hi See Far,
thank you for some space to share.
about this photo; feels good to be feeling what I am about to share, and know I’m going to say it to you.
This mirror…is a picture of compersion. what my body has made…what I have made…after a selfucking session on the phone with jane, considering her fucking other men. we went on for a while…this was maybe three years ago and I was in a hotel somewhere. I came so much, connecting to my craving for her, jealousy, appreciation soaked in her beauty for choosing, and the idea as well as the truth that I was masturbating to this.
What a tender submission to her – I know you can feel this. Since the earliest moments of our relationship I’ve gotten off to her fucking other men. I’ve been there once, holding her, as her lover jake fucked her and held her, and lost control. She so beautiful…I had guided the situation so that he would be the one to fuck her. He wanted to do watch me as well, he said later, though I think I wanted it more, and I knew what to do.
I sucked her asshole while she sucked his cock. She was on all fours and we could see one another. I looked him in the eyes as I licked her, showing him what I was doing, trying to get him to cum into her mouth. But she wanted him to fuck her and she would ease him back from his orgasm.
Then he fucked her from above, as I lay next to her and held her. Their faces so vivid even now.
When they had relaxed from this, they sat there dressed. I remained naked, gently worked myself into orgasm, and ejaculated into my palm and licked myself. I was facing a window. They were not looking at me…nor at one another…it was so strange…and though I did not push myself out into the room and say Look At Me. Feel Me, I did make love to myself.
So back to this picture. My body made a lot of semen facing her fucking, the story of her fucking. These are some of the deeper emotional spaces I’ve reached erotically…psychically…this has been an especially poignant scenario to lure myself into selfloving compersion…and I keep repeating — taking a healing space for myself for a while, and over and over, I meet the truth that she has made love, drank his seed, been licked and been fucked…what beauty in that she knows I bring myself off to this.
Understands that I draw up both thirst and semen to my understanding of her fulfillment. The reference in one of the bOb posts to showing him my full mouth is showing the man who has just let go together with her my full mouth.
Isn’t this an interesting, beautiful and intuitive feeling way to find my way to selflove?
Honoring a woman…gently opening up to the pain surrounding her…opening to her for mutual sharing in which we both gain and grow. We submit to our respective pleasures. For me there is deep pleasure and an understanding that I can access certain aspects of healing only through mirror masturbation. I would love your feedback on that.
Do you have any thoughts about what I’m doing vis a vis narcissism?
xef
Yes- I would say it?s narcissism brought to the level of awareness.
In many ways and on many levels, you are living the myth of Narcissus both as literally and as metaphorically as anyone I?ve known. The caveat is that most often, the referred to myth reflects an unconscious process of working through themes of self-love, being/feeling unwanted, power, vulnerability, emptiness, humiliation, rejection, abandonment, self-acceptance, etc. Without awareness, the part of the story that describes a flower growing in the soil where Narcissus dies of grief never actualizes. The transformation doesn?t happen. Being stuck in the narcissistic wound- not acknowledging the emptiness that initially leads to the pursuit- is what is most referred to with the term narcissism. My sense is that you are working with the story with intense and deep awareness, and that this is what allows for beauty and life to grow. That?s my psychological response, and I imagine there is nothing new for you here.
(As an aside, I just read Death in Venice, which seemed to be to evoke similar or at least some overlapping themes- especially when we blur self and other.)
My spiritual or existential response, which is also more of a personal response: Your journey through this myth strikes me as beautiful and painful and intense, fulfilling, courageous, poetic, and life- and death- embracing. In submitting to the other- to her existence- you are affirming your existence & possibly all of existence. Your process includes witnesses to/for you. You invite your witnesses in and in doing so, step out of ?narcissism? as the term is often used.
I wonder about (or sometimes read about in your writing) what you know and what you?ve learned about the wounding that you discover or experience. And about the other side of submission. Both in terms of what you discover on the other side and whether you are you in touch with an instinct to aggress or dominate/ where does this instinct go? Again, I know you?ve written about this and so I have a sense of this process as it exists for you. You?ve seemed to make peace with the longing and emptiness and existential doubts?I imagine they are present for you in a transmuted sort of way.
I also want to say that, as you know, I am much less of an analyst than you are. Whereas I do find self and other analysis fascinating and necessary and stimulating, my more immediate and- for me- fuller response is that of providing space and appreciation and a witness. I think of the metaphor of the pretty exact Pluto-Venus opp in my birthchart, ruling my Self-Other angles: The intermingling of beauty and pain and love in the context of relationship is what most grabs me in your experience.
w/ love,
C
I think that a narcissism wound has spurred me forward, both inflicted by family and also a wound that is the property of the society. most relationships are about a narcissistic infatuation with ‘the other’ rather than recognition of the other.
I need to read the myth though it seems there is no implication that Narcissus consummates his relationship.
He just gazes, longs and grieves. So in a sense he is as alienated from himself as he is from his environment, the nymphs, etc.
I think that’s exactly right, based on what i see/know. I also think this is a necessary part of the myth and journey- The self/other relationship within one’s self preceeding or coinciding with an equal and direct relationship with the other “out there.” It’s the nature of being human, perhaps, to experience the divide and a longing for union. How we choose to grapple with this characterizes, in part, our respective journeys.
The unavailability in the myth is present as Narcissus rejects the nymphs and then again, as his image dissolves away- just out of reach; he then dies from grief, dies into his grief and onto something else, and a flower grows from the soil of his dissolution. I agree that most pple enact this myth unconsciously in one way or another. I think you have done so consciously- you have worked with the unavailability consciously, deeply; you have consciously chosen yourself (celibacy) at times; you have allowed that to transform you, have died (submitted) to the longing and other feelings, experiences, and others’ existence, and have risen from this death/ grown from the incorporation of your own seed just as the flower blooms from the soil with Narcissus’ remains. It’s like a rewrite of the myth from the perspective of awareness. You allow the nymphs and the forest and river to be your witnesses. I like to think of the flower as the possibility of love and beauty being fulfilled. I think our process is always relational- though we can ignore this and it becomes shadow. In some ways, I also think our process is always solitary.
Part of the resolution will come I think when I start to find some women who can meet me in a direct way emotionally, intellectually and sexually. Part of why I explore here isthat this hasn’t been forthcoming, but I was not going to wait around for someone else to go deep. My intent is always to embrace and include. In the Narcissus story there is nobody else there. It’s all about him. As far as I can tell what I am doing is entirely relational, and I am not coveting my relationship tomyself in some special way — just working with what I have to work with, and who…
I’m sure you’re right about that.
I think there is something beautiful in his initial falling for himself. This is not to in any way paint over the very real alienation (which seems to be exactly the right word in this context) and hatred created within a certain narcissistic defense style. I want to try to see the healing in the symptom, though. Perhaps narcissism can be the beginning of self-love if worked through. Sadly, self-love gets a bad rap in our world; such a strange, perhaps ironic, taboo. I like to read N’s death as psychological transformation and hope that we have it in us to die to our illusions and rise into something real, authentic.
I’m not there myself. Maybe this is why I have a need to find hope in the myth.
Going back to your experience, it is, for me, a compelling example of living self love and acceptance.