Ok. Well in the spirit of responding to generalized coming out of the closet, I have possibly rude questions.
Do you...have sex with women that you care about?
If so, how does the desire for distress interact with the caring? Aren’t they...almost exactly opposites? Or is that not how it is for you? Do you “turn down the volume” one one to turn up the volume on the other? Are you expressing caring by causing someone to struggle?
Yes, I definitely care about the women I have sex with, and most other people who I interact with significantly. Even when I intend to keep a relationship relatively “casual”, I still generally provide a fair bit of the more intimacy-flavored aspects of a relationship—i.e. generally paying attention to what her day-to-day emotional experience is like, what parts of her life or herself she’s anxious or insecure about, etc, and generally trying to help her grow stronger without being too pushy or steamrolly about it.
There’s more than one way the desire for distress and caring can synthesize, for me. One prototypical synthesis: deeply wanting her to come out of the experience better and stronger. Indeed, that’s the one promise I make upfront on a first date: my first priority is to make sure she leaves a better and stronger person. When it comes to the sex, a “become better and stronger” case I enjoy is when some part of her wants the sort of experience which arouses me, it’s something she knows a part of her wants but which she hasn’t embraced often, and she comes (and comes, and...) out of the experience with her parts/values more whole and integrated. There’s a lot of gentleness and curiosity around it, giving her space to understand herself, though it doesn’t necessarily look like gentleness aesthetically (e.g. “forcing” her to tell me her darker fantasies). Of course the flip side, on my part, is having to be very careful not to project or suggest such a part into a woman who does not, in fact, want it. But that’s a special case of a skill I’ve practiced a lot in many contexts.
Another way things might come together: it’s centrally about doing these things to a woman who wants these things done to her. And in that frame, there’s an element of… taking pride in seeing actual humans’ actual values for what they are, and embracing them, and celebrating them, rather than pretending that humans’ values are necessarily some gentler or “friendlier” thing. Like, we’re both embracing what we really want, together, and ignoring whatever background social conditioning might have said otherwise.
Also I should mention that my kinks aren’t necessarily obligate; the extent to which I need this particular thing in order to finish varies over time and I haven’t worked out the relevant factors yet. And I’m generally pretty ok with just fucking a while and not finishing, that happens pretty frequently, and I don’t need my kinks engaged just to keep it up (unless I’m very stressed or tired, or it’s like round 3 or 4 and we’ve basically just been going at it for several hours).
Ok. Well in the spirit of responding to generalized coming out of the closet, I have possibly rude questions.
Do you...have sex with women that you care about?
If so, how does the desire for distress interact with the caring? Aren’t they...almost exactly opposites? Or is that not how it is for you? Do you “turn down the volume” one one to turn up the volume on the other? Are you expressing caring by causing someone to struggle?
Good questions.
Yes, I definitely care about the women I have sex with, and most other people who I interact with significantly. Even when I intend to keep a relationship relatively “casual”, I still generally provide a fair bit of the more intimacy-flavored aspects of a relationship—i.e. generally paying attention to what her day-to-day emotional experience is like, what parts of her life or herself she’s anxious or insecure about, etc, and generally trying to help her grow stronger without being too pushy or steamrolly about it.
There’s more than one way the desire for distress and caring can synthesize, for me. One prototypical synthesis: deeply wanting her to come out of the experience better and stronger. Indeed, that’s the one promise I make upfront on a first date: my first priority is to make sure she leaves a better and stronger person. When it comes to the sex, a “become better and stronger” case I enjoy is when some part of her wants the sort of experience which arouses me, it’s something she knows a part of her wants but which she hasn’t embraced often, and she comes (
and comes, and...) out of the experience with her parts/values more whole and integrated. There’s a lot of gentleness and curiosity around it, giving her space to understand herself, though it doesn’t necessarily look like gentleness aesthetically (e.g. “forcing” her to tell me her darker fantasies). Of course the flip side, on my part, is having to be very careful not to project or suggest such a part into a woman who does not, in fact, want it. But that’s a special case of a skill I’ve practiced a lot in many contexts.Another way things might come together: it’s centrally about doing these things to a woman who wants these things done to her. And in that frame, there’s an element of… taking pride in seeing actual humans’ actual values for what they are, and embracing them, and celebrating them, rather than pretending that humans’ values are necessarily some gentler or “friendlier” thing. Like, we’re both embracing what we really want, together, and ignoring whatever background social conditioning might have said otherwise.
Also I should mention that my kinks aren’t necessarily obligate; the extent to which I need this particular thing in order to finish varies over time and I haven’t worked out the relevant factors yet. And I’m generally pretty ok with just fucking a while and not finishing, that happens pretty frequently, and I don’t need my kinks engaged just to keep it up (unless I’m very stressed or tired, or it’s like round 3 or 4 and we’ve basically just been going at it for several hours).