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ACCEPTANCE=LOVE
If I cannot accept him, I do not love him. I am choosing to feel hurt, yet the more I share, the more fears arise. Staying in fear keeps me from going deeper.
He's plenty committed, and I know it. I must let myself feel the fear and then let it go. Move on to the positive. Shift my thoughts, my awareness, my heart and spirit to the beautiful moments of which there are so very many, the love the adoration, the the affection, the laughter, the passion, the closeness, the connectedness, the orgasms, the sharing.
Breathe. Relax. Melt. Send golden pink light to my heart to calm and soothe it. Love it. I know he adores me. I must keep this close always. It's strengthening my self-love and self-confidence button of "I'm enough on my own, and I'm more than plenty."
He shows up. He always shows up for me and for us. He accepts I'm healing. He loves me. Not the other stuff. I must stop torturing myself.
4/28/2007
I've been struggling for awhile now. It hurts. I don't want to feel like this anymore. I've had periods of respite, sometimes long spells when I feel so good, so connected to you, when I feel so much love flowing between us, but then the clouds descend again.
I know what the trigger is, but I'm not sure what the deeper issue is, or maybe I do. I could guess that it's old father and/or mother issues, feelings of inadequacy, the emotional molestation I suffered, not feeling loved.
It could be that all I've known of love or what was called love was pain, conditions, strings attached, so when presented with the real thing, you, it feels so good; I revel in it, but maybe my subconscious can't handle it for too long. It's too unfamiliar, or it thinks it's bound to be taken away; I'm going to be abandoned anyway, so it creates pain which is the known as horrible as it feels. Or maybe it's something else.
It's still the porn. I still obsess. I still feel badly around it. I want to understand, but I don't. I want to believe that you are wired differently as a man than me as a woman, for I emotionally connect to a picture. I imagine a whole scene all senses included all in a split second. I'm told it's not at all like that for a man. I want to believe it's a harmless habit born from whatever reasons. I want to believe that it has nothing to do with me, that it might even enhance our sex life, but I can't seem to get there.
When you kiss on me, hug on me, touch me, fondle me, admire me, become aroused by me and what I do sexually or otherwise, I love it so much, but a small piece of me thinks for example any breasts would turn you on, so mine aren't anything special, yet I know I'm special and special to you.
When I think you are home alone, sometimes, often, I feel anxious, worried whether you are looking at it or not, and when I come home, if I know you've been here, I feel fear and a sense of helplessness. If you haven't been here I feel relieved, but I also feel guilty for being like this.
I feel so confused. I've worked so hard on this, and I've come so far. I've grown so much. I've blossomed. I've released and let go of so much. Sometimes this is only a blip on my screen, but sometimes it's a big wave.
Either way it's still present. It hasn't gone away. I hate it. I hate the thoughts I have around it. I hate the monster I create around it likely having little resemblance to the truth of it. I sometimes feel like I want to disappear in the face of it. I wish it would go away. Yet I really, really want to let this go, but I also really, really want you to stop. I don't know what to do anymore.
3/1/2007
What's been the hardest is understanding and knowing and attempting to bring down to the deepest of my depths the fact that whatever K does or doesn't do has no bearing on his obvious intense feelings for me, his love and his lust for me. He's doing the very best he can in each moment. Even if he is looking, none of it takes away from me and our love.
What does take away from me and our love is my story around it, the one I make up and embellish on ad infinitum. This is what keeps me in pain and in misery, tense and unable to feel love, not his actions which I've likely invented anyway or at least blown up out of proportion to something not all resembling reality.
So it's not he who is taking away from us. It's not he who is trashing our love. It's not he who is disregarding my feelings. It's me who is taking away from us by staying in my drama and thus pain and numb to love. It's me who is trashing our love, his love for me, for the same reasons. It's me who is disregarding his feelings, his feelings for me. Its me who is keeping him at arm's length because I'm terrified of fully opening to him, trusting him with my heart and with good reason from the past but not the present.
Irregardless, these are old reactions to a reality that was, not is. I realize that my deep down instincts don't really know that, and it may take more time, and again this is where I have trouble, being gentle and patient with myself.
As everything shifts and changes, physically too, for the physical is directly related to the emotional, the parts that were so hurt and damaged way back when will kick and scream, fight to maintain the status quo, the familiar, a misperceived safety, and for me it's enormously frustrating and very uncomfortable, emotionally sure, but right now physically the muscles around my heart (it's so amazingly literal) keep clenching, tightening down around it to protect against a danger that no longer exists, but instincts are resilient in their fragility.
It's so uncomfortable. Sometimes I can't breathe. It's so hard to have love and patience with it all, especially when there is a fist gripping my heart to keep it safe, yet I don't feel safe at all anymore. It hurts and keeps me from feeling wonderful and having a filling and fulfilling love.
I've been so focused on getting myself back to a semblance of myself so that I can work some on the relationship. We've been at a crossroads for a long time, he's right. But it's not an independent or dependent thing. It's not a question of being too concerned with stuff or what he thinks, yet it's all of that.
What it comes to is that I have never been able to relax enough around any relationship, to be authentic to myself, to be me in all my flaws and all my love and all my pain. I have never been able to love because of this, and it comes from my fears, my insecurities. It's what I've always wanted, and now I'm being challenged to be the vessel of love I have dreamed of.
Yes I'm still bruised and hurting at times, but it's an avoidance really. It keeps me from doing the real work. It keeps me from loving. It keeps me from love. I guess it must be very scary, but it's so uncomfortable being in that place where I question and doubt and imagine bad things and put an evil face on the one I want to love. I've had glimpses of another place where I can feel love and warmth and good yummy things flow through me, down my front, into my core self, and back up into my heart, and I feel good.
I am to separate his business from mine. I think I now know what he meant when he said I was being invasive and too concerned with what he thought. It's that I'm constantly analyzing, wondering, worrying, trying to solve problems that may not even be there. Whenever the questions and doubts arise, I need to transform them into soft, pink D thoughts and feelings. What is it that I feel? Do I feel nice, good, happy, turned on, excited, safe, warm? Do I feel sad, awful, icky, worried, confused, tense, terrible, frustrated? Am I having bad thoughts?
I must write if I cannot speak about why I feel it, memories it brings up if it does, and then I need to go to a lovely place and transform my negative state. I must go to a place where I feel good, a fantasy place, a place of transformation.
So how do I shift this relationship, start being more authentic? I need to start being true to me, warm and fuzzies and not so warm and fuzzies. I need to speak my feelings to him. How do I speak to him so that he hears me? I tell him how I feel, no elaboration or excuses or apologies, no reason why.
desire - dedication - determination
March 1, 2007
He is the love of my life. I am the love of his life. Pornography has been the only issue to have interfered with our relationship, that has kept me from falling completely, melting utterly, opening my heart fully to him and in turn he to me.
Yet this has compelled me to go down, so far down into myself to unearth, set free the dark demons I still held, ones I scarcely knew were there, so that I can be the vessel of pure love, angel goddess, a golden being of love and passion, the woman I have striven for and dreamed of becoming, that I may revel in and immerse myself in life and love, something and someone I wondered if I could taste let alone savor.
Yes porn has hurt me desperately. It has devastated me, shattered me into many pieces, turned my world upside down and inside out, but it has been a great gift. He has felt badly about my pain and that it was he who was the impetus. He doesn't want to hurt me and can't understand why this would as much as I can't undestand why he would continue knowing how I feel.
I am important to him. He cares how I feel, and he has asked me to trust him numerous times. He's telling me that his habit is of no threat to me whatsoever. He's an honorable, loving, compassionate man. What he does is meaningless, yet it's fun; it's maybe an escape; it keeps him in a state of arousal, something I like to be in most of the time too.
He doesn't want to let this go, so he doesn't. I must let it go, all of it, not just pieces of it, not just some of the time, all of the time. There is nothing to fear with it and with him. He's telling me this in so many ways and repeatedly.
I am afraid that I'm not good, not young enough, not pretty enough, not sexy enough, NOT ENOUGH, yet he has told me countless times how much I turn him on, how perfect my form is, how beautiful, how much he loves me, how much he loves our passion and our sex life which is abundant and so great and just keeps getting better, how pretty I am, how special I am to him, how sweet and fun and silly I am, how much we enjoy together, that he will always love my being, physically and otherwise. He shows me all of this over and over and over. He shows up for me and for us all the time.
His looking at porn, pictures of other naked women has nothing to do with me. I have fantasies too I suppose, vivid, detailed ones, most of which I would not want to bring to life and the ones I might, I wouldn't because I'm very much with him, loyal and faithful, strictly monogamous, so it wouldn't even be a consideration.
Men are visual. Porn has nothing to do with love. It's a physical reation to a visual cue. It's a purely instinctual, habitual, physical response that has absolutely NO emotional context. I know he looks at porn. I also know with everything I have that he is fiercely faithful to me, that he loves and adores , ME.
I don't know if he will always look. I don't know if the interest will wane as my energy around it fades to nothing, and none of it matters. I can't care. My pain surrounding it feeds the energy. I can't care. As long as our sex life doesn't change, as long as he's tender and wonderful to me as always, as long as he satisfies me, loves me, cares for me and about me, is attentive and adoring, cherishing, wants to be with me, spend time with me, why would I care.
The looking apparently enhances his longing for me, keeps him aroused and craving me. What I can care about is that he makes love to me, ME, often and with passion, tender care, adoration, variety, and imagination.
He has a firm grip on reality, likely more than I. He's very well aware of the difference between an air-brushed, photoshopped, two-dimensional image and his beautiful, sensual, sexual, loving lady, his woman, ME. He knows how lucky he is to have this woman, ME, angel goddess, as close to his perfect fantasy woman as he could have imagined and maybe even then some. He likes fantasy as do I, but he loves his real life so much more.
Apparently he rarely if ever anymore orgasms to those images. He'd much rather be with me, even just masturbating together. Alone is fun, and I do this far more than he, yet it's so much more fun together, shared. I'm sure he would agree. He has.
If anything ever changed, if our sex life was ever affected negatively, or if he looked for hours on end, if I felt his energy withdraw from me significantly for long periods, then I would worry in the same way I would worry about excessive drinking, pot smoking, or gambling.
I want to enjoy our love and our sexuality. This hurt I've been carrying really and truly has nothing to do with me. I love him. He loves me bunches and deeply, passionately, intimately. We have a very special and rare bond. It's to be treasured and nurtured.
This has been a deeply painful process, and through it I'm growing and blossoming. I'm digging down, so far down, tapping into very dark, murky, excruciating core issues. Porn triggered this in me, and ultimately I'm grateful. It's hard, but it's wonderful, amazing, releasing, liberating on all levels. I've learned, am still learning. I'm opening, am still opening, yet ingrained survival instincts though fragile are enormously resilient. I'm still moving into and allowing trust, trust in me, trust in him, trust in us, opening my heart to me, to life, to him, to us that I may love more fully, absolutely with passion and awe, compassion and XXXOOO.
January, 2007
I still carry some fear, some pain. I don't want it. It gets in the way. It keeps me from feeling what I want to feel. It keeps me from melting completely into myself, into you, into us. I want to let it all go, the porn issue too, that wound that seems to still open easily. I'm doing better with it, but it still comes up.
I want to feel I can tell you anything. Do you want me to come to you when this comes up, when anything comes up? Or do you want me to keep it to myself, work it through myself as best as I can?
I need to embrace everything I feel, including the awful images. I need to sink down into them and everything else too. I need to toss out the thoughts that lead to icky feelings. I cannot let them come back once I've embraced them and sunk in. I need to replace them with better thoughts and the feelings will then transform. Maybe I don't want what I think I want. Maybe I want what I actually have, which is wonderful.
D,
Interesting - in the last weeks I've gotten a bunch of e-mails from women about porn. It must be epidemic. I started thinking - this has been with us forever, porn, girlie pictures, and prostitution. Playboy and Penthouse have been acceptable magazines for men forever. So now we have the internet, and its pretty much no different from Penthouse.
So it seems to me, the only thing we girls can do about it is say - don't bring it in the house! And yet, as soon as we say that, we push away a bit of openness in the relationship, and we are, just by saying it, accepting it outside the home.
I think women are just different than men, and looking at girlie pictures is just not that big a deal. It's a different kind of worldview than we have. Addiction to anything is always an avoidance of something, fear based.
But a man who looks at a Penthouse when it shows up or porn on the internet when he has a free moment and sees a picture of a pretty woman on ANY site ANYWHERE, as long as he can stop after 5 minutes and get back to his work or what he was doing - I don't see a problem with that. I see it as an acceptance of a man for not only who he is with all his bugaboos and weirdnesses (just like he accepts us for what must be incomprehensible perspectives and emotions) but his plain old MALENESS.
And I almost see it as giving us license to feel, be, and express more of our FEMALENESS. Whether or not you want to "keep it out of the house" is a pretty darn acceptable house rule too and should be a problem for him to deal with. "Keep it out of your life" seems way too much for any relationship to bear, and I wold like to encourage you to keep going with your own work to where you can negotiate, share, talk with him, and come to a mid-point agreement that you both can live with.
Making this about your insecurities just talks yourself into it. Talking about what you "can't handle" is perhaps way too negative. Let's talk instead about what you "don't want around you, in your environment" and see if you can go from there.
Love, R
January, 2006
The bottom line for him is not what's he's doing or not doing but the freedom he has to do what he wants and to be himself. Men and many women need to have the freedom to be unfaithful in their fantasies without fear of retribution or guilt.
That freedom regardless of what any man actually does or doesn't do with that freedom is one element that puts the juice in his relationship, you, and keeps everything flowing. He feels restricted at work, restricted by his other limitations, by his own demons, childhood issues. To experience you as an enhancing, freeing spirit in his life is an incalculable joy.
He would never, ever cheat on you for real, and he probably doesn't even do it in his mind (Men aren't that imaginative. They don't go off into fantasies like we do. They look at a picture of a woman, it's a quick buzz, then they see the sport's section, and that's the end of the woman.) When he looks at you it's a totally real experience. You want him to be with you which he does. The only limitations you have on him are in reality, and that's the limitation he not only can accept without tension, but it's the limitation he wants also for himself and for you.
Try to accept that he's a different animal. There's a complete difference between momentary eroticism in a picture for a man and the full bodied response he has to you in the flesh. What he wants to feel is that you know the picture is no competition; it only stokes the fires of his passion for you, and that's the kind of confidence he wants to see in you. Even if you don't feel it, you can think it, and then the feelings will follow.
He is very aware of what committment means, and if a masculine energy man needs to tell himself he's free at all times to choose you over and over again and that looking at pictures of other women helps him in that regard to not feel commanded by us, then that's a good thing.
And by not making a big deal about it, we are demonstrating self-esteem and self-love that we recognize these pictures are not real, that we rcognize that his fantasy life is not under our control, and we will not try to control it because we are confident in our power and committment and can let him be because we know he loves only us. This is a very powerful magnet for a masculine energy man.
I believe that the pornography is absolutely no issue at all judging from what you said. He was very non-defensive yet insisted on his own rights and boundaries to his own self, mind and fantasies included. He wants to make sure you are coming together a separate equals. He is standing firm for your relationship to have as few co-dependent elements as possible. He is strong enought to say basically, "Take me or leave me," and yet clearly he doesn't want you to leave him.
It is made absolutely clear by him and borne out by every man I've ever talked to or heard about that for men, sexual fantasies, pictures, etc. have NO emotional context. When we look at pictures or imagine things, there is an emotional, romantic imagery attached. We women imagine ourselves there and experience the emotional feelings.
Men don't work that way. It is purely an instinctual, habitual, physical response. When he looks at you however, he feels emotional context. It is completely separate for him, compartmentalized. He does not put you or the woman who passed on the street and he admired her breasts on even the same planet.
He is capable of looking at a strange woman's body and feeling slightly aroused and then turning to you, feeling love, and telling you he loves you without skipping a beat and without confusion in his mind or his heart. We women cannot even comptemplate this. You must accept this is so.
