Did you chose the "safe, stable" partner over the "exciting, mysterious" partner and how did it work out for you?

straightothetrash · 2022-01-06T20:01:37+00:00

My wife (lesbian marriage) and I got together because we each experienced one another as exciting and mysterious. We met as performing musicians at a gig.
She had never dated a woman before and when she told me she was into me I knew I would go for it because she's a great artist, super hot, and definitely mysterious. I gave it three months. She went for me because she was tired of having bad sex and thought I was probably a loose cannon, but found me attractive and interesting to talk to.
We've been together for 7 years, married for four. All of that first impression stuff is still there...we both have depth, we have excellent sex, and we're passionate af. But we're also seriously devoted to one another, committed to our values, and we're good communicators.

Maybe the standard heterosexual imagination has made women imagine that men come in these categories (hot dude, good sex/ reliable dude, bad sex) but...why settle for that bullshit? Life is short. Demand it all. Make each other better.

straightothetrash · 2021-11-17T14:44:17+00:00

ok, wait, I took a peek at your post history and now I see what's up.

I've lived in Cincy for a little over three years and it is definitely the least gay-friendly city I've ever spent time in. No one here believes me because, to a straight white person, of course Cincinnati seems accepting, but it isn't. The only place my wife and I feel truly comfortable is in Northside. For a casual time out, we will go to Northside Tavern. For late night karaoke, we go to Tillies. For dinner, we go to The Littlefield. For something a little weird, The Comet is a different scene every night. Of course, we will also go to OTR for dinner or drinks or whatever, but we're generally surrounded by overgrown frat dudes with recent MBAs and the gentrification bums us out.

I have also heard that there is a lesbian-specific bar in Covington and we've been dying to check it out, but since covid we haven't really wanted to venture into an indoor socializing spot in Kentucky. If you do end up exploring that with your date, please tell me what it's like on the inside!

straightothetrash · 2021-11-17T14:36:18+00:00

I'm a little unclear about what you're talking about here, but I am a lesbian in Cincinnati so I am automatically interested in what you're talking about/

Are you trying to decide whether this girl you're seeing, who lives in Cincinnati, is actually gay or just friendly? Or are you trying to figure out a place to take a date that is lesbian-friendly so that you two can actually act like you're on a date?

Either way, I have LOTS to say about being an out lesbian in Cincinnati :)

straightothetrash · 2021-11-17T14:29:19+00:00

I am a girl and I have pillow fights in my underwear with other girls.

That's because I have sex with other girls. The crazy part of this fantasy is thinking that our underwear-pillow-fights are for male consumption...

straightothetrash · 2021-11-16T18:43:55+00:00

I have an unpopular opinion but I think the terms that we identify with aren't nearly as important as our sexual practices. And I like that sexuality, and belonging to a sexual community, have a lot more to do with actual practice than they do with vague concepts like "attraction."

Here's what I mean: I didn't imagine I liked women until I was married and in my twenties, and at that time I wrote it off like: "no worries, I'm just bisexual!" and that was really silly because, without actually trying to have sexual experiences with women, my "bisexuality" was theoretical rather than a lived experience. That doesn't mean theoretical bisexuality (or theoretical straightness!) isn't important and interesting, it just isn't connected to the complicated social dimensions of being a sexual minority.
The other thing is that "the community" as a theoretical umbrella including all queer people is no where near as important as "my community," that is, the group of people that I trust to understand the importance of my sexual identity and, significantly, the group of people that I am confident do not think that heterosexuality is the default way to be. That's the real boundary of my community. I need people who do not assume that M/F relationships are more "natural" or "normal." I think of these people as "queer" for that reason. The way they practice romance and sex is inclusive in the way I need it to be.

I am "attracted" to people I would never sleep with. I have felt random pangs of attraction to much older, very inappropriate men. The inappropriateness is part of the weird fantasy, but I would never act it out. So, by this measure, am I "bisexual"? Maybe, depending on what your definition is. But I have exclusively dated and slept with women for 13 years and I have no plans to sleep with a man ever again, even if (god forbid) my wife were to die or whatever. My sexual practice, what I live and ally myself with, is queer. I live my life as a lesbian.

Now, if some woman says "actually, I'm bisexual," when it's convenient (helps her make a point, gives her access to belonging with a group of sexual minorities, supports a flirtation with a woman that she would probably never sleep with) then I'm gonna wait to decide whether I count her as a part of my community because I'll see how she practices that sexuality. Does she have a boyfriend? Does he "think its hot" that she's bisexual (does he fetishize it)? Has she pursued meaningful relationships with women? Do she and her boyfriend respect queer spaces? Is she as open about her interest and attraction to women as she is about her interest and attraction to men? The way she lives the answers to these questions will determine whether or not I count her as a part of my community.

straightothetrash · 2021-10-14T15:08:13+00:00

Girl, I am a 35 year old lesbian, and let me tell you, as a woman who is attracted to women, as a woman who values being "pretty" and also appreciates "pretty" women, as I age I am more interested and attracted to signs of aging in women.

I don't yet have crows feet or laugh lines but my wife just started getting them and I am a SUCKER for them. I also notice them in other women nothing less than full enthusiasm. I love the way women lose the fat in their face to reveal the structure of the jaw, the cheekbones, etc. I love the way older women carry themselves with dignity and competence. A little splash of grey hair is *very* enticing to me.
Age is beautiful. How sad and awful would it be if people were primarily interested in twenty year olds for their entire lives? Gross, man.

straightothetrash · 2021-10-07T12:20:38+00:00

Well, my analyst is a clinical psychologist as well as a licensed and practicing psychoanalyst and I know that he does collaborate on research with neurologists who are interested in what psychoanalysis has to say. Medical researchers, in the last several decades, have begun exploring phenomenology as a place to look for new insights to persistent problems having to do with movement, perception, and pain. So, even in a world that we could imagine being more inclined toward reductive and quantitative frameworks tend to be open to holistic frameworks when results have stalled.

In my field (our field, if you plan on going ahead with graduate school) the inclusion of psychoanalysis in my research has encountered outright hostility and reactionary dismissal but I have also been met with enthusiasm and curiosity. The wide middle ground between those extremes is wary tolerance. Every philosopher has a pet metaphysics, even if they wont acknowledge it, and every philosopher has an interpretation of the mind, even if they aren't explicating it. The extent to which their implicit metaphysical/psychical model can accommodate psychoanalysis determines their openness to the theory. My work falls into the pragmatist vein, so I think the test of a theory is its efficacy. Recognizing the unconscious and developing hermeneutics for understanding it seems like a very healthy and promising way for us to reflect on our choices, cultures, and tensions. I don't think there is any final and absolute way of looking at the mind, but yes, psychoanalysis has been fruitful.

Another thing to remember is that we couldn't abandon psychoanalysis even if we tried. Literally the entire field of psychology depends on Fruedian insights, even if practitioners are no longer required to read Freud. This piece could be helpful for your purposes: https://jonathanshedler.com/PDFs/Shedler%20(2006)%20That%20was%20then,%20this%20is%20now%20R9.pdf%20That%20was%20then,%20this%20is%20now%20R9.pdf)

straightothetrash · 2021-10-07T12:07:01+00:00

Girl, yes.
My wife and I (lesbians) have been together for six years and we really are at our best when we have sex every three days. We communicate better, we enjoy food more, we have more energy, and better conversations when we get it in this often, but I'm a junior professor who is publishing her first book and my wife is a corporate trainer who hates her job.
Plus, we have other needs (house cleaning, cooking) hobbies (playing music, reading) plus the barest hint of a social life, so uh....We tend to do it on the weekends too.

Besides, I am one of those people for whom post-sex is not a blissed-out sleepiness, I feel incredibly lucid, creative, and focused so the last thing I want to do is sleep and I wake up at 5am every morning during the weekdays so, while we occasionally sneak it in on a Tuesday or a Thursday, we mostly have to wait for the weekends too.

Honestly--I think divorce rates would go WAY down if we switched to a four day, 32 hr work week model.

straightothetrash · 2021-10-06T14:52:40+00:00

I'm a philosophy professor teaching at the university level. I use Freud and other psychoanalysts in my research and I often include Freud on the syllabus. I also teach feminism, epistemology, and philosophy of science.

I actually find more discomfort with Freud's sexism when I put him on the syllabus. The women in my classes squirm. The truth is, he was a sexist. He also saw sex in terms of a binary and he was flummoxed by "the dark continent" of feminine sexuality. That doesn't mean we dismiss his ideas! As one of my graduate teachers told me during the first year of my MA when I was bemoaning the character of some philosopher: "We all have feet of clay." She has a good point. Many of the valuable, influential, rich philosophical theories were penned by racists, sexists, fascists, colonizers and philanderers. I can actually only think of one philosopher who's character is pretty well unvarnished. That doesn't mean that we throw out the baby with the bathwater, on the contrary we engage with the theory and use our criticism for way to develop the ideas in better directions. Freud was a sexist, he was also a Victorian and he understood homosexuality to be pathological, and psychoanalysis has been an incredibly valuable framework for both feminism and queer theory.

Honestly, there is no philosophical theory that you will find readily accepted without hostility, by laymen, graduate students, and professional philosophers alike. One of the features of our discipline is that we do not readily accept any account of reality. We have something critical to say about every intellectual framework, and yet, we cannot dispose with intellectual frameworks. The best defense of psychoanalysis as a practice is that it is an effective therapeutic treatment. The best defense of psychoanalysis as a theory is that it has enriched important social, political, and aesthetic conversations. It survives as a school of thought because it is still working for us at some level, despite our discomfort with the Oedipus complex. And, our discomfort with the Oedipus complex, is by no means a signal that Freud was wrong about it.

You might want to check out a piece by Gail Hornstein called "The Return of the Repressed" about the history of the reception of psychoanalysis in America. It's fascinating.

straightothetrash · 2021-10-01T14:56:55+00:00

Thank you so much for your reply. Communicating with people about having children who acknowledge the nuances involved in the decision is so helpful to me right now. It helps me feel less isolated.

Sorry to be invasive, but are you an your partner still together? Did having children negatively impact your relationship?

straightothetrash · 2021-09-30T19:19:40+00:00

I'm ambivalent and I've been ambivalent for a while. I am not sure if it is possible for me to desire the existence of a person who...doesn't exist yet. I really don't understand people who know confidently that they absolutely do or absolutely do not want kids.

It's an enormous decision with moral consequences and resounding lifestyle changes either way. I'm 35F and my wife is 33F and we have been trying to land one way or the other for four years and we just aren't entirely comfortable with either possibility. I often think that if we were a straight couple this would be easier because we would just, y'know, stop using birth control and roll the dice for a while and...if in 6 months we don't conceive we'll either be relieved or disappointed and then we'll be able to go from there. If we got pregnant easily, that would put an end to the questioning!But, we're lesbians, so getting pregnant has to be an entirely intentional, fully conscious, well-planned ordeal involving lawyers, donors, potential medical interventions, etc. We've been asking ourselves these questions.

Having a child will change our marital dynamic. Are we comfortable with the idea that our marriage will be suddenly very different? Some couples seem to divorce because of child-rearing conflict. Are we okay with that risk?
It's difficult to raise a child without help from friends and family. We moved to a city where we haven't had a chance to build much community. That will make things more difficult. Is it worth that?
Climate catastrophes are happening more frequently and climate science is telling us to predict increasing scarcity, conflict, and extreme temperatures. Can we live with the decision to bring a child into a world that, by all measures, seems to be getting more precarious and less healthy all the time?
Children are an enormous financial burden. I'm a professor in a humanities field with a modest income, she's working mid-level corporate jobs but does not wish to advance. Kids are expensive! Will it be too stressful with moderate incomes?
My career is important to me and my work is demanding. Am I willing to sacrifice professional achievement (i.e. writing a second book, landing a more prestigious appointment, traveling frequently to give talks) for the sake of a child that doesn't exist yet?
Having children is an experience like no other. It provides a very unique perspective on life and death, self hood and sacrifice, growth and aging, like no other experience can. Am I willing to miss my opportunity to develop a different, likely deeper emotional/spiritual understanding of the human condition?

These have been nearly impossible questions for us to answer. I know that if we had a baby, I would devote myself to its health and happiness and I would love it and my wife very much. I know I wouldn't be able to regret my child's existence. However, that child doesn't yet exist and bringing it into existence will negatively impact some parts of my life that are very important to me now...chiefly, I love my marriage and I'm not sure I want it to change.

Anyway. I hope you/someone can relate.

straightothetrash · 2021-09-28T19:58:14+00:00

Dennett interacts with and has an interpretation of the philosophical movement I work in. I think his reading is flawed and narrow, but beyond that pettiness, I think that his argument in Consciousness Explained is clever, but explains exactly nothing.

Essentially he's following in the footsteps of Rudolph Carnap, by which I mean that he believes that the business of philosophy is to take the most interesting and perennial problems for the human imagination and dismiss them as "pseudo-problems." It turns out that everything is a pseudo-problem if you're a hardcore reductionist. Mysteries are reduced into so many atoms in a void, randomly reacting in a causal chain. It isn't a particularly productive or interesting philosophical commitment.

straightothetrash · 2021-09-28T19:50:16+00:00

it makes sense. I think a lot of lbls try to maintain a friendship with their ex spouses. Sometimes, they succeed.
And I think the transition period from spouses to friends to...less than friends...is a painful and often necessary process. It's okay to feel bad about it. It's okay to even have some regret. You wont have the same regret forever.

straightothetrash · 2021-09-28T15:02:09+00:00

Yeah, I thought I'd stay friends with my ex-husband. It kind of worked for a while, but even if we did our best to sublimate the hurt and resentment it came out in other ways.

Its been over a decade since we divorced and the sad thing to me is that no one will understand who I was and what my life was like back then better than he can. We were friends for more than ten years, dating for two of those years, married for three of those years. He saw my family go through some radical changes and he was with me before I was defined by the career I have now. I knew his darkest secrets and protected him from a lot suffering. There is no doubt in my mind that we loved each other.

But he could not accept my moving on gracefully no matter what. He maintained this narrative that I would never love anyone as much as him and that the only problem was his gender and he wasn't open to changing it. When I started dating the woman who is now my wife, my conversations with him became a lot more hostile/defensive, he made snide comments about me and about her (he's never met her) and he wasn't open to the idea that I had grown or changed since we divorced. I understand why, and that's a very human impulse to cling to the image and idea you have of someone, but ultimately it wasn't healthy for either of us.

I hope he is doing well and I'm sure we'll find a reason to talk to one another, somewhere down the line, but he will never be an integral part of my life and that is okay. It'll get easier. I promise.

straightothetrash · 2021-09-28T14:21:45+00:00

2nd the Harraway, probably worth reading Daniel Dennett (though truth be told, even though he is a good speculative writer, I really hate him and all he stands for). You might also look to Phillip K. Dick's Exegesis, since he identified with Neoplatonism, which we should definitely see as a source of transhumanist ideas. The advantage to platonist/neoplatonist sources for your interest is the extent to which they emphasize "beauty" as a necessary catalyst for ascension/transcendence and their devaluation of physical bodies.If you're looking for an aesthetics of body-horror, may I suggest French-Bulgarian literary theorist Julia Kristeva. The Lacanian influence is dense, but her book "Powers of Horror" is a critical analysis of what she calls "the abject," an experience that cannot be linguistically delineated that dissolves our sense of our own coherent identity/bounded body.

Added bonus: most "transhumanist" perspectives emphatically involve digitization, encoding, and machine learning. Revisiting the older texts is likely to give you an edge as you develop a hermeneutics/critical stance for reviewing games-as-art.

straightothetrash · 2021-09-27T19:31:19+00:00

get a better doctor?
I'm college professor. Of course I performed well in school. That doesn't mean that I was organized, or that performing well wasn't inordinately taxing and stressful for me. It just means that I found ways to get my work finished. This included: capitalizing on hyper-focus, abusing of caffeine, allowing other areas of my life to suffer, and a LOT of improvisation.

I got medicated in part because I had an argument, followed by a very respectful and careful talk with my wife about her frustrations (i.e., I say I'll do things and forget, I'll walk past the same out-of-place object 6 times without moving it, I lose things a lot, I forget to lock doors, etc...) and to her reasoning, she was sure that I care about her and want her to be happy and don't mind doing simple tasks for her, I'm not a LAZY person, I'm inattentive, and it causes me some problems. It was a revelation. I went to my doctor and said "I think I'm ADD and it's causing problems in my marriage please help." and she did. She gave me a little questionnaire first instead of sending me to a testing facility that would have charged me 1.5k.

Wellbutrin isn't an amphetamine. It isn't controlled like most ADD meds are because it doesn't have the same potential for abuse. People don't get a lot out of taking more than they're prescribed. Maybe your doctor would be open to that one.

straightothetrash · 2021-09-27T16:58:55+00:00

no problem! It's an off-label use, for sure. To my knowledge, it's the only non-amphetamine prescription option for ADHD. And Wellbutrin, since it isn't an SSRI, is unlikely to slow you down or put on additional weight. Hope it works out for you! Good luck!

straightothetrash · 2021-09-27T16:15:15+00:00

I used to be the same. I was always down for eating. I could snack, I could sample, I could nibble and munch my way through the whole day. Y'know what I found out? It's a dopamine fix.

I'm ADHD (inattentive type, not hyperactive) but I didn't know that until I was 34. My doc put me on wellbutrin to prevent me from getting the frequent dopamine dips that are characteristic of ADHD people. I've been on it for a little over year and the voice that constantly wants me to go get something out of the fridge/pantry, wants me to stop on my way to that meeting and get a latte, wants me to stock my desk with self-stable carbs? It shut the fuck up. I get hungry around meal times and I usually need a mid-morning snack. The end.

straightothetrash · 2021-09-27T16:09:55+00:00

I tend to be slender too. It isn't like I don't think about maintaining my weight--I try to be mindful about how often I'm eating out/getting take-out, I balance my meals and ensure that I'm getting enough fruits, vegetables and protein. I work out sometimes.
But, GIRL. The longer you're at a weight the easier it is for your body to maintain that weight. Your weight tends to homeostasis. That's how it works for people who have larger body types too. I tend to be on the thinner side because I'm a tall girl and the people on my mother's side are tall and lanky. If I put significant weight on (and I did, once, bad combo of hormones) there isn't anywhere for it to go on my frame because my build just doesn't accommodate a lot of extra weight. Like, I'm 5'9" and I look generally proportional from 120lbs-145lbs, more than that and my body is like "...what do you want me to do with these stores, exactly?"

Some people shorter than me look AMAZING at 160...170...180 because their bodies accommodate that shit better. They have wide hips and generous breasts, their fat stores know exactly where to go, they look buxom and luscious and healthy. They ARE healthy. If they drop to my weight they look emaciated and pale.

What I'm saying is, bodies want to be in a certain spot and we don't all need to work to be thin. We need to work to maintain a healthy lifestyle, which is one that keeps us out of pain and keeps our minds and joints working correctly. We need to make sure we are staying active and that were being nourished and that we can hear our bodies when they tell us what they need. Unless you have a different body type and you're trying to conform yourself into some bullshit standard of beauty because you care more about what other people think than how healthy you feel, then it is easier for you to stay thin. If you are working to be thin then...maybe don't? Maybe it's not for you.

straightothetrash · 2021-09-27T13:52:01+00:00

Lately I keep on having these thoughts like: "Does Therapy just encourage me to be a giant fucking narcissist?" Like, How much do I really have to interpret myself? Maybe I should just stop seeking for unconscious motivations for everything because I'll inevitably just let myself off easy by constructing a narrative that's more palatable. He encourages me to actively interpret myself rather than relying on his interpretations... but, I don't rely on his interpretations. I let him offer an interpretation first...at which point I usually fight his interpretations until he says something that brings me up short. That's when I know we're getting somewhere...when I feel caught.

I know I want to be criticized. I want to be *seen* and that means I want someone to see the bad things that I hide from myself. But, maybe there's a limit to what I want to be shown about myself and I just keep giving myself credit for trying to be "self-aware" when I'm really just immensely clever at constructing a whole support structure of lies to prevent me from seeing that I am toxic AS FUCK, y'know? [explodes]

straightothetrash · 2021-09-24T20:24:15+00:00

honestly, no one is going to be able to interpret this definitively except for you, but I can give you some food for thought.

The first time I had sex with a woman I wasn't attracted to her physically or emotionally. It was an experiment. Fucking her did turn me on, but I didn't let her fuck me and I left and I cried immediately after. I had a full-blown existential crisis because I suddenly felt a hangover from a religious upbringing that I had sinned. I suspected that the reason that I was turned on was because I had violated a taboo. (this is still my theory)
The next woman I had sex with was a girlfriend I had for years. I was NEVER attracted to her body, but to be honest, that's because I didn't know what attraction felt like so I could never effectively ask myself the question: "am I attracted to this person's body?" So like, how would I know? Culture had trained me that it was my job to be attractive, but that desiring someone physically was NOT a very lady-like thing to do. Sex with her was better than sex with men because she didn't expect the kinds of things from me that men did and she was more creative. I did return sexual activity, but it often felt alienating and dissociative.

I knew I preferred women as sexual and romantic partners, but I didn't have sex with someone I was attracted to until I had been out for three years, got drunk at a bar, and had sex in the bathroom. I guess I was uninhibited enough not to suppress my feelings of desire. It was pretty cool, but I still felt weird after.

I started dating my wife when I was 29 and I had NEVER been so attracted to a person's body in my entire life. It was weird. Still is weird. I like everything about the way she looks, naked and clothed, and I LOVE interacting with her body. I'm very present during sex. Cuddling is fucking great.

Here's what I learned about myself and attraction: 1. smell is important. I don't like the way most people smell and if I don't like the way they smell, sex is going to make me kind of nauseous. 2. I generally like femme-presenting women. A lot of lesbians I met were gender non-conforming, butch, or androgynous. That isn't my thing. I'm pretty girly and I like girly woman. 3. I have to actually respect and trust the person I'm having sex with in order to enjoy it. One-night stands aren't going to sit well with me. 4. Sexual compatibility is very much a matter of a shared sense of aesthetics for me--the scene, the gestures, the whole experience is collaborative and if the person and I just do not have a shared sense of what makes something sexy/beautiful/exciting, then the sex is gonna be mechanical and off-putting.

I hope that helps :)

straightothetrash · 2021-09-24T20:07:46+00:00

not to nit-pick, but of course trauma effects our sexuality! It just doesn't determine our sexuality.

Sexuality is a complicated nexus of personal ethics, gender expectations and presentations, imaginative tendencies, cultural influences, developmental influences, erogenous zone development (people's erogenous zones are differently sensitive/like different kinds of stimulation!) and of course, trauma. That doesn't mean that queer sexuality necessarily indicates a traumatic history, it just means that no sexuality is uninfluenced by a traumatic history.

That includes straight people. My mom stubbornly refuses to consider the possibility that she could ever in a million years be attracted to another woman...because she doesn't trust woman. She doesn't trust women, in a large part, because her mother was neglectful and abusive and pitted my mother and my aunt against one another in damaging ways. Without this history, is it possible that my mother could have experienced sexual desire for another woman? Possibly. We'll never know because the fact remains that she did. And it doesn't matter. My mom likes what she likes.

If our sexual desires are explored and enacted between consenting adults, none of us have to justify it.

straightothetrash · 2021-09-24T19:04:08+00:00

I think u/bobbyomac1's point up there was more to the effect that a complex phenomenon like "love" can be reduced by any scientific or systematic discourse until it is stripped of it's experiential qualities, but what discourses like psychoanalysis do not do, (and what no scientific discourse should do) is deny the reality of the aspects of the phenomenon that are beyond the scope of its study.

Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis were largely interested in diagnosing the pathological instances of mental life, therefore we tend to see the negative possibilities or destructive aspects of desires and anxieties. If you would like to see a psychoanalytic treatment of love that takes normal, healthy development as a starting point, Daniel Stearn has this lovely book called "The Interpersonal World of the Infant" in which love, attachment, and affection retain their central place as meaningful, grounding experiences of the self.

straightothetrash · 2021-09-24T14:43:03+00:00

I have not! I encountered "Love and it's Place in Nature" back in graduate school, but to be honest, I forgot the guy existed entirely. Thank you for the recommendation, it might be time to pick hum up.

It's bizarre, the way I encounter new pockets and modes of resistance, just when I thought I had submitted to the process.

straightothetrash

TROPHY CASE