Thoughts on books and flowing waters
Imagine emotions as tho they were water. When you tip a glass to one side, the water spills out over the edge until it becomes level with the rim, or, it continues running out of the glass until the glass itself is leveled again. We may not always understand the unseen hand moving the glass, but what we do comprehend is the power of the water – and when it spills out… someone inevitably gets wet! ;)
Sometimes it helps me to look at the things I write as snapshots of a moment in time – as if I’ve captured one still image of my water running over. It isn’t always pretty either. Human emotions can be extremely complicated, and if I’m guilty of anything… maybe it’s been allowing too much of my unbalanced water to spill out into public view. I don’t apologize for that and I’m not ashamed of it either; what would my journal be worth to me if I was? Tho there are varying layers of that too, which I should consider from time to time – maybe.
Elizavetta wrote an interesting post here where she explored many of these similar issues that I now find myself writing about, most specifically when she says:
Recently I’ve talked about struggling with issues concerning disclosure . As I’ve said, the reason for my struggle has not so much to do with secrecy but with wanting to write about things that would make no sense without a back story - a story which contains elements of truth about my relationship with my husband.
My husband and I are very intentional about maintaining a layer of enclosure around the inner territories of our relationship - again, not for reasons of secrecy in order to hide something, but for reasons of care and love, in order to protect what is sacred to us.
On the other hand, he and I believe very strongly that the most personal story is often the most valuable - for the tellers in their process of telling it as well as for those who encounter it and thereby might gain some learning or recognition relevant to their own lives.
This is something I completely understand and is also something I try and maintain as well – sometimes I’m better at it than others. I write many intimate things about the people in my life. The more intimate things are nestled away in my Sanctuary, tho there are still other things which find their way out onto these pages – tho lately… I’ve been wrestling, somewhat publicly, about my relationship not only with Jeff, but with Lisa too – the latter being much more prominent in recent weeks.
With this too… I struggle to find balance. How much is safe to say? How much do I want to reveal? These are always ever present questions in my mind when I write, and I’m not sure that I really have very good answers either.
I’m very guilty of not providing enough context sometimes where both Jeff and Lisa are concerned – and I’m not entirely sure how to correct this other than to continue the narrative and hopefully a clearer picture will emerge. Tho in the end, the only person any of this really matters to is me. So, maybe I should stop worrying about it.
* * *
The first time I tried to explain and talk about my own bisexuality was in this post here which I wrote quite some time ago. When I look back and read it now, it seems a bit crude to me, as if I were hedging a bit because I wasn’t quite sure just how much I wanted to reveal. You’d be surprised, but sometimes it’s a lot easier to write about a sexual experience in the context of erotica than it is to write about something non-sexual but filled with emotion. Most of the things I’ve written about Lisa have been centered around the sexual aspect of our relationship – but in the last few weeks that’s begun to change. I’ve been much more focused on the deep emotional connection we have – tho I’ve always tried to maintain the emotional power of sexuality in my erotic writing because I see the two as fundamentally tied together. In my world today – sex and love are one thing. And while my life story has many episodes when this was not the case – this is how it must be for me now.
I’ve also begun to despise the word bisexual – I think because I’m not comfortable with the connotation or the fixation on the raw mechanics of gender. I believe that love is love, and that we are, or at least I am, quite capable of being, falling, and maintaining love with a person of either gender.
Not too long ago my friend Caitlain asked me when it was that I became comfortable with my own bisexuality in terms of it being my owned sexual identity.
This was a curious question to me for several reasons; one because I have a deep fondness for Caitlain and a friendship with her (she who is also openly bisexual), two because I never really thought about it before she asked, and three because it was a really good question asked by a very smart girl!
As I considered my answer – I thought it was fair of me to explain how I first came to experience sex with another woman, and I shared my story of how I always had attractions towards other girls but wasn’t fully able to act on those feelings until I went away to college and met Lisa. So, Lisa broke my girl-girl cherry so to speak! I also shared how Lisa and I drifted apart and how I had other experiences with other women when I was divorced from Jeff, but truly comfortable? That didn’t come until Lisa and I reconnected in early 2006. It was then at that point when I felt completely comfortable and safe to say to the world – I am bisexual and I love this woman. And that was truly liberating.
But it wasn’t without complications either.
I think from a practical standpoint – when we think of two women in a lesbian relationship, society gets hung up on the sex, and just the sex. And to a degree I completely understand that. Sex between two women is unlike anything else, and as I wrote in my original essay, many women are bi-curious, and many men have fantasies about their wife or girlfriend being involved with another women, and further, many men (and many women) simply get off on the idea of two women being together. Our society seems to have an appetite for sapphic erotica – but what often gets left behind in the discussion is the powerful emotional component of these relationships and how they impact a woman’s life.
This is what I have been wrestling with. These are the questions I’ve been struggling to answer – how it all fits together for me. Where do I put these emotions which rage inside of me. How do I deal with her absence? How do I deal with missing her? How does she and all of this fit into my life? How do I make this work without destroying everything and everyone around me?
In many ways I’ve been terribly unfair to Jeff these last few weeks. I’ve tried to explain to him that I cannot control these feelings or even begin to explain to him where they’re coming from. He’s been wonderfully understanding, but he’s also confessed a little concern where he’s wondering if I wouldn’t rather be with Lisa instead of him.
I have to admit that I’ve had a hard time coming to terms with that one too – because for me, what I have with Lisa isn’t very different on some levels as what I have with him; as I wrote here:
Maybe I’ve always known it was there but didn’t have the courage to face – tho now this storm is upon my door, churning at my feet and within my heart; with answers so terrifying that I dare not ask the questions.
These are the questions I dare not ask – but I must ask them if we’re to survive and go forward. Otherwise there will always be this gap between us.
Lisa on the other hand has also been wonderfully understanding too; letting me fall apart as I wrote about here, coming to be with me as I wrote about here and here, and still… if I asked her? I think she would upend her life to be with me. But how can I ask something so enormous? How can I be that selfish? And is this even what I want?
I do know that I need to see her more, and I’ve made that very clear to her. So, perhaps this will help to alleviate this emotional void I feel when she leaves or when too much time goes by.
I don’t really know for sure. This is all very frightening sometimes.
* * *
In my small circle of online friends, two have recommended a book which I hope will help me understand some of what’s going on inside me – tho I don’t think we can ever get all our answers from a book, but sometimes another perspective is all it takes to help us find our own way. My friend Alexa wrote a post here about a book called Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire by Lisa Diamond.
From Publishers Weekly
Many women experience a fluid sexual desire that is responsive to a person rather then a specific gender, argues Diamond n this fascinating and certain to be controversial study. Diamond, associate professor of psychology and gender studies at the University of Utah, is best when detailing, with vivid examples, how scientific studies of sexual desire and behavior have focused on the experience of men, for whom the heterosexual/homosexual divide seems mostly fixed. Diamond says traditional labels for sexual desire are inadequate; for some women even bisexual does not truly express the protean nature of their sexuality.
I’ve also asked my dear sweet friend Caitlain about this book too, and she’s also recommended that I read it – and as she so eloquently told me to basically stop whining (in her own special way) and read the book in her comment here – I think I’ll take her advice.
Another book which has been recommended to me by another friend is called The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
From Publishers Weekly
Why do we have sex? One of the main biological reasons, contends Ridley, is to combat disease. By constantly combining and recombining genes every generation, people “keep their genes one step ahead of their parasites,” thereby strengthening resistance to bacteria and viruses that cause deadly diseases or epidemics. Called the “Red Queen Theory” by biologists after the chess piece in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass which runs but stays in the same place, this hypothesis is just one of the controversial ideas put forth in this witty, elegantly written inquiry. Ridley, a London-based science writer and a former editor of the Economist , argues that men are polygamous for the obvious reason that whichever gender has to spend the most time and energy creating and rearing offspring tends to avoid extra mating. Women, though far less interested in multiple partners, will commit adultery if stuck with a mediocre mate.
I find this fascinating as well – primarily because I’ve explored from time to time within the pages of my journal the nature of monogamy and fidelity – and in some cases, these ideas apply to my current triangle between myself, my husband, and my girlfriend.
Tho I think it’s important for me to stress: I love my husband. When I first started keeping an online journal I used to think of it as one long love letter to him, and I recently shared something so precious to me about my past with him with someone whom I felt might someday understand just how deep the love in someone’s heart can be.
I have the feeling she already knows… but the symbolism of sharing something so intimate to me with her was what mattered. I believe we should always take time to let the people in our lives know, no matter how we encounter them, that they are special and important to us.
Buddhism teaches us that we go thru our lives with the same group of souls – and I’ve always believed that souls who are meant to find each other do so, in one way or another, even if the life construct doesn’t make any sense at all – our mind’s eye knows when it sees something which belongs as part of who we are.
For this, and for the friends I’ve gathered around me and have allowed to see inside me, and for the people who are brave enough to love a nut like me, I will be eternally grateful.
Tho I’m starting to feel as tho the unseen hands of the universe has begun to level my waters. We shall see what tomorrow brings — but I’m beginning to feel that my waters are coming back into some kind of balance — which is a good thing. Maybe this is just something I’m going thru because it’s time for me to do so… I try not to question the wisdom of the universe… and like water, I must flow in the direction the universe wants me to follow.
Tho I’m sure my answers are out there…
1Caitlain
wrote on 27 May 2008 at 6:23
Good morning, goddess.
You are definitely right in that you won’t find the answers to your situation within any book. What Dr. Diamond’s book will do for you, though, is to A) let you know that you are *so* not alone with respect to what you’re going through, and B) help you understand how and why this happens for a great many women. Obviously, it isn’t going to resolve anything for you because you have this matter known as heart that has to figure into your individual equation. And you know no book is going to help you with that part of it! ;-)
In my comment that you referred to, I suggested that you stop trying to define the relationship you have with Lisa because, as you’ll see in the book, no one knows how to define it, even the good Doctor, and she’s been researching it for years. And, in all reality, you don’t need to define it. One of the more salient points the author makes is that humans have this insatiable need to categorize things to help make sense of the world we live in, and female sexuality just does not lend itself to that in any way, shape, form or fashion. Trying to do so will just waste energy on your part - energy that could better be used for other things (voice of experience speaking).
Human sexuality is such an incredibly complex subject (again, even more so for females than for males, IMO). It always irritates me when certain members/groups of our society/culture try to reduce it to some sort of black and white construct. I’ve always thought that about feminine sexuality, but never had anything concrete that I could point to as any sort of codification of that until I read Sexual Fluidity. For me, it validated much of what I have personally encountered and come to believe over the past 6 or 7 years regarding my own sexuality. I hope it will do likewise for you, my dear.
2dinsdale_piranha
wrote on 27 May 2008 at 12:01
Well, this opinion won’t make me any more popular around here, but in further contemplation, I don’t see anything about sexuality. I see a MID-LIFE CRISIS.
Call it what you will. River, path, earth, air. Grass greener over there. Subtle dissatisfaction with where you are vs where you want(ed) to be.
I tried to make light of this, but I see it is serious. I am in the midst of one myself. After all, who isn’t? A friend of mine was feeling similar feelings, and had to be told.
You were just recently proclaiming how you had everything. Well, you do.
Now I know (or rather, don’t know) that from a woman’s perspective that having feelings for a man and a woman at the same time is different. Is it really that different than having feelings for two men? Two Women?
I’m not stupid, just inexperienced. OK, I can’t even imagine having anything like the emotional contact (much less physical oh god gross me out) with a man. So what? So I think women are different? My god, women ARE different (thank GOD).
No one ever said that life was a straight line (except for lying republicans). There are reasons you are where you are now.
You did it. For whatever reasons. Introspection will probably reveal those to you, not some goddam books about some stupid sexual non-definition.
You are at a divergence in the Force.
No, no one is entirely happy with their life (except liars). The real question, as always, is balance. Life doesn’t stay balanced. EVER, Yin and Yang are NEVER perfectly balanced, except in a few moments to be treasured. Hell, if I could maintain balance, I wouldn’t be reading some blog about some hot bi-woman. The pendulum swings. Randomly. One can only try to restore balance, an eternally losing battle, but at least one worth fighting for.
3nina aoki
wrote on 27 May 2008 at 12:55
dinsdale_piranha,
Well, this opinion won’t make me any more popular around here, but in further contemplation, I don’t see anything about sexuality. I see a MID-LIFE CRISIS.
And you would be wrong. Three days ago you were asking me if it was my period — and much like any typical guy who thinks he ‘gets’ women, it of course has to be something so easily explainable and definable for it to make sense to you.
Oh it’s her period, Oh she’s going thru a mid-life crisis, Oh she just needs to get laid, Oh it’s her hormones, it’s always something isn’t it? It’s what men have been doing to women since the beginning of time — instead of listening to us, we get dismissed and categorized because that’s just easier for you. Why listen to a woman when you can throw a label on her and pretend you’ve got it all figured out, right?
I tried to make light of this, but I see it is serious. I am in the midst of one myself. After all, who isn’t? A friend of mine was feeling similar feelings, and had to be told.
Yeah? I feel for ya.
And while that whole ‘need to be told’ shit might work with your buddies, it doesn’t work with women. Especially a woman you don’t even know.
You did it. For whatever reasons. Introspection will probably reveal those to you, not some goddam books about some stupid sexual non-definition.
Typical.
You know, please don’t project your own life bullshit onto me. You really have no idea what I’m going thru, who I’m going thru it with, or what I’m feeling other than a few words you’ve read here on my journal. I don’t appreciate having my spiritual beliefs mocked, nor do I appreciate being mimicked.
Hell, if I could maintain balance, I wouldn’t be reading some blog about some hot bi-woman.
I guess I failed to fulfill your sexual fantasy of hot girl on girl sex this week… sorry, I’ll try to do better next time. Tho I don’t see a gun pointed at your head either. Sorry to burst your bubble, but reality is a whole lot different than that fantasy world you’ve managed to concoct in your head. Real women have real lives and real emotions, and guess what? That gets messy sometimes. Tho I’m sure if you use ‘teh google’ I’m sure you can find something to entertain yourself with. I’m not here for your goddamn amusement.
I don’t think I asked for advice — and the polite thing to do here would have been to just shut the fuck up if you had nothing remotely positive to offer. Let me give you a refresher course in eitiquette.
No, no one is entirely happy with their life (except liars).
Think so? How sad.
nina aoki
4nina aoki
wrote on 27 May 2008 at 13:06
My dearest Caitlain,
Thank you so much for this — more for your reassurance that I haven’t completely lost my mind! :lol:
Yes, issues of the heart are always complicated — tho I feel that things are leveling off a bit. What’s so important and so helpful is that we all know each other and we’re all very close. I think if anything the three of us need to just go out and talk all this thru like we did a couple of years ago.
Trying to do so will just waste energy on your part - energy that could better be used for other things (voice of experience speaking).
Which is why I value your opinion and input so much because I know you understand exactly what I’m feeling and what I’m going thru.
I think, and this has been a recurrent theme with me, that it comes back to perspective… but as you also know, that isn’t always easy. We’re emotional creatures — and quite frankly, I’ve found myself with more desires lately than I can handle. And I want you to know just how grateful I am that you’ve been there in some ways to help hold me up and keep me standing. That and our friendship truly means the world to me.
Human sexuality is such an incredibly complex subject (again, even more so for females than for males, IMO). It always irritates me when certain members/groups of our society/culture try to reduce it to some sort of black and white construct.
Oh I completely agree — there are so many shades of grey here… it’s just so complicated.
I think this, your point about ‘validation’ is important here. I think it’s why we seek out these things to help guide us and to help us understand how these things impact our lives and why we feel the way we do.
Ultimately this will work out exactly as it should — but going thru the process, as painful as that can sometimes be, while essential, is still difficult. Thank you so much for helping me over the rough spots my sweetest friend.
Thank you…
xoxo,
nina
5Alexander Earl
wrote on 27 May 2008 at 23:25
Love, deeply felt love is transcendent of lables, it is elevated aboven social constructs where some level of expectation is part and parcel of the very thing easily familiar with people that for lack of a better term share aspects of the same system of values.
I don’t know if today’s social consciousness is wiulling to hear a male side of a relationship that’s frought with conflicting emotions. We guys often feel underappreciated for efforts that seem to become increasingly invisible to those we love more than air itself.
From a guy’s point of view, it feels a bit like betrayal that someone we’re intimate with on a deep level may feel justified with sharing that intimacy with strangers, or at worse someone whom may be a rival for our feelings for whom we love.
Maybe its that feeling that our deepest secrets that took immense trust to open up to our significant other is somehow interpreted as fodder for those that didn’t make the initial emotional investment in the relatiuonship to begin with.
I doubt anyone appreciates having their relationship cast in an academic light where its simply part of the statistical conformity, rather than a unique entity with a seperate identity shared by two people.
You love Jeff, and you love Lisa. But I assume Jeff and Lisa aren’t in love, and maybe there’s something uncompromising about love that places a kind of pressure, real or imagined to choose one or the other.
Maybe it would be different if Jeff and Lisa were equally in love with each other as you are with her and vice versa.
I do beleive that your concerns are genuininely real and shows that you do have deep feelings about the circumstances you are currently dealing with.
That said, I don’t know what advice I can give you that might make sense. My own unsolicited opinion is that its easy to not see the value in things around one’s self when one’s self is all one sees. I don’t mean to imply you are this way. I guess I mean that its sometimes easy to take some things for granted without realizing how extremely empty one might feel when its gone.
You never miss the water til the well runs dry.
I think I understand Jeff’s frustration. Those times when knowing that someone else is with you is like having a welling hole growing painfully in the heart. Trying to make sense out of why its expected for us to endure what seems to be obviously painful for those willing to demand such pain as one of the uncompromising terms of the relationship.
When Kathy admitted she had had an affair, it was like the life in my soul had been stabbed to death. There was a moment when she wasn’t sure what she was going to do about the other man. And I can tell you there are few things as sadistically painful as a sense of sheer helplessness while you are forced to endure those moments of indecisiveness. When she said, she was confused and didn’t know what her feelings for the other man was.
I knew where I stood with my feelings. And I resented like Hell that until she made up her mind that I also had to stand on pins and needles until it was resolved.
In the end it worked out in my favor, and as she lamented the tough choice to choose me, I must admit a feeling of intense malice when I found myself comforting her through her sorrow for cutting loose a man with whom she conducted an affair with.
Were the circumstances turned around, would she be as understanding?
Should I think it reasonable that she accept sharing my love for her equally with another woman, or man?
A couple of years have passed since that incident. I don’t speak of it to her, and encourage her to speak less of it to me. The affair I forgave, but now a part of me is forever closed off to her because of it. Nothing she can’t live without, just a piece of my soul that didn’t survive the emotional violence of that period.
Maybe this will help, I’m not judging you or Lisa. I fully admit that because I’m a male, I’m prone to percieving Jeff’s feelings, which isn’t to say you do not.
I guess I remember my own sense of emotional vertigo when things didn’t seem so concrete, no matter how hard or how understanding I wanted to be.
Alex.
6nina aoki
wrote on 28 May 2008 at 17:03
Alex,
I’m deeply touched and I thank you for sharing all of this with me. You’ve raised so many points here — things which also raise others in me, things which I’m not really prepared to talk about, but still very relevant. We too have dealt with infidelity in our past — it was part of the reason why we split up. So, I completely understand and relate to much of what you’ve shared with me.
Let me try and shed some more on this, so it makes a little more sense.
I wrote here:
I’m very guilty of not providing enough context sometimes where both Jeff and Lisa are concerned – and I’m not entirely sure how to correct this other than to continue the narrative and hopefully a clearer picture will emerge.
The context of this situation I’ve been dealing with is very relevant to this and what you’ve shared.
You see, the three of us are all friends too. We’ve known each other for years. Lisa stood at my wedding with me (my first and second) so she and Jeff have known each other almost as long as she and I have known each other. Are they in love? No, but they are very close.
So, this isn’t a situation where one must choose one or the other, and it isn’t exactly like infidelity either — as strange as that may sound. We’re all very aware of what this is and what we’re doing, and we’ve always made sure that we’ve talked about things and that we all know what’s acceptable and what isn’t.
My recent emotional flood has come from a lot of different places and for a lot of different reasons.
And I know how lucky I am in what I have with Jeff. That is and never has been in doubt. The issue I’ve faced is how to fit Lisa into my life in such a way that it doesn’t become destructive or hurtful, and for the most part, I’ve been able to do that pretty well.
I would never try and invalidate a man’s side of any relationship, and while I can only speak from a woman’s perspective, I’m very aware of his feelings too.
The biggest issue I think is that for me, the sex and the love are one in the same. I find it impossible now to be intimate without that — and yet the same feelings and pain of absence are there when she’s gone. But much of that, and much of my issue, has to do with perspective and balance.
Jeff and I have spent many hours discussing this and we’ve reached that place of balance again, and I think the beauty of our relationship is that we truly understand one another and we understand what the other needs and what makes us tick.
Yes, I am openly bisexual. Yes, I have intense feelings for Lisa. But I also understand how she needs to fit into my life, and if it was a matter of saving my marriage or never being with Lisa again, I would always choose my marriage.
Maybe it would be different if Jeff and Lisa were equally in love with each other as you are with her and vice versa.
Maybe. But while I believe that love is love — the love I feel for my husband is much different than the love I feel for my girlfriend. They are each a part of me, and each separate. Maybe gender plays a role here, I don’t know for sure. I only know how I feel.
But ultimately, I think this flood of mine needed to happen. Some things needed to be washed clean again so things could come back into balance. Which I believe they have.
What’s sometimes frustrating for me, as a woman, as a writer, as any number of roles I play in this life; is that people read the word ‘bisexual’ and it immediately raises all of their own fantasies about what that means within them. They can only see the sexual part of the relationship — and to some degree I’ve fed that. I won’t lie. But what always gets overlooked is the emotional component and the fact that these are real lives and real people, and it isn’t like what you fantasize about or what you might see in some pornographic film. It’s real. Real people. Real emotions.
So, I think that’s probably all I can say about this other than to thank you for sharing so much with me and for being so honest about something so deeply painful. It’s sincerely appreciated.
nina
7Alexander Earl
wrote on 28 May 2008 at 21:34
You have filled in enough blanks that I feel your insights are compelling and by any measure an accurate take.
Michy has us fellas reading you for one of her assignments. (Its a long story.)
Much of what I am reading is suprising in its clarity and even tone, which I greatly appreciate. I’m not known as a person willing to open up my feelings (according to Yoriki.) Reading your blog with more bearing is helping me to be expressive with my feelings, such as they have potential to be expressed.
Kathy now reads your work, and looks forward to reading more.
Alex
8nina aoki
wrote on 28 May 2008 at 22:28
Alex,
Well that Michy is pretty smart you know! ;)
Thank you, sincerely, for your kind and gracious words. I am far from perfect, but if I can at least be honest with myself, and with anyone else who chooses to immerse themselves in this world of mine, then that’s something.
Thank you so much,
nina