River's Blog

River

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A random tid-bit to start.

Quote:

You want an inconvenient truth? Try this one: human beings are clearly evolved for sex lives featuring multiple simultaneous sexual relationships.

Men, especially, are designed by evolution to be attracted to sexual novelty and to gradually lose sexual attraction to the same partner in the absence of such novelty. The so-called Coolidge Effect is well demonstrated in social mammals of all sorts, and is old news to anyone knowledgeable about reproductive biology.​

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...nient-truth-sexual-monogamy-kills-male-libido

Holy shit! This means I'm normal!;)
 
I think I got excited by this article :p

My problem with blanket statements like this, are akin to why I dislike such specific references to alpha/beta male patterns. Simply put, we have cognitive and reasoning ability that can over shadow pure instinct.

While we follow similar patterns to animals I don't like to think of these things as an inability to choose.

I am an alpha male, I don't run around beating up other alpha males and taking on my own pride of females. As appealing as that sounds :p :D
 
Simply put, we have cognitive and reasoning ability that can over shadow pure instinct.

While we follow similar patterns to animals I don't like to think of these things as an inability to choose.

I agree that it's not correct to lump all animals, including the human animal, together in one big fuzzy lump. We do and can choose. But much of what we feel, our impulses, are rooted in biology -- and deeper than thought, belief, and choosing. How we behave in relation to those impulses and feelings is variable.

Anyway, I think that article sorta lets a lot of us off the hook, so to speak. We are as we are not because we're BAAAAD, but 'cause we're ... well, human.
 
Quote from the website mentioned by the OP (original poster): A recent article in Psychology Today profiles a therapist/author who suggests that married men with low libido can overcome this difficult situation if they just do it. According to this article, “their low sex drive often has little to do with hormones or biology and a lot to do with the women in their lives. Men today, often enough, are angry at their wives.” Readers are told that, “In the presence of a mismatch of desire, all intimacy drops out on all levels in addition to the sexual. Couples stop having meaningful conversations.”

Even though the author of the article dismisses this opinion... it certainly explains my last relationship. Though he's happy with his new married gf, which is how I ended up here.

And I think since people are living longer, we're all looking at what works, and how to get more love and communication.
 
I'm posting a copy of the below over here because it has bloggy feel about it. The original is in the topic about extroversion & introversion.


I suspect most folks (I'm guessing!) are plenty okay about where they are on the introversion-to-extroversion spectrum, but lately I'm feeling rather boxed in as a result of my having been a lifelong introvert.

Well, I'm on my way toward ambiversion, I suspect -- and I have no doubt that a lot of folks will see me as quite extroverted, until they get to know me well. That's as a result of my being much more assertive than passive. I'm probably much more assertive than the average person. But I'm also, in some respects, probably more shy, too.

Actually, I can surprise people with my occasions of extroversion, my willingness to talk with strangers, my ability to create quick rapport with people, etc. So even I am having a little bit of a challenge understanding my shyness, which is also there.

Maybe it all roots in my childhood -- when I was the proverbial Boy Never Chosen for obligatory schoolyard ball play. That sort of thing. I was a mess, then. Trodden down at home and on the school yard. A bedwetter, a scrawny scardycat boy who made up stories about pirate treasure to try to win friends. I used to have a beadspread with football helmets on it even though I neither understood nor cared for football. I'd do anything to win the acceptance and appreciation -- the love -- that was so foreign and strange to my longing heart.

Ooops! See, there I have gone and done it again. I seem to extravert my introversion. I'm a pro!​
 
When a bee is precisely and only a bee,
buzzing.

When the poem falls silent
beneath
metaphor.

When the ribs are!
When there are humming throats,
kisses! new kisses!

The skin which shivers
The eyes which tear up
The impossible fucking poem!

Who is not in search of this,
This
This
This

Who does not swim in it?
 
Thanks, Charlie. (I'll view that when I have my headphones with me at the cafe, since I don't have internet at home at this time.)

=========

I want to introduce one of my teachers. A true wise-woman. Though I've never met her, her words are magical, and true (mostly).

http://www.tarabrach.com/


.
 
How to think without grasping?

People will say, "I grasp that concept". I "get" what you mean.

How to let the heart (my heart) speak?

A question makes a better guide.

When I hold a question my hands are turned upright, open.

When I hold my breath, both heart and mind shrink.

To hold my heart open is to ask a question is to hold a question lightly is to allow the fullness of breath.

That's the same thing as letting the sunlight in.

Long ago, my heart shrank for fear.

Now the sun can seem too bright! My hands clutch, but I catch them at it. I'm learning to love them when they're like this. They need my love. So does my breathing.

I don't want to "get" love. I'm not grasping after it. I'm intensely curious. I want to know what it is like to breathe without any hesitation.
 
The essence of a poem is that it's boiled down to its own essence. But this is prose, and it's quick. I'm wanting not to overthink it. The fingers need to fly. There's far too much here to find any sort of essence. The changes are swift, as if I am caught in a fast moving River.

And slow, deep... wide. I grow impatient with my impatience. I notice it. What else can I do? I so want to push off, move on, get on with it....

But what?! Here I am. This Is It.

This is a story far too slow, swift, wide, and deep to post as a "blog post". I'm searching for its essence, but I only want to say, instead, that I'm thinking again of David -- Yes, the guy who pulled the disappearing act. I've been remembering his touches, his kisses.... His disappearance.

My disappearing act is different, I tell myself. Here I am, pushing the River, wanting and wishing, needing and ... I think I'll sit in meditation, take a hot bath.... Anything to avoid
... What? .... This gnawing dukkha. "Unsatisfactoriness" (and would you believe I'm uncertain about its spelling?

Habits. Rivers cut deep canyons in the Earth. They don't change swiftly. They rush on swiftly.

I miss him. I do.
 
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For now, for once, I'm not running away, not judging my pain as something that needs getting rid of.

Nor do I judge your pain thusly.

Together, we can hold it.

Hold ourselves.

Hold each other.
 
In the heat of the moment I sometimes forget the deeper intelligence and get caught up in the voices of the surface intelligence. (These are my substitutes for "higher" and "lower". Lower things are good, and not inferior. They are to be kept and used and praised.)

The deeper intelligence takes a long view and is not afraid to allow the transformation of the surface intelligence -- often into itself. It's called deep learning. The deeper intelligence invisibly guides one toward one's and the world's (that's everyone's) best good. Deep good, not "higher". (Even "deep" is something akin to a metaphor. So don't choke on it.)

When the world is rocking and rolling within me, when deep change is afoot (high change!, wide...) the surface intelligence likes to spread out its archaic wares in the mind's eye like a good salesman. And I can forget the subtle and graceful, nearly silent, voice of deeper intelligence. That is when I need to Stop. I need to stop. Set aside the insistant KnowItAll salesman. His tools and wares are good, but they are not always the best tool for the job.

This message has been brought to you by the deeper intelligence, which lives just beyond my finger tips, and whose work is play. And who dreams up freedom.
 
Earthquake, volcano, partial melt down ... in Japan. Revo- and Evo- lutions bursting out everwhere. "Inner" transformations bursting out everywhere.... Who turned up the speed of the clocks and calendars?
 
There are moments along the way when I forget
how far I've travelled,
how much I've progressed
and healed
and grown.
The clouds cover and the fog settles in and I forget
how grateful I am
how blessed I am
how lovely I am
how free I am
What joy there is.

I am walking this way, walking into
the new world
It is a world with less and less shame
less and less fear
more and more allowing
of myself
of others
And appreciation

And pain
And joy

Say you love apples and
suddenly you -- after great hunger-suffering --
inherit ten acres of apple orchard.

It's like that.
 
I like the dirt
that hangs like crumbs
from the shaggy roots of things

I like the silence
between the words
in poems

It cheers me
to see a cracked
coffee cup

and my slightly bulging
middle aged belly
makes me laugh

who could not appreciate
the indirection
of the actual poem of life?

It hadn't known where it was going
yet it assembled
upon the snow
and upon the grass.
 
I'm Not Really Gay

Take, for example, internet search engines. Take Google for example. Google up things "gay," and you will see how it works. The most popular sites go right to the top of the list. And you see how the term "gay" is a marketing term. The idea of "gay" is a market niche. And this is one of the main reasons I'm not really gay.

Then -- brrr! -- have a look at your local Craigslist Personals. It's frightening! Chilly.

I like men. I like to talk with them, walk with them, hug them, kiss them, laugh with them, play with them, cook and eat with them.... Make love with them.

I'm not gay.
 
So here it is. Yesterday evening I finally got kissed ... by someone other than Kevin(!). I don't know where things might go with the kisser in question, but I'm glad that after three years since my last such kisses I've finally had another. Those three years ago it was [Name Withheld-1], who had been my friend before the kisses started, [Name Withheld-1] who abandoned our friendship suddenly and harshly when his boyfriend found out that [Name Withheld-1] and I were being physically intimate. (I thought [Name Withheld-1] and his boyfriend were splitting up. Otherwise, I'd not have been sneaking around with [Name Withheld-1].) My heart was broken, 'cause I was in love with [Name Withheld-1] by the time the hatchet fell. And I felt as if all of [Name Withheld-1]'s kisses were stolen, not given -- taken from me rather than given to me.

[Details removed] So that's why this one kiss yesterday evening was special. Somehow healing. It wasn't the kiss of a promise. It belonged only to its own moment (I hardly know [Name Witheld-2] at all! We'd just met moments before!).

[Name Witheld-2] and I had just met at [a bar]. I was telling him about my work toward creating a chapter of GayOutdoors, as well as another club for LGBT folks and their admirors, when -- strangely, suddenly, out of the blue -- he asked me if I liked kissing. Puzzled, confused by the non sequitor, I said that I did. He then asked if I would kiss him. I paused and thought about it. He's quite attractive. But I had to say "We'll see" -- with a soft smile. It seemed to me we should know each other better before I decided the situation merited kissing. But he urged me forward, and so I bent toward him and we kissed. We'd met only maybe twenty minutes before! (Weird!)

It didn't take long for mutual attraction to be felt and realized between us. And [Name Witheld-2] is the sort of fellow who comes right out with whatever's on his mind, very direct. And so we were talking (so soon!) about what may and may not occur. He had been informed of my polyamory--a topic emerging out of the natural flow of getting to know one another a little. (I had to explain why I wasn't involved in certain gay men's activity groups. He thought my having a partner explained it, but I said no, as I'm always open to meeting men for 'romance'.)

[Name Witheld-2] has a partner of many years. Yet he and his partner haven't had a sexual relationship for [ X ] years. [Identifying details removed] In the vocabulary of polyamorists, [Name Witheld-2] is sexually non-monogamous but emotionally monogamous. Or, more probably, he's sitting on the fence between these two -- scared of moving his ass. But the glimmer in his eyes, and some of his words, indicate a desire and a capacity to connect on a heart level -- feelingly.

When he let me know he was interested in me, but his heart would belong 100% to his partner, I quickly let him know I found that "uninteresting". At about the moment of my uttering the phrase "how unintersting," I really wanted to move away from him and our conversation, perhaps meet another guy, or sit by myself at the bar.

"That's very dangerous, what you ask for," He said. "That polyamory". Did he think I was asking for that from him? I was only telling the fact of the matter when I said "If you and I were to be sexual, my emotions would be involved." That was a simple, almost scientific fact being reported -- not a request from him. (His sexual interest in me was clear enough by then.) If I were to have sex with anyone at this point in my life, it will be "making love" -- for I simply cannot divide myself down the middle the way so many gay men do. Or men do. Or people do.... Meaning, my heart and my skin are conjoined. My cock and my heart are conjoined. My kisses and my heart are certainly conjoined. I suppose I'm more "like a girl" in my loving than so many queer guys. I have loving in my loving, and can't seem to divide one from the other.

What I wonder about what happened between [Name Witheld-2] and I is, was there tenderness in the tenderness we shared? Is he another [Name Witheld-1]? Did he steal that kiss? Or give it?

He had to go, suddenly, when I was finished peeing in the men's room. I asked him to stay put when I got up to pee. And so I embraced him and said "See you around".

I'm more than a little tempted to be at the bar again this evening, just to see if he's there.

Am I nutz? Shouldn't I forget about this unavailable man?
 
I'm more than a little tempted to be at the bar again this evening, just to see if he's there.

Am I nutz? Shouldn't I forget about this unavailable man?

I assume you two did not exchange contact info?

I would perhaps not go back to the bar so soon. Wait a few days, and if he's there the next time, there may be enough distance to see if that attraction/tension is still there and to see if a conversation about whatever might develop is warranted. Or a conversation to get clarification on things.

Sometimes it is worth investigating what people mean or how they define those things. I wonder if his saying that his "heart is 100%" with his partner doesn't mean that he cannot love another person, but that he wanted you to know of his loyalty. Even though he seems like a direct person, he may have his own interpretations of certain terms or concepts. Perhaps his "sitting on the fence" with his relationship is a bit of a rut. It sounds a little bit like he doesn't quite understand polyamory (calling it dangerous).

I would say go slowly, be open and honest (no doubt that you would) and ask for explanation if something doesn't make sense to you.

And hey, if you don't wind up seeing him again, you shared a nice kiss. Sometimes we just get little boosts like that in life even if they don't lead anywhere. Sometimes they shouldn't lead anywhere and simply stand on their own as a little bit of sweetness that came your way. In that case, I'd say he gave it, not stole it. :)
 
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