What he goes there for is to unlock the door
I'm having a weird evening this evening. I feel like writing. Actually, I don't feel like writing as much as I feel like eating something, even though I am not hungry and don't need food right now. Actually, I don't feel like eating as much as I feel like talking to someone, but other than zinging chat messages to L. (who is busy with dinner and clean-up right now) there is nobody with whom to have a conversation. So, I write.
My weird evening began with a feeling. I was feeling as if one of my inner parts had metaphorically kicked me in the butt. Hey, you, let's have a conversation. I guess I was in a state of mind that is hard to characterize. I wasn't doing "parts work" at the time. I wasn't particularly trying to engage my inner parts. In fact, I wasn't doing or thinking much of anything. I was looking at a picture of a woman whose working name is "Sammie B" on my laptop. It was part of my porn collection, but it wasn’t a particularly "raw" photo. In it, she's dressed, shown from the shoulders up. The only erotic element to the photo consists of a steel "slave girl" collar around her neck. Heh. I wasn't looking at the pic for "erotic engagement," to put it in genteel terms; I just find Sammie easy on the eye and I was just enjoying looking at her at the moment. I wasn't fantasizing or even thinking much at all.
It was at that moment that one of my inner parts kind of metaphorically kicked me in the butt and wanted to talk. Usually, it doesn't happen that way. Usually, I have to go looking for my inner parts, except for DJ - she's fairly spontaneous and accessible. Heh. Anyway, it wasn't DJ because what was going through my mind wasn't music. No, some part of me wanted to engage myself in a game of let's pretend, so I indulged that part in a bit of fantasy/day-dreaming.
The part suggested that we pretend we were on a date with a woman. OK. Sammie is right there on my computer screen. She seems available. She'll do. I imagined myself, sitting across a table from her, conversing. Eventually, Sammie asks what went wrong in the relationship when I was married. I extended my hand to her across the table and said: "Give me your hand." She put her hand in mine and I said to her, "What are you feeling, right now?"
"What does that have to do with what I asked you?" she asked.
I told her, "When I was married, I didn't understand what I was doing. I had no conception of connection. I thought it was merely about paying attention, and listening. I didn't realize that it was something that one has to consciously work at, that empathy is engaged like any other form of thinking, that conscious connection is more than just listening and paying attention." I explained to her that many times when my wife did try to communicate her feelings to me, I merely reacted to them. I didn't "reach across the table to her" and ask her to expand upon what she was feeling. I explained that quite often Crystal wasn't any better at connection than I was. We didn't quite understand what we were doing. Sometimes, often, maybe, we "clicked," and got connection and things just "worked," and that was good, but we each, in our own way, didn't understand how to make connection, consciously. We didn't understand Schnarch's concept of how we humans map each other's minds, and how tricky and ticklish that kind of intimacy is, and how it requires conscious determination to hold onto ourselves and not slip into "reaction mode" and stay in the moment with one another.
From there, our imaginary dinner date conversation went all sorts of strange and interesting places. Why? Because I wanted to know who it was to whom I was talking. I wanted to map her, visit her inner worlds, see if she had any interest in visiting mine. Gah. I felt such a yearning. Coming out of my pretending exercise, I experienced the understanding of having had a wife available to me, once upon a time, a partner who lived with me, was available for conversation, connection, anytime we wanted it, nearly literally 24/7. I only vaguely grasped what I had at the time. I believed that I appreciated my marriage. I did, to the extent I was capable. We really didn't understand what it was we wanted, but want it we did. We were inept at getting it. I realized in the moment that I was feeling that yearning. I wanted conversation right then. There was nobody to whom to talk. Friends, relatives, too far away, in different places, different time zones, probably asleep at that hour. I exchanged some Skype messages with L., but she was cleaning up dinner, which she and her spouse had been enjoying. She made liver pate for them.
I thought about living by myself for these past twenty years and only dating, and not engaging in a serious long-term relationship. It seemed kind of wasteful. I remembered how fascinated I was to look into my ex-wife's eyes, see her thoughts and feelings cross her face. Gone. I thought of the few women I have dated in the last two decades, opportunities not pursued, flowers blushing unseen, wasting their sweetness on the desert air. Hmm. I've had some wonderful opportunities to develop something with some remarkable, truly quality women… Why didn't I pursue a relationship more diligently? Opportunity costs, miscalculated?
L. mentioned how her spouse still felt a bit of surprise when she did his laundry. It's so weird. I'm not amenable to the feminist ideology. Yes, women are freer now than they have been at various other periods in history. They can vote, drive, hold jobs, cash their own paychecks, head their own households, when that was a bit more out-of-the-ordinary in "the bad old days." It's a good thing. Nevertheless, I don't believe in "patriarchy" or women as an "oppressed class" of human being. Still…the idea of being served by a spouse, girlfriend, partner... How many guys are like us? We have internalized this idea that it is somehow "wrong" to want to be cared for, or heaven forbid, served by a spouse or partner who feels inspired to do such things. It sends small shocks to the brain to think of it, like we're shamed for fantasizing about some kind of bdsm slave-whoopie-wench role for women, just to entertain female magnanimity or care, or an act of love. The crazy stuff we pull out of the zeitgeist and internalize, without thinking about it or even noticing. Is it that? Maybe it's more personal, in my own case. Maybe I'm susceptible to "internalized feminism" not because of "cultural influences" so much but rather, because I don't quite feel "worthy" enough?
I remember one time when Crystal and I were arguing. We'd been up late, In our conflict, and had gone to bed, still angry. The next morning, I got up, showered and got dressed to go to work. When I came into the kitchen, I found her cooking breakfast for me, and packing a lunch for me, as she did most days. I sat at the table, feeling flabbergasted. What she was doing touched me. I felt small for being angry at her at all. It was just foolishness. I told her that I understood that we had been up late, and that I knew she was still upset with me. I told her that I would understand completely if she didn't feel like cooking or making lunch for me, if she just wanted to go back to bed and get some more sleep. I didn't even want her doing something so personal for me, if she were feeling resentment or was not inspired to take care of me in such a way. I can still see her, in my mind's eye, standing in our kitchen. She just said, "I want to do this." Ugh. At that point, the fight felt incredibly pointless, from my perspective. Why was I even in conflict with her? How could I be angry with a woman who was doing something so personal for my benefit? It made no sense. I tried to talk to her. I tried to tell her how I felt, how I felt like reconsidering my part in the conflict and making another attempt to understand her perspective. In the moment, she was unreachable, out of her stubbornness, or my fumbling attempts to connect. Ignorance has such a high cost.
Sitting there in my bedroom, earlier this evening, thinking and experiencing these things, I started feeling like I wanted to go out and get something to eat. I wasn't really hungry, and I didn't need anything to eat. I just wanted some kind of satiety. I had a surprising and dawning realization that the satiety feeling resulting from having something to eat would act as convenient substitute for the conversation and connection I was wanting in the moment. I had intellectualized this before. I understood that I tended to "eat my feelings" as it is so cringingly put by people, sometimes. Nevertheless, I had not before now drawn such a visceral, internalized experience of what was happening when I felt that urge. It was something interesting to experience. Food for thought.