Following the Additions are excerpts from the book
ADDTIONS
250313 Hyperventilation and Tetany
In the discussion of sexuality, I forgot to mention the possible hyperventilation that can feel uncontrollable and scary and, if prolonged, lead to a condition called tetany. One may feel their face getting numb and their hands curling into claw-like contractions. Some people may find themselves hyperventilating/panting after a particularly powerful orgasm. This could involve a strong emotional release and/or exertion. A low carbon dioxide level in the blood causes the effect. This is not a pleasant sensation. The usual way to bring someone out of it is to have them breathe and rebreathe into a small bag or similar object, thus raising their carbon dioxide level. If one is having this in a sexual context, the hyperventilating partner can get face to face with their partner, if they aren’t already there, and inhale the exhalation from their partner, expelling it to the side, and so on until hyperventilation has ceased.
250102 To state the obvious re sexual pleasure that is so overlooked in the popular media: It isn’t how it looks that is most important. It’s how it feels! In the book, I talk about how important it is to Reframe the Beauty Bias. In my Metalledctual Adventures, I joke: Have you noticed how, in the dark, all flesh and mucous membranes feel pretty much the same? This tends to get an edgy response, especially from women.
241226 Jordan Peterson is a controversial figure who doesn’t bow down to left-leaning PC thinking. I like much but not all of the things he says. Judge this for yourself. https://youtu.be/KWs_vAwgZwU?si=MlpmwyYUTg3z2z3S
241210 These are great – Words from the Laadan language
Notes: Females in an extremely patriarchal linquistics-oriented group of families create a women’s language, and it changes their reality. Check out Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue series if you find these words as interesting as I do. There are more on the Laadan language at http://laadanlanguage.org/
dooledosh – pain or loss which comes as a relief by virtue of ending the anticipation of its coming.
doroledim – (sublimation with food accompanied by guilt about that sublimation) This word has no English equivalent whatsoever. Say you have an average woman. She has no control over her life. She has little or nothing in the way of a resource for being good to herself, even when it is necessary. She has family and animals and friends and associates that depend on her for sustenance of all kinds. She rarely has adequate sleep or rest; she has no time for herself, no space of her own, little or no money to buy things for herself, no opportunity to consider her own emotional needs. She is at the beck and call of others, because she has these responsibilities and obligations and does not choose to (or cannot) abandon them. For such a woman, the one and only thing she is likely to have a little control over for indulging her own self is FOOD. When such a woman overeats, the verb for that is “doroledim”. (And then she feels guilty, because there are women whose children are starving and who do not have even THAT option for self-indulgence..)
lowithelaad – to feel, as if directly, another’s feelings (pain / joy / anger / grief / surprise, etc.); to be empathetic, without the separation implied in empathy.
nuhaam – to feel oneself cherish, cared for, nurtured by someone.
oothanuthul – spiritual orphanhood, being utterly bereft of a spiritual community.
raahedethi – to be unable to feel lowitheláad, to be empathically impaired.
raahedethilh – to be unwilling to feel lowitheláad; to be deliberately empathically impaired.
radama – to non-touch, avoiding touch, to actively refrain from touching.
radamath – to non-touch with evil intent.
radeela – non-garden, glitz without beauty, a place that has much flash and glitter and ornament, but no beauty.
radiidin – non-holiday, holiday more work that it’s worth, a time allegedly a holiday but actually so much a burden because of work and preparations that it is a dreaded occasion; especially when there are too many guests and none of them help.
radodelh – non-interface, a situation which has not one single point in common on which to base interaction, often used of personal relationships.
raduth – to non-use, to deliberately deprive someone of any useful function in the world, as in enforced retirement or when a human being is kept as a plaything or a pet.
raheena – non-heart-sibling, one so entirely incompatible with another that there is no hope of ever achieving any kind of understanding or anything more than a truce, and no hope of ever making such a one understand why; (does not mean “enemy”).
rahom – to non-teach, to deliberately fill students’ minds with empty data or false information; (can be used only of persons in a teacher/student relationship).
ralorolo – non-thunder, much talk and commotion from one (or more) with no real knowledge of what they’re talking about or trying to do, something like “hot air” but more so.
ramime – to refrain from asking, out of courtesy or kindness.
ramimelh – to refrain from asking, with evil intent; especially when it is clear that someone badly wants the other to ask.
ranem – non-pearl, an ugly resentment or situation which worsens & festers, an ugly thing one builds layer by layer as an oyster does a pearl, such as a festering hatred to which one pays attention.
rani – non-cup, a hollow accomplishment, something one acquires or receives or accomplishes but is empty of all satisfaction.
rarilh – to deliberately refrain from recording; for example, the failure throughout history to record the accomplishments of women.
rarulh – non-synergy, that which when combined only makes things worse, less efficient, etc.
rashida – non-game, a cruel “playing” that is a game only for the dominant “player” with the power to force others to participate.
rathom – non-pillow, one who lures another to trust and rely on them but has no intention of following through, a “lean on me so I can step aside and let you fall” person.
rathoo – non-guest, someone who comes to visit knowing perfectly well that they rre intruding and causing difficulty .
raweshalh – non-gestalt, a collection of parts with no relationship other than coincidence, a perverse choice of items to call a set; especially when used as “evidence.”
shaadehul – growth through transcendence, either of a person, a non-human, or thing (for example, an organization, or a city, or a sect).
wohosheni – a word meaning the opposite of alienation; to feel joined to, part of someone or something without reservations or barriers.
wonewith – to be socially dyslexic; uncomprehending of the social signals of others.
zhalaad – the act of relinquishing a cherished/ comforting/familiar illusion or frame of perception.
241212 I say in the book that we have neither the words nor the concepts to define love. Love is undefinable. Nonetheless, it can be fun trying. My favorite definition of Love is Bucky Fuller’s. “Gravity is unit and undifferentiable. Gravity is comprehensive inclusively embracing and permeative, non-focusable, shadowless, and omni-integrative; all of which characteristics of gravity are also the characteristics of love. Love is metaphysical gravity.”
My current best definition is “I really really really really really like you.”
121121 I recently found this imaginary Couple’s Vow from an unfinished project
MINE
- I offer you the gift of my true perception of
- your radiant beauty, and a field of consciousness
- in which you may know contentment in the
- certain knowledge of the inherent goodness
- in who you are and what you do.”
- HERS
- I give you the fullness of the ground of my
- being, and the grace of my nurturance in
- support of all that you may aspire to manifest
- in the worlds of spirit and form.
- As we gazed into each other’s eyes, our souls
- merged. In shared union, we agreed: So Be It,
- So It Has Been, So It Is, and So It Will Be.
- 241018. I feature Susan Campbell’s Getting Real work in my book and life: Relationships Can Get Traumatized Too
I know Susan, we were sort of friends with benefits while she was writing the Truth in Dating book which ended up being dedicated to me. Her approach to couple’s therapy often focuses on helping people clarify what they really need to say and be heard by a partner or other people in their life. She sees that most relationship issues come from people getting triggered and perhaps another then getting co-triggered. She recommends pausing, calming down and then work on figuring out what is in the subconscious that needs work. Her most recent book is Triggered to Tranquil.
She walks her talk and is perhaps the freest person I know. The way she lives her life is an inspiration.
Chapter 3 Enhancing the Depths of Intimacy
This chapter discusses various ideas and practices that have helped me mature as a loving person and partner. In a mature life, love, personal growth, and spiritual wisdom are sources of intuition, insight, and meaning.
As discussed in the last chapter, I support and celebrate all individuals who have found deep loving relationships in whatever form works for them, including coming to the unconditional love of oneself. In this chapter, I discuss the nature and characteristics of mature love within hetero-committed couples because that is what I know. I support others in finding their own ways to love. I discuss various ideas and practices that have helped me mature as a loving person and partner. In an evolving mature life and love, psychological growth and spiritual wisdom are concurrent ongoing sources of insight, intuition, and meaning. Many wise people believe what Rumi said: ‘What you seek is seeking you.’
This Is Not Only My Story
The following personal revelations come from my experience and intimate conversations with other mature lovers. Unfortunately, there aren’t adequate terms to describe altered mental states or sexual experiences. Talking about these experiences is like trying to explain a color or smell to someone without the requisite senses.
While many mature lovers are not in romantic coupled relationships, they can still have rich, loving relationships with family and friends. Whatever relationship forms people find themselves in, each individual needs to find what works best for them.
Trust and Respect
Having a deep and abiding trust in and respect for one’s partner are natural and necessary components of a mature relationship. I trust that neither my partner nor I will ever intentionally do anything to harm the other. I trust that while we may occasionally do something hurtful to the other, it will be mild because we are wise and aren’t acting out of repressed emotional distress or malice. I trust that on such occasions, we will do whatever it takes to resolve the issue and return to our usual mutual caring. There is real comfort in knowing this. My partner and I respect the quality of the life the other is living and the path it’s taken them to get here.
One important kind of trust is being comfortable giving each feedback about what best works and what not so much in how they touch and approach the whole realm of sensual, sexual and other life activities. We trust and respect each other’s autonomy.
The Love of Mature Couples
In a mature loving relationship, we meet the divine feminine and masculine in each other, and in a way within ourselves as well. These relationships are free of coercion and obsessions. The partners move around in and out of loving, laughing, engaging, and teasing. Lovemaking often becomes a spiritual communion. There is nothing else in human life with this unique preciousness. Is there any time when partners appreciate and adore each other more than when making love? I don’t think so. Mature lovers can have the best emotional intimacy and sexual pleasure. This is an assumption carried throughout this work. It is true in my life and for my peers. It isn’t just that practice improves one’s skills, although there is that. It isn’t that you get to know each other’s preferences better, although there is that. It isn’t that you’ve come to find your older bodies beautiful, although there is that. It’s more than all that. There is a quality to this love that is difficult to talk about because we don’t have the language.
Don’t we all know that humor is the magic elixir in relationships? It’s a beautiful feeling to know we have what it takes to keep this relationship as good as possible, given whatever may come. It’s a gift not just for us but also for those around us. It’s also a gift to the soul of humanity as we manifest beauty, goodness, and truth through our lives together.
It is self-evident that individuals in a mature, committed sexual relationship may have experiences unavailable in any other context. It isn’t accidental that humans tend to be drawn to long-term relationships. There are indeed many varied cultural patterns for primary relationships, sexual and otherwise, found in the anthropological literature. Nonetheless, I am focusing on hetero relationships. I don’t know how it all works in homosexual ones; I understand as I write this that gender identity issues are currently contentious. For this reading, please accept that I am an elder writing generally for other elders who are primarily embedded in more traditional notions of relationships. It doesn’t make us bad people, nor does it make us hostile to different kinds of relationships.
The Dance of Making Love
When sexual pleasure and true love combine, the heartmind opens into spiritual bliss. This is a dance with infinite possibilities. This art form, when done with consummate skill, is uniquely special. It is not about technique but opening up undefended in the moment. In no other way can the intimacy between two humans be so rich and deep and pure as in this dance of souls — a dance of energy beings freed from the limitations of physical, emotional, and mental bodies. There’s no obsessiveness about it; it’s open to easy-flowing spontaneity. Humor, passion, and conversation can, playfully or seriously, morph into the magic of the moment.
There are tactical and strategic concerns. The tactical decisions are about the direction and depth of pressure — all in the present. The strategic ones prepare and evoke the tactics moving the energy forward. In this dance, every couple will have preferences and practices when engaging sensually. It will shift some with the details of the moment and partner. Couples will develop optimal patterns, even if one of those is to seek more fantastic novelty. How the dance is led will be more or less subtle and attuned to the self and others.
Being the more active provider will naturally flow back and forth in couples. The dance can be incredibly pleasurable when giving and receiving are entirely mutual. This requires each participant to become unself-conscious. This requires a meditative self-realization process. Whenever a thought arises, the living experience isn’t fully present. As Robert Kegan pointed out, when what you are thinking and feeling becomes conscious to you as an observer, something changes. Being more aware in the most intimate moments is its special gift.
When not attached to the outcome beyond the present moment, leading takes any pressure off oneself and the other. When a receiver is not attached to an outcome, it takes any pressure off the provider. This allows all those present to enjoy the quality of the touch more fully since there’s no yearning for something different. Receiving non-sexual pleasure from loving touch, however delicate to firm, slow to fast, can be incredibly pleasurable. For our happiness, we don’t want our partners to feel that they must do anything they don’t like doing now. If a partner is sensually stroking one, it is essential to let the recipient lead the way at what rate and whether and how it gets overtly sexual or not. The giver can be creative in their experiments. The more attuned a couple becomes, the more spontaneously learning occurs in a mutually enhancing flowing union.
Love With My Partner Is Many Things
There’s the enjoyment of really liking everything about someone — their face, feel, mind. The softness of interactions with a few hiccups here and there. The sheer wonder of how it feels. It’s just so.…
In my relationship, I experience love the most when I don’t feel anything. Hearing this often elicits a ‘What?’ response. Of course, when I’m saying or just thinking feelings of I love you. I love you so much. You are so beautiful. This is the relationship I’ve wanted all of my life. You pleasure me beyond anything I could have ever imagined possible. That all feels very good. But there’s so much more to the quality of our loving relationship.
It’s most loving with my partner when we have a shared, quiet, deeply peaceful, immersive presence and sense of contentment, just being together. What we’re doing doesn’t matter much. She is a wise, compassionate, intelligent, and knowledgeable person. I know that she will never intentionally do anything to harm me. We have moments where we get triggered and reactive, which can be ouchy. Those moments are important because they’re learning experiences. Paying attention to such dynamics lessens their occurrences, intensity, and duration. These moments aren’t a threat to the quality of our relationship. They’re just one of the many ways our daily lives play out.
Reprogramming the Beauty Bias
This is so important, as we have a worldwide media that obsessively and relentlessly portrays the same images, reinforcing the assumption that young bodies are the most or only beautiful and sexually attractive ones. While these ideals vary in detail from culture to culture, I don’t know of any modern culture that idealizes the mature sexual beauty of older humans. I’ve heard this differs in indigenous cultures, although I don’t know where and how true that may be. Even in our culture, before photography, people had only their neighbors to compare themselves to. We all do better with that rather than when comparing ourselves to the media stereotypes. This is an important area for me for both personal and advocacy reasons, given how our society and, from what I’ve noticed, all contemporary cultures have become addicted to arbitrary ideals of sexual beauty.
The Grandmother Becomes a Love Goddess
Sexual organs engorge with sexual stimulation — the penis and, less obviously, several female organs: the clitoral head, shaft, legs, vestibular or clitoral bulbs, and the urethral and perineal sponges. The male organ acts as one unit and, after an ejaculatory orgasm, disgorges. The female organs don’t necessarily collapse after an orgasm and can continue orgasming. The male’s organ can also continue to orgasm if it is separated from ejaculation.
All of this had long been familiar to me, but after age 60, a marvelous thing happened, something I had no previous experience with, thus no expectation. I found my older lovers’ faces also engorged, not in a cartoonish way but in an oh-so-lovely manner. When the wrinkled pale grandmother I went to bed with got turned on, her face swelled slightly. There were no more wrinkles. Her skin became beautifully smooth and glowed radiantly, glowing pinkish gold. It was almost as tho she were young again, but it was so much more than that. A young face may be smooth and fresh, but life experiences create character. The Love Goddess’s face is rich, wise, and beautiful, too.
This is reciprocal. When we talked about this once, my partner said, “And you don’t look anything like the man I sat across the breakfast table from this morning, either.” Once, I took before and after photos of my lover in this thrall. And yes, the camera accurately captured the change — not quite the full aura effect, but close enough for her to get it.
Imagine what a difference it would make if the knowledge of this became the norm and was recognized by the larger culture for its delightful gift. Indeed, mature women can have a wondrous beauty that younger ones can’t have. When I tell my partner that she is beautiful, I mean it. That’s true in her normal unturned-on state, too.
There’s much more of this in the book.