Paris X
What’s most important when you meet someone new?
1. Setting the Scene
at the cafe we’d enjoyed together, now I’m alone
I’m in Paris with my daughter and she isn’t feeling well. Got her some things and I’m on my own for the morning at a sidewalk cafe. What to do my last day in Paris? Sitting here looking around at the nearly-empty street, at a practically-empty cafe I had enjoyed with her — it was bustling then when the waiter encouraged us to order an oversized pudding and after it arrived we saw him smiling at our dismay at how huge it was.
Mine and my daughter’s main activity here has been taking photos of her to document her trip. She wants candids with expression, and coaches me how to do them, what angles and strategies she finds best. We’ve set scenes to be present, at a cafe, a vintage shop, or on cross-town treks. It seems harder to be present on the longer walking treks, as they often end grumpy, with us trying to manage our energy and expectations, each of us with a different idea how to deal with the low energy of the late afternoon after walking for hours. Push on farther towards the next sight? Uber back? Stop to eat? What, where? Everything sounds fun until you’re tired, then nothing does!
Sometimes it’s better to stay close to home base, walking around shops, sitting in cafes sipping coffee, wine, watching people. I recently spoke to a woman who lived in Paris while she taught at university — she always stayed in the same area we did, near the Jardin du Luxembourg. Why go out of your way when the best experiences are within a short walk? Can that become a broader thought on travel: why travel when you already enjoy where you live? What about travel to break yourself out of a rut and open up your view of the world?
Paris as a sounding-board for the soul
I sense Paris can be a sounding board for the soul. I’ve always heard it’s a place for lovers, and have wondered how gravel paths, open parks, and restaurants with grumpy waiters are supposed to be romantic. The parks and waiters help make Paris a space where our own experience of each other becomes the focus, instead of the park or the waiter. And this must be what is implicitly romantic: ourselves in Paris. The parks and restaurants let us be ourselves — romantic, or grumpy, or whatever we feel at the time. Those wide-open parks are meant to be filled with people. The waiters are there to get their job done so we can connect with each other, not with them. Paris is the background, not the main event. Of course, a lover doesn’t want distraction, a lover wants to love…
All around me I see a comfortable celebration of the senses in people at cafes focused on the pleasures of food and conversation. They seem focused on being together, and not so much on the scene they present. I’m watching others who don’t appear overly concerned about being watched. Ah, being an American in Paris! Without my usual companion here at the cafe, I cast about, seeking the best set for this setting on the last day of my trip, worried I’m not doing enough to enjoy it. Self-conscious and doubting myself.
a half-memory from high school floats to the surface of my mind as a colorfully dressed middle-aged woman passes in the street speaking loudly in English, as loud as church bells. I remember days when I felt at the mercy of my self-involved peers, when everything social seemed to be about appearances, and I felt an outsider to a system trying to draw me under its control. I resisted, and stayed outside. Do I still? I seem surrounded by peers here in Paris. But there are also non-Americans here enjoying their food, their conversation, acting unconcerned about others’ assessments.
Fellow loud, old and young English-speakers surround me. In an expensive cafe across the street, perusing a menu, walking, chatting, flagging down a waiter. We sit at these iconic Paris cafes, lined up shoulder-to-shoulder — ranked seating facing the sidewalk — turning the street into a theater where the audience watches itself…
acceptance…
Despite misgivings regarding my purpose here (and the feeling of other Americans closing in), I still feel hope knowing I’m the alien and this Parisian culture may present a different way of being, a chance to see the world as a place to appreciate the moment. With food, sounds, talk, all around in the morning sun, I sit alone at the cafe except for a couple off to the side. For a moment, I accept. And something shifts.
2. The Change of Acceptance
an attractive woman pauses in front of the cafe in the sun, steps into my outdoor theatre, and sits down across from me
I immediately want to talk with her, but I don’t. Months later, looking back, I still wonder why. Perhaps I’m afraid, not just of rejection, or even of how a conversation might go, but also that I won’t know how to disconnect. Am I the only person who fears ending a conversation before it begins? I’m convinced this particular fear of connecting comes from my uncertainty about my skill engaging in the final phase of the dance of connection: the phase where we move apart.
And, while paralyzed by my fears, that earlier wondering what to do on my last day here — how to play the tourist — comes painfully back into focus in this moment of wanting to, yet unable to, engage with the woman beside me. If I’m afraid to connect with her, then what is it I want from connection that has me still seeking it in spite of the fear? Maybe it doesn’t matter beyond the fact that I do still want to speak with her.
clarity…
So, first I was alone with the goal of self-realization among the sights and sounds in Paris. Now the morning angst seeking the ideal tourist activity becomes angst at failing to connect with my neighbor. Paris fades, the joys of the early days of our trip passed. I feel the remaining excitement of adventure in Paris evaporating like fog under a hot sun.
she moves into the shade on the other side of me
More American tourists pass in the street as the day gets brighter, and the circumstance of an interesting female in a peach-colored suit reading a book and having coffee and croissants alone beside me brings my personal dread of not seizing the greater Paris experience into focus with the hot agony of my failure to engage with her. If I’d wanted the mystery of Paris personified in an intriguing person with whom to explore, then here she is, if I should choose to engage with her! I want to find myself in conversation…
fear…
Still I say nothing! It’s true I do also fear feeling awkward addressing her, and I fear once we engage I won’t open up and the interaction will become contrived, stressful…not least because I’m unsure whether I’ll know how to gracefully disengage. And I do also dread that separation at the end. Is it fear of hurting her feelings or that she’ll hurt mine?
Could my fear of the awkwardness if I find I want to stop talking be more of a problem for me than the fear that she’ll reject me? As a shy person it’s hard to wrap my mind around the idea that I may be afraid of hurting someone through losing interest in them, that I’m shy to find a way to say “I’ve had enough of talking.” It’s not the way I usually think of “social anxiety” or “shyness,” but maybe shyness can be fear of an ultimate confrontation, the confrontation of having to say “no” to someone else.
cost vs benefit…
Despite all this I know, if we speak, the allure of the unknown will dissipate as our mutual focus towards each other uncovers real life details. And I’ll feel better for having tried. So why not? This question echoes in my mind as minutes pass, the sun creeps higher, voices in the street get louder. I’m still unwilling to risk myself with her, even just to find out if we’ll talk.
Another reason not to talk to her, besides fear of letting go, is I’ll be forever changed if we talk, and how do I know it’ll be for the better? Every conversation changes us, and each deep, connected conversation changes us a lot, perhaps even making us a different person. What if I’m good the way I am: mooning about, taking photos, writing about my splendid isolation? Why change that? What companion will ever top these self-involved narratives? Connecting with people is lots of work, it can seem superficial, and the other person always wants things I’ll never fully understand. Is it worth braving all of that just to talk to a stranger in a strange place?
She has finished her breakfast.
to be present or not to be…
I’ve tried to accept myself here today alone, unsure what to do with myself. Now I want to open up to a new person, and yet the chance to do so is swiftly passing. Another fear: if I offer to open up to her I won’t, really. Instead I’ll just say things, and so will she. And then I’ll feel awkward departing and awkward forever after since even in talking to a new person I lacked the courage to be myself and then I’ll have to live with the failure. Or wait, I just thought of something. What if we get along just fine and then after we separate amicably I don’t have the courage to follow up with her? A friend made and lost in an hour. A world opened and closed…
I feel like I’m looking down at myself far below in Paris, at a cafe beside a woman, in the shade on a sunny day without my daughter. How do I get back down there into the cafe with myself and this woman? Dissatisfied, empty, watching as though from above while I do nothing about something I care about. Why do I let myself suffer like this?
if there’s a reason…
Me feeling lost, out of sorts, separate from myself, could be a message I’m sending to me, a message that in a different version of this life I could be sitting here having breakfast, not making a big deal of who sits next to me. Why make a big deal of it? Instead of seeking the best tourist activity I could be content here in this moment…
Isn’t that how we envision every trip before it starts: all ease and choice without pressure? The suffering I feel seeking something different could be a message I’m sending to myself to stop trying so hard! What if I stopped worrying about going somewhere and just experienced where I am…and thereby find myself.
I do care who sits beside me. I care so much it may cause me enough pain to actually engage, dare to open a portal to another conscious universe…
I begin to let go…
Why try so hard? Perhaps I’d make better use of my time just noticing I wanted to find myself in Paris streets, cafes and vintage shops — with and without my daughter. And that now I want to find myself in conversation with a particular woman. What else is new? Another message to myself: I won’t be happy until I try to talk with her. So, do what you want, self. Try not to talk with her, try to enjoy your coffee, because, in a sense you’re bound to this and you never had a choice but to follow your feelings or continue to suffer!
By the way, past self: you could try putting your attention on her, unashamedly yet gently, without pushing. And if she wants to talk, then you’ll end up talking.
3. The Change With Letting Go
letting go I find courage…
As I sit near the likely Russian or Ukrainian woman, I rouse the courage to speak. While she looks at the dessert menu I mention I had a pudding here the other day with my daughter. “That pudding is way too big,” I say. Simple words to take a man from distant, painful numbness into direct contact with another.
I’m still forever a universe apart from her, yet now we’re vibrationally in touch. Bringing our perspectives into contact in the moment, we send ripples out into the depths of our respective connections in our parallel, but now linked, experiences of reality.
is it better for a man to wander alone than risk encountering a strange woman in a foreign place?
I bring up the pudding, and then? She may scoff at my temerity, laugh at my effort to engage her. Or laugh to herself, nodding politely: Yes, a giant pudding, I see, thank you! …and back to her book. Or she could talk with me for an hour and be open to us seeing each other again.
if rejected, at least I’d have made the effort! But if she accepts my offer to engage, then what?
we engage…
The woman beside me in Paris engages with my comment about pudding…
the meaning of conversation…
What do I say to her? And is it all about what I find to say — what does she say? And even if we make it all about what each of us says, how is both of us saying things not just talking past each other? How is that really different from me floating above everything before choosing to speak, as though from far above? If it’s all about me, or her, or even each of us separately, saying something to the other, it’d be like we were on separate islands throwing bottles into the water, hoping the other would get the message…
Not truly interactive. Instead of two universes in contact, we’d be just two universes, each viewing the other as light and color on a screen. Completely separate. Yet, if we do respond to each other, dance with each others’ words in real time, then can we perhaps truly affect one another? And anyway, how can we not, if you consider the physical reality? It’s only if we think of ourselves as separate consciousnesses that we can imagine we’re truly alone. If we think of things concretely, then of course, we share air, views of the surroundings, and, while we talk, narratives. My narrative now contains her.
Are we really separate universes ? Or do we share in the energetic swirl in which we’re both caught from the moment we came anywhere near each other? From the moment we were born…
exploring meaning in action…
Pausing, and hearing her say she enjoyed traveling to Paris, most recently from New York, and before that from “her country,” I ask where she likes to travel. She mentions “her country” several more times without naming it, and I say, Do you mind if I ask what country that is? When I stand back, pause within myself, and watch to see what happens as I turn my attention to her — consciously, openly, respectfully: conversation flows. Sure, it begins with pudding. It could’ve started with almost anything. I ask questions about some things she says. It doesn’t really matter what we discuss…
if one isn’t a bit bold, what will happen? Whether we speak of pudding or Putin, if we brave an interview — both following, both leading — then we can see what we talk about, and lose ourselves for a few moments in a new world…
a moment’s eternity…
She and I talk for an hour about beliefs, views, life choices, ranging from breakfast, to marriage, to career. What are we then? A washed-out photograph lost in time. A late-night college discussion. Both far from home, our work, books and journals ready to hand. As we talk, our personal narratives — life choices, goals — are on display. A we briefly exists, holding a unique lens to the world. For a moment a new reality comes into being through us. Why not see the world differently for a moment?
How will we change?
partway through the conversation the busser brings glasses and pours us two glasses of water from a single carafe
4. Setting Aside Narrative
reality…
Is it unrealistic a woman would stop at a mostly-empty sidewalk cafe on a touristy street in Paris, consider, then sit near me, a mature man wearing a gold wedding ring? Wouldn’t she be busy with her own travel companions, her own projects? Is her very stopping and sitting near me suspect of “bad” intentions? Is everything about the two of us choosing to sit and talk suspect of us trying to take advantage of or betray each other and our loved ones in some way, because there’s no other reason for a man and a woman to connect? If that were true then the one reason would be…sex? Does everything about sexual desire have to be a betrayal of everyone to whom we’re committed?
What if we just felt like connecting? Would that automatically be wrong because of the emotional charge — and the associated risks — that we identify in a man and a woman connecting? Of course, a man is supposed to look away from an attractive woman unless he is “available,” isn’t he? Or, if he talks with her, he may display a brash confidence that says he certainly isn’t trying to pick up on her, even though he’s showing her his confidence, in case she should wonder whether he could handle it.
Men and women are only supposed to connect “non-sexually” unless they’re “on the hunt.” There can’t be an in-between where neither one knows what they’re trying to accomplish, and the interaction is simply a dance that proceeds as the dance of life itself. Because then, either of them or anyone watching or hearing about their connecting could assign intentions to the connection and lay claim for or against their communion. Or, wait, what if it is always in-between, even with the same sex as ourselves? What if we’re so repressed that we don’t know what we are doing, so blind that we cannot but make up stories about our relationships?
does narrative actually define reality, or are our stories just an effort to explain what happens anyway…
I see a woman pausing, she sits near me, I wish to talk to her, and I do. Then she talks with me for the better part of an hour. It’s not a question of if but why. And yet a fact doesn’t need to have a why associated with it…it can just be a fact and that’s all. Why does the moon sometimes cover the sun (there is a mechanism, and a detailed description for the event, but that does not truly answer the question of “why”)? Why does a wave curl up over itself before crashing down in a chaos of foam?
The woman’s backstory could form a narrative to help us try to create a why, so we can feel like we’ve figured it all out, so we can try to manage, try to control it. But why not just avoid all the trouble? Man, woman, Paris — too dangerous! Avoid all the trouble by not talking to her at all. Was that really an option back when I was feeling that strong drive to meet her? Maybe what I call “shyness” is really my aversion to getting myself in trouble with a strange woman. And so it took quite a bit of something to get me to talk with her…
is it in our best interest to ask why…
Why do we connect? She’s a New Yorker, born in Russia, involved in cryptocurrency. In Paris for a conference, recently separated from her husband (who loves travel less than she). Independent. Surely there’s an X factor, a primary reason why she sits down near me. Such as? Whatever we posit: that she finds me mysteriously attractive, interesting, or a means to further her own goals in life — or even that she hardly notices I’m there at all until I open up my mouth — it resolves back to the question of why as opposed to just accepting what is and going from there. What if we could simply accept what is? What if she’s the one who sits next to me and that is all?
There’s no end to the question of why once you start asking it. What in her wants this particular meeting? The thing is I’m coming to believe no one can strategize a meaningful connection with another. One can only jump in and see what happens.
What if the X factor is in fact an X activity, and right there on the surface too: she’s the person who pauses in the sunshine for a moment and sits down near a man dining alone at a cafe. Everything else is backstory to fill in what’s known. If she hadn’t come and sat down near me I’d be sitting alone, or next to someone else. If the earth wasn’t exactly such distance from the sun, none of us would be sitting at cafes. Maybe we’d be intelligent plants, or maybe we wouldn’t be at all. In fact we are not except for the particular occurrences that make up our lives. The “X Factors” all piled up upon one another.
action drives narrative…
Since she sits near me, we deal with that. She and I talk. That also is a fact on the ground, not floating up above somewhere. In the end, the reason doesn’t matter, perhaps partly because there is never, in truth, a reason, only in the end actions, and partly because even if there were, the reason would become lost in the actuality of interaction. True connection between two people. There is in the end no X factor, only observations of fact. The X activity of meeting someone new changes all the factors around it, in that moment of meeting.
So is it useful to know why or is why just a distraction from what? Whatever is in her head at the moment she sits down near me, though it may become known or remain unknown, she’s the one who does it, and I’m the one with whom she sits. The “X” factor we seek is the defining aspect of our connection, and yet it turns out the X factor is the actions themselves — meaning and rationale radiate out from actions as we generate narratives. Meaning and rationale can never dictate nor articulate the true meanings of actions. Actions remain forever beyond our ability to rationalize.
our actions define us, driving our narratives…
We are what we do, not what we calculate. We are defined by our actions, not the other way around. We don’t get to decide what will happen later, but we see what comes of — or in retrospect went into — our actions now. It is our actions in the moment that define us, not our pre-existing motives and strategies.
5. Why Ask Why?
if I kick my heels together at the sidewalk cafe in Paris, and repeat, “I wish I were home,” could it be that instead of transporting myself to a remembered home, I might suddenly find that I am home? Could my home become, not Paris itself, but this kind of meeting occurring throughout my life? My home my life in the moment. Because there are two aspects to finding oneself at home: the part of trying to be in some desired place and the part of accepting where one is…
narrative is intrinsically unstable as it has no substance…
Say an independent-thinking person engaged an unknown, married person at a Paris cafe and enjoyed a conversation. She discusses her personal experiences of Russo-Ukrainian relations, the importance of emotional integrity, and her goal of becoming closer with her father. Where would that lead? After talking for a bit, would he expect to begin spending time with her, a crypto salesperson he barely knows? Would he have a chance to know her, given he’s married and they live a continent apart? They are different ages, backgrounds, in different parts of their lives. How would it work?
How would it work? Must there always be an it, an overarching narrative, that has to “work?” I told her I’d share this story when finished and now I’m still working on it over a year later and we haven’t communicated except once, at the beginning. Is it working? Or are she and I, and all of us on this planet, all the time, just doing what we do and seeing how it all works out? What if I don’t know and will never know if it is working? Do I have to know?
narrative is much work for no clear value, or worse, it gets in the way…
And then, how does one deal with the close of a delightful meeting? What I feared before it started: that if we talked the separation would be awkward. Or I wouldn’t know how to separate from her. And do I? Is this whole story about the angst of not knowing how to separate? Yes. And I think it’s more. It’s the angst of not trusting to encounter someone with absolute love, because of the existential dilemma of always holding back, looking for motives before trusting, and in the end never being able to trust without promises beyond the human power to keep. So never trusting in anything, except something false.
I don’t trust you because I dare not trust anyone, because I’m supposed to have a plan for any relationship I initiate, any connection I engage, and that makes it not really a relationship and not really worthy of trust…
So what’s the point? Honest communication of intentions is one thing — if you find that you have clear intentions — but promises about the future? Promises to feel a certain thing? Or even promises to live contrary to feeling, as needed. In order to support a narrative in favor of building up what society approves — and against the heartfelt — because that just isn’t as important.
why ask why…
Months later, I second-guess why I would reach out to her again. But if we spend our whole life seeking motives before taking action we’ll never figure out the motives, since motives emanate from actions and without actions we can’t think, feel, or live. Without action we have nothing, we cannot live. So perhaps a follow-up connection could happen, or not, in a manner similar to the first contact: if it does happen, no one will ever be sure why!
as we separate, what matters? I’m a writer and portrait and landscape photographer, real estate investor and broker, I could offer to help her with real estate as a way to stay in touch, since that would be a respected business connection that we already both pursue. Does it matter so much what we agree to do together? Does it matter more that the agreement be based upon propriety…or passion?
narrative doesn’t fix the underlying problem…
If this story ends with the two of us staying in touch, we’d want her to be suitable for me to connect with, right? I need to find a rationale for staying connected so it can work. There’s the it again. It needs to work. But doesn’t this beg the question why I’m trying to connect with her in the first place? What if I try to connect on the basis of my true interest in her…which is? Whatever my interest, “acceptable” or not, “prudent” or not, fully understood…or not, wouldn’t connecting with her on that basis be the most honest thing to do? Suddenly I feel myself relaxing as I re-read these words, as my thoughts turn towards acceptance of my heartfelt desires. And more…acceptance that my heart-guided actions of the moment will guide me well without the need for narrative to initiate them.
What was she saying, during our conversation, about the importance of emotional integrity…
6. Following Our Goals or Our Heart?
trying to make something work is different from finding out what something is
I would like to know what it is…
Isn’t saying it has to work tantamount to saying our emotions should only be convenient ones? Because isn’t trying to make something work very different from finding out what something is? If we want to to do something, what is the first thing that comes to mind: should I do it or should I not? What if the first thing that came to mind was, instead, I wonder what I would learn from this? Can you imagine if we went around curious what we could learn from our actions rather than primarily fearful that our actions would in some way be wrong, lacking, ill-timed, unappreciated?
What if the only way to know our what our emotions are is to take action? Can you imagine? Those of us caught up in our heads would never know anything, while those of us who took steps towards whatever interested us would find out what we felt. We’re told we should only feel — or at least communicate — interest in someone if they’re appropriate for us. And we should only communicate our emotions if they’re appropriate, positive, useful for us. For us? How are we to decide what we should be feeling and whom we should be feeling it with? We’re told we can keep our emotions to ourselves and keep ourselves to ourselves to avoid causing anyone discomfort! But what if in so doing we cut ourselves off from both the world and from our own internal life, leaving us as shells, hollowed out within and disconnected without?
In any case, how do we decide what emotions and connections are “appropriate” for us? What makes an emotion or a connection “useful.” And, what do we do with the “negative” or “inappropriate” emotions that we “keep to ourselves;” where do those end up? What about the connections we choose not to have, despite our heartfelt desire to connect? Even the connections we choose to have, the feelings we choose to experience and share: if those are chosen rather than simply lived, how can we trust they are true to our deep selves?
what if it turns out life is all about feelings, and not just the ones that serve our preferred narrative? Then we can let ourselves be guided by feelings instead of narrative and we can find our home in emotions instead of story. I want to live in the world of emotions. That sounds authentic and fun!
imagine if we could be finding out about life all the time rather than dictating what it should be…
If we happen to feel interest in someone “inappropriate” for us, we’re told we should suppress those feelings. Because we must be aware of the impact of expressing our feelings on others around us: our loved ones, our friends. But what is the effect of these suppressed emotions, of feelings never expressed? How are our loved ones affected by emotions that we partly or completely withhold?
To sort this out — for this encounter of a man and a woman at the cafe in Paris to work — for me not to suppress so many emotions that I become an angry, depressed person, I would either have to be a good boy and never take a second look at her (was that ever an option?) or we will need to “make” her someone whose rationale for knowing me is “appropriate,” and I must have a rationale for knowing her that’s also “appropriate.”
Since my emotions and desires for connection do carry information about myself and my potential for connecting in the world, if I choose to disregard that information then I’m missing out on something that could have helped me navigate the impacts on myself and others. When I disregard my feelings I am blindfolding myself. Then I’m supposed to figure out the overall schema of the impacts on those around me if I were to express my feelings? How would I know if I didn’t begin to express them? Tie one hand behind my back, or better yet, place me on my knees, and then ask me to protect my community from harmful emotions. Or, maybe it’s more like: to protect my community I have to lie down and play dead. When we play dead in the moment, how are we not really dead in the moment?
so we dictate our feelings…
Hers and my actual emotions don’t matter, right? In fact, I understand it’s better they be suppressed unless they specifically support the appropriate and permissible interaction between a man and a woman under a given circumstance. So, in light of this need to suppress strong emotions so a man can talk with a woman, wouldn’t it be better to just steer clear and not talk at all? Why even take a second look at her? Why not just look down at my plate when she first comes near (play dead)? Wouldn’t it be infinitely better if I simply looked the other way and avoided undesirable emotions by not engaging at all? Unless us seeing each other and wanting to talk is actually more important than all this management of emotions... What if talking with her were the most important thing. But how would I know?
Can you imagine? Instead of engagement of a woman by a man being a “temptation,” what if it was the most important thing the two of them could do? So instead of managing how they feel, they would have to deal with how their feeling and their actions affect their lives…
the cost of following one’s emotions…
This presents a dilemma. If the emotions are important yet also dangerous, is it wise to let them get started? Can I keep these “important” emotions light and clear and safe, or is even that both asking for trouble, and a falsification of those emotions at the same time? Maybe there is no “middle road” in feeling and expressing our true selves. Maybe we either “play dead” or jump into the pool and slip under the water…
I might, in the course of my light, appropriate, and important emotional engagement with her, discover feelings that would support friendship, perhaps founded in interest in her Russian knowledge outside my regular range of awareness, interest in her intellect, interest in her independence and love for travel. We might become friends. But are those shared experiences not also the beginning of a slippery slope towards “inappropriate” feelings or interactions that might damage my existing relationships?
Her independence and love for travel separates her from her husband, who likes to stay at home. So will I talk with her about personal independence and our mutual love for travel? Will she then ask what my wife feels about these things? Will we both talk about our independent attitudes compared to our spouses? Will that begin an “unholy alliance,” support ongoing conversation kept separate from our spouses and friends?
the costs of connection…
The slippery slope of emotional attachment: if a married person shares personal and relationship-oriented matters with a person of the opposite sex — say issues with the way their primary relationships work or even just personal dreams of relating better — a bond begins to form with the new person that’s separate from the marriage bond. And is that bond? So we are taught: we should only open our heart to and put our trust in and give ourselves to one person at a time whom we find attractive (ok to be open to a friend who’s not a sexual opportunity). Because…anything else would become awkward and challenging…
powerful emotions that don’t fit our chosen narratives are inconvenient to those narratives…
Giving ourselves emotionally to more than one person at a time could (must?) lead to one emotional bond competing with another, which sounds inconvenient (and even destructive to both bonds, because we lack tools for navigating such competition? Competition between mother and spouse, sibling and spouse, child and spouse, child and child, are considered normal, but spouse and other lover? We’re told this is a step too far. Sacrilege!)
Ultimately, aren’t emotions mostly inconvenient, just as most of what happens in our lives and the sensations we experience in a given day are often inconvenient? The stronger the emotion or sensation, the more inconvenient. This is why we teach that emotions should be directed into paths supporting a person’s external commitments in life, especially marriage and relationship, which tend to include commitments to home, career, children, finances.
There’s so much to lose if we allow desires and emotions to be expressed! So much to gain if we can control, even harness or transmute emotions, creating feelings that support the Princess Myth that we’re all just waiting to live happily ever after as a couple with the privalege to exclude all others from our joy. Experiencing emotions is an unaffordable luxury…isn’t it?
But can we afford not to feel, express and act upon our core passions? How long can we afford to play dead to the world while waiting to become alive to our forever after joy in that one perfect union…what if we have these things mixed up? What if it’s the out there that brings life to our union with a beloved partner?
7. The Cost of Following The Rules
some emotions, feelings, passions, acts don’t fit our dominant culture’s narratives…
Some think sexual feelings, attraction towards others, and a whole range of inconvenient emotional reactions, even personal passions, can be guided, redirected and used without simply suppressing them. Instead, they’re transformed into other passions, societally acceptable passions. A win-win if we don’t fight the emotions but put them to use for something “appropriate.”
The best of all possible worlds if we avoid inconvenience and don’t block our emotions but instead put them to work! To do this one only has to treat certain emotions as something different than they are: attraction to a non-spouse, for example, might be remade into a passion for writing, or camping, work or sport. Now I’m excited…about my new camper!
Wanting to go deeper into connecting with another of the opposite sex is transformed into doing the paperwork to support real estate investment, or volunteering, or buying flowers for the “appropriate” sweetie. Instead of a smile of joy at the sight of a woman’s beauty — a smile that could be shared with her — there is a furtive burying of the feeling and saving of it for the “right woman,” the one with the bond one chooses to strengthen in order to support family, home, community, career, and everything ever after.
But does this behavior really strengthen that bond? What if experiencing true feelings and sharing them in attuned ways with spouse and also with the person one feels attracted towards at that moment is what would lead to strengthening the bond with spouse, in the end? How can that be, you ask? Well, if I’m your spouse would I want you to lie to me and make up a story about our lives, or would I rather that you feel what you’re actually feeling, whether you tell me about it or not? And would I actually want to know what you’re feeling?
Sounds revolutionary, I know, but some people are interested in knowing the person to whom they dedicate much of their life. Others are at least interested in getting what they need out of a relationship while knowing in their hearts that the other person is also getting everything they need in their lives.
if one plays by the rules, one is free to engage (appropriately) and to be celebrated by the dominant paradigms of society
even though some choices lead to outward success but inward loss…
If one is clear on one’s role in life, if one understands and accepts one’s commitments to others, particularly to the spouse with whom one has chosen to share a life, then one is free to engage, right? When a married man encounters a woman other than his wife, he only has to know the boundaries (read: emotions on the far side of the boundary are reinterpreted to be something other than what they are). So much, and no more, this way and not that way. You can feel this, but you cannot feel that!
Attraction is natural, but it is guided into the joy of self, laughter at life’s eccentricities, reminder to self of commitment to spouse, and above all else the freedom not to worry about what to do with attraction, because one redirects it quickly and decisively. One never openly pursues attraction.
As though it never existed.
The biggest inward loss is that you no longer have your own feelings as a compass. Instead you have society’s guidelines, and your feelings are created from those. So you’re no longer a full person but a kind of shell supported by and supporting society’s mandates. You’re like a battery that gives power to society, at at night, when you’re sleeping, it trickle-charges you back, keeping a roof over your head, perhaps, if you’re especially good in your service, another desperate shell person next you in the bed.
the inward loss is that you’re always alone and never free of the responsibility towards the dominant relationship paradigm, whether you’re single or in a dedicated relationship — you’re either always looking, afraid of making a mistake, or you’re always not-looking, afraid of making a mistake. No one will ever know your truth and you will never be free to express your desires, to anyone…because you’ll never be able to act out your desires so you’ll never truly know what they are.
society’s paradigm for feelings leaves us in a hollow role filled with nothing, no feelings of our own, and the constant sense of something missing…
what is missing is action…
If I were single, the hardship would still be what to do with any attraction I feel towards a woman. Because as a single person I’m always at risk of over-committing to the wrong person. As a married person, really opening up to a woman besides my wife is out of bounds, so what to do with any attraction towards a woman is also a hardship, because the last thing I can do is be honest with either the woman I am finding attractive in the moment, or my wife...because being honest would involve sharing of feelings and even desire to act that could make my existing relationship more complicated, right? Or uncomfortable? Why should we ever do or say anything that would make us or another person uncomfortable? Isn’t life all about feeling good and never, never causing “unnecessary” pain?
And why is it true that being honest about and even acting upon our feelings would make our lives and relationships more complicated? Why is it true that deep connection with someone else will take away from my existing relationship? Does even talking about connection with someone else take away from my relationship? Only one clear rationale behind all these negative logics: our relationships aren’t real (or at least we’re afraid they aren’t), so they have to be protected from competition. And we aren’t real (or at least we’re afraid we aren’t), so we could never have the courage to make real decisions in the face of multiple opportunities to connect in the deepest possible ways with others. We have to make sure we only give ourselves to one person and we protect our frail, unreal selves from “temptation.”
temptation is the word for when we feel strongly about something but we’re supposed to “turn off” that feeling…
If I were a single person I’d be filled with the angst of deciding whether or not to pursue a relationship with her — I’d have to weigh the pluses and minuses, watch out for red flags, be on guard to assure that she didn’t turn out to be hiding things, be totally wrong for me, or both. Because a single person is always aware that each attractive person they meet is both an opportunity to be considered and also a risk of one’s very life and freedom at the mercy of another who could be a lifetime “bad match,” or in any case a relationship “investment” that’s hard to move on from. I might get “in trouble” with this person. This is a form of terror perpetuated within our society because intimacy becomes a commitment and an obligation. Remember my fear that I wouldn’t know how to end a conversation with the woman at the Paris cafe?
I’m free to be “me” only as long as I follow rules redirecting desires that could challenge the dominant paradigms of society…
I let the rules define me because having feelings at odds with the rules would be too painful to hold in awareness, and even if I did, none of my close relationships would support me in doing sharing, experiencing and acting upon those feelings. Feeling that could pull me towards the “wrong” people and activities.
Fortunately, I don’t have to worry! I can be myself since I’m emotionally and physically unavailable. My expressions towards the woman I just met can seem full and vibrant because I know my place — anything that comes up outside my boundaries is immediately redirected into building my passion for writing, or for travel, or even for building wealth in real estate. I guide my emotions into paths that work for society, for myself, for my spouse and my family.
My emotions are made to work for everyone! Since I know what I’m allowed to do, I’m free to fully experience (what’s left of) my emotions within the boundaries… Those desires that inevitably go outside the boundaries are immediately and even unconsciously modified. Any messiness in that modification, any distant, muffled scream of frustration and revulsion at being denied my essential self, is sent to roam the wilderness of the unconscious. And good riddance! The forest of the unconscious is probably a nice, refreshing place for my essential self to reside. Why should my essential self have to face the grim and gray realities of this conscious world within which I find myself (this conscious world I create by forcing my emotions and feelings into exile)?
at the cost of knowing myself I can become a successful self, just not my self…
A managed, successful man, knowing my place in marriage and family so well that I’m free to have fun and be myself with all comers, so long as I play by the rules. And then die? I mean, if I don’t follow my heart but instead a compass of utility and achievement, how will I own what I’ve done, what I’ve become? It’s almost as though someone else has accomplished these things. Have I already died in letting enough of myself go to these rules that the remainder has no compass? I mean, wow, an amazing life, full of family and spouse and who knows what else I may accumulate: grandkids, more wealth, a stellar reputation. But, who’s life is it?
I could become a pillar of the community, supporting others who don’t seem to have it all together as well as I do. With this sensational stability I could build so much! Develop myself personally, get richer, support nonprofits, go back to school, who knows, even advance science, advance causes I care about — but can I, really, or can I only advance causes which the rules I play by care about? And where is the real me in all this? Hiding out in the back of my mind? Why wouldn’t I want all this power (the power to advance myself in the interest of the dominant cultural rules I play by)? A wise person would still ask the cost…
The cost is to not be myself, but also to not know myself.
have I taken control, or been taken control of…
Now comes the part that, in the end, is neither funny nor a surprise. At some level I’m given a choice to whom or what to hand over my power. I can choose to give it to The System of real estate ladders and relationship escalators. I’ve done that. Now this person (me) who has stepped out of himself, relinquishing moment-to-moment control to something outside, reaps the rewards of loyalty and steady investment. The possibilities are practically endless for the managed man, a man who takes his emotions and his sexuality and sublimates them. The only thing he can’t be is himself. Is that really so bad if the person he becomes is celebrated by his peers? Is there any other way out of this dilemma of choosing between serving the world and being an authentic human?
transformation into the sublime…
Sublimation is the transformation of “undesirable” emotions and drives (libido, hard-wired responses), desires, into work approved by a dominant culture. The core of the Protestant Work Ethic, sublimation is a process that can sustain us on the relationship escalator and the real estate ladder that our society promotes as ways to higher heights and greater achievements — this is what our society considers sublime. Thus, we sublimate, or make desires sublime instead of “base,” passions “useful” instead of just our own.
You need energy to achieve big life goals such as real estate and major family success, and a great source of energy is whatever arises in the self, whether it’s a sexual impulse, an impulse to anger, or pretty much anything other than a clear focus on the dedicated goal. Whatever powerful desires arise in you, just put them into the grinder, feed passionate feelings into the higher education/relationship escalator/real estate ladder machine. The squished-up, ground-up paste of raw emotions will give you the energy to climb towards the heights of modern society!
who I’m free to be…
In addition to freeing myself from awkward emotions and drives, and using all that energy to produce shiny stuff my society admires, I’m free to experience a range of emotions, because I’ve learned how to protect myself and my community from any that might threaten this worldly success! In other words, by putting on blinders I’m a horse free to gallop forward without concern for what temptations might lie to right or left! I can still fully feel emotions — the ones I let myself feel.
I have the satisfaction of having taken sexual desires and overly-personal, overly-awkward feelings and re-directed them into open success! If I were a little better at this I could almost become a superman, accomplishing everything I could ever want, or at least everything my society says I should want. And so I have the double victory of getting great things and having everyone else admire and envy me. What price would be too much to pay for such success, for this excellent arrangement with the machine we call society?
I really only have one thing to offer…my soul…
8. Reflection
is there another option? To what could I relinquish moment-to-moment control that would let me be truly me? What would such a life be like?
a place for me…
Amongst all the escalators and managed sexuality, I lack the ability to step back and reflect upon my own “place.” The pact I’ve made to always abide by the rules of marriage has taken just a tiny little bit of freedom away from me, a certain piece of my soul. And in so doing it has blinded me to that same part so that I can’t see it, can’t know it, can only indirectly and by inference reflect upon it at all.
How can such a loss even be noticed when I have so much, when my marriage has given me so much more than I could have had alone? So long as I don’t seek to question the sanctity of marriage: so long as I see it as God-given, or the ultimate product of science, or just part of being human, or even the best accomodation to society or to my own success, or to my family or my wife, then I’m…pretty much fine. Right? So many ways to justify sublimating my sexual feelings and other instincts to feed the beautiful many-colored dragon of society floating above our petty human world, smiling down upon us.
And, one question, if my sexual feelings get changed into productivity, that of course is of service to the development of real estate, other work, taking care of kids, and so on. But how does it affect the excitement in my own marriage? Let’s see, take sexual energy and make it go away. That can’t be great for my excitement about my spouse. Could there be a better way…
I can’t know what an alternative would be like because I don’t dare try it…
The little piece of my soul I’ve paid is invisible to me. I can detect ramifications of the transaction — such as the sick feeling I have when I want to connect with another woman and feel ashamed or afraid — but I can’t see it for what it is because my psyche is built upon this sublimatory model. To turn away from it would shake the foundations of everything I’ve achieved. And I can’t see myself — enmeshed as I am in this system — without first pulling away, and thereby threatening to collapse the system. Blinded by my own fear of relinquishing the power I’ve used to build this palace of illusion, I just hope if I keep my eyes closed the towers and the walls won’t collapse of their own accord…
what is the downside of not buying into the either-or mentality, of opening myself up to these messy emotions, feelings, passions and outcomes, when my whole life I’ve been told I must make particular choices?
married or single is really not a choice at all, the choice is being with the program or being independent of it…
I’m better off than in almost any other conceivable scenario, am I not? That little chink of sacrificed freedom to see with open eyes — the freedom to feel — is freely chosen, freely given. I didn’t have to get married, but I had to choose: married or single. A binary choice. Why? Because I was already blinded from the moment the Princes and the Princesses were living Happily Every After in my infant psyche that was too young to separate fact from fantasy. I could choose to marry now, marry later, or die alone. How about now, how about now…
what if I allowed myself to follow the emotion to the feeling to the passion to the consequences…
Go ahead and let your emotions flow down one path or the other, but beware: even single, you’ll be imprisoned in constant need to be on guard against all suitors, all prospects, all people you meet where there might be mutual attraction. Because what matters is the Happily Ever After, not the moment you’re in. This moment can’t be trusted. To live truly in the moment would be to risk the ultimate temptation to follow an uncharted path and to be led astray by emotion, led down dark and sinking paths, farther and farther away from that glorious, smiling dragon in the sky who rules over our society, keeping us from ever getting uncomfortably close to ourselves or to each other.
the society I feel I’m surrounded by believes sexual attraction can’t be trusted except as a societally-managed soul-binding tool…
So, single, you won’t be able to trust yourself with anyone you find attractive because they may not be reliable enough to spend the rest of your life turning to for support. You dare not fully enjoy your instincts and your erotic power in relation to anyone because too much business value is at stake: a lifetime of Happily Ever After depends upon looking past these base forces towards the overarching narrative provided by the community.
The irony of being single is your only relationship freedom is to obsess about whether whomever you are dating (or obsessing about) is the Right One. You’ll thus never feel safe until locked securely within the bonds of marriage ‘till death do you part. That’s the only safe space, away from authentic and potentially dangerous drives and emotions.
marry so you can at last be free of the risks of passion…
Marriage undergirds the sublimated freedom from troubling choices and troubling emotions, offering a chance to say goodbye to lust and attraction and…fading glimpse…goodbye to any free and open connection with someone else, a freedom which you might never have dared to have — even once — in your life even from the age of two years old, because the Princess Myth has controlled every moment of your single days and your married days.
what would a free and open connection be like anyway…
Does it count to have a free and open connection if you’re only able to have it before you hear the Happily Ever After myths told to children in their cribs? At the age of two you think you’re the center of the universe and your parent is there to serve you. That’s not a free and open connection. An infant doesn’t have the capacity of a full, independent self to connect with another. And the poisonous myths of sublimated connection and the loss of trust in one’s emotions are already being fed at such an early age!
Maybe just once when you decided to open up to that one person who became your person? But did you open up in true sovereignty over your own choice or did you open up by spilling your personal integrity like a roll of the dice onto the craps table of modern life? This is a beautiful person to whom I feel attracted; what do I have to lose, except my soul? And in paying it I take my place in society, so perhaps in dedicating my soul I have saved it from wandering the back alleys of non-commitment until I’m old and have lost the energy to produce any more cool and shiny stuff for myself and society. But wait, what was that about true sovereignty over my own choices? Was such an option of full choice ever on the table?
is knowing my place enough…
I know my place — don’t I? — I share perfectly pure feelings with this Russian woman in Paris, appropriate and useful to me and her and everyone we know, in fact emotions that could light up our community with joy. And even though such strong feelings might easily lead to overinvestment in the relationship to the point that it becomes inappropriate, embarrassing, a “liability” for everyone, even though it would be most prudent to steer clear of feelings — steer clear of strange women!— keep things in my head, keep it intellectual, keep my body locked up tight, yet I move forward, seeking further connection with her.
I think we go around thinking that if we were evolved we’d have friendships with the opposite sex, but in practice it’s too risky — I think we have it backwards: friendships with the opposite sex have a sexual element to them. That’s not “risky,” that’s just something one has to accept if one is going to connect…
9. Highest Relationship Authority
say anything…
The connection I seek. Oh. I seem to have thought through all the above and to be feeling a bit faint or lightheaded. I know there’s no point in trying to connect with this woman about real estate, so I offer to connect through taking photos of her. What!! How can that be? A married man taking photos of a younger woman he’s met in Paris. Impossible. Or, if somehow possible…still, scandalous. It will surely lead me and my family to doom! What is wrong with me? Why would I even contemplate such a thing when I have this much to lose?
what if the highest authority is friendship, not sexuality — whomever you’re having a friendship with — and sexuality is one part of the whole picture. Not to be made a goal of, but to be honored as an avenue of feelings, and also not to be feared…
authentic emotion…
I contemplate a connection with the woman at the cafe because in every other other direction — every direction away from my feelings — lies death. How can that be? Can there be a higher authority than God-given, or society-given, or opportunistically self-chosen, or morally obligated, or love-driven, or God-only-knows what driven…marriage? Could the authority of emotions, which seem so fickle, so spontaneous and unmanaged, be greater than the institution of marriage, built up over millennia? No way!
my passion in life isn’t so much real estate, but photography, and I find I’d like to take photos of her. What if I simply offer to do it? In my heart, do I really want to be reasonable in relationship?
what connection shall we find…
If I’ve already told her of my passion for writing and photography, could we find a connection in those? And if that’s not what she wants, then we’d be able to say goodbye now and perhaps I can sooner meet someone who does share some passion with me, and then this woman won’t end up wasting her time with me either — thinking of me as mainly a real estate connection when real estate isn’t the main passion I want to share.
a selection process…
I’m passionate about portraits more than real estate, so if I offer to take photos of her I can find out what she’s about and what we may have in common — what we can actually be about, she and I
Every step of the way relationship is defined. Two seen within each others’ awareness through intersecting traits letting them meet in the first place. For relationship to continue we must share truths about ourselves that have us appreciate each other, or else we’ll stop connecting. To remain superficial, or worse, focused on one thing when a different, unspoken thing is more passionately felt, is not a pathway to stable connection. We’ve got to connect in ways where we both feel passion, or the connection will drift, blink on and off, disappear…
an offer based upon feelings and attunement…
How bold if I offer to photograph her! On the other hand, how much more bold to withhold passion while still engaging. What deceit would have me accept an “If you’re in New York…” parting offer and expect such an “in New York” meeting would ever occur without a heartfelt connection. Better to say, “Bye, forever!” That would be more honest! I’ll certainly be in New York, yet just as certainly won’t meet someone with whom I don’t share an ongoing connection. So the question of relationship isn’t about New York, it’s about something between now and then, here and there.
engaging my passion for photography — my joy in capturing emotion in the moment — through an offer to share this passion with her…
And what could be more perfect than meeting an interesting and attractive, independent woman, talking with her down to a deep level, then offering to do something with her that I love to do? Let’s say I don’t sense she’ll be offended or threatened by my offer to take photos of her. In that case, why not? In this way, the mutual selection process continues and we see right away whether we continue getting along, or part ways.
when you meet someone you enjoy in a strange place for the first time how do you leave it…
maybe I leave the meeting the way we eventually leave everything, as the approaching moment of departure becomes the past, letting the moment go with whatever happens to take place as we part…
facts determine outcome…
In continuing to determine whether we’ll cross paths, be in each other’s minds, talk — or if instead we’ll fade from each others’ awareness — isn’t the event of separation after one conversation itself a determinant? If connection continues, then maybe it’ll become more stable. If not— c’est la vie — we’re each on to whatever comes next. Perhaps no need to suggest how we’ll meet again? Easy to see meeting someone at a sidewalk cafe, but harder to visualize how a relationship continues from there. Why try? Maybe the unlikelihood of continued connection is what facilitates a meeting in the first place. There was never an implicit obligation to the future. Nothing has to be awkward about saying goodbye to a stranger…
but for that good-bye to have meaning we must share feelings…
No plan to meet in Paris in a year, only the parting words, “I’d like to take photos of you,” and the response, “Sure, I would appreciate it!”
goodbye…
And we separate with expressed desire instead of plans, not anticipating the future.
