply "No, not quite." as if to say "Don't flatter yourself" because I was never that psycho-fused. Then we both joked about how it probably had something to do with the lack of cocaine and handguns in our living environment. The point of this anecdote is that clearly my H was linking the hot sex we had just had with my current lack of fusion. The less that I want to have sex with him because I am viewing him as "my man", the more he wants to have sex with me.
I will continue this confusing muddle of a post with another analogy. It's like I used to think of my H as a poorly trained dog who refused to do tricks, growled when I petted him and cr*pped on my floor but I loved him because he was mine. I felt like my only two choices were to keep trying harder to train him with either positive or negative motivation or to just give up and drop him off at the pound. The solution that didn't occur to me was to simply install a very big dog door. If you give a dog a dog door and leave him free to roam the whole wide world and that dog chooses to walk back in the dog door and cr*p on your floor.....well, you get my point, it just doesn't happen.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
I once tried to explain my notion of the difference between being HD or LD by comparing and contrasting my thoughts with those of MrsNOP. She had posted that in her attempt to be more sexual she was having the positive thought "this man really loves me" as she approached orgasm. I replied that I was different because as a HDW I was more likely to be having the thought "I really love this man" as I approached orgasm. Now I think that MrsNOP and I were more alike than different in our thinking because we were both working towards a sexual ideal that was two people expressing their love for the other through sex, we were just approaching it from different directions. Now I think differently. I think that the best sex happens not when I am thinking "I really love him" or "He really loves me" but rather when I am thinking "I really love myself" because then I have nothing to prove and nobody to please but myself and consequently the same is true for my husband.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Quote: I think that the best sex happens not when I am thinking "I really love him" or "He really loves me" but rather when I am thinking "I really love myself" because then I have nothing to prove and nobody to please but myself and consequently the same is true for my husband.
I think that is an awesome realization. Truly. I can't think of a better place to be, than in that zone of awareness!
Quote: I think that is an awesome realization. Truly. I can't think of a better place to be, than in that zone of awareness!
Yeah, but how do you stay there? I wish I could brand this zone of awareness onto my brain permanently. I think my H really did me a favor with his recent "I hate my job." fit because it was so pure in its "selfishness" that it set me free to be equally "selfish" after my initial reaction which was a frenzied fit of fusion in the crucible as documented on this BB-LOL. I think we really burnt down the house this time and yet here we are still standing.
I could use the simplistic example of body image to explain how I came to be able to think "I love myself" during sex. Let's say I have lumpy thighs. I could think "I hate my thighs therefore I hate myself and anyone who loves me is a loser." and fall into a pit of self-loathing or I could think "I love myself therefore I love my thighs and anyone else who doesn't love them as part of me is an *sshole" and balance myself on a precarious cliff of self-delusion. Now I think "I love myself even though I have some damn unlovably lumpy thighs. Anybody who loves me must be doing it in spite of those thighs.". Therefore, if my H were to say to me "I don't want to have sex with you because you have lumpy thighs.", my response would be along the lines of "Well, I don't blame you. They are pretty lumpy. I guess I could move "work on thighs" up to number 7 from number 19 on my Lifetime To Do list, though I should inform you in all honesty that it will never make it to number 1 or even 6 because there are quite a few things that are more important to me, so you should make any decision about whether you would care to continue with me as your monogamous sexual partner based on that info. I, of course, will make my own decisions based on my own selfish preferences.".
I used the example of body image but any personal attribute you could think of would apply. We are limited in both our ability and our willingness to change who we are and part of who we are will always be fairly sucky because none of us are perfect but we have to love ourselves and we do love others despite this fact. If you ask your partner "Does this dress make me look fat?" or "Do you love me?" or "Did you like having sex with me?" or "Will you stay with me forever?" you need to realize that the answer that you get does nothing whatsoever to change the state of the world or your relative safety in it.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
I don't know that you do... I'd say people come in and out of the state... but the very best news is... now you know what it feels like to be in it, and so it is always a marker for yourself. You know when you are there, but more importantly, you know when you AREN'T there, and can work to get back to that place.
Analogy time. When I first started playing golf... it ALL felt off, and certainly not natural. As I progressed as a player, sometimes I'd be ON and sometimes (more times that not) be OFF, but I had no idea why. With practice and lessons, I learned better techniques, etc., and stayed with a more consistent swing for longer and longer periods (though I wouldn't say I was ripping the course up with great scores. But I digress). Now, when I lose my swing or my game, I have two or three things I always go back to in order to self-regulate... if that doesn't work, I go get a lesson. Usually the thing it takes to fix my swing are one or two minor things I didn't realize I was doing.
And quite honestly, nothing beats practice. Nothing.
So... you've learned one or two very crucial lessons here about yourself. I'd write it down, stick it in a drawer, and when you feel yourself losing it, or going back to old patters on behavior, pull out your sheet to remind yourself of the mental attitudes you must possess in order to be in the 'state of being' you so prefer.
Easier said than done, I know, but we all know that if you want to lose weight and get in shape, the only way to do that is through diet and exercise. Now what kind of diet and exercise you do will be tailored to what works best for you. The key to any of it is self-discipline and self-love. Of which you have both.
Quote: I don't know that you do... I'd say people come in and out of the state... but the very best news is... now you know what it feels like to be in it, and so it is always a marker for yourself. You know when you are there, but more importantly, you know when you AREN'T there, and can work to get back to that place.
That part about knowing when you AREN'T there is very true. For instance, I would know that I wasn't there if I was feeling jealous, possessive, insecure, controlled or out of control. Who was that nucking futs woman who was weeping with jealous misery because her H was jacking off to porn rather than f*cking her? Remember her- the one who wanted to be with the man who would sign a contract guaranteeing that he would never turn her down when she asked for sex? Yikes! The saying "Be careful what you wish for girl or you will surely get it" certainly applies to that thought.
I am so happy to be un-"fused" that I even had the thought that maybe I should give my H a "free pass" to have sex with other women since it would be fun for him now that he has more sexual confidence (and not because I would be hoping that he would return the favor-LOL). However, my H might still be too fused to want to hear the equivalent of "I don't care if you sleep with other women" and there would be the fusion state of the other women to consider etc.etc. so it's probably not a good idea.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
I feel like I should amend my previous post since it might make me seem like I've gone nucking futs in the other direction-LOL. I don't actually want to suggest to my H that he have sex with other women. It's just that I'm happy that the thought of such a thing doesn't effect me in the way that it used to. I can visualize my H having sex with another woman and not experience some horrible angry jealous possessive self and other loathing thoughts.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
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