openness

September 15, 2006

D,

The goal of everything, all this work, is of course ultimately about you. About opening up to life, opening your heart and body. This is separate from K. You're not doing it for him; you're doing it for you. However the most important thing right now in your personal growth is the relationship. And specifically being open in the relationship - not just through your body but through your words. To get to the point in the relationship where you can communicate about anything you choose to share. And what you choose to share determines the depth of the relationship.

If you choose to share your deepest fantasies, then you will allow him to share his deepest fantasies. Not wanting to hear them, you'll not speak about yours. Keeping secrets is very tricky business. I do not share much about my inside life with my husband (I don't think he's ever expressed interest in or read a word of my books or anything I write.) but he's free to. I'm very aware what I don't want him to read or know about me is my choice to keep the relationship superficial. It's about the level of trust I have.

For you getting closure in the leering, salacious side of K that you are fixating on may be about going into that milieu and seeing and experiencing it for yourself. And yet it's not a book you read or a picture you saw or a fantasy you had - but an actual nighttime visit to a real place. If I stop into a porno shop or lingerie shop to buy myself a sex toy, I don't feel the need to tell my husband about it - we've done it together. But if I was concerned, and it bothered me to think of him going into such a place or renting a porn video or catching some girls gone wild on TV, then my visit would eat at me. It would fester and bother me. It would be a secret because we'd never had the discussions and the ease to talk about this part of our lives.

Essentially you are working on your internal reactions to something that is commonplace and acceptable to most people - looking at pictures of naked girls every once in awhile. This has to do with you and control and curiosity and all kinds of feelings you really want to get to and get familiar with and release their hold on you.

I just want you to look at things from his point of view. And to look at everything as an opportunity to deepen the relationship by talking rather than tip-toeing around things. I don't know how to tell you to do this, just to please be aware of your stress level, where the guilt comes in, how open you feel around K, how he's being, how you're talking with each other about stuff, whether or not he feels free to unburden himself to you, and how if you were him with the same sensitivities you have, he'd like you to be with him. I vote for communication as the most important thing on the plate here. This may take some thought, some writing, some really looking at him and the relationship, and how this all fits together.

You are brilliant and on the edge of something really incredible. What is keeping you from marriage is not your feelings of inadequacy, we all have those, but your fear of the depths of intimacy you could go without some of the secrets you still hold. I'm going to have to up the level of my life just to keep ahead of you. It's easy for me to talk - I'm inspired to take some more giant leaps so I can keep walking my talk.

Love, R