Tuesday, September 27, 2011

fantasy vs. intimacy


All along i've thought of it as fantasy vs reality.  Of course the stuff that turns me on to read can't happen in real life.  But specifically why not?
There's the stuff of fiction and erotica and fantasy, some of the particular themes that hook me: someone unknown and dark and mysterious and in authority - someone who is very, very serious - who i, for some reason, really want to please - who pushes me and challenges me and has expectations of me - even scares me a bit, or more than a bit.  A big part of it is that I don't know him, and especially, he doesn't know me.  I have to learn his ways and his desires.  Most importantly, my own expectations of myself become moot  - forgotten, completely irrelevant.
I am to be molded, changed, no longer myself, and most to the point, no longer responsible for myself.

Or maybe shown a new me that i didn't know was always there.

For this fantasy, this story to work, i can't have connections.  I need to have no connections to other people, no family, no attachments, and no real connection to myself.  Because in the fantasy - no time is spent worrying about my wishes or desires, or even my state of mind.  In fact, there is no getting to know me at all.  It is all about my becoming something else - what i was is irrelevant.  

In reality - it's never going to happen.  Quite the opposite in fact.  My husband knows me - we keep learning more about each other.  He pushes me, but to be more *me*, not someone else.  He does what he wants, and gets what he wants out of me, but what he wants is influenced by who i am, who he knows me to be.

He has no interest whatsoever in my relinquishing responsibility, for the mundane, or in a deeper sense for myself.   

So for me, really - i think it's intimacy vs. fantasy.  What ttwd does for us, has done for us, is exponentially increase the bare-it-all intimacy.  We have to really face each other, but we have to face ourselves as well.

The idea still really pulls at me, in small ways (order me to do things, tie me down and do what *you* want, ignore my pleasure) -  and in the big picture (take over me completely, remove my will, maybe this is where humiliation comes in).  The idea of of his discounting me as he knows me and replacing that with his vision - that has strong appeal.

Fantasy is just that - and i don't know the why's about it all: why do i have these fantasies, why do these themes grab me so forcefully?

I imagine a big part of it is that intimacy is so much harder:  it is more work, it's emotional, it requires a lot of investment, it is always appealing to relinquish responsibility in a world in which there is too much of that anyhow, i don't always like what i see when i face myself....

2 comments:

  1. Hey, I have one of those "don't always like what I see" mirrors, too!
    (but absolutely no interest in "someone who is very, very serious", need I say?) ;-p

    I think you're absolutely right. Having to look long and hard at yourself is the part of intimacy that requires the most work for me, too. I find I have infinitely more tolerance of his flaws than of my own. But my fantasies tend toward him drawing me out, rather than making me over.

    We are all such interesting creatures!

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  2. Jz,
    I didn't realize the extent to which this sounded so self-loathing. I probably should have ended with a different phrase. It's funny - because i don't feel that way generally. i have my moments, but the fantasy is firmly in the realm of sexual/kink imagining - I am in my reality very much attached to my life, my family, my self, all of the real me.

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