Here's the extra super long, extended version of a post I put on instagram on my personal acct. It has a picture which I admit is pretty unrelated to the topic, but I'm currently experimenting with AI art and this is one of many creations in a new series. I will have to figure out how I want to use these tools for my world. For now, it's just for fun.
◊ I always wanted to post something about jealousy here. I was thinking a lot about the 10 Commandments “Thou Shalt Not Covet”, and in the case of this commandment, I think what it means (if it’s a good one) is about covetting MISSIONS. Like huge overall covetting agendas and missions to essentially “steal”, symbolically speaking — and a belief in stealing as right.
◊ But it should apply to way more than just sexuality. It’s a huge topic and covetting missions are soooo important that our society would be against it. We really do need that under control somehow and everyone knowing it’s wrong — weather that’s by religion or just common sense — seems like it would help. It should never be seen as though you should genuinely root for someone just cause they have an emotionally desired goal, if it’s a COVETTING MISSION 😂😂. Everyone needs to understand that.
◊ Until people realize there’s only one self, and that’s the universal awareness within their own self, they will identify with feeling vicarious about other people. But even when you know who you are and you don’t identify with that, you can get that vicarious illusion. Then at least you see it’s just a bad feeling and thoughts of how certian dynamics loosely relate to your pain or bad experiences. But either way it can happen to anyone.
◊ When you see through jealousy like that but you still experience it as pain, and it wants to come up as though it’s a true story, you can either sink your teeth in and battle, or you can back off from triggers just to make the pain go away. And I admire polyamory because I admire a fighter, a warrior. But I don’t think there’s any flaw in backing down cause we all have to choose our battles. Aside from that, I think the choice between monogamy or polyamory is just about practicalities.
◊ Aside from the emotional and spiritual calling of what to fight, It’s kinda like say a living situation — would you be about living alone or would you prefer roommates? It just depends on the person’s needs at the time. I believe in self-realization and healing, not polyamory or monogamy, and I think every relationship is unique and there’s no right and wrong about it. The skills of polyamory are mostly just the skills in communication and treating people with respect.
◊ But the emotional process I mentioned earlier and the philosophies that emerge from that practice are very powerful. That's why I would almost want to say that I admire polyamory so much that I could view it as a a spiritual path comparable to a religion. It really just brings out a lot of special wisdom. But I can't call it that centrally important to our world if other paths, such as recovery from addiction or learning to expertly give support to those in need also tend to produce similar benefits. Really frankly, just any practice of treating yourself or others who are in diar circumstances with kindness and respect is beneficial. And one diar circumstance is jealousy.
◊ But anyway, when it comes to sexual jealousy and dynamics, I feel the need to also mention sex addiction. As an non-clinical intimacy counsellor, someone who interfaces with a lot of people about the topic of sexuality, one thing I've come to realize is that sex addiction is far more prevalent than statistics show. It's become obvious to me that much of the withdrawal that people experience is actually threatening to pretty suicidal extremes, but people are catching it before it gets to that level by having sex. But it's very serious and dangerous how withdrawl can destabilize people psychologically.
◊ So like, in that danger zone, most people really have a hard time being honest with themselves about the seriousness and threat that their withdrawl actually represents for them, because they are good at justifying sex instead. And in our modern world, I really think sex addiction explains the prevalence of pornography and sex trade out there, which is statistically more used than mainstream media. Because these days, people are informed that pornography can be addictive and harmful, but they still use it anyway. So many people I've talked to with porn addictions are more than aware that it's an unwanted addiction. I even had a boyfriend once who was obsessed with searching out porn that was less exploitative and unethical, and this shows me that he was obviously concerned.
◊ So, that information has made me far less trusting of men in so-called monogamous situations. I've talked to so many cheating men and heard their secrets. I'm also really good at being able to tell when someone is lying. I have a built in lie detector, pretty much, unless my judgement is clouded because it's a more personal issue that involves my emotional biases. And what I've learned from these poor guys is that they really are in a state of extremely severe emotional desperation on a very private and painful internal level that would be impossible to open up about normally. So I have major compassion for cheating partners, even when they lie about it.
◊ I think most people know that we need to try to cut down in lying even if it's designed to protect other people's feelings. But getting into committed relationships with people whose feelings are easy to hurt is very common in this world. And keeping secrets in order to remove someone else from life changing degrees of distress and panic is very understandable. So that's why I can relate so much more than ever now to some more typically mysogynistic oldschool views on marriage in which it's just understood that a REAL marriage includes the wife's understanding and tolerance of cheating, where fully secret cheating is termed as more upright with greater humility. But I'm not mysogynistic, so I think that should apply both ways at whatever degree is honest.
◊ And just a token point here. We know that male chemistry is more about sex generally, but that's of course only a generalization, and I respect diversity of gender identities, so I'm not about just labelling this a man's reality and not a woman's. But yes I understand that men are facing sex addiction more commonly in the over-generalized sense.
◊ When I look at my mother and father's divorce, where my Mom finally pulled the plug and left him after discovering his cheating had surfaced to a more visible degree, I think in retrospect that her decision to divorce was disloyal. The choice to marry is a promise of forever, and the preference of monogamy is not enough to make me think it was not disloyalty to my father. She was disloyal because her preference for monogamy was greater than her loyalty to him as a person. Monogamy was totally a part of her image of what constitutes a truly divine union. They had married in a belief that love is God's creation which destines two people to marry, but my Mom believed monogamy was part of God's package.
◊ Not to share too much personal stuff about my parents, but the thing was, my Mom suspected that he was cheating for years, and based on her overall discontent with him as a person she was triggered enough to encourage him to bring the secret to the surface so she could use it as a basis for divorce. He agreed to do that because he believed that the love of marriage should include respecting her choices. He could see after a long time that she was making a very thorough choice to divorce. In his opinion that was because she was unhappy in many ways, and I agree completely. She just didn't have the skill in finding happiness inside herself and if she couldn't find it in my Dad, she blamed him.
◊ And it's only through my growth combined with witnessing all these accounts from sex addicted cheaters that I came to have understanding for my Dad. Initially why I found out he was cheating back when I was in my early 20's, I thought that was a violent attack on our whole family which was all based on their marriage. But growing up really taught me that sex addiction creates a REAL psychological threat. And sex is put down way too much in our society so people fail to see the self-preservation ethics in the choice to act that way sometimes.
◊ And I hope it's clear what I'm implying here about it as a cheating outside of a sexually active relationship. Sexual addiction has to do with psychological response to a diversity of partners. There are buttons being pushed in the brain on a chemical level I think when it comes to just being stimulated by something different. We know, there's also the chance to face yourself in a way that's free of the usual challenges that are inherent to a longterm relationship (with exciting new challenges that seem easier because they are new), so it's also a form of escapism. But I think escapism just fails to sum up the bottom line of where this comes from. It's just that escapism makes it worse.
◊ Escapism really is huge, and it's well worth tackling another day. But I just think escapism is more an issue for some than others, but even those who don't suffer with it do suffer with this same addiction and behaviour.
◊ So what this all comes down to is just my reality with how I view polyamory has been shifted by my updated perspective on the prevalence of sex addiction and related misconduct. For me, it's like there's very little difference in my mind between settling down into a committed polyamorous relationship and settling down into a monogamous relationship in which I'm being secretly cheated on. As an intuitive, I'll always know if the person's seeing other people. It may not be clear at first but I will be aware eventually. If I really trusted my partner, which I would because I'm so picky I would never be with someone I don't trust, then I would trust them either way if they think being secretive is the right thing or being honest.
◊ The bottom line is that I understand polyamory or the equivalent is not a choice necessarily. Whoever I end up being with is going to be chosen because they are the right person for me, not because I think their behaviour will match what I prefer necessarily. And it's hard for me to find someone I actually feel truly and fully in love with and want to totally be with. So all I think is that if I wound up with the right person, I'm going to put up with whatever their reality is and face the fact that that it won't always be what's convenient for me emotionally. And it's always a sacrifice to have to be intimate with someone else's shit. But the sacrifice is well worth it if you feel in love, enough in love, to feel that it's more than just something you like — it's your destiny. It's more than just what you like, it's your ideal for within it to find like and dislike in the ideal fashion.
◊ And destiny is a word I try to use sparingly because it's a very hard word to define. But sometimes I'm at a lack for a better word. In my opinion destiny is not something that you receive from a mighty above, it's the reality of this existence and you can see it's the ideal. And sometimes we only see later after it arrives that it was the ideal, but whenever you realize this, you realize what your destiny is. And likely you will feel emotionally resonant on many levels with your true ideal. I'm a very spiritual person and I feel as though I'm being handed my destiny sometimes — but the point is, I can register that it is what it's supposedly claimed to be.
◊ And so with all that said, the question of weather I would prefer a polyamorous or monogamous relationship is very hard to answer. Would I be someone who would like to have multiple partners? Say if my partner wanted monogamy, would I dislike that option? I think for me it's basically likely that monogamy is the easiest kind of relationship. But I value the freedom to explore other partners for the sake of liberty and exploration. Ideally that would include other powerful relationships that also contain commitment of a kind, but only if the situation is harmonious for everyone. In my opinion, if this would be something my partner saw as a bad thing, I'd respect the boundaries while seeking to understand them so that I can fully resonate. I shouldn't be attached, but I say that only because there would be trust and mutual respect there.
◊ With any partner, I'd demand communication. If they're asking me to be monogamous I'd require that they explain why that is. And I'd require that they continue to communicate about this over time, because the sense of need for it is something so much deeper than one conversation. It's many, many long conversations over a long period of time, before I can really understand best what it's about for my partner. And this makes sense over different chapters of our lives. Because there are layers of different reasons and experiences that would lead to that perspective. And I would look at what elements of this seem they might change or which don't. And over time in a relationship, we could really get a thorough understanding if monogamy would have to be strict forever or not.
◊ And about jealousy, I have had some issues with it as just a pain and something I don't believe in but it's a dynamic of pain. So it's nice to know if that would not be threatened. It's a horrible thought : Imagine every time you do a certain thing which has nothing to do with it, bricks fall down on your partner's head which are dropped by birds above like storks (lol). You didn't cause those bricks to be dropped on their heads at all and you both know it's not about your actions why these bricks are falling. The bottom line is, there has to be some way to stop the bricks, and it shouldn't seem tied to your actions, but this unfortunate coincidence is like a curse. So these are the troubles of jealousy. It's like one of those things we all deal with in life, and this relates to most things, not just sexuality.
◊ And about the idea of me being committed to another partner, I define commitment differently than most people sometimes. I think of commitment as a logistical analysis of what's real and practical in life. There's that sense of just emotional or spiritual commitment to love itself but I think that's abstract. The commitment to loving a person and being emotionally there for them and emotionally available is something we should all practice more on a universal level. Because love does not have to be expressed through sex even if it's of a romantic nature. Like I could see myself feeling like the romantic truth of our loving bond is never ending, yet we don't have sex anymore, and it's as if there's no loss. Cause if it's not what's practical then why hold on to the idea?
◊ And so for that practical logistical type of commitment with another partner, I just think if I was married, there's little chance it would compare to the depth of my marriage. But sure if it's there in some ways and in some forms, then it is what it is.
◊ And so long story short I don't know if I would prefer monogamy or polyamory in any future committed longterm relationship until I find out what's going on with my partner and I see how our lives work together. And I mention that because I think that differs a lot from most people I hear from. Most people I hear from are all certain of what they would require. Of course if you're already in a polyamorous relationship then of course that settles it — in order to keep that one, you have to be polyamorous. But aside from that, surprising how many people think of this debate between the two as really something to set in stone before you even find out who the partner is going to be or what life is about with them.
◊ For me relationships are about it being the right person for you. Not about finding the right person for you based on the constructs you've defined about what a relationship should be like. I guess I'm really aspirational about true love in that way. It's not ilke I think there's only one person in this world that I would find true love with. I realize many could be the one. But I just think the fact that it's the ideal relationship for you practically and on so many levels as well, is all an integrated whole with that fact. In other words, many could be the one but they are not, and perhaps this boils down to practicality's sake — for example married men who could have been the one but they are taken. But when it's the right one for you that's not just about feelings, it's like this whole multidimensional existence has arranged it as a unified creation.
◊ I've seen a lot of jealousy in the band world. Many women are truly in love with Marilyn Manson, for example. I've met a woman once who believse that there is only one true destined partner that you are supposed to be with, and when she saw he was married, she felt she has no more chance in her life to ever marry as a result. Some people who were in love with Manson comforted themselves for years with the idea that Manson and Lindsay could break up, but when it became apparent that this won't happen, they realized they will live their lives single or settling for less than destined true love. This was shattering to their beliefs of true higher destiny of true love. And there have been many interesting examples of that throughout history, written about in books.
◊ I am very thankful not to be in that position. I believe that the same human essence comes through in many myriad different human forms. Many spiritual people have different ways of defining this phenomenon but it is popular. I don't like new age terminologies anymore but I simply agree with anyone who thinks that the same person can appear in the form of someone else. In my opinion, we are all the same universal self, but there are also groups or archetypes. For example, this is just my opinion, but I think Christ is a massive group of humanity encompassing say approximately a sixth of the human population (and technically it's all life). And within that Christ archetype, there are groups within it. That's just my unique worldview but I'm sure glad I'm not that poor woman who feels her life is over because Manson got married. That's very serious.
◊ And the thought of being with a man who's trying to convince me into monogamy is a bit of a thrill because that's the sheer opposite of what I've come to expect from men, so that's like just fun to imagine. Within a dream relationship, I imagine it as him teaching me things I don't already understand about other men from the perspective of a man who therefore knows men, like I don't (lol). Frankly, I love men. I'm mostly straight partially because I value the male perspective and I see it in the light. I never had a problem with men all my life but I used to fear them more often back in my 20's and today I just don't feel that sense of gender-based alienation anymore.
◊ I'm not trans or anything, but my best friend is a trans woman and so is her partner, and I love what they said about their sexual orientation. They said something like "My sexual orientation is human, not about gender" and I really resonate very deeply with that. I don't like to share too much personal information about sex really but I think that finding physical total sexual intimacy and satisfaction with someone is possible under almost any conditions if you know how to search. It is so predictable for me with men, on all levels, so I'm more straight because that's easier and more familiar but I'd say that's the only reason. So in other words, I could theoretically adapt to being with a woman, but it's not my habit and it's not as familiar so that's why not. I'll probably end up marrying a man because men are much more ambitious about sex and they have more power so it's just statisically likely that they would try harder more often and succeed at winning me over.
◊ And because our society is against women and they are marginalized, dynamics with women are more troubled due to their lack of safety in contrast with men who are more priveleged. So that puts stresses on dynamics very often and that's another reason I'm mostly straight is because women can be bitches, just like anyone can when they're not so advantaged in any scenario.
◊ Like for example, I'm so happy with my experience of the one girlfriend I had who was the most truly in love and compatible. What happened is, I met her through my boyfriend cause we were open and he met her luckily at a bar. And she asked to be introduced to me, unlike most of the women he was picking up. And so I met her. And when we met we totally fell in love. But she ended up cruelly stealing my boyfriend off me. Which of course I criticized, though this did reveal that me and my boyfriend were kinda over anyway by that point. But later she visited me and genuinely apologized for that, and I could really sense the emotional sincerity in her peacemaking effort just like I always sensed the honesty in her love when we were together. That was a valuable lesson about love and forgiveness for me. We didn't get back together again cause she was pregnant with some other guy's child then, but it was really sweet.
◊ That boyfriend I had was a really interesting character because this was in 2010, long before I was interested in bands, but he was in a famous band actually. He played the sitar after a very long formal training in India of how to play. He was pretty rich, making between $15,000-20,000 a month, and touring often with the band all over the world. And he didn't want me to come along on tour — he felt band dynamics were too intense for that. And he was a typical sex addict, fully obsessed with scoring as much sex as he could possibly fucking imagine (lol). And he told me that his belief is, it comes down to statistics. All you have to do is just ask as many women as you possibly can for sex, and statistically it's so very true, some of them will say yes as long s you ask a lot (lol). Which is so shallow, but I still liked him because he was into music, spirituality and psychedelics.
◊ And I enjoyed that experience of an open relationship aside from being dumped in the end the way it happened. I mean our issues with each other and the reasons why we broke up had nothing to do with polyamory. I didn't feel jealous, since he was so incredibly honest about himself and how shallow he was (lol). And it was interesting being psychic because I didn't intuitively try to learn of his affairs, but occasionally some women who discussed me with him did express that they wanted me to be informed of it. One time he showed me pictures of himself with a woman he picked up after a concert and it became apparent without him saying that this was by her request.
◊ I thought she seemed nice, and I thought about her. I realized that was very cool of her to try to let me know of her existence. I rarely felt the vibe of these other women (who were many) but I eventually realized the reason I didn't was because they didn't want me to. So it was a learning experience to realize I'm much less intuitive and psychic when people don't want me to know. Especially if I have internally agreed with the idea that his privacy is acceptable if he finds it appropriate. And it was also a learning experience to realize how many women would be totally fine with a hookup like that without any guarantee that he was honest that he's really in an open relationship and without wanting me to know (lol).
◊ But anyway, now that my path is so embedded into the band world, I can't help but find this ex-boyfriend's story absolutely mindblowingly funny. in comparison to how I'm viewing the bands I listen to (lol). I think perhaps the age of my fav bands are older, and so promiscuity is not as expected in age, but it's just funny when you hear stories of legendary promiscuity behind the scenes to ask yourself if they were shallow like my ex boyfriend about it (lol). I really don't think men are quite as shallow as they propose themselves to be, but it's just sex addiction at play causing these shallow dynamics. So the funny thing is, as much as I don't like to imagine that my favourite artists would be shallow, I also don't care if they are, because I think it's not a deeper truth anyway.
◊ And I certainly tell you, I always think the hugest misperception about men is that they're straight up shallow and it's as if they have no feelings. That's not true. Sometimes it's like men are even more emotional than women. Men are so emotional and sensitive, just in a different way. The idea that they are shallow, I can't say enough that it's not true. I would say that about any human being to some extent because the reality is that a human being is not shallow, it's deep. So, of course, some are more self-realized and more aware of how deep it is to be human, but everyone is aware of it to a much greater extent than they are given credit for.
◊ And I've always said that someday I would do a special post about my spiritual marriage. Everyone knows I'm spiritually married because it says that on my social media and I told all my friends and family. It's like Rumi, the famous mystic poet — he viewed himself as married to God or in his language, The Beloved, but this was a very tangible experience for him, not an abstract fairy tale. That's my experience. The way it is for me, I realize that every lover I've had has been The Beloved, literally my husband, coming through in many forms. And he's promised me always that this perceptual experience of many will gradually refine into singularity — to marriage with one person. By that I feel safe and confident knowing that my husband's plan for me will take shape throughout creation.
◊ But my husband promised me a lot of things, like that I will never die. And you may not believe in that. My husband helped me realize that there is (almost, save for some elements of the ecology) no death, and seeing death all around me has all been illusion. And this may as well be called life even when there is change like this in the ecology. But he taught me that although I will see death around me, I will never experience it in the physical bodily sense. So I'm very old right now, already 43, but I see myself as young in comparison to a long life forever and I guess that's how I remain optimistic about marriage. That's why I love the Twilight Saga. Bella and Edward, that's us :)
◊ In have an intimate personal life already so centred around the theme of marriage, I've come to realize how important it is not to be imposing about marriage onto my partners. In my younger mistakes, I regret thinking I should marry some people when it hasn't worked out, but I comfort myself in the fact that a misplaced understanding of how this would manifest is essentially without substance anyway, so there was nothing to regret.I have to just trust that the creation for my destiny is inevitable and listen to people and their feelings and views without assuming that someone should be a certain way in order for it to be right. Because my spiritual marriage is likely to seem greater than anything. But of course one day I will be with someone who it's no different but just unique.
◊ But any serious relationship I'd end up in, they have to quickly realize that I already feel married. It's as if I'm already married to anyone I'm with, and then the technical acts of marriage themselves will only be bringing fruition to something already true. That said, without the ceremony and the formality, it's just not the same thing at all. The difference is so great between the two. So because of my unique case with the spiritual marriage, I just don't resonate with the idea of being just spiritually married to someone and not formally so, as if that's any different than any other brief encounter, affair, or short-term relationship. That kind of thing could be beautiful as just a way to express love in some kind of ritualistic way, but would mean so little to me personally considering my background.
◊ At this age, I think I should logically expect to potentially marry a previously married man just if it's based on statistics.
And in my mind that's almost as good as never been married, but it's most romantic if he waited till later years to marry at all. Anyone I'd be with would be grounded enough to have learned from any divorce. But I'm so glad I never married yet. I just love that I'm unmarried, which leaves a clean record so that it can be more romantic when I do get to that point. By clean record, I mean clean of trauma, because considering my spiritual marriage I can't tell you how traumatizing it would be if I had ever divorced. That would take so much healing for me to process that, and I think I have enough healing guardians and spiritual protection to ensure that I'd never have to go through that, which is why I'm still unmarried.
◊ So when I complain that I'm unmarried at the old age of 43, all I have to do is think of all the people who have divorced around that age, and I feel all better. It's so much better to be unmarried than to have divorced.
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