Libido and Attraction

I’m struggling today with my sexuality. Not in the sense that I don’t know which way I want to swing, so to speak. It’s not as if I would want to fuck the first person who wanted me because I wouldn’t. In actual fact, I am actually struggling with my libido today. I’m actually beginning to wonder whether I have any, which in itself is rather ironic because at the same time as my libido is depressed, I am also desperate for a fuck, but a fuck from a particular source.

Blimey, that sounds somewhat cold and calculated. It’s not meant that way. There’s far more to it than that. I don’t just want the fuck. I want everything that goes with it.
I just find it strange that my libido can be so low and yet my need and desire for one person be so exaggerated.
Maybe there’s hope for the old libido yet. Or is that a completely separate issue?

In considering this, I am wondering how my libido has functioned in the past. I’m not sure that I have been very conscious of it sometimes. Certainly my youthful sexual experiences were somewhat lacking compared with the excitement and stimulation that I now have, but they were not all hopeless losses, and clearly my own libido had some role to play in whether the whole experience was enjoyable or not.
But I am interested in this issue about libido and attraction. I think there is a strong possibility that libido and attraction, particularly for one person, may not even be working on the same plane.

Libido is very much to do with the physical. Attraction is often far more to do with the mind, with an individual passion although physical appearance also has something to do with it. The attraction for another can stimulate and drive the libido. Libido can possibly drive attraction if you are desperate for a fuck. I think there’s that idea about rose tinted glasses, or alcohol induced vision.
Anyway, they are clearly not the same thing and yet sometimes they are mistakenly considered as such.

So how well is my libido functioning at present? Will it only be rejuvenated by one source, one person or should I get onto some porn sites and see whether there’s some dormant libido left in the old girl. Trouble is, I’m not sure I can be bothered.
As for attraction, well, I’m still attracted!

And how well has my libido functioned in the past?
In order for me to clarify in my own mind this separation between libido and attraction, I feel as though I need to write. Nothing like it really for trying to organise your thoughts, even if you don’t come to any particular conclusion at the end of it.
So I thought I would write a story about my libido and attraction from the past, to see if the two were, in that time, inextricably linked or whether one drove the other and how that happened.

There will be a series of short stories, based on my sexual experiences, written both as a journey into this libido/attraction thought but also to see how my sexuality grew and how it also journeyed into barren years of seeming nothingness.
Anyone who hasn’t experienced that cannot really understand what it was like, and what it is like now to experience something of the wonderment of sex.

The stories are fictional, based on some facts. Names, places, situations may have changed but essentially they are true people and I am going to take the role of the female in all of them.
As they are yet unwritten, I do not know what is going to spill out, but the thoughts of the women in the stories will essentially be mine, either as a regression or from the viewpoint of a woman who knows and understands and feels and thinks so positively about the need and desire for sexual fulfilment.

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Stories tomorrow……

International Women's Day

Today is International Women’s Day.

Should we have an International Women’s Day? Is it something that we should do or does it reiterate the division of gender and further mark the huge difference between men and women? Does it even perpetuate the gender divide?

In some ways, I’m not sure that I do want an International Women’s Day and before I have to cope with the wrath of a million feminists (I should be so lucky that there are that many readers), there is a reason for such a statement.
I wish that there was no need to highlight the plight of women across the world. I wish that there had never been a time when women felt subservient to men. I wish that people would value women for being women and men for being men, and that neither gender was seen as superior in any way other than the obvious ones of physicality that, for all Billy Jean and Martina’s efforts, is clearly insurmountable.

However hard we try and pretend the opposite, men and women are different, and I think we ought to celebrate the fact. Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. Though I think there are some men that are far more akin to Venus and many woman who truly have greater warrior inclinations. Nothing is quite that simple.

I wish it would not be seen as politically incorrect to suggest an International Men’s Day because actually, I would quite like to celebrate the joy of men. I like men. I like having sex with men. I like their sexual organs. I like feasting my eyes on them and feeling the effects of such voyeurism on and in my own body.
I like talking to men. I like being hugged by men. I like their manliness all around me. I like the fact that they are essentially quite different from me.

I wish that International Women’s Day could be daring and challenge our view on female sexuality. Maybe this is happening somewhere in the world.

Mainly though, I am glad that there is an International Women’s Day. Even if we were in a world of total equality, which we are clearly not, then there should still be such a day to celebrate womanhood and to remind us of the struggles that our ancestors had in being recognized and worthy civilians, and support those women who still struggle for recognition around the world today.
An election is looming and I still get stupidly annoyed by women who do not exercise their right to vote. It is a privilege that was not there for our predecessors, however clichéd it may sound.

Now, I know I am in danger of sounding flippant but I do want to return to the idea of female sexuality and International Women’s Day.
Surely this should be the absolute platform for standing up there and screaming very ardently and passionately that there is still far too much to do in relation to the acceptance of female sexuality and the right to be a sexual being?

Women around the world are still being victimized, are still being abused for the very fact that they are women. That is an abhorrence and will always continue to be a central theme for International Women’s Day. However, there are other female causes that need a voice too, and there will always be a need for such advocation of women’s rights until there is acceptance of total equity.

So here are a few thoughts that I would like the organizers of International Women’s Day to consider in the future.

1. That there should be an absolute acceptance of the G-Spot – Can you really believe that in the 21st century there is still the debate about its existence. For all of those doubting Thomases or indeed Thomasina’s, I would happily demonstrate this to you if necessary.

2. Along the same lines, there should be an absolute acceptance of female orgasms. They are not a myth. We are not all blessed with the acting capabilities of Meg Ryan and her ilk. Yes, we can be cunning enough to fake it if necessary but the female orgasm is a real, and fucking wonderful thing that should be an entitlement for all women. Can you imagine a world without the male orgasm or an acceptance of its functionality and purpose? No, of course not. Without male orgasms we wouldn’t actually be here. So let’s see the emotional and spiritual needs of the female orgasm with the same importance and vitality of the functional and pragmatic purpose of the male one. Just because one has practicality for existence doesn’t negate the importance of the other.

3. More on female sexuality. There should be an absolute acceptance of the female orgasm. I am fed up of apologizing for my juiciness. Luckily I don’t have to apologise to my lover. He rather likes being soaked in my juices. He loves to see my fuck juices running all over his balls and soaking the sheets beneath. He loves to celebrate my juiciness by rubbing it all over the two of us. Even if it was urine, he would not be squeamish or stupid about it but the simple fact of the matter is that it is not urine. It is clearly something entirely different. When I said that I want to stop apologizing for my juiciness I meant generally. There are still far too many people who think I am pissing over my lover and this has got to stop. This myth around female ejaculation has to stop NOW!

4. There should be an absolute acceptance that women have as much right to think about sex as much as a man does. There is the notion that sex is still a man’s domain. They are the ones who are allowed to have naughty thoughts. They are the ones that can watch porn without anyone really batting an eyelid these days. They are the ones who can be overtly sexual without having a tirade of vulgar names associated with their obvious sexuality. You don’t get men being called tarts or whores or hussies or anything like it. Sexual revolution is required before these words are eradicated in such derogatory terms.

5. And talking of terminology, there should be an absolute acceptance of words like vulva and labia. These are beautiful parts of the body. They are vital to my being. They’re pretty vital to my lover’s being as he adores to look at them, stroke them, lick them, separate them so that he can slide gloriously into me. Can you imagine if we did not have appropriate words for the male organs? Can you imagine not having a functional word such as penis or willy let alone the coarser version of cock or dick? Vagina – I mean, vagina doesn’t even relate to the areas of the body that we are trying to talk about for goodness sake

6. And whilst we are on the subject of body parts, there should be an absolute acceptance of the functionality of the clitoris. Let’s stop shying away from its existence. Let’s remind people that it is there and it requires stimulation. And if it is stimulated properly, it can give the most intense pleasure known to woman. Stop pretending that is not important just because it has no significance for procreation. Sex is not just about procreation? When was the last time you had sex to procreate?

7. There should be an absolute acceptance that female masturbation is as important and as natural as male wanking. Just because our bodily parts are shoved inside rather than on show does not mean they are less significant. They can still be aroused. You just have to go a little deeper into yourself to do so. The effect of masturbation is the same for women as it is for men, including the ejaculation and climax. I adore to feel myself to orgasm, especially if I am being encouraged to do so by an adorable man sitting there with his cock in hand watching me do it. There’s very little that is more exciting.

8. There should be an absolute acceptance of sexual equality. By this I mean there should be an absolute understanding that there is equal desire, equal passion, equal need between the sexes.

I could go on for hours and hours.

Dear readers, please feel free to add to this pledge on International Women’s Day.
No flippancy intended.

I am completely convinced that until we get full acceptance and appreciation of these and many more absolutes, we will never have the type of gender equality that we are still fighting for.
Sexual equality, sexual understanding could be the key to the lock that we haven’t really tried yet.
It’s worth considering at the very least.

Serious thoughts on Infidelity

I am a whore, an adulteress, a hussy, an unfaithful tramp who has no qualms about cheating on her partner.
I am, what was the phrase?…… oh yes, a fucking cunt, shouted at me whilst he was indeed fucking my cunt.

I am a thoughtless, heartless, unfeeling disgrace.
I am an inconsiderate risk taker who does not really give a damn about anyone else but herself and her earthy need for a good seeing to.

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As I have said before in other pieces of writing on this subject, I don’t really consider myself to be any of the above, and it appears that I am not alone.

There was an excellent article in the newspaper yesterday, written by Polly Vernon on Infidelity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2010/mar/07/polly-vernon-infidelity-betrayal-help-relationships

The article reiterates the fact that as a species, we continue to be “attached” to the idea of monogamy whilst in reality, we find if difficult and in some cases impossible to actually adhere to this unfeasibly, unrealistic state.

I always find it interesting to read such articles for both personal and anthropological reasons.
Initially, I read such articles aiming to grab some kind of vindication for my own chosen lifestyle. There is a certain amount of comfort in knowing that I am not the only one who finds monogamy a complicated and unworkable concept. I read such articles and words bounce out of the pages that resonate absolutely.
As an amateur sociologist and a person who is interested in how society responds to sex, such articles take on another meaning too.

In essence, it is clear from these newspaper articles that there are a considerable amount of people out there who are not exactly forthcoming with the truth. There are ways of living to which we have not yet customized our minds to let alone actually living them.
There are also people living with the burden of guilt that clearly needs to be lifted so that they can live a fulfilled and purposeful life.
And sometimes I get quite angry about it all.

I’m not entirely sure how I am going to tackle this piece of writing so I think the best way is to concentrate on paraphrasing the article and making comments as I re-read through, similar to the previous posting.
I will be mixing both thoughts on what this means to me personally and what I feel it says about the sexual or the sexually unenlightened world in which we live.
Alternatively, I will just ramble on in my own sweet way and the reader will either bear with me or bog off!

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Apart from the ubiquitous mention of John Terry, Ashley Cole and Tiger Woods, the article kicks off with a range of scenarios of infidelity collected by the author.
1. There is the man who talks to his colleague via instant messaging in a suggestive and flirty manner
2. There is the woman who has reconnected with an old friend via Facebook and is deciding whether to meet up with her old flame after receiving an array of sexy emails
3. There is the man who got in touch with his ex partner, having found her on Twitter. She responded and the implication is that the conversation is a little fruity, despite the fact that she is pregnant by another man.
4. There is the woman who thinks that kissing is not a sign of unfaithfulness if both participants are in another relationship
5. There is a woman who thinks that infidelity is fine if it is with a famous person
6. There is a man who wants to leave his long-term partner because he has finally met his soul-mate. They haven’t had sex yet.
7. There is a man who has stopped having sex with his bit on the side but is still in a relationship that is “an intensely, emotional engagement” and conducted entirely by text
8. There is a woman who is having glorious sex with a younger man. This is not the first time she has had an affair (Hell, that bloody word again!)
9. There is the man who is actively looking for a mistress. He likes living in this way

All of the aforementioned people are in committed relationships of one sort or another. Some are married, some are not. All have a story to tell. Some would argue that only three of the people have actually been unfaithful. It is only the last three that have had penetrative sex. Others would say that each and every one of these characters has fallen off the monogamy wagon because they have either thought or indulged in some sexual activity, even if it is only via fingers bouncing over a keyboard.
(As the article says, there are far more ways of being unfaithful these days. A few years ago, Twitter and Facebook didn’t even exist! Consequently, though, there are more ways of being discovered too).

The nine scenarios are interesting in themselves, for although they cover some corners, they do not cover all.
How about some more?
• There’s the man who is in a deeply emotional relationship with one woman, whilst getting his sexual excitement from another.
• There’s the woman who remains faithful in body but has an incredibly sexualized fantasy world in her mind
• There’s the man who goes out every Friday with friends from work and usually finds someone to screw
• There’s the woman who has loved a man all her life, knowing that he is unattainable and has been waiting for the moment where she finally catches his eye. Her marriage means nothing compared to the desire to be with this long time love
• There’s the man who is deeply involved with a woman whom he loves but he is resolutely believes that he can have sex with other women without it taking anything away from his primary relationship
• There’s the woman who finds herself loving two men in exact and equal amounts and just wishes she could have both
• There’s the man who thinks about women at work all the time. He imagines them undressed, fucking him on the stairs, in the lift, anywhere but he wouldn’t ever contemplate actually doing it
• There’s the woman who has realized that she is deeply attracted to other women; something entirely new for her and she is desperate to explore the wonders of another woman’s body

I could go on and on and on, and in all of these scenarios, there is nothing really close to the situation I find myself in although there could be some amalgamations of scenarios that are true at this point in time or have been in the past.

If there are so many scenarios, if there are so many people that in some way connect with some of these, then who the hell are we kidding as far as the concept of faithfulness?
What sort of messages are we giving to our future generations too?
How the hell can we move on, develop, evolve without upsetting the social order?

Ms Vernon, the author of the piece continues.
And yet we're still incredibly reverent about, and attached to, the ideal of monogamy. Both the major political parties are attempting to enshrine monogamy in pro-family policy; both made monogamy a cornerstone of their election campaigns. En masse we are critical of other people and their infidelities. We're fantastically sanctimonious regarding celebrity transgressions. We were glad that John Terry was stripped of his captaincy; delighted that Tiger Woods lost his endorsement deals as a consequence of his alleged infidelities; overjoyed that Cheryl gave Ashley the boot. We condemn the unfaithful publicly and gossip about them privately. We condemn ourselves when we transgress; we lose ourselves to guilt and suffer identity crises: how could we do this? This isn't who we are!

Why are we living this dichotomy? Why do we support the idea of monogamy so heartily while not managing to be monogamous? Why do we persist in having affairs, persist in believing in monogamy, when we're not comfortable with or especially capable of either?

What a powerful couple of paragraphs! I don’t think I can add anything to this other than explain to the reader how much I personally connect with this.

I didn’t condemn John Terry and didn’t feel the need for him to be robbed of the captaincy of his country; not for sexual discretion anyway. I’ve no idea what decisions have been made in that particular household. I find the whole idea of the astronomical amounts in endorsements paid to the likes of Tiger Woods obscene. That, to me, is far more of a concern than whether he has been slipping his cock into a dozen or twenty dozen nubile and sexy women. That is far more of an indictment on society too for that matter. As for Ashley Cole, well, he’s a bit of a wanker so I have no thoughts on this either other than alarm at the puritanical response to the situation from the red-top newspapers who cannot see the irony of their hypocrisy as they blindly fall over their pathetic attempts at morality.

I do however, have concerns about people criticizing others for having extra-marital relationships when they do not know the situations. I do concern myself with the blame that people impose upon themselves for essentially following their instinctual wit into situations that they should not feel guilty about.
We do indeed live with this dichotomy.

As I said at the beginning of this piece, I am an adulteress. I am unfaithful but there is not one person in this world who could possibly apportion blame to me without considering the factors involved. My story, as I said, is a complicated one. It doesn’t seem to comply with any of the scenarios mentioned. I doubt it is unique but sometimes, when you read these stories, if feels so.

Polly Vernon then goes onto discuss the conversation that she has with Esther Perel, a middle-aged woman who has a self-styled “voice on erotic intelligence – a sexologist”.

Erotic intelligence eh? I think that one deserves a blog all of its own.

Here is another quote that I would like to consider.
“Eroticism comes not from closeness, not from intimacy, but from precisely the opposite. From distance, from moments of jealousy, from a constant awareness that you do not own your partner no matter how long you've been together; that other people fancy them, that they always have the potential to sleep with someone else”.

I wholly disagree with the first sentence. Eroticism can come from a non-attachment but it is all the better for being very much part of an intimate relationship. Eroticism is dependent on the individual interpretation of an image or a piece of writing but if that individual interpretation is shared then the eroticism can be multiplied too.

As for the second part of this quote, I would agree. You certainly cannot know your partner completely, though once more, with an intense intimacy and a complete honesty, you can know them pretty darn well.

It blows my mind to consider that other people would not find my sexual partner attractive. He is an exceptionally attractive man. Guess what? That is why I want to fuck him all the time, well, one of the reasons anyway. To deny the fact that others may be aroused by him is denying both mine and his sexuality. People don’t metamorphosise into a monster when they become involved in a relationship. They don’t lose their sexuality. They don’t stop being attractive and they do not stop being attracted to others. When will we learn this simple yet complicated fact of life?

Perel continues.
Infidelity, she says, is one of the great recurring themes of the human experience. "And we are not monogamous! We are not! Monogamy is human, but human beings are not monogamous! By nature! Historically we have always been unfaithful – and always condemned infidelity. For a glimmer of passion, or whatever, people have been willing to risk everything. Women more so than men."

I like that phrase – human beings are not monogamous by nature. It is interesting that she sees that women are far riskier than men in the infidelity stakes. She continues to say that female infidelity is a sign of social evolution and that the power dynamism of gender is shifting.
Back to the economy, I reckon! The reason that women have been less faithless in the past could be to do with the financial reliance on a partner. Without the need and dependability of financial stability, I have a feeling there would be a completely different response to monogamy.
How far we have travelled and yet how thwarted our journey has been and continues to be.

"The men and women I work with invest more in love and happiness than ever before, yet in a cruel twist of fate it is this very model of love and sex that's behind the exponential rise of infidelity and divorce. Fascination and disillusion stare at each other." Says Perel.

I find this statement fascinating.
Are those of us who commit adultery obsessed and driven by a search for love and happiness? Does this search, if indeed it is, simply create a disillusion?

The more and more I read of this article, I realize what an incredibly fortunate soul I am, or maybe that is my delusion.

I never went in search of love or happiness or sex. I was quite content with what I had, even if the latter was insignificant or even non-existent. I did become fascinated but I don’t think I had illusions. I expected nothing and gained everything. Disillusion could, of course, be just around the corner.
Honesty and trust could, of course, ensure that disillusion is prevented.

"The standard ideas that affairs deplete intimacy, that affairs deplete the marriage, they are always harmful – I say: this is one possibility. But there are others. Affairs also are enormously enlivening. Re-eroticising. They balance the marriage. People who have affairs don't always want to leave the marriage. Sometimes, often, they are looking for a way to stay!"

"When you have an affair, this is rebellion! This is not a mild act! We have affairs to beat back the sense of deadness. We have affairs not because we are looking for another person, but because we are looking for another version of ourselves. It's not our partner we seek to leave with the affair, it's ourselves. It's what I've become that I don't like. It's how I've truncated myself. That there are parts of me that I have been so out of touch with, for decades… And of course, we live twice as long. We are different with different people."

Why the bolder print? This one hit home. I am not going to explain that here other than to say that Ms. Perel has made a very important and significant statement here.
Many ‘affairs’ happen because people are trying to find something of themselves rather than the idea that they are running away from what they have. For some, having a relationship outside their committed one enhances the primary relationship, brings back the excitement. It gives them balance. It nurtures a sense of wellbeing that can considerably improve the marriage or the long term commitment. Other times it does the opposite. Other times again, it can do both.

Whatever else, Perel says, we do not have affairs simply because we are bad by nature; or deceptive, or selfish, or cruel. "It's not just about right, and wrong, and moral. Particularly in America and in the UK, this is what we say about affairs. It's wrong. We talk about cheater. Philanderer. Liar. Narcissist. If it's not all those condemning words, then it goes to pathology. Borderline personality disorder. Childhood trauma. Addiction. We hide behind moral condemnation, or pathologising. This is not helpful, and not true. If it is true, then there are a lot of us suffering with childhood trauma and borderline personality disorders, and we have been suffering from them throughout history! We need to start to understand infidelity in terms of the complexities of life today. We need to think in terms of the failed ambitions of love."

Right up until the last sentence, I was happy with this paragraph, though on re-reading, I am beginning to understand what she is saying.
If, as Vernon and Perel are suggesting, infidelity is far more commonplace than we would like to think, then surely it cannot be evil or a pathological disorder? Yes, we need to consider infidelity in terms of the complexities of the now, but what exactly is all of this about “failed ambitions of love”?
Maybe it has something to do with an unrealistic notion of what love actually is.
Love is not about deprivation. Love is not about being untrue to oneself. Love is so complex a concept that it is almost ephemeral and yet equally eternally unintelligible.

I keep on saying this phrase over and over in my mind. “Infidelity has something to do with failed ambitions of love”. Does this mean that we are unfaithful because we have high expectations of what love actually is? Does this mean that those who are unfaithful are constantly seeking the pinnacle of a loving attachment? Does this mean that we are never capable of finding that ultimate loving relationship and that it is a completely unattainable and futile aspiration?
It sounds to me as though we are pretty harsh to ourselves and one another if this is the case.

Yet there is a counter argument. There are those who do remain faithful. Maybe they are the abnormal ones. Maybe they are the dishonest ones but for now let us assume that there is complete faithfulness in some relationships. Have they managed to achieve the ultimate ambition of love?
And there are those who have deep affection for one another, who acknowledge one another’s sexuality, have decided that infidelity cannot exist between them because infidelity in itself suggests an ownership of another human being. Maybe it is these people that have actually achieved the pinnacle of a loving relationship – one that accepts that we are individuals, one that appreciates the sexuality of the people involved, one that is honest and frank enough to admit to wanting or having sexual relationships with other people.
Isn’t that the ultimate aim fulfilled? If this was achieved, then articles such as this would not need to be written because there would be no such thing as infidelity!
But then again, I am just a dreamer!

Perel thinks we have to work toward renegotiating our ideas of monogamy. We need to see it as an exclusive emotional commitment, but not an arrangement that necessarily denotes sexual exclusivity.
Ah, yes – now we are coming onto something that is extremely interesting. Emotions, attachment, non-attachment, exclusivity.

In essence, this statement is possibly a good one. If people can assume that a primary relationship is about an exclusive emotional attachment rather than a sexual one, then infidelity is excusable. It is less significant. This makes sense…….. unless, of course, the emotional commitment is severed too.
There is an assumption that affairs take place, even by Perel, because we are trying to seek some unachievable image of love. We can fuck around happily because we have this notion of being “in love” in its giddy, unrealistic and glorious way.
Only some people have additional relationships that go way beyond the physical and the sexual. What of them, I wonder? Can you have two “exclusive emotional attachments”? Two and exclusive don’t go together by the law of physics!

"Free love didn't believe in the old model. Free love wanted to throw the old model out. Free love saw it as reactionary, as constraining, bourgeois. The new model is an attempt to reconcile our needs for commitment and our need for freedom. Our needs as part of an individualistic society, which talks about individual fulfilment and personal happiness and more is better, and our need for secure attachment and a stable family." She points out that, while we often talk critically about the idea of "having our cake and eating it" with reference to affairs, in every other aspect of our lives – in work, in our homes, in our social lives, in our experiences of the world, in our constant quest to improve ourselves and our quality of life – we are encouraged to have as much as we possibly can of everything.

I don’t really want to add anything to this paragraph other than to highlight it as significant.
Commitment and freedom have been seen for many decades, even centuries, as mutually exclusive. You cannot have one if you are seeking the other. Perel is suggesting here that you possibly can have both if one redefines the interpretation of fidelity. Furthermore, I think she is advocating the view that there is a constant drive for fulfillment and that in every other aspect of our lives, we are encouraged to have “the best”. What is wrong with wanting your cake and eating it, as long as it is not to the detriment of others?

And then the article has its penultimate statement with the one small crux, the sting in the tail.
What of jealousy? Ah yes, the green-eyed monster, the passionate envy that is so irrefutably destructive.

As a life-long sufferer, I am intrigued to hear and see what Esther Perel says on the subject.

"Aha!" Perel says, and she laughs…………….."And, of course, the view is that jealousy is a negative emotion, it's a primitive emotion…………..Jealousy goes hand in hand with passion. Is jealousy intrinsic to love? Yes! It's an indicator. If you cheat on me, am I just pissed because it's a sloppy thing to do? Or am I jealous, jealous that you had with someone else what I want to have with you, or what we used to have that was special? Because that's a very different thing! I don't know that you can have romantic love that doesn't involve jealousy. The question is: how much? And what do you do with it?"

More bold highlighting!
Jealousy is a destructive emotion. It is there, subliminal or overt. It can cripple and ruin the most intimate of relationships. By loving someone, you feel passion. The passion is so intense and so wonderful that in your irrational moments, you want it to be constant, forever, eternal. You cannot imagine that love being transferred or duplicated elsewhere. To consider your man or woman being sexually involved with another makes you feel jealous. Love and all its glory comes with the negative.
Someone once said to me that if you choose to believe in God then you also choose to believe in the existence of the devil. Whilst I am not sure that I hold much belief in anything, I think there is a point to be made here.

If you accept all that is wonderful about the brilliance of intimacy, spiritually, sexually, the works, then you may have to accept that there is always the possibility of a down side. Natural highs are fine but they are not necessarily sustainable, they have the potential to damage if there is an expectation of constancy and there is always the feasibility of coming down.
The question is: how much? And what you do with it?
Absolutely, totally. This is unequivocal.

Jealousy is an emotion that is as destructive as you allow it to be.
So my man wants to fuck other women. He loves sex. He loves women. He wants to suck another woman’s tits. He wants to feel inside her pussy in all its feminine glory. He wants to kiss her and hold her. He wants to feel his way around her slender and warm body. He wants to give her the love I know he is capable of giving. He wants me to know how he is feeling. He wants to share his passion with me.

How much can I take? How much do I want to know? How much does anyone want to know?

If you had asked me these questions a few years ago, I would have said that the only thing I wanted was for him to want me. I could not even entertain the thought that he could possibly want to fuck anyone other than me. I could not contemplate that he wanted to fuck someone more than he wanted to fuck me. I saw only an either/or.
There are times that I still see this. There are times that I am literally petrified that he will find someone who means more to him than I do but there isn’t anything that I can do about this so why worry?

What do I do with it? Well, quite frankly, I take my jealousy by the horns and allow it to challenge me. I challenge it. I embrace it. It is part of me and I have to learn how to deal with it.
I want to know everything. I want to know his thoughts and his acts. In that way, I can cope with my envy.

The simple truth is that when he fucks someone else, I find that a challenge but the depth of our relationship goes way beyond this. He cannot be unfaithful to me because I do not own him and he does not own me. Our commitment to one another is there. It is implicit and him fucking another woman, just as me fucking another woman or man does not detract from the intimacy of our relationship.
Infidelity cannot take place.

And maybe this is a lesson for us all.

The article started with quotes from people who have not actually had sex with others but have certainly thought about it. They have dabbled in cybersex. They have fantasized or rationalized potential sexual ‘infidelity’.
If people were more honest and open about their sexuality, these happenings would not be seen as an indiscretion. They would merely be part of a loving relationship If people could be honest about the positives and the negatives of extra-maritial/relationship sex, then I think the world might, just might be a happier place but it is wholly dependent on trust, belief and the ability to manage that very destructive emotion.

Furthermore, this rapidly expanding field of infidelity is yet another reason for us to redefine monogamy. "Do we have to put monogamy on a spectrum? Do we need to think: what does monogamy mean to me? Does it mean no sex with other people? Does it mean not to look at other people? Does it mean not to fantasise about other people? Does it mean not to Facebook your exes? Not to text your friends? Where is the line going to be drawn? Monogamy today is no longer going to be assumed. It's going to have to be negotiated."

Perel's ideas on infidelity are infinitely more useful than anything else currently doing the rounds. They would, at the very least, shake up lazy wisdom on what it means to cheat and be cheated upon. They would provoke debate, move things on. I think they should be given clinical currency.

Here, here and here’s to more debate on the subject.

Wake up world and be a little more realistic about the profoundly stupid expectations we put upon one another. Wake up and realize that you can have the most perfect, intimate relationship that enables your partner to express themselves sexually, even emotionally, but that is probably the more challenging of the two.

Reading and Writing our Thoughts

I was recently reading an article in the newspaper about Jeanette Winterson.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanette_Winterson

The article was promoting the 25th anniversary publication of her most famous book “Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit”.
I’m ashamed to say that I have not read it. I’ve obviously heard about it but haven’t got as far as picking it up and having a read through. I must do that imminently.

However, the article was interesting for the many interesting comments that Jeanette made about life, love, sex, depression, families etc.

I have been trying to think how I want to write about this for some time, and whatever I come up with seems rather disjointed. So I think the only way that I can do this is to take some of the quotes that interested me and make my comments.

You can read the article for yourself here.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/22/jeanette-winterson-thought-of-suicide

To paraphrase, the article explains how Winterson found herself in the depths of despair after the break-up of her relationship with theatre director Deborah Warner. It wasn’t merely the end of the relationship that made her suicidal. At the same time, she had found out some disturbing information about her adoption, which made her question her very being. In the article she explains precisely how this affected her.
She then goes on to discuss her current relationship with Susie Orbach, who beautifully describes herself as “post-heterosexual”. The joy of her relationship with Orbach emanates from the pages and she is clearly in a comfortable and content place right now. Her thoughts and discussion on writing are definitely worth a read and I also found it interesting that the Guardian writer himself clearly found warmth in this woman that he possibly did not expect to find.

As someone who finds great solace in writing, there were some interesting comments.
Any writer obviously uses their own experience to develop a theme, sometimes into a blog, sometimes into a successful novel.
"My feelings about that life before adoption leaked into my fiction. I was wounded and didn't know it. When I found I was wounded, I needed to clean the wound properly, or it could have closed up badly."

Her wounds were clearly healed by the cathartic nature of writing, and I think this is a lesson that many of us should take on board. Writing is one way of cleansing the soul, of nurturing it too. Sometimes, I get a real urgency to write because I know that I am restless if I don’t. That is quite different from feeling a need to lick wounds, but that is another reason why I write. Sometimes, I like to write because it is the only way I can reason about some of the issues that frustrate or temper me.

What has this got to do with sex and writing about it? Well, plenty!
On occasions, a lack of sex or even an intensity of sex is not exactly a wound but it is something that needs thought. I write about sex when I am frustrated that I cannot get it. I sometimes write about sex as an exciting bit of foreplay. I write about sex when I am surrounded by its strength and overwhelmed by its passion.
This quote from Winterson reiterated the fact that my writing about sex has been a sort of healing. It has allowed me to explore my sexuality and my thoughts on the sexuality of others. It has enabled me to cross thresholds that I thought I was incapable of doing.
That feels good.

Here’s another quote from the article, where Winterson is talking about depression and suicidal thoughts; not strictly Zenpuss material but here you go!
"I found what [the poet Robert] Graves calls the shining space between dark and dark. It was something I visualised, that shining space. It seemed that I could just walk in that shining space and be there. And I did and then the darkness began to clear. The wound is always there and hurts but it's not festering." You can live with it? "I can and I have to."

I actually found myself welling up at this comment.
There have been times in my life and the lives of those most important to me when there seemed no hope of finding a “shining space” yet even at the darkest moments you knew it existed.
Depression is wholly debilitating, yet even the manically depressed cannot maintain constant angst for twenty four hours a day. They do smile and they do laugh. They capture the humanity of others, even if it is slight and minimal.
Sexual relationships and even sex just as a recreation can be, for some people, that “shining space”. When everything seems hopeless, sex can take you into a different realm that eases the pain. Yes, the pain is still there but this deviation to explore your sexuality gives you a breathing space – and hope.

I’d go as far as to say that I have experienced this, not necessarily in myself, but in others. When darkness and more darkness seemed to seep into every corner, there was always the time to drift away into sexual oneness.
The shining space eventually widens and kicks the darkness to the outer edges where it should rightfully be.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be sex that does this. Writing helps too. As does music or sport or taking a walk down the street or into the countryside, but there is a shining space for all of us somewhere.

Jeanette Winterson and Susie Orbach are lovers. Here is the next quote that I want to use.
Winterson is more garrulous about the affair than Orbach. "I'm in love and I don't care who knows it," she says. The two women only started seeing each other last spring, but Winterson is already plotting a long-term relationship.

With weeping in one paragraph, I turned to laughter with this one, and the comments around it.
“Plotting a long term relationship”? Is that actually a healthy thing to be doing? Shouldn’t she just be living in the now and enjoying what seems to be a delightful, equitable, loving relationship?
“I’m in love”? Is this a healthy state or an unreality that people with a history of manic depression should not place themselves in?

Seriously though, I laughed at the excitement that she portrayed and I empathized. The woman is very happy. I think that hearing of other people’s happiness is joyous and I wasn’t laughing in a mocking way at all. I was laughing because that sort of eagerness of adoration is contagious.
I’ll not delve into the pedantry of the phrase “in love” rather than “deeply loving someone”. There is, I believe, a huge difference but for now, let’s assume she means the latter. (Actually, there is no pedantry here. People should be very mindful of the difference!)

The wonderful essence of this statement is in the “I don’t care who knows it”. In the previous paragraph she explains how Orbach, when asked about her affair with Winterson, affirmed with a very contented smile.
These woman appear to have deep affection for one another and they are unconcerned who knows.
Quite right too!
They have nothing to hide. They are not flaunting their love in an over sensualised manner. They are not fighting some feminist rant on sexuality. They are merely enjoying this feeling of bliss and are happy to share this with whoever wants to pose the question.
You get a strong sense of liberation from both of these women in being able to do this.
That feels good too – for them, though sadly not all of us are blessed with the ability and ease to be so forthcoming about our sexuality or the relationships that mean so much.

Oh, and whilst we are on the subject, will lazy writers please stop using the word ‘affair’ when they actually mean a loving and meaningful relationship? It is so debilitating!
‘Affair’ – according to the dictionary definition in this context is “an intense amorous relationship, usually of short duration”. The word ‘affair’ has so many negative undertones. It implies triviality, transition, instability, faithlessness. These women are not ‘having an affair’. From what I can see they are ‘in a relationship’. Bloody labels! More of that now.

And onto the next quote.
"Susie calls herself post-heterosexual. I like that description because I like the idea of people being fluid in their sexuality. I don't for instance consider myself to be a lesbian. I want to be beyond those descriptive constraints." Winterson has explored this theme in her fiction for decades – as if to say, if only we could get beyond the constraints of gender, we might be more sexually fulfilled.
[Just a small aside, I do like it when I have to edit the Guardian’s own typos. It makes me realize that all is well with the world. There are some constants! You will notice that I suffer from Grauniaditis frequently in my own writing. So dear readers, feel free to mentally amend! – A brownie point for anyone who finds the change from the original text – it is only the most observant and pedantic who will find it]

I listened to someone in a conference a few years ago talking about the stickability effect of labels. Once a lesbian, always a lesbian!
I remember with horror the time when the press on both sides of the Atlantic tried to assassinate Anne Heche when she firstly ‘gave up’ her heterosexuality to have a relationship with Ellen De Generes. To make matters worse, according to the media, she ‘reverted’ back once the relationship with the comedienne did not work.

Winterson is absolutely right here, as is Orbach. We don’t need these labels. They are not very helpful.
There should be fluidity in sexuality and not just fluidity about whether you want to have a heterosexual or homosexual relationship. Sexuality is fluid. Experiences, positions, occasions of sexuality are fluid.
Years ago, I would never have contemplated having sex with more than one person at a time. I would never have considered a desire to be watched having sex. I would never have thought that I could open my legs and be fucked by a man I do not necessarily desire just because it pleases his partner to see him fucking another woman. I would never have imagined I would take another woman’s breasts in my mouth and suck on them generously and lovingly.
My sexuality is fluid. My sexual experiences are fluid.
Some people think they can adamantly rule out one thing or another, but you never know.
Constancy in life can be comforting, like the Guardian and its perpetual spelling errors that used to be serious Malapropisms. Other constancies in life are crippling, sapping, unexciting.

Nobody should have to wear a label like a ball and chain, and I think that I have tried to remove these shackles so that I might be “more sexually fulfilled”.

I did explain at the beginning of this blog that this was going to be a little disjointed.
Here is the next quote from the article that interested me, and I haven’t used all of the quotes that I could have done in this writing.
On “Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit” –
Does she still agree with what she wrote in the introduction, that this is a threatening novel that exposes family life as something of a sham, shows love as psychosis and argues that what makes life difficult for homosexuals is not their perversity but other people's? "Did I write that?" she says disarmingly. "I can't remember." But she concedes that her writing always has a political purpose. "My aim in writing is never just to give pleasure. Art isn't a luxury product. It's always about trying to change people's lives."

I like the idea that art is “about trying to change people’s lives”. I hope that the reader never feels that I am evangelizing but I do hope that my various musings and ramblings about sexuality at the very least makes them consider their own interpretations on sex, sexuality and the possibilities as yet unobtained.
Writing is an art form that is so often dismissed, yet how many times has someone picked up a book or an article in a newspaper that has moved them to tears, or reduced them to hysterics?
Good art evokes reaction. It initiates and encourages a range of feelings. For me, art is a ‘must’ in people’s lives in order for them to develop, to function, to reason with the world in which they live.

I have fond memories of going to art museums where I have stood in front of a piece of work and literally wept in front of it. I actually take the greatest of pleasures from losing myself in a piece of music that stimulates my mind to the point of removing me from mundaneties. I adore jumping into the television programme or film to accompany the actors as they fulfill their roles, reaching out expressively to their audience and their own experiences.
Art moves me. But it is more than a mere reaction to an impetus. I like to take art and do something with it.
It does change lives.
Even this piece of writing is changing me. I have read something. I have taken it into my thoughts. I have remodeled and considered some of the statements within and I have moved forward some more with my own thinking.
That’s good art.

“Love as a psychosis” – I think we are back onto the territory of being “in love”. That is certainly a psychosis of sorts; a mental disorder characterized by delusions.
Being ‘in love’ is one form of psychosis but family ties and responsibilities could also be seen as a psychosis in some instances. It certainly feels that way sometimes!
I think what Winterson was saying in this introduction to the book is that love for all its alleged beauty and perfection could easily mask some very destructive emotions. There is nothing simple about love. Accompanying it, there could be jealousy, envy, disgust, control, demands – all sorts of diabolically dangerous feelings that can develop into a psychosis of sorts.
Real love has none of these. Real love makes no demands. Real love expresses freedom and compassion Real love enables rather than disables.
Real love is very hard to find.

“What makes life difficult for homosexuals is not their perversity but other people’s”.
It’s not just homosexuals though. This could be said for many folk.
Some people would argue that I have chosen a perverse way of living but that would be their opinion. It is their prejudism and their shallow-mindedness that does not enable my honesty.
With regard to sexuality, this is ever present. Isn’t Winterson saying that it is perverse not to consider the needs of others, the difference of others, the sexuality of others? Collectively, as a society, we still tend to see homosexuality as a perversion from the norm. This is abhorrent really. What, for goodness sake, is the norm? Maybe all folk who like to consider themselves as heterosexual are the ones who are perverse. Maybe those who deny any interest in the opposite sex are perverse in their denial.

Of course, I am being flippant here. I don’t actually think that heterosexuals are perverse but locking away sexuality in a category where the door is shut and the key is thrown away is, at the very least, questionable.
I’m not suggesting that everyone has the capacity to be bisexual. I am not saying that at all.
I am merely suggesting that it is perverse to consider other forms of sexuality as perverse, and I fear that is what we tend to do.

And now to my final comment for the day.

It is really bizarre but my final quote does not come from the article.
Thank goodness for Google, for being reliant on my short term memory would never have retraced this extract.

Here is the quote,
At first sight, of course, vice is more attractive. She is sexier, she promises to be better company than her plain sister virtue. Every novelist, and every reader too, has more fun with the villains than with the good guys. Goodness is staunch and patient, but wickedness is vivid and dynamic; we admire the first, but we thrill to the second.

And here is the piece in full
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/21/three-virtues-delight-liberty

It is part of the Citizen ethics series in the Guardian and comes from the author Philip Pullman.
Why have I cottoned onto this as part of this particular blog? At first glance I am not sure but I think it probably links to how good writing can change us. Good art can make us consider.
Jeanette Winterson and her main character in “Oranges” has virtue and vice. The two are not mutually exclusive.

A virtuous society has to be one that we aim for, but we are never going to learn from virtue alone. A sprinkling of vice does thrill but once more I question this. Who decides what is vice and what is not? Where is the perversion in this? Who dictates it? Society? Individuals?
May be the thrill and dynamism of so-called vice isn’t quite so wrong after all. May be it is not actually a vice in the strictest sense of the word.

To me, Jeanette Winterson has shown in both her life and her writing that there is a little vice and virtue in many things. What she deems as virtues others would see as vice. What I see as virtue others would criticize as anarchistic.

Art, you see. Writing and reading provokes thoughts.

This blog may seem disjointed and disparate but I hope at the end of the reading, the reader has seen a sort of journey that I take on a regular basis; my meandering mind!
I simply adore the fact that articles in a newspaper conjurs up such an array of thoughts. I love the fact that someone else would have read this article and had a thousand thoughts that in no way mirrored my own.
I love how, if you look carefully, you can see hidden messages about sexuality in many things, admittedly it was more overt in this article than some. But sex, love, passion, virtue and indeed vice are part and parcel of our lives, as is good art, good literature that makes us think and stimulates us to do something about it.

And this blog, I suppose, is my attempt to do just that.

Four Letter Words

Miss you
Love you
Want you
Need you

None of these phrases are easily or glibly said, not by me anyway.
It’s such a pity that they are used so ‘randomly’ as the young people would say. In fact, I would go as far as to say that I resent them being used without the depth of feeling that such phrases require.

Living where I do, though I am sure this is the case across the nation, you often hear this coarse “Love ya babes”. It has its dialectical variations; “Luv yow, darlinggg”, “Love yew Sweetie” It has become a stock phrase and the sentiment behind it is diminished with the ease with which it trips out of a loud-mouthed person cockily declaring his or her attachment to friend or lover.
I fear it has little to do with real love, though I could be mistaken.

My sister occasionally texts me or telephones me and says “I love you”.
She means it. She’s not the sort of person who just delves this out as a matter of course. When she says it, you can feel that it has come right from her heart and her soul. At that moment, she feels a need to express her love for me. It really is quite genuine, and that makes it special.

‘Want’ and ‘need’ are also thrown around as so many simplistic words are. I’ve talked about this before; take the twenty stone lad who shouts at the top of his voice – “I need a burger!”
No, darling. You do not need a burger. You may have a desire for a greasy blob of meat. You may even think that you need it but you don’t actually need it. It is not an essential in your life.
I sometimes think that I need a cigarette or a drink but this is clearly utterly stupid. I do not need a cigarette. I need to think of a substitute for the times when I feel a cigarette is necessary. That is something that I need.

Even the word ‘want’ is misused. Sometimes it is said because it is an expectation. “I want you”.
Do you really, or do you feel a burden of expectation that forces your mouth to spill out these words?
Do you really want me or would you actually prefer a burger, if you were being totally truthful?

Such simple little words; miss, love, want, need!
Four letters, one syllable. To the point; precise. Yet the simplicity becomes just that if it is over-used.

Nice! There’s another one.

It’s interesting that when I was at school, I was encouraged never to call anything ‘nice’. It was too vague. It was not descriptive enough. It has little meaning because of its commonality. It says nothing.
The same could be said for these four words. They mean very little without passion, without force of feeling, without the essential emotions that accompany the words. Yet we still use and misuse them without thinking of the consequences of such statements.

Only some of us don’t use them glibly. Some of us use them because, in some ways, they are the most important simplistic words available.
In their simplicity, they convey their truest form. If this appears to contradict what I have just said then think again.
If words such as ‘love’ are used without thought, if they are uttered with triteness, then they become meaningless and simplistic. If they are used with a complete passion, they are still simplistic but in a totally different way. They are simplistic in their honesty and their clarity. They are bursting to the seams with realism and understanding, with expression and forcefulness.

“I miss you” – could simply be used at the end of a conversation. As soon as the phone is turned off or the door is closed, the speaker could forget this phrase and get on with the important deeds of the day. The ‘missing’ is lost in an instance and is therefore negated. It has been said because there is an expectation that these words should be used when unforeseen, uninvited or prolonged separation occurs.

“I’m going to miss you” he said. “I’m going to miss seeing you, kissing you, feeling you, holding you, fucking you, loving you”.
He didn’t say all of those additional statements. He didn’t need to. There’s plenty that he is going to miss and an infinite list of ‘doing’ words is not going to enhance the real and fully appreciated “miss you” statement.
“Miss you” says it all. Well at least it does when you know it is heartfelt. It means an incredible amount when such a phrase is not used randomly or too frequently. Yet, sometimes, it cannot be used too often.
If you really are going to miss someone special and someone important, then you really should say so. What else is there to say?

I am going to miss you. I always miss you when I am not able to be with you. Sometimes it is bearable. Other times the missing is so intense that a kind of misery overwhelms me. Whatever happens, the phrase “I miss you” or “missing you” or “I am going to miss you” is said with every ounce of humility and truth that I can muster. I never say it as a stock phrase. It means everything in its simplicity.

Love is so complicated that essays around the world have been written on the word. I have tried before to make sense of it as a word.
I love my friends, I love to write. I love a sun-drenched day. I love fucking. I love rivers. I love the sea.
It’s not wrong to use the word in these contexts but they pale into insignificance when compared with the time when I am lying in bed, having incredible sex, when I am completely enveloped in an overwhelming and euphoric state, where there is only one phrase that seems to fit.

“I love you” - because at that moment there is nothing more important than declaring that in its simplicity and its complexities. It doesn’t need reciprocation but I ‘love’ it when it is. It doesn’t need reciprocation but it is sometimes wanted.
I just wish there was another phrase that could be so conveniently delivered, that set it aside from the other uses of the word, and in its convenience it encapsulates the totality of the feeling.
“Love” as a word alone cannot do that but it possibly the best we have on offer.

How often do we use the words ‘want’ and ‘need’ in relation to sex? Again, they may be uttered incorrectly.
Again, I don’t think I do this.

They are such easy words to use but I cannot describe how important they are. My ‘want’ is ceaseless. My ‘need’ is real; very real. At times, I feel as though I am incomplete without the brilliance of the sex I currently enjoy. I genuinely need this sex to make me whole, to give me the bliss and completeness that I need to be me; to function, to live.
There is no flippancy in saying these words, there’s no cliché or convenience.
They come from my soul and they are not said slightly.

Four letter words.
There’s no coincidence in their succinct nature. They are to the point. They are precise.
Consider other four letter words; the words associated with sex and sexual parts of the body.
There’s a reason why they are so short. They get to the point where nothing else will do.

Sexual language and the language of thoughts and feelings are so important. We should consider how we use them. They convey everything and if used too soon or too often, they convey nothing.

Miss you, love you, want you, need you, fuck you, kiss you, fist you, suck you.
You get my meaning.

Miss you
Love you
Want you
Need you

I survive the absences but these four words remain there in tact. I function but I am not complete.
I do miss you and not just when you are away. I do love you and not just when we are intertwined. I do want you and not just sexually. I need you and am happy that I do.

Thank you for four letter words.

The Spirituality of Sleep

I lie in bed semi-clad. I am wearing a small, black camisole that barely covers my most intimate parts; the edge of the silky material is wafting around my inner thigh, exciting me, enticing me to think very sexual thoughts.
I lay my hand on the material that covers my pubic hair. I don’t stroke it; I just place my hand there. There’s warmth within in doing this.
I straddle my legs slightly, giving room for a breath of air to seep between my legs. It is getting a little moist down there as the tension rises beneath my hand and I can feel anticipation growing. Mere anticipation, though there is nothing ‘mere’ about either the anticipation or the expectation of what I am about to receive.

A total state of relaxation overwhelms me. I am lying on my back. My hand is motionless. My mind is calm. Come to think of it, I don’t actually need to anticipate. It’s going to happen but I like to anticipate nonetheless.

He walks to the side of the bed, glancing towards me and smiling. There’s no smirk. There’s no urgent hunger in his dark eyes. Just a smile. There’s nothing knowing about it. There’s nothing suggestive. It’s just contentment.

He stands by the bed and slips out of his pants.
My clitoris responds. How strange that after all of this time, I still have an erection of my own at the sight of his cock, whether it is aroused or not. Just as he stands there for a split second, I instinctively need to move my legs a little further apart as I feast my eyes on that cock that pleasures me so intensely.
I’m not in great need. I wouldn’t even say I am hungrily wanting his cock inside me at that point. I am simply enjoying him standing there, allowing me to just look.

He moves the duvet back and clambers into bed. He imitates my position and lies on his back, not yet touching me, not even feeling my arm next to his. There is space between us.

The television is off and the music has been dismissed. I still lie still, though my hand has moved to my side. I lie with my head on the pillow, conscious that his hand has moved over his pubes and he can now feel the mound of his cock and balls in his grasp.
He’s not wanking. He’s just placing his hand there and feeling the warmth within. Unbeknowingly, he imitates my precise actions from a few minutes beforehand.
There’s comfort in that too.

Nothing needs to be said. There’s a time for words and they will come. Later.

With our heads on the pillows and our arms by our side, we turn to one another and smile.
There’s no need to move. It’s a precious and stable moment. It just needs to be. We need to be.

Hands eventually reach out for one another. Neither of us are the first to move. It is done in tandem.
Once hands are clasped together, bodies follow and an embrace of warmth emerges.
I wrap my leg over his. There’s nothing overtly sexual in this, though he must be able to feel the moistness of my pussy on his knee.
I know he can feel it when we kiss, and he gently pushes his patella into my groin so that I can ride the hardness. He moves his knee around so that its undulating sides rub my crack, and he must surely now feel the specific warmth of my juices.

I maneuvre my hips around so that I can enjoy the full extent of his knee being swallowed in my pubic hairs.
Still there is smiling. Still there is a gentleness washing over us.

He slides his hand under my camisole and feels the fullness of my breasts. He squeezes them tight. First one, and then the other, and then together as he kisses me; a tender, calm kiss that opens up so that we can explore one another’s mouths with our tongues. It is all so gentle. And yet, it is more needy now. I am rocking strongly on his knee and it is only a matter of time before I need something else.

His cock is rising. It’s knocking against me, reminding me of its growth and readiness. I lie on my side, still kissing him and reach out for his balls. I trace my finger down his erection, past his balls and towards his anus. I rub hard at the wealth of erection that I can find there. He is arched and ready.
As I walk my fingers back to his helmet, I pull gradually at his foreskin to reveal a sticky delight of excitement at the tip of his cock. It needs to be licked but I don’t want to move from this position.
I am enjoying his eyes and his mouth too much, no matter how much I want to taste that stickiness in my mouth.

But he is so stiff and I am now so needy.
Foreplay is going to be whole play. It is going to be intermingled. I lay him flat and I guide and glide his cock towards a very large opening between my legs. I crouch above him feeling the power of his cock rubbing inside me. I ride him hard. I lean back and arch myself so that I can feel that stiffness within me. I feel his movement and I imagine the places, the skin, the erectness that he is touching inside me with his.

My mind takes over, and I am totally turned on by the completeness of this moment. With his cock still firmly embedded in my cunt, I lie on top of him, rubbing my clitoris against his pubes, moving my hips to feel the stimulation at every conceivable angle. I press hard and feel the orgasm coming. It’s a clitoral stimulation, a clitoral cum and it takes longer to arrive than a vaginal gush. I know it is coming and the anticipation of waiting for it to build is fucking brilliant. I want to hold onto the orgasm for as long as possible, and he adores me doing that. He knows I am in a state of utter bliss, and he selflessly holds himself in a position where I can receive the full glory of an ongoing orgasm.
In doing this, my mind has flowed right back to the bodily connection and I am aware once more how big his cock is inside me, how near it is to my cervix and I now need to ride rapidly.

He seems to have reached new depths within me. He’s not the only one fucking me right now. I’m fucking myself too with my mind and I know that he is doing exactly the same. The immediacy of my gush is astonishing. He giggles as it hurtles down his shaft, over his balls, out of my cunt and covers every conceivable and inconceivable part of the sheet. I feel it running down my left hip and he indicates that it has swept past his left hand.
It’s not over yet.

I climb off him and dive under the covers to lick away my juices from his dick. I maneuvre myself so that my pussy is over his right hip and I go down on him, strong and ferociously. I take his cock deep inside my mouth as far as his balls and I repeat this until I can feel more cum dribbling out of me.
He delights in my enthusiasm for fellatio and is further excited when he feels the incredible power of my mind working in tandem with my body as I gag on the size of his cock that makes both my eyes and my cunt water.

I flop onto the bed as he raises himself from it, and leans before me with his hands dancing towards my already drenched pussy, knowing that there is still more to come. I push his fingers inside me and he enthusiastically finger fucks me until another tirade of fuck juices spill out.

He then lays me down and watches himself pushing into my cunt. He sees his cock emerging and then being enveloped by my labia as he continues to fuck me in the most desirable manner.
He lies on top of me, as I lay on him before.

He reaches beneath my arse and places his hands on each cheek, firmly gripping as he pushes himself inside me further. He nuzzles his face into my neck as he stops and starts the final assault to his own orgasm.
I encourage him to cum. I can feel the proximity of his climax as he grabs my right cheek a little harder.
He groans into my hair as he thrusts his spunk into my awaiting cunt. I reciprocate almost immediately by climaxing onto his cock and shoving him out of me.

We lie down on the bed and I reach inside me to feel the softness of his sperm over my inner labia. I adore feeling his spunk inside me immediately after he has cum. There is something almost miraculous about that.
I love it.

We spoon together to singly and connectedly appreciate our bliss. The force and endurance of such passion is almost impossible to describe. It is intransigent and determined, happy to remain there for a moment longer to remember, to feel, to explode once more with the beauty of the sexual oneness.

We fall asleep. Together. Wrapped as one. Oblivious to anything. Mindful of everything and nothing. We think. We are without thought. We feel. We are devoid of any feeling other than the moment.

We fall asleep.

I move. He responds by clasping me nearer to him but he is sleeping.

I turn to face him.
His arms flop by my side, still clasping my hand.

I feel his body. It’s warm. It is full of life as he gently sleeps.

My cunt is still excited and I have to slip out of bed to get rid of a few more juices. There must be a cavity within me that collects the remnants of the physical and the thoughtful. I go to the toilet once more and I emit a clear, colourless spillage into the loo. It’s come from just lying there and watching him sleep.

I return to bed and slide the covers over me, careful not to disturb his slumber and I drift away, unseen and seemingly into a deep sleep.
Hours pass and through that time, there is occasional touching from him and from me.
A leg moves over here. A hand twitches to touch there. An arm glides over the shoulder and embraces the breast. One reciprocates and gently flutters over the pubes.
It is slight at first. There is a break of several minutes between each touch. Then the bodies come closer. The time between touches diminishes and uninvited yet perfectly desired, a finger slides once more into my cunt.
I am barely awake, yet it feels right. He wants me to cum and I oblige all too quickly.
This excites his cock once more and for hours and hours we make love, and we fall asleep, and we touch one another, and we make love some more.

I find myself looking at his back. I’m not worried about disturbing him. That is not a selfish statement. He’ll sleep through my touches if he wants to but I need to just place my hand down his back.
I feel his being and I am satisfied. He smiles. I can’t see it but I know it is there.

I turn away and sleep.

He brushes my neck with his hand. I turn over and accept the awaiting hug.

We fall asleep once more.

The morning arrives with more of the same.
He takes my hand and I guide him to my pussy. We both enter into it. We both get a drenching.
He moves on top of me, and he fucks me again.
I take his cock in my hand and wank away, hoping he will squirt more of his stuff all over me. He obliges and I rub it into my stomach and over my boobs. I kiss his cock immediately afterwards. I love doing that.

We don’t sleep now. We just lie there and think.

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I miss him on the nights when we are not together. I miss this; the spirituality of sleep. I’d miss it and long for it even if the sex wasn’t there.
There is something incredibly perfect about lying in bed with someone that you care for, someone that you want and need to be with.

A hug is only real when it is felt by more than the actual physical presence. A kiss is merely a kiss when it has no meaning of relationship behind it, nice as the hug and the kiss from anyone has the potential to be.
But there is an abundance of spirituality in the sharing that a night bed has to offer.
There is no need for an imaginary umbilical cord or a band of gold to show such togetherness. The spirituality of sleep is in a place of its own. As I said, the words are not needed yet I feel a need to scream out and shout from the heights to reiterate how important it is – for me, for everyone.

Can you be spiritual and unconscious? Is sleep really as unconscious as we think?
I don’t know the answer to those questions. All I do know is that, for me, there is always going to be the spirituality in sharing that quietness of sleep. There is a state of being, a satori that we can all have with wonderful sex and perfect intimacy. When this is accompanied by hours and hours of quiet togetherness, often unconscious in sleep, it seems to sensitise it even more. It harmonises. It places you in another realm.
Yes, there is very definitely a sensuality and spirituality in sleep. Think about it next time you are in bed with your loved one(s). Morning, noon or night.

And then meditate. Meditating on such thoughts is blissful too.

Monogamists Behaving Badly

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“Bigamy is having one too many wives. Monogamy is the same.” – Good old Oscar Wilde. Not sure we can rely on him for a full working knowledge of heterosexual monogamy but I like the quote regardless.

“I can’t fly a flag for monogamy or whatever the opposite is; it depends on the person and the situation.”

And here is one from that well known philosopher, Sting. Yes, he of the Geordie teacher turned musician. I rather like his notion that he cannot think of the opposite for monogamy and the fact that he is quite clear that it is all about the context.

“Marriage requires a special talent, like acting. Monogamy requires genius.” – Warren Beatty. He’s always had a fairly healthy non-monogamous attitude to life. Yet he apparently changed his behaviour on meeting Annette Benning, who he married eighteen years ago when he was in his mid fifties. Has he become a genius?

“A man is only as faithful as his opportunity.” – You’d have thought this quote came from a woman but this one is actually from Chris Rock.

“Men would like monogamy better if it sounded less like monotony.” - Another comedian but this time it is a woman – Rita Rudner.

According to the radio the other day, monogamy is God’s will. It is the natural order of how we should live.

Apparently, the reason that it is bad luck to see a single magpie is because they mate for life, and therefore it is deemed unlucky that one is flying around on his or her own.

I was once told that birds are the most monogamous of species. Once they have mated, in the main, they tend to stick together. Well, that is what I thought until I did a small piece of research that I will return to later.

From the shortest of Google searches, and certainly not a complete study of the subject, it appears that, for western society, monogamy can be tracked back to the Romans and the Greeks before them, even though the leaders were hardly the most monogamous people in the world. They were advocates of monogamy and this became the norm in western society for the thousands of years since.

Looking back further to prehistoric times it appears that, according to artifacts found, stone-age women had sex for recreational purposes and not, as had been previously thought, merely for procreation. Discoveries from these times include a range of wooden dildos. Some of these have voluptuous bodies, delighting in and celebrating the female form, often without a face to accentuate the wonderment of the big boobs and open fannies that are creatively crafted.

It was only when the “hunter/gatherer” societal changes came into play that people became monogamous; over-protective about their domain, their possessions which apparently included their partner.

How funny that when talking about sex there is that notion that we should talk about the “birds and the bees” as the simplistic take on sexual behaviour.

Well let’s just do that, because their sexual behaviour is hardly monogamous.

As I stated previously, I had always heard that birds mated for life but apparently this isn’t strictly true. Although a large majority of birds only have one partner with which they procreate, they tend to have sex with quite a few of their species. Birds may have one “life partner” but they fuck around with whoever they feel like and once more, not merely for procreation.

As for bees, well that is clearly a matriarchal society where the queen not only decides who she is having sex with but she also manages to store sperm, thus deciding which eggs are going to be fertilized and which are not. In doing this, she also determines the sex of the offspring with the fertilized eggs becoming female and the non-fertilized becoming male – the drones.

Looking at our closest animal relatives, there is no suggestion of monogamous behaviour in chimpanzees. As for Bonobos, they are certainly worth having a look at. They live a very civilized and peaceful existence. They seem to live in a communal way and have sex in what we might deem to be a promiscuous manner. They have sex after they have had an argument as a means for making up and calming down. They have different sexual positions that is unusual for animals who normally have sex in exactly the same position. They have heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual sex and they are far from monogamous.

According to current research only 3-5% of mammals are monogamous and even these animals, such as otters, beavers and foxes have a little play around on the side from time to time. It is also pointed out that these mammals that are monogamous are reliant on systems of support, like the beaver needing company to build a dam. Therefore monogamy has developed as a practical solution to the necessities of life.

Research also suggests that, in the main in the animal kingdom, males are biologically determined to “spread their seed” whilst females are programmed to get the best genes from the best males.

But of course, we are not animals. We are superior beings with a multitude of intelligences, agilities and dexterities unknown and seemingly impossible for the simple animal-life around us. Survival of the fittest and all that!

That is the excuse that some people would use to further their determined stance on “natural orders” in relation to monogamy. Add to this the dogma of religious doctrine and the notion that it is “God’s will” that we maintain monogamous relationships - and is it any wonder that people feel that this is the way that they have to live their lives? Like it or not, beliefs in a deity of one sort or another, from Greek mythology to the emergence of Christianity and other western religions, has shaped the way our society behaves.

But of course, we are animals. We may have the means and the ability to communicate by speaking and writing but we are still animals with an instinctual intelligence to fight, flee and fuck. These are an integral part of our being - just as they are in the rest of the animal kingdom. How often do we actually follow our instincts, especially when so much of our western teachings dictate how we live our lives - and thereby contradict that instinctual understanding?

How can we rethink when we have been so conditioned to one way of living that this in itself seems to be an instinct? But one could hardly call monogamy an instinct!

I have been surrounded by monogamy all of my life. There’s been the odd divorce here and there in my family but in essence, it appears that we are a pretty monogamous bunch of people. The learned behaviour has become instinctual. Expectation is that we remain faithful to one partner, hopefully for life, and that if one gets tired of the situation, then one should just stoically get on with it!

Although this may be an extreme, there are hundreds and thousands of families who think in the same way. They might say that they are more liberal in thinking but society expects monogamy. Look at the way people have formed opinions in an extremely set manner about the likes of John Terry and Tiger Woods about their alleged infidelity?

One thing that I found very difficult, almost impossible to ignore, was this instinct for behaving in a certain way. It was and is very real. I have often said that I cannot be ashamed or upset by behaving in a way that seemed the most natural thing to do. How could something so utterly wonderful, something that seems so totally life-giving be the wrong thing to do? Maybe animals that fuck around feel the same way? May be animals are far more in tune with their instinctual intelligence than many humans are? Who was it who decided that this instinctual behaviour should be relegated to second class rating?

But I don’t fuck around!

I am actually beginning to worry about my commitment to monogamy, whether it is so deeply embedded in me that I may never be able to shake its shackles clear from my mind. I appreciate that is a pretty odd statement from someone who is allegedly ‘playing away’. I am just having an ‘honesty’ moment. It might disappear in a while.

On the radio the other day, the debate was about whether humans could remain monogamous, but it was a non-debate in a sense because all of those present actually practiced monogamy even if they were slightly differing on the reasons why. Also, the debate was set in a religious framework which meant that alternatives to monogamy were somewhat limited and predictable. However, there was one person there who explained that polygamy was allowed under Islam as long as the man provided equal love, care and devotion to each of his wives, and that he took no more than four at a time. Naturally, under Islamic law a woman is not allowed to take four husbands. Another of the contributors was suggesting that we probably ought to have a look at the alternatives to monogamy and that there were plenty of places within the bible where polyandrous situations were recorded.

However, it was only when they talked to a man who was living with two other women where the comments became more interesting. This man had emigrated to Eastern Europe so that he could live without prying eyes and tutting. His initial partner had been involved with the other woman. He had then started seeing and presumably fucking the other woman until they all agreed that they could live happily together as a threesome.

To be honest, I’m not sure that is the way that I would like to live but I would never rule it out. There may come a time in my life when that is precisely what I want. It’s just not what I want at the moment and without any tone of admonishment – each to his or her own!

The one statement that really hit home was relative to promiscuity. Once more, there is an assumption that if you are not monogamous then you are, by default, promiscuous. The very fact that you are prepared to have sex outside the monogamous relationship, according to some in society, means that you are promiscuous.

I am not promiscuous. The woman on the programme agreed with me. I choose to have a relationship with another person but that does not mean that I want to sleep with every Dick I see. In some ways, life would almost be simpler if that were the case.

I think it is probably about time that, as a society, we really looked in greater detail about how we actually use words such as these, that are loaded with insinuation and inaccuracy.

Here’s another example of inappropriate words and sex.

Recently, a friend of a friend phoned up and said that she was worried that her ex-partner was, and I quote, “shagging around”. In reality, she is worried that he has found another lover but the way that she expressed that fear is also loaded with insinuation just by the use of the word “shagging”.

“Shagging” is seen as coarse, as promiscuous, as animal-like. She is actually worried that he has fallen in love with someone else not that he is fucking every fanny that he falls upon.

As it happens, he is shagging around - but is “shagging” the right word to use when it is so full of negative tones?

He has explicitly said that he has no commitments. The one person that he is regularly having sex with actually encourages him to have sex with other people and wants to know the details of his encounters. He is careful to ensure that he is maintaining his sexual health and those whom he chooses to fuck. So what crime is he actually committing? None as far as I am concerned.

He is having sex with a range of women and he is accepting that at this point in his life he does not want a monogamous relationship. Good on him!

Another comment from the radio programme was that in order to be polygamous or polyandrous, one probably needed to have a high level of emotional intelligence, or rather that one could reason and condition the destructive emotions that so frequently seep into such situations, like envy, jealousy, anger, infuriation, etcetera.

I think this is probably true. In order to have a polyandrous existence, it doesn’t mean that you should never have a jealous thought in your head, although that would be a wonderful blessing. It just means that when those jealous thoughts creep in that they are managed and understood to be the destructive emotions that they are and that they should be eradicated as quickly as possible if you are going to live peacefully and unperturbed in your chosen form of sharing life in a different way.

It’s strange and quirky that in my research on this subject, I should come across that quote from Sting. As a woman in her forties, I grew up with a slight adoration of the iconic, spiky blonde. If I was a decade earlier, it might have been another such pop idol and a decade earlier still, I may have looked to the Beatles or Elvis.

But what Sting says is absolutely true.

What precisely is the opposite of monogamy? Even scientists have recognized that there are different forms of monogamy and in some instances the monogamy of animal life is pretty similar to what we so bitingly refer to as “serial monogamy”.

Not only can we not determine the opposite of monogamy but we have to face each situation and each person in their own way. It absolutely depends on “the person and the situation”.

Sting himself has been hounded by the tabloids for having sex with others outside his marriage. Yet the tantric one probably agreed to this with his wife. From what I can gather, Trudi likes to dabble as much as her partner. They effectively have a committed relationship which is essentially monogamous but they enjoy recreational sex with other people involved, either as a couple or individually.

Haven’t they probably got it just about right?

Sometimes, I think so.

Sometimes I think that is precisely what I would like in life – which is why I am sure that the shackles of preconditioned thinking are so hard to break.

Somewhere along the line, somehow, I have fallen for the monogamy bug but by circumstances and by thought, I cannot reason that this is the way to live. I choose not to be monogamous but even if I didn’t, even if I was totally faithful, I could not believe that everyone should be partnered for life.

I married in my early twenties. I am simply not the same human being as I was then. I may be a different person now to how I am in twenty years time. Thankfully life is not that stagnant.

People should be free to live their lives how they do, and they shouldn’t be seen as monogamists behaving badly.

Everybody has their ideal and sometimes that ideal fluctuates.

Right now, I am somewhat envious of Sting and his partner.

Isn’t it possible that monogamy is feasible with a glorious amount of recreational sex thrown in?

Ultimately, that sounds good to me, but it is equally possible for a person to care for two people, have sexual relationship with two people (or more) and be totally committed to both.

Maybe it boils down to honesty and trust once more, as it does with so many things in life.
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