...rules of engagment

OOPPS!!!
I thought there was a forward here about where I found this "manual". did not write this list. I am however a Master of most, I thought I invented many and the rest seemed just so obvious.


How to f*** up

1. Lie. This is basic and effective. To maximize bad results, lie
about something important to the other person(s) and arrange to be
caught in the lie in such a way as to produce maximum shock.
Additional stress points awarded for keeping the lie going for a while
before discovery, which increases the disorientation and sense of
betrayal in the deceived person(s). Lying about sex gets double
points. Lying about being married gets triple f***-up
points. Creative lies of omission (i.e. "not telling") with fancy
rationalizations and condescension get gold stars.

2. Avoid self-knowledge. This is more elegant than strategy 1, as it
combines a bold sweep of denial with sorties of distraction aimed at
oneself. This tactic is most effective when combined with tactics 3
and 4. Self-destructive or addictive behavior has also been found
very effective in avoiding self-knowledge by our researchers. When
combined with an endearing attitude of helplessness, this strategy has
been proven efficacious in attracting "rescuers" or "white knights" on
whom one can then practice strategies 4 and 3, in that order.

3. Blame the other person(s). If anything went wrong, hey, it must be
their fault, right? This eliminates the need for messy things like
communication and negotiation, which can be embarrassing, particularly
if one is using strategy 2.

4. Disclaim responsibility. This is a little more complex than
strategy 3, and often includes what is referred to as "codependency".
The classic way to play this strategy is to cater to the partner(s)
involved while repressing one's own desires and questions. This
allows a good head of resentment to build up, and one can justify
anger by saying one has done so *much* for one's partner(s) and gets
no thanks, etc. In its most refined state, this strategy makes the
other person(s) responsible for setting the direction, pace and
content of the relationship, for which one can them blame them if
one's own expectations or needs are not met. Using strategy 2 to
avoid knowledge of these expectations and needs gets double points.

5. Push. This is an art, albeit a crude one. When augmented with
strategy 6, pushing can achieve spectacular negative results in even a
short time. Remember, when pushing, only *your* satisfaction counts!
It's a dog eat dog world, and you're a pit bull. Emotional and mental
bullying can be as satisfying as old-fashioned physical coercion, and
not nearly as easily prosecutable.

6. Play on insecurity. This is an old favorite. Using sexual
insecurity as a weapon and combining this with strategy 5 is a
four-star winner. Attempting to control one's partner(s) by
manipulating them through their insecurities is a sure-fire f***-up
tactic. It's so much more delicate than simply beating them up, too,
though the resultant emotional damage can be remarkably similar.

7. Avoid intimacy. This may seem paradoxical; after all, we're
talking about getting up-close and personal with as many hot bi babes
-- er, ahem -- we're discussing achieving satisfyingly close
relationships with a number of people, right? The trick of avoiding
intimacy can be performed in several ways, but the easiest is to
confuse intimacy with "rubbing slippery bits together". Substitute
the words "sex" and "love" for each other often in conversations.
Repeat the mantra, "If you loved me, you'd know what I want."
Practice strategy 8 assiduously, supplementing it with strategy 2.
According to the needs of the moment, figure out whether action or
words are more likely to be ambiguous or misconstrued, and go with
what gives you the most plausible deniability later. Some
exceptionally talented individuals manage to give the impression of
being intimate while successfully remaining stone-cold. Study sales
techniques for pointers. People with good "lines" fall into this
category, especially if the lines include explanations of how they
truly *value* the other person.

8. Don't talk. Talking has been known to lead to communication if
practiced carelessly. Communication will seriously impair your
f***-up progress, and in certain cases will halt or reverse it
entirely. If you *must* talk, use clichés and quotations from popular
songs as much as possible, or fall back on strategy number 1.
If all else fails, make a safer-sex agreement with your partner(s) and
then break it, contracting a communicable disease about which you do
not then tell them. Double points for avoiding all discussion or
negotiation of sexual matters entirely so that the "agreement" is
wishful thinking and completely deniable. For a coup de grace, add
strategy 6 and tell them it wouldn't have happened if they had been
satisfying you like they were supposed to.

9. For the ultimate metaf***-up, remain technically faithful to your
partner while breaking the spirit of whatever agreement you have
whenever possible, keeping this knowledge bottled up to ensure maximum
fear, shame and resentment. Some people win the grand prize with the
figleaf-and-stinging-nettle cluster for self-inflicted suffering and
wasted potential by managing to keep this strategy up until death do
them part, concealing from their spouse the fact that they have been
shamming happiness all these years.

This week…

This has been a tough week.

My sweety is gone for the week. One of my addiction triggers has something to do with abandonment. I have a very difficult time alone. I tend to 'act out' in my addiction when I am stressed this way. I started out the beginning of the week pretty much ok. By midweek I was trolling a blog that could be considered porn. Not porn strictly speaking; just a blog that I know to be sexy and thinking. Thinking about sex but thinking none the less.

Today I am not trolling those blogs very much, mostly writing and working around the house and trying to stay warm. Man there is a lot of work to get done around here. But it so cold outside that I find it very difficult to be out there very long. I think I have nearly frost bitten my fingers and toes riding my motorcycle in the cold and now they seem overly sensitive to cold, that or I am just a wimp.

I was looking up the sex rehab show and found that some of the rehabbers have blogs. Two of them are very well done and relative to their new lives, the others surprisingly not. I read some of their posts regarding their experience on the rehab show. The two good blogs are definitely worth reading.

…limitations

I don't troll "porn sites" any more… or do I?

I find this blog very interesting. Years ago it was a day to day accounting of the blgger's coffee-dates and 'parties', blow by blow literally. I stopped reading it some years ago, not because of that necessarily, but I drop in now and again. This blog has evolved remarkably over time. I refer to that evolution by saying it has matured… like a wine. Much of the "harshness" has mellowed. What used to be a running diary of butt sex, masturbation, orgies and, and, and evolved to include the stuff of a real life; tragedy and triumph, pain and happiness. I think it is a healthy mix. Some might argue about the magnitude of the sex practices that engaged in. But it is as likely to include sweet scenes about the blogger's kids at the park as it is a fairly comprehensive how to on fisting. The way this person talks about fisting makes me really want to try it. Not so much for the apparent orgasmic potential but the intimacy and closeness it is reported to create. It could be seen as 'more' than porn in as much as it has thoughtful content and is not gross raw sex without context. It is also visited by thinking people with good considered opinions and actual vocabularies. So I sort of think that it's not porn, more like sexy news and comment. I suppose it could be seen as 'less' as well since there isn't the gross (One man's gross is another 'entertainment' I suppose but…) eyeball infecting fuck parade of super colossal prosthetic cocks being run into 'Barely Legal Tight Teens'. Wow that stuff nauseates me. Nor does this blogger post naked pictures of them selves. So this blog is sort of like real life. Some days this blogger is a parent and some days this blogger is a slut. This was not supposed to be a blog review.

What I am wondering is this; Is this blog and others like it porn?

And but so is my situation like that of an alcoholic? Is sex, any sex, to much sex? If I read this blog am I likely to wake up three days later in a dumpster after having been beet up by a bunch of hookers with blisters on my dick, no money no wallet, no clothes, no self respect, all my credit cards maxed out to porn sites and online Love Missile Bone-on pha^rmaciuticals?

Can I handle this as long as I understand my limitations?

More importantly is it something that is tolerable to my sweety.

Or is this another thing that I need to let go of on my quest for total sobriety?

Today

Today the sun came out for the first time in weeks. But it came out in a strange way and caused an interesting thing to happen. The fog didn't burn off from the top like usual. It moved back horizontally I guess you might say, south to north. My back yard was totally shrouded in fog but the front of the house was clear. It was a creepy science fiction horror movie kind of feeling. It sort of reminded me of a time when I lived in Hawaii. On one side of the street it was pouring rain, torrential rain heavy, and the other side of the street was dry. I could walk into and out of the rain like stepping into and out of a shower. So any way this fog push back caused a very localized hail "storm". There is a tall redwood tree in the side yard. Redwood tree bows are designed so as to 'scrub' fog moisture out of the air and drop it to the ground to water the tree. This scrubbing and the fact that I haven't seen the sun for about two weeks due to the fog and the 28 degree temperatures apparently created lots of tiny icicles in the bows. When the fog cleared back and exposed the tree to the sun, the sun warmed the icicles causing them to fall creating a tiny localized hail storm. Very cool, confusing at first, but very cool.

…lines

Where is the line between a good healthy enthusiastic sex life and an addicted one? What does that line look like? Surely a healthy sex life shouldn't be boring "man on top get it over with quick".

If I direct my enthusiasm for sex at just my sweety can't that be a healthy sex life?

How do I define my sobriety? Is it not looking at porn on the internet, not lusting after other women, not masturbating, not fantasizing, not sex toys? All of that, some of that? Something I don't even know about that I do that I shouldn't be doing?

Internet porn is boring… a quick fix. It's a hit that lasts about 30 seconds. And recently I find it more and more repugnant. It makes me angry. Sort of like I hate that I have that ring in my nose and can be jerked around by it. But isn't that sort of part of the male condition of living… naked women… got to look. I hate that. I would like to think that I have more control than that, that I am more 'evolved'. Perhaps not. Perhaps in time.

So...

Lusting after other women… I have never really done that except one woman, and I am well past that. A year sober on that. More on that to be sure lots of feelings there but I am over it. None of the residual feelings are lustful or regretful except that I wish I hadn't gone there and caused so much hurt to all involved.

Masturbating… I am sober on that for over a year. And well over it also. Embarrassingly enough I can't seem to anymore anyway. And it always left me feeling even more empty than before the "craves" lead me there.

Fantasizing… I don't do much of that any more but when I do it's just my sweety. And it's just a few things… but I fear that if I indulge that fantasy muscle then the fantasy world would explode and be back to where it was before out of control. So I purposefully self sensor that except a few remaining points.

Sex toys… I threw away, easily, $2000.00 worth of toys both purchased and made by me over a year ago. I will say that I still love the idea of sex toys though.

…why

I have been trying to understand the 'whys' of my compulsions/obsessions, which is being a slow process. I was watching Joyce Meyers' show yesterday and they were talking about some very similar topics. The result was sort of a redirect of one's energies. Don't get stuck on understanding why but ask what. What am I going to do about this problem? You might never understand the why's and if you are mired in the discovery of the why's of it you might never be able to move on.

That bit of 'advice' stuck with me. I was beginning to feel that I was compulsively thinking about my obsessions, which felt like a degenerative toriodal spinout, ultimately going nowhere fast.

I will try to embrace 'what' for a while.

…still more on breasts

Why are breasts nearly universally appreciated as beautiful? I wonder that it might be some societal thing about "western culture". I wonder that in aboriginal and tribal areas of the world that breasts are not 'worshiped' as much as in America. Some things appear to be universally perceived. Spiders and sharks are almost universally perceived as frightening.

Americans or western cultures seem to be obsessed with larger breasts. Tribal cultures don't appear to be.

On national Geographic Specials of South American Amazonian tribal peoples the women go about without covering their breasts. The men in the tribes don't seem to be very excited about it.

Why do men crave the breasts? Why would an adult man desire to suck a woman's breasts / nipples? That would seem like something an infant would do.

I wonder that I am so curious about this in an attempt to understand the attraction if I could understand it I could be less obsessed by them.

…forgiveness

I wrote something in the last post about forgiveness. Then shortly after I flipped on the TV Shatter's Raw Nerve was on and the topic of discussion was forgiveness… more specifically self forgiveness. The person being interviewed said that if or when they were able to forgive themselves then forgiving others would be a piece of cake.

Perhaps someday…

…rough day

I had a rough day.

To start with my sweety is gone for the week. She is attending her daughter with her first baby… a girl.

My daughter is graduating boot-camp soon and I am dis-invited because… well that is a huge long ugly story. The plot points of which I have tried and tried to forgive but I am seemingly unable to. Each time this issue is brought up I find myself talking to myself in a fit of rage that inevitably leads to a feeling of self loathing and disgust that has me sliding down the razor's edge to a depressive state that persists for days and sometimes weeks. I feel this particular time may be worse because I am alone with my thoughts and the internet. I tend to act out in my addiction during times like these. With my sweety gone for the week there are no brakes on my behavior except my own strength of will… and look where that has gotten me in the past. To a certain extent this is no exception. I trolled to one of my favorite blog sites to see what I have been missing there in the last months. But I go to this blog because it, in all honesty, actually has "thought provoking articles". Not just the usual debached story one after another. It used to be this way at this blog but this blogger has 'matured' and writes about more real and ethereal things… mostly. But I digress.

I am fixated on breasts recently. And this week's circumstance is not helping one tiny bit. I can't seem to get them out of my mind for long. I watch TV to try to distract myself from them but well you know … there they are on TV. But by and large Myth Busters doesn't do too many sex related myths.

More white knuckle living… oh the joy

The land that time forgot

I live in the land that time forgot. Most fall morning are thick with fog but when as it begins to burn off there are places of clarity it here and there giving it that mist shrouded prehistoric look. The back drop is a mountain that rises very steeply. The top is ringed with an escarpment of vertically pushed up cliff faces, very dramatic. It has the appearance of being very tall; disappearing into the clouds added to that the Great Blue herons flying around that look remarkably like the pterodactyls slow moving and gliding.