love, sex & dissociation

Ravenscroft said:
Here's my take thus far on dissociation:

The ability to separate emotional feelings from what has the potential of providing extraordinarily deep emotional/spiritual/intellectual connexion -- that is to say SEX or even SWEATY ANIMALISTIC F*CKING -- is in no wise bad.

The inability to connect them is bad.

I would also offer that the inability to disconnect them is bad.
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Since so many times I've been with others who, it would seem, had the inability to connect them (been with in many of the senses of that phrase), it's easier for me to begin there, with the honoring of this salient observation. That the inability to "disconnect" them is bad is something less obvious to me, perhaps having in part to do with the callous way my partners in "the act" have sometimes suddenly disappear without a word or hint as to why.

One thing which has come out over and over in these fora is the observation that we're all different in various, numerous ways. Perhaps some of us are simply different in this particular way: that we find it odd that someone can make love with us and then disappear shortly thereafter without so much as some words about the wondrous experience we had shared -- as if it were nothing interesting or engaging or soulful or whatever. As if silence were as good a way of parting as a few words, a touch, some kind connection....

In more ways than I had ever figured before, I'm coming to see the human Earthlings as many rather than a single species in this way. Not all of these species understand one another at all.
 
Ravenscroft said:
Magdlyn said:
The idea of romantic love as a cultural ideal is really rather new. Marriages, until quite recently, like the last 100-200 years, has been about clan/tribal/nation-state/political connections. The idea of a marriage commitment based on "love" is new, and the idea that a monogamous marriage should remain hot and sexual for 50+ years is unrealistic and a new, radical and ultimately unworkable idea (as shown by the divorce rate).
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Y'know, aside from me, you're like the first person in 20+ years I've seen dare state this in public?
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Really? I thought this is common knowledge. I've seen it stated in self-help books, history books, historical novels, blogs, websites, textbooks, workshops on relationships many, many, many times since I started looking at this stuff over 30 years ago... Perhaps since we women are the ones who were always treated like men's property, we are more aware of these facts and you just never noticed it being discussed before?

The Renaissance is when the idea that relationships could be about romantic love first became idealized (glaringly so in the fictionalized retelling of the story of Guinevere and Lancelot - he wasn't her lover, he was actually her protector). But in practice, marriages were still business transactions until very recently. Have you ever watched Downton Abbey, set in the period between the sinking of the Titanic and the mid-1920s? Even though people are falling in love left and right in that show, by and large, many marriages are about the financial transactions and preservation or advancement of social status. I think it's pretty well-known that the premise of marriage being about LOVE, and the realizations that women aren't frigid and can be highly sexual and sexually turned on well past menopause, are very, very recent phenomena.

Hell, even in the 1970s, divorced or single women could not get credit cards in their names, and we were all told that women shouldn't lift heavy weights or go jogging because it was thought to be unhealthy for us. So, yeah, relationships on our own terms? A very recent concept!!!
 
An interesting story of a one-night stand that is profound in its tenderness is told in the 1971 film, "Summer of '42." It'll always be one my favorite shows.
 
Weitzman's book has some amazing horror stories about how ghastly marriage laws were, well into the 1970s. It's a Must Read recommendation, & has ben since 1980, yet very few polyfolk have ever touched it.
nycindie said:
I thought this is common knowledge.
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Clearly, we can agree that our experiences are vastly different.;)

Since I started writing stuff down back around 1982, one recurring theme has been essentially that Romantic thinking is a major stumbling block to any sane relationship, & a huge structural weakness to long-term nonmonogamy.

That's why I get a bit squicky when someone starts waxing eloquent about how wonderful their NRE is, & generally try to walk politely away until their endorphin levels decline. I've likened NRE to drinking two pots of Kenya AA coffee (my one drug of choice): it's a great experience, but then I have to deal with being totally useless until it flushes out of my system.:D

There was a paper (mentioned in OMNI) about that time that draws parallels between what we call NRE & a person's first exposures to cocaine (via insufflation), & mentioned a few cases of people who were clearly addicted to "falling in love": they'd throw away jobs & spend out their bank accounts, & when the high ran down they'd throw away their "lover" & go through a sort of rehab (kiss up to friends & family, find new job, rebuild savings, maybe get new apartment or new pets) in order to go through the cycle again. While extreme, in polyamory I've seen plenty of missteps made because of "soul mate" & "life partner" nonsense that was used to bludgeon common sense.

There's plenty of polyfolk who think I'm a terrible person for even thinking such things -- "but... but... poly is ALL ABOUT the LOVE!!!"
 
Ravenscroft said:
Since I started writing stuff down back around 1982, one recurring theme has been essentially that Romantic thinking is a major stumbling block to any sane relationship, & a huge structural weakness to long-term nonmonogamy.
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Is it romantic thinking that's the problem, or romantic feeling -- or are these two so interwoven that it hardly matters?

What are the particular thoughts or beliefs which constitute "romantic thinking"?
 
Ravenscroft said:
. . . Romantic thinking is a major stumbling block to any sane relationship . . ..

There's plenty of polyfolk who think I'm a terrible person for even thinking such things -- "but... but... poly is ALL ABOUT the LOVE!!!"
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Yeah, and a lot of folks don't even know that love and romance are two separate things. It's also amazing to me how often we see people come here looking for help because they are in extremely unhealthy, toxic, and even abusive relationships but they stay because they think poly means they have to put up with shit they would never endure if they were in a monogamous relationship, but mostly because it's "But I love him/her so much!"

I wish someone would give me a dollar for every time I wrote here that love is not enough to make a relationship work, and be healthy and satisfying.
 
Why do "Western culture" and "the US" always get blamed for whatever concerning behavior? In what culture is sex always a long, slow heartfelt gaze into one another's soul? In almost all "cultures" past and present, physically focused fucking is far more prevalent than sharing and caring making love. It's true that romance as a notion is a historically new idea and certainly a very recent expectation in relationships and even more recently in marriage. We covered this thoroughly in my Women's History courses back in the 80s and I figured this was fairly common knowledge to most who have some liberal arts education. That we, as humankind, have evolved to include "heart connection" in our expectations of relationships is a great miracle of the ages. This is a sea change in the history of human experience.

As with anything you want more of, don't bemoan that it doesn't happen more often - look for the evidence of it and you'll find more and more and more.
 
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FallenAngelina said:
Why do "Western culture" and "the US" always get blamed for whatever concerning behavior?
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Oh, don't go all Republican on me. :D Such "blaming" statements are often an attempt to avoid repeating "in my limited experience & understanding in the midst of a relatively brief life" or similar. As I wrote elsewhere, I can barely speak on behalf of rural northern Midwesterners born in the middle of the 20th century, much less my ancestors OR decendants.:cool:

Unistaters glibly speak on behalf of "America" all the time, yet how can any sane person pretend that such rants automatically include Canadians, much less anyone Mexico or southward?
FallenAngelina said:
I figured this was fairly common knowledge to most who have some liberal arts education.
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Most people don't graduate from college.

Of those that achieve Associate ("some liberal arts"), there's very little room in two years for noncore electives like Women's Studies.

I'm one of the very few males in the 1980s who took WS classes at the U. This never came up.

It seems unlikely that people pursuing a technical or professional degree -- engineering, prelaw, premed -- would find WS a high priority.

IME, on matters of the heart/groin, people are more likely to quote their minister/priest than their professor. Clergymen are, of course, EXPERTS on Romance...

I figure "common knowledge" is a lot like "common sense" which, as RA Wilson put it, "is what tells you the world is flat.":)
FallenAngelina said:
As with anything you want more of, don't bemoan that it doesn't happen more often - look for the evidence of it and you'll find more and more and more.
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Counterintuitive at best, right? "It's all over the place -- you just have to dig an open-pit mine & do a little blasting!! and then figure out how to separate it from the dross!!"

:D
 
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Ravenscroft said:
.... Such "blaming" statements are often an attempt to avoid repeating "in my limited experience & understanding in the midst of a relatively brief life" or similar.
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Good point.

I have no significant direct experience of other cultures than the "American" one. So I speak of what I know directly. What I hear (or read) about other cultures is very indirect.
 
As with anything you want more of, don't bemoan that it doesn't happen more often - look for the evidence of it and you'll find more and more and more.

Counterintuitive at best, right? "It's all over the place -- you just have to dig an open-pit mine & do a little blasting!! and then figure out how to separate it from the dross!!"
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Yeah, nah. (it's a Kiwi thing, google it)

You don't need an open pit mine, you need to recognise the power of your mind. That which you focus your attention on will be your reality. The stories you tell yourself are then reinforced because you see what you expect to see. Perception becomes/is your reality. Not long ago someone mentioned the power of the mind and the placement of a negative suggestion by a skilled mentalist. I suspect the reference was to the "don't push that button or you will kill that cute little kitten" demonstration. Well, surprise, the vast majority of human beings have the ability to exert that type of control over our own minds. Actually, we often buy into the 'don't' statements without realising it... so much so that modern "self-help" notions like gratitude journals or positive affirmations are treated as bunk (ooo, dare I suggest that it's because that since Tony Robbins, they have actually been owned more by women...! Oh no she didn't.)

So, yeah, I'm with FA on this one, that which we look for we find WITHOUT the need to actually look very hard (if we bother to put a little practise into it)
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Evie said:
So, yeah, I'm with FA on this one, that which we look for we find WITHOUT the need to actually look very hard (if we bother to put a little practise into it)
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Me too - to a point. I do have some problems with the notion that people as individuals must think good stuff and look at the world in a particular way to solve problems.

That said - the idea that thoughts and previous experiences shape what we see in the world is not new and has not really come from self help books.

Scientific enquiry is based on it. Experiments to test new medicines have to be set up so that nobody involved knows who is getting what medicine. In fact, they must even be set up so that the allocating of patients to test or control group is random. Otherwise, the beliefs of the tester about the medication will affect the results. The tester will see what they believe is true regardless of what the actual results are. So, to test if one medicine is better than another, needs an elaborate process to make sure that anybody involved in the testing doesn't know what they are giving to who.
 
InfinitePossibility said:
Scientific enquiry is based on it. Experiments to test new medicines have to be set up so that nobody involved knows who is getting what medicine. In fact, they must even be set up so that the allocating of patients to test or control group is random. Otherwise, the beliefs of the tester about the medication will affect the results. The tester will see what they believe is true regardless of what the actual results are. So, to test if one medicine is better than another, needs an elaborate process to make sure that anybody involved in the testing doesn't know what they are giving to who.
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Tangent:

And yet much, perhaps most, science is now corrupted by big money interests. One thing many don't know about "science" is that a large corporation with a vested interest in the "outcome" of research results frequently hires "researchers" (and pays for the research), but also requires the "researcher" to sign a non-disclosure agreement (See below link) in which the researcher is legally bound not to "disclose" the results of the research if the corporate interest who funded the "study" doesn't like the results. A consequence of the pervasiveness of this approach to "science" is that thousands, perhaps millions, of industry-unfriendly study results ("papers") are buried unpublished in corporate vaults while an equal number of corporate-funded papers are published in esteemed "scientific" journals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement
 
Evie said:
I suspect the reference was to the "don't push that button or you will kill that cute little kitten" demonstration.
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If that entire video was not staged, with the test subject the equivalent of a paid actress, it was a very carefully selected test subject -- a woman with little or no self-awareness, intelligence, curiosity, sense of self..., a bit of fluff of a person.

The whole thing had as much appearance of authenticity as a cheap slight of hand magic trick or a "reality tv" program.
 
River said:
If that entire video was not staged, with the test subject the equivalent of a paid actress, it was a very carefully selected test subject
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Yes, that was one of the Derren Brown stunts I was thinking of. Your psychic skills are MUCH better than mine to turn back Time & know what actually happened. :rolleyes:

However, it is NOT the only one by far, & plenty of mentalists have made similar demonstrations... which could be readily determined by anyone NOT hell-bent on denial. ;) Look into Penn & Teller, for instance.

Many magic tricks take advantage of what's called "forcing," which is in multiple veins, for instance (1) shaping the subject toward a limited choice set that is further reduced, (2) faking "free choice" entirely, (3) setting up multiple "successes" so the subject cannot choose wrongly.

Brown is not my favorite, but he's the easiest to find at the moment. Here he is forcing Simon Pegg to "want" a bicycle -- try to keep track of all the cues!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMropN6ft4Y

Maybe people really ARE just that gullible, right? But how is "people" thus defined? & how is it that you/we are somehow better than the "people" who are such gulls & suckers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOdYgEDSm7E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q2KGGMc1EM

As for "if you want it, you should just LOOK harder!!"... well, here's Brown again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy75GtKsOAw
That which you focus your attention on will be your reality.
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My take: if you really expect to find some vague ectoplasm "all around" us everywhere, you run a clear risk of brainwashing yourself into belief that it not only exists, but that you have apprehended it, & furthermore you benefit from that possession.

I don't clap for Tinkerbell, so if she's dead, I guess it's MY fault, eh? :D But nobody's proven that my clapping WOULD fix Tink... & come to think of it, there's no proof she's even real. Just the expectation she's HERE.

Certainly, "scientific exploration" DOES NOT depend from deciding the answer you NEED to find, then manufacturing a Goldbergian scheme to connect that delusion to objective reality. Sure, there's times for "fake it 'til you make it," & Science has plenty of intuitive leaps (which are later objectively proven rather than subsequently accepted on mere Faith), but only a nutball would pretend that a confidence scheme is identical to the reality it attempts to pantomime. Merely being "logical" (structured) doesn't make it sane.

In general, people are not very good at differentiating what they ask for from what they want from what they need, & are regularly dismayed when their "solutions" are useless.

I've picked up plenty of New Agey stuff. Long ago, I found that wanting something is just a milder version of needing, all of which generally attracts the wrong (for lack of a better term) energies. Meanwhile, recognizing a lack that would lead toward want/need, I learned how to (well, sometimes, at least) leave myself open to something that would satisfy that lack. Deciding in advance the answers I was willing to accept blinded me to available solutions.
 
Ravenscroft said:
Brown is not my favorite, but he's the easiest to find at the moment. Here he is forcing Simon Pegg to "want" a bicycle -- try to keep track of all the cues!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMropN6ft4Y
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I saw cues like red dots on the package. Saw no cues about a BMX bike. Maybe I'm sleeping? I doubt it. I think this Brown fella is a complete hoaxer fraud. Must have paid off the two bit actor.
 
Ravenscroft said:
Maybe people really ARE just that gullible, right? But how is "people" thus defined? & how is it that you/we are somehow better than the "people" who are such gulls & suckers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOdYgEDSm7E
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Are we actually being asked to believe that that guy who gave his wallet to the schmuck was not being paid as an actor? There is NO F**ng way I'd hand my wallet to a stranger in a situation such as that. I'd have asked, "my what?... My WHAT? ... you want my what?"
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JM_WnsR08U#t=190.581

okay, okay, ... if this particular schmuck is not a paid actor, he's exhibit A for why and how The Banksters pulled off the biggest bank heist in history around 2007-8.

it also explains how Donald Trump is leading the Republican Party side of the presidential race in the USA at the moment.

The premise is, of course, that most everyone is already at least half asleep, and the slightest distraction is more than enough to take their minds, their loved ones, their wallets, and anything else some huckster would take from them.

Obviously, this means we'll all be dying momentarily in a nuclear blast -- but, hey, so what? Right? :p
 
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