Friends, Readers, Countrymen:
In case you’re wondering what we’re up to this Valentine’s weekend, Planet Waves is re-publishing some of our favorite selections from the conscious relationship and sexuality genre. Each of these articles is designed, in some way, to inform you that you have a choice in how you express yourself in your emotional, affectual and erotic life. We are all programmed — more or less constantly — to act a certain way and to believe certain things: about our gender, about how to relate to others, and what is moral or ethical. All of this conceals one simple fact: we have, as a privilege of being alive and aware, a choice in how we relate to ourselves and others.
One theme running through most of these articles is that the ability to relate to others, and to love others, begins with knowing, loving and trusting ourselves. From there, I have faith that anything is possible.
I consider my writing something more akin to the first word, than the last word. Plealse take a few moments and add your comments to these articles, so that others can feel and appreciate your thoughts.
Many thanks.
Your scribe,
Eric Francis
hhmmm… how about, “friends, readers, CUNTrymen?”
sorry, couldn’t resist! 🙂 just looking for a way to integrate the male & female in that word…
i am *so* glad to see these essays reprinted. i have saved them all in my email, but i love anytime this stuff can get a wider audience. a lot of it has given me much food for thought over the last year or so.
and it feels especially apropos given that i just had an interesting experience last night (or early this morning). i’m not sure i have time to give it proper treatment, but it was an exercise in acknowledging and giving free rein to a darker side of myself, consciously deciding to break a certain rule.
i have been avoiding for weeks a certain former/occasional lover. he and i had had an emotionally dramatic open relationship; i finally got to the point this summer where i could finally let go of him emotionally. we had had lots of very hot sex, which had almost been addictive for me since i had just come out of a solid decade of sexual dyfunction/difficulties with arousal. despite the fact that i was finally regularly, wildly turned on & able to fuck, i only had a few orgasms with him over the course of almost two years (mostly with me masturbating, once through oral). my vagina circuit was fianally working, but the clit (previously fine with partner oral, and functional in masturbation) seemed to go on vacation.
fast forward to the past few months: this man has a girlfriend. after fucking him a couple times, i found out he’s pretending to be monogamous with her, that they were not having the kind of openly poly relationship we had had. i was determined to be ethical and not be “the other woman.” i tried just being friends with him, but his seduction coupled with a couple of instances of the old non-arousal dysfunction with new partners threw my confidence for a loop and i gave in a couple times. i felt guilty and ashamed (to the point of not telling my therapist for a few weeks) yet relieved that i wasn’t regressing to my “broken” state of arousal dysfuntction completely.
so, i made up my mind to avoid him completely, since clearly i couldn’t trust either one of us. and then last week while masturbating, i realized i was not just fantasizing about him (common enough), but i was specifically fantasizing about allowing myself to give in to his seduction despite his having a girlfriend. up until the last few months, i have always been completely scrupulous about not going for another woman’s man. but as i came, i actually said aloud, “i want to be bad.” it was a little scary to hear myself acknowledge out loud that there is a side of me that just wanted to blow my own code of ethics wide open and recognize it as a conscious decision, not play “victim” to another’s powers of seduction.
i do not expect to be praised for this, but it really feels like some part of my struggle as a taurus with saturn in cancer to break some rules as consciously as i can. it’s scary to admit to having a dark side. and so last night i accepted this man’s inviation to a bite to eat, and to watch a little tv, knowing all along that i was going to let myself fuck him. and when he went down on me and i felt myself close to coming, instead of running away from the cliff’s edge as usual, i thought to myself, “i want to be bad. i want to be bad,” and even “i want to die,” the latter not so much in the literal sense, but in the sense you (eric) have written about before: that orgasm is an acceptance of change, and change involves a kind of death. and i did in fact have that orgasm, which had been eluding me with this man (mostly) for almost two years. i am not proud of knowingly fucking another woman’s boyfriend. but i felt an amazing freedom in ackowledging that very dark side of me, my capability of choosing conscioulsy this action, of allowing that orgasm.
i’ll be doing a lot of thinking about this. as you said, it’s a seriously strong box i’m trying to bust open.
in honor of self-knowledge, happy valentine’s day.