Giving Thanks in Hades

Happy Thanksgiving. 

Plain oatmeal and unsweetened soy milk for breakfast. With some roasted, salted almonds. The kind of experience that makes me feel like a Spartan warrior, girding my loins for a highly likely death. But accompanied by excellent Indonesian blend dark roast from the ambitiously named Adventure Coffee Company. 

The morning has been about packing. Three pairs of boxers. Two pairs of hiking socks. 2 pairs of athletic socks. Pills. Depression requires buproprion. A tendency toward prostatitis requires saw palmetto. The predictable travel headache or the hip pain of sleeping on a camp bed requires ibuprofen. Insomnia as a possibility at all times requires herbal sleep aid. My ancestors who migrated out of Africa for whatever reason, probably engaging in some moonlit and heartbreaking shenanigans with a few Neandertals along the way, bestowed on me fair skin prone to burns and cancer, which requires sunscreen (even though studies have shown sunscreen is to no avail against cancer— cancer that is everywhere lurking, always within the nucleus of each cell it seems, the hypochondriac's ready answer for all ills).

Hotels for two nights and camping for one requires a lot of mixed packing. The clothes of civilization and the trail. Suitcase, day pack, field supplies, tent, sleeping bag, pad, luxury sheet and comforter, Jet Boil, cameras, water, snacks. The single night camping is the usual trial run for the Baja trip. 

It's November 23rd. In 22 days I'll be in the presence of my beloved. In 8 days I will be in Baja California, from December 2 to December 13. Tonight, I'll sleep in Amado on the way south, and tomorrow night, in Guaymas, and Saturday night, I do not know. Sunday, I'll return to my monk's cell and Monday I'll push myself into the weird week between Thanksgiving and the end of the semester. Busy limbo. 

We humans are complex, in the sense of having more than one moving part, especially around language. We can easily say one thing and yet behave in a completely different manner. Giving thanks, for example. 

I work to stay focused on giving thanks through action, not words. 

Romantic style

I am beginning, at the ripe old age of 1 billion years basically, to realize and accept my romantic/sexual relationship style. In the past, I have done a lot of fancy footwork to try to change this fundamental style, or manage it, or restrain it in the face of the indifference of a love interest, or, at worst, think seriously about killing myself over it. 

Now, however, in the light of my recent sex and relationship inventory, crushing depression, months of counseling and the revelation a couple days ago about power, I'm basically feeling this: fuck it. 

It seems to be who I am, simply. It has been unchangeable for decades, no matter what I have tried to do about it. 

So what are the basic features?

When I fall in love with a woman, and yes, I do mean fall in love, and I am weary of the general cynicism about that experience in our culture— I have a whole style of acting it out. And in regard to the HSO, my most authentic self assessment is I've never been in love in any way shape or form even close to this experience, which is especially surreal, considering that whole 1 billion years old thing combined with a long history of romance. Nevertheless, so much seems true. So whatever my usual style of acting out being in love with a woman, let's just say that this experience has raised it to the nth power, and some complications have arisen as a result. More about that later. 

Now, look. If you are one of those bitter, heartbroken, disappointed, cynical haters who think falling in love is dumb, keep it to yourself. I myself have been there repeatedly and in fact I was fairly well cauterized in the cardiac region after the whole A catastrophe. But the meeting with the HSO and the dam-bursting wildness of all of it along the way to now changed all that. It's weird to be on the gurney and come back to life on the way to the morgue. So to speak. 

Anyway—my style—

Wide open, unprotected, effusive, devoted, generous, affectionate, enthusiastic, attentive, sentimental.

That's me when I am smitten. It's okay as far as it goes, and it's a style that has mostly been appreciated and welcomed by love interests, if not always reciprocated. 

However, there are aspects of it that are problematic. It can sometimes bleed over into treacly sap. Or it can be altogether too ardent and bowl people over. Or it can be rejected outright as just too intense. Or it can be ignored (intentionally or unintentionally), in response to which I can be very sensitive and resentful. I set myself up sometimes-- poring over Amazon or somewhere looking for just the right gift that captures some sentimental line of symbols or something, then giving it, and if it doesn't seem appreciated to the degree that my ego would prefer (which sometimes is a ridiculously unreasonable degree), being hurt and resentful. This is an ugly dynamic, bordering on quid pro quo transactional romance, which I find ugly and sad. 

My sponsor tells me: "Stop writing checks you can't cash." So now, before I think about giving something to the HSO, I do an inventory. If she were to not seem very taken with the gift, how would I feel? This has been helpful. Can I just freely give and let go? That's the goal. 

The other complication (it occurs to me there might be a lot of complications from such a fiercely romantic and dramatic approach to things, especially in our current cultural context) is that my beloved starts to take me for granted. Because when I fall in love with a woman, I have in the past made it clear that I am seriously devoted. I am reliably available. And it seems, just by human nature, this invites a sort of withdrawal on the part of the beloved, where she can rest assured that I will always be here when she returns, so off she goes. It also has made certain women lose respect for me— these were women who honestly found unavailable men more interesting, and interpreted my wide open generosity as weakness or at least as boring. If a woman is the type who enjoys pursuing, I am usually not for her. 

What usually happens if things take that turn is I'm gone, ironically, since that suddenly makes me interesting again. Except that I pretend to still be there. But I am suddenly emotionally withdrawn and only going through the motions. This is really not good. In fact, I could characterize most of the work I have done on this dynamic since I got sober as being the search for balance. Maybe tone down the gushing floods of sheer adoration a little bit, and, in turn, be less sensitive and suddenly fiercely self protective and dishonest when the beloved pulls away. 

One project that has helped reduce these extremes and make me more capable of just chilling the fuck out has been to dig deep into my first falling in love experience and the course that took and the heartbreak at the end of it. This all happened when I was 17, and I had long assumed that it was no longer affecting me, haha, right. In fact, as the counselor, the sponsor and I have painfully uncovered, I've been in a re-enactment compulsion around that primal trauma for decades. 

Anyway, more about that another time. Suffice it to say that my "sane and sound ideal," as Bill W so memorably puts it, is to love the beloved with reliable actions of love and work on moderating my intensity and my expectations, at least enough to provide breathing room and some semblance of stability, endurance, reliability and peace. I want to be nearer unconditional love and less prone to hurt feelings and withdrawal caused by codependent attachment. 

I never expected to fall in love the way I have this time. If someone had asked me back in June or even up to and including the morning of July 13th when I was going to fall in love again I would have belted out a hearty evil laugh and said fuck that noise, that foolish shit is for suckers, never, ever again. Ever. As I drove across the causeway off of Long Beach Island and headed out into the next three days or so of travel back toward Arizona, I honestly felt absolutely astonished, petrified, flummoxed and knocked on my ass repeatedly as I slowly realized I was falling in love. I had no idea then how deep it was going to go, of course. I had no idea that eventually, further relating with this person would result in my feeling like I had met the love of my life, a concept I had long ago dismissed. But even without that extraordinary certainty (and I do mean certainty, oddly enough), "catching feels" at all for this person was utterly unexpected. 

Exactly how my wide open romantic style navigates the equally real landscapes of power remains to be seen. It's fraught, it seems to me, because the effusive nature of my style can easily be mistaken for me completely and totally surrendering the entire territory. Giving my power away, as they say in CoDA. 

I look forward to understanding this dynamic more clearly. It seems I am in the perfect learning situation, currently. 

Beyond "can't" or "have to"

Of course, there are relationships I can't have, or situations involving relationships I can't have. And there are relationships I have to have, or situations within relationships I have to have. 

But in between those extremes, I have agency. I can decide. And I'd suggest that (barring weird hypothetical and abstract conversations about free will or whatever) the vast majority of my relationships and situations involve a decision on my part. And this gets down to what I so often have difficulty articulating: 

What I want. 

With the HSO, what I want is absolutely clear to me— nothing has ever been clearer— but it's not currently an option. So this framework also goes to what I do when I can't have exactly what I want. I think this all can be a valuable way to show up for life— meditating on these categories. Can't, have to, want, don't want, decide to accept, decide not to accept. 

If I don't reflect on these fairly clear categories, my boundaries get vague and I can even start to feel suicidally powerless. Not the powerlessness of recovery but the powerlessness of despair and self loathing. The self-pitying "what's the use" total and abject failure. 

(side note: I finally got sick of two hyphens as a substitute for one of my favorite punctuation marks, the em dash, and looked up how to type one. This— and I say this in all seriousness— is one of the best things I have accomplished today).

How important to you is a sense of agency? It's very important to me to think I have a choice in matters. To think I am able to carry out what I would like to carry out or at least decide to accept how things are in the face of not having a choice. I guess this sense of agency is probably important to most people. I think feeling the despair of helplessness and ineffectual action is a core part of all of my ills. 

In particular, the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization that the book Alcoholics Anonymous talks about that results from the repeated, worsening experience of not being able to quit drinking on one's own power— that's a nexus of lack of agency. Or of only being able to quit under extreme duress and with such misery and discomfort that one might as well be shitfaced. It seems like one overarching way to describe all addictive, compulsive behaviors is that they arise out of a total failure of agency. We consider ourselves to be capable of behaving however we choose, and the stark awareness of an addiction that completely short circuits this perception of free choice is truly an awful insult. And, from the perspective of a person who still has free choice in the matter, addiction is truly incomprehensible. Not just puzzling or weird, but truly beyond the scope of understanding. 

Recovery people sometimes blithely talk about "denial," and how fierce a person's denial of alcoholism can be before they cross to the honest side of step 1. But I think it goes deeper than just denial. I think it's primal and fierce self-defense. The plain fact to the ego is that an inability to choose is simply impossible. The loss of choice is a total defeat, from the standpoint of the ego. The ego resides in a sense of personal power. That part of myself that believes it is in control *is* my ego, or a large aspect of it. 

So how many bound up situations do I have? Where are all the places where it is true in reality that "I can't" or that I "have to"? And to what degree am I at peace with those contingent and restraining realities?

Power and what passes for love

My highly significant other (HSO) a few days ago indicated that she was aware of a power imbalance between the two of us and it's become a huge, huge and I do mean huge thing looming over my mind. A dark cloud, a troublesome swarm of locusts, a spine in my right atrium. Not to be dramatic or anything, oh no, not I. 

The specifics are unimportant. The larger epiphany for me is that I do not think about power dynamics when I am in a romantic relationship. I just do not. I have been unconscious of this reality for many years, I guess since my first girlfriend broke my heart way back in 1978. So, having just completed a sex and relationship inventory in AA, I'm suddenly going back over it in my mind and reframing a pattern I've been in for years. It feels like this is going to be a massive revision. 

Basically, the pattern has seemed to be to go big and vulnerable with "dangerous" women (that is, at least how I used to frame it, women I allowed myself to care about, women who could hurt me) and get gutted and then go comfortable and safe with safe women and try to protect my heart. I always saw it as a strategy I had used to alternate the rush of intensity and thrill with the comfort of emotional distance and quasi-Platonic companionship. I'm sure that's true as far as it goes. Taking a risk, stabbed to death; playing it safe, bored to death. Nice. 

Now it looks though like it has always been about who has the power. On a much more raw level, I have either been willing to surrender my power to a woman or I have not. This feels so much more Machiavellian and not at all nice or romantic, or, frankly, "loving." It feels ugly, opportunistic, painfully fraught, humiliating and shitty. It feels like I have either been the wide open fucking idiot Fool completely baring my heart and basically giving a woman the dagger to slice it open or I have been the self-centered, selfish, niggardly Hermit, performing only the outward shows of so-called love but making sure I have the power, I hold the cards, I am basically invulnerable. 

How could I have missed, for 40 years, the reality of how power operates in romantic love? It has hit me like a fucking bus. I speculate right now, although I do not yet really know, that it *is not nice to deal with power*. And *I am a nice guy*. I bet this blind spot that is as big as the state of Montana just goes back to my nice guy bullshit. The taboo against being real about power dynamics goes so deep. Pretty much everything toxic about me that runs that deep goes to that Nice Guy idiocy. So I bet this does too. 

The universe must think I'm ready to face this head on, since my counselor and I had the following exchange last Thursday:

Me: "Well, you know, in CoDA they say don't get in a new relationship for at least a year and/or until you've done all your step work."

Counselor: "How do you think your HSO would respond if you set that boundary with her?"

Me: "Oh, she's already offered it, a while back. 'If you need a year, go ahead, you take whatever you need to be well.'"

Counselor: "Wow, she really has all the power in this relationship doesn't she?"

Me: "wut blink blink."

I muttered something like huh I guess you're right I'll have to think about that and we moved on. I had not seen her offer as a sign of power imbalance at all. I had been surprised by it, and had felt honestly, I would not be able to offer the same in return, probably. But I didn't see it as an assertion of a power imbalance. 

Then maybe two days later HSO herself said "There's a power imbalance in my favor."

And I. Well. Here I am. 

There's also this CoDA promise:

I learn to see myself as equal to others. My new and renewed relationships are all with equal partners.

Since I started going to CoDA last March, that promise has never really made clear sense to me. Equal financially? Intellectually? Equal-- wtf does that mean? Now I know what it means. It means with a balance of power. 

I realize two people can't maintain a complete balance of power at all times nor remain reliably in a completely equanimous peace without any power dynamics at all times. But I gather the idea is to aim for that as a goal.  That would be...nice. But hey you know, we're dealing with humans here. Ugly motherfuckers. 

And maybe not only my Nice Guy bullshit but also my basic nature of being an aesthete and hating ugly realities has blinded me. Because power in the midst of romantic love just looks ugly to me. Misshapen, cynical, fear-based, selfish and territorial. But, well, it sure looks REAL also. 

And this reminds me, cynically, of the nuclear weapons policy of the US during the Cold War (and still): Mutually Assured Destruction. Because make no bones about it, romantic love seems to have the power to destroy me repeatedly and has for my entire life. Or it looks like I have made sure I have all the power and then I cannot be destroyed, but it sometimes destroyed the other person. The best romantic relationships I have been in, we just fucking went to town on each other and were both left bleeding out, cut to shreds and full of impotent fury. Those were the best. 

To many of you, it might seem cute that this is only now dawning on me. "That Percy sure is funny, seeing the goddamned obvious for the first time in his 6th decade, haha." But for me, it's like I've been looking out over a landscape with about a 190 degree view and someone finally turned me around so I could see the rest. It looks like a charred battlefield carpeted with smoking bones, at the moment. 

An acquaintance of mine has a saying: "The only functional relationship is reciprocal mercy." I thought that was a pretty cool aphorism but didn't really understand it. 

Now I do. 

The Hanged Man

The most challenging action for me is non-action, no question. I was talking with a sponsee recently about sitting in discomfort without trying to do anything about it. The longer I've stayed sober, the more enduring and resilient is my ability to tolerate discomfort. I think discomfort is a natural part of life, and I think a lot of my alcoholic, drug addicted, sex addicted, gambling addicted acting out was to try to get out of discomfort or at least try to manage it, at all costs. 

I got you, boo. It can't be like this forever. Hang on. 

Another startling realization that I had while I was talking with this sponsee is that I have lived most of my life with a malevolent companion. An imaginary friend of the worst kind. Most people take one look at Charon and shudder, finding him frightening-- but this malevolent companion of mine is much uglier and more destructive. It's that voice. "You are worthless. You are unlovable and not capable of love. You have nothing to offer anyone-- who do you think you're fooling? You deserve to be alone. You're a failure and you always will be. You can never get anything right. You're not normal. You're sick. You're a freak."

The malevolent companion sometimes even says that I might as well be dead. With some counseling and magic little buproprion pills and prayer, meditation, step work, service work-- that dagger-like statement has been a lot less frequent. So I have that going for me, which is nice. 

So my sponsee and I were talking about discomfort, self loathing, self sabotage, how to just sit in it and accept it as what is going on and observe it without judgment. Because so many of my behaviors are reactive otherwise. "I'll show them!" I say, well, really, I want to prove the malevolent companion wrong. But the thing about the malevolent companion is he's infinite, he's bottomless, he's wily, he'll never be impressed no matter what I do. I mean, what are malevolent companions for, after all? The malevolent companion is not subject to defeat via exertion. The moment of acceptance is the only amulet that works against him. As infinite as the malevolent companion is, humility is also infinite, endless, always satisfied, always welcoming. 

On Monday, I cleared a major hurdle in the PhD process that had been weighing on me for the past 9 months-- advancing to candidacy. I did take myself out to dinner but it was awful (food was gross and other tables of people talking pro-Trump) and I felt vaguely guilty anyway. And then, straightaway, Tuesday morning, I was busting my ass trying to raise money, anxious and despairing. I didn't give myself any room to really breathe and enjoy the milestone. No space to regard myself positively for what I had accomplished. 

Anyway, not doing anything at all. I rarely even ask what would happen if I just don't do anything. I am usually thinking about what I have to do to fix this or that, or to communicate this or that, or to react to this, respond to that. It's my default-- surely, something could be done to get rid of this discomfort (and don't call me Shirley). But what about just not doing anything and letting everything be exactly as it is and just observing? Accepting. Eventually, natural action seems to arise. It is smoother and much more graceful. 

And I don't mean not doing anything as a way of just procrastinating and avoiding and letting anxiety build and amping up the food for that old malevolent companion. I mean the skillful deployment of the fine art of graceful retreat. Of hanging. 

 Not always able to just be with the gifts that fall into my life

 Grief! Have to do something. Must not feel. 

 Are the two roses out of order or the only interesting thing happening? Hanging. Is it sustainable? 

Roads True and False, High and Low

Yesterday was A's birthday and I am hilarious. 

In every demonstrable way, she has not given even a nanoshit about my existence since giving me the boot at the end of February. Truly, not even one shit molecule of the tiniest breadth and width has been given. Yet, I spent the past few days actually torn over whether to wish her a happy birthday or not. This is super fine if it bespeaks something truly along the way of the Work-- sorting out how to Do The Right Thing in the face of...what, exactly? Oh, well, you know, Unconditional Love (tm) and the Higher Self or being "the bigger person." You know, that sort of thing. 

Fuck that, he said cheerfully. 

I had a moment of clarity where I realized I was just being codependent and was tempted to buy into some stupid fakeass Spiritual (tm) bullshit. Devoting energy to someone who has disappeared, poof. She sent me a pro forma text wishing me a happy birthday and asking for my address because her kid wanted to send me a birthday card. Thank you! and here's my address. I looked for that birthday card for a few weeks every day, because I'm hilarious.

No card. Hey maybe it will be in the mailbox today! nope. Hey maybe it will be in the mailbox today! nope. Like a fuck-puppy of the goofiest kind, hooked repeatedly, a Beckett character hopeful and smacked in the face repeatedly, the hopeful walk up the path to stepping on the hidden rake of the empty mailbox. A week after she inquired I ought to have texted her again and said "hey where the fuck is the kid's card?" Because I authentically cared about getting that card, but pretended I did not. I pretended I didn't care because pretending my feelings are not hurt is one of my most predictable defense mechanisms. I'm fine, it's fine, everything is fine. I feel nothing. That's fine. 

Anyway, last week, a weird charge showed up on my Amazon Prime movie account for a kid movie and I figured it was for A's kid, but I texted her to be sure. "Oh yes, sorry, I guess the TV still has your password," and I was glad I wasn't hacked. "Hey, I never got that birthday card from your kid, if he sent it I don't want him to think I wouldn't thank him." "Oh, we never got around to it." Doormat Syndrome almost instantly kicked in and I waved it off and mewled a bunch of wet Charmin bullshit in my head like it's the thought that counts and she sure is busy and it's not that important anyway. 

But Real Percy had other ideas-- can you imagine what Real Percy  authentically wanted to say to her on her birthday? And yet, trying to weasel my way out of my authentic self with his authentic feelings and his authentic work on his authentic resentments, I imagined being Noble Percy the Bigger Man and showing how Spiritual (tm) I am by wishing her a happy birthday in spite of her complete and total indifference. In the light of the early morning today, I am very, very glad I did no such pathetic, dishonest, inauthentic, self-sabotaging and self-abandoning thing (not to mention the passive aggressive dimensions where at least part of my intention would be to hope that my generosity would actually make her feel badly about her shitstain of a soul). 

Noble Percy is far more dangerous and toxic than plain old Real Percy, the Unrelentingly Human. Sure, Real Percy is sensitive, and "extra," and can be blunt and fierce. But with Real Percy, everyone (including Percy) knows where Percy stands. Once Noble Percy starts calling the shots, shit gets weird mighty fast. Gaslight-y, murky, confusing, funhouse mirror-ish. Something is happening that everyone knows is weird and fake somehow but no one can exactly define exactly what that happening is. "There seems to be a Nice Guy in the room. But there's scary music playing."

Why did it hurt my feelings so much that A never got around to keeping her kid on the task of mailing me the card he definitely wanted to (because I know him-- he actually does give a shit about people and has a more generous heart at age 9 than his mom)-- because the whole scenario tied powerfully back into my being cut out of his life, never having had the chance to say goodbye, never having had the chance to continue to be a mentor if no longer a parent figure. "We didn't get around" to acknowledging, ever, not even once, how much love, realness, presence and plain old time I spent fathering the kid. A has not once said to me "You were great with him and I appreciate it." My cut off in that area was as butcher-knife-clean as my cut off in every other area. And that, plain and simple, is abusive behavior. 

Not the removal of me from his life-- that may well actually have been in his best interest, which clearly was his mom's judgment call to make (we've been through this before, readers, please, no more urging or suggestion that I go against his own mother's wishes in this regard, that is simply not going to happen). The abusive part is the complete and total cut off. Severance without process of any kind. "I believe it will be best for the kid to continue on, grieve your departure and not continue to spend time with you, but come on over and take a walk with him and say goodbye." That's humane. That's not abusive. And I would have appreciated it. It would have meant a lot to me. 

Of course, it behooves me to continue to work myself clear of the shitty way I was disposed of in the situation, and believe me, dear readers, I continue to work on that. You honestly have no idea how much work I'm doing in that regard. 

At the same time, why would *anyone* want to wish a "happy birthday" to an abusive ex who has made zero attempt to set things to rights? Here I am, clearly tumbling in hurt feelings and a deep sense of having been wronged, still, and yet I was agonizing over whether or not to wish her a fucking happy birthday? When the authentic things I want to say are in fact the exact ugly opposite-- "Happy birthday! I hope you fucking die but are miserable for years first!" 

That is ignoble, definitely. That is definitely not Spiritual (tm). I definitely do not want to feel that way. Yet at this stage of the trip, well, obviously, I DO feel that way. Real Percy is down underneath all of the unnecessary bullshit, clamoring to be honored and taken seriously. Clamoring to no longer be silenced by fake fucking Noble Percy, who is paper thin, boring, doormat-oriented and codependent af and silently, toxically enraged. 

Is Real Percy capable of true nobility? True generosity of spirit and forgiveness? That's the sad part-- of course he is. He's truly and authentically quite skilled at it. But all the fake ego-feeding manipulative passive aggressive wanna be nobility of that good old nice guy Noble Percy actually gets in the way and makes the work so much more difficult. Sweetness and light can go fuck itself. 

Realness and light-and-shadow are where it's at. The way forward. The way to freedom. The true low road is far preferable to a fake high road. I can't help it anyway. I'm on whatever fucking road I'm actually on. 

Flor Garduño, Canasta de Luz, Guatemala (1989)

Fool and Cynic, Besties

One of the skills involved in constructing a good life is to love individual people openly but always try to stay realistic with acceptance of the truth that they are unreliable, by nature. Even the most decent and trustworthy are mortal, so loving them means we risk losing them to death, as a baseline. But we also risk having them change in ways we dislike, or having our illusions stripped away and seeing that we had bamboozled ourselves or feeling they had bamboozled us, or any one of a seemingly unlimited number and type of disillusionment, an elaborate taxonomy of disappointment.

I've done a lot of field work here

That we can be surprised that people betray our trust (either explicitly by, say, fucking someone else or intrinsically by, say, telling the same tiresome stories over and over again) is a mark of our denial, certainly, since the preponderance of unassailable evidence is that people will betray our trust over and over and over again. Yet, if we get bitter as a result and become incapable of love, we're just being unrealistic and foolish, since becoming bitter over plain facts is like shaking one's fist at the ocean. On the other hand, being a wide open fool is also unrealistic, especially being in the delusion that this person or that person is "not like the others." It seems we are fickle, ordinary and disappointing by our very nature. Each one of us is in fact *exactly* like all the others, in regard to our ability to be either dysfunctional or boring.

The mathematician points out three things about this image: 1). Reality has to be something, since division by zero is meaningless. 2). If expectation is zero, of course disappointment will be zero and 3). A quotient is proportional to the relative size of numerator and denominator and in fact, the most rational expectation for disappointment would not be zero, but 1, that is, as close to an exact match of expectation and reality as possible. A disappointment value > 1 would signal unrealistically high expectation, and a disappointment value < 1 would signal unrealistically low expectation-- both situations reveal delusional states of mind. Or, with a disappointment of 0, the formula would reveal the modus operandi of an enlightened being.

A friend of mine recently said "I am amazed you are so open to love after what you've been through!" It caught me off guard, in part because I heard an implicit criticism in there. I asked, "Are you actually saying that you think I ought to be more cautious?" and they admitted as much. (Wishing people would say what they mean is as fruitless as wishing they would mean what they say, let alone the insane wish that they will behave congruently with their avowals).

Anyway, of course it's painful in ways from small to heartbreaking when, for whatever reason, a person in whom we have put our trust lets us down. But there's an element of business as usual in it, and it seems to me we could have a more realistic attitude in regard to these occurrences. Exactly how we decide this or that betrayal or disappointment constitutes a deal breaker or violates a non-negotiable boundary we have-- well, that's where a lot of creative skill and adroit spiritual and emotional intelligence comes in.

If one asked say 10,000 people what their non-negotiables are when it comes to how they are treated by a lover or friend or family member, how many would be able to generate a specific and detailed list that was realistically useful? There are of course the obvious ones that most people would say. But the thing is that most betrayals and disappointments are not egregious enough to match the obvious non-negotiable standards we would have. Most of the ordinary hurt that is mutually dealt in a close relationship is banal and grey.

We've all seen couples out in public who quite clearly have a low level, chronic, corrosive mutual contempt for each other, for example. At Target the other day, I heard a woman say to her male companion, "Well, where do you *think* the toothpaste is, like, in the *dental* aisle?" and he had an annoyed look on his face and simply walked away without saying anything. These gritty little snipes seem part of almost any intimate relationship, at times. How serious are they? I think this differs by case, but I know that if a woman treats me like that even once, I might not show up emotionally for weeks.

I suffer from Hypersensitive Empath Disorder (HED, which I made up), so even one such quiet and contemptuous snipe like this can send me looking for a new partner or plotting some incredibly overprotective strategy for myself. I'm not exaggerating. I am hair trigger alert for contempt toward me or my own impulse to dismiss or ridicule a woman. For me, I cannot live in this poisoned water even for a moment. Yet, I see people who splash around in it for years. I am overly tuned to be deeply hurt by teasing, also, and have generally been drawn to kind, gentle, non-bullying or non-teasing women as a result. Yet I also admire and find myself attracted to women who have a cutting sense of humor and keen sense of the absurd, so my partners have had to adroitly direct that satirical or snarky energy everywhere but toward me.

I realize my extreme sensitivity is not a boon. A single remark can send me spinning for days, months, years. I still remember single sentences that women uttered decades ago that cut me to the quick. Part of the step work in recovery is seeking more emotional intelligence and resilience. I've made progress, but I still have naturally very strong boundaries around indignities, even very minor ones. I need my partners and friends to admire me. It's a narcissistic trait, I'm sure. Of course it's also "normal," but a lot of people seem a lot more capable of dishing and receiving snipes, snarks and scoffs than I. "Haha, I know you were only kidding!" I'll say, and then six months later I move to a different state.

This has been convincingly traced to my being the youngest child, with 3 very articulate, witty, sharply observant and intellectually cutting siblings. My emotional nakedness often had me feel like St. Sebastian in the midst of the barrage of penetrating remarks in our daily family life.

In fact, in some ways, I have been better equipped to handle big, dramatic and obvious betrayals like infidelity. I have a set of learned responses to trauma and drama. I have not been as skillful at airing out the petty and banal grievances of daily life. When A and I went to the one and only couples counseling session we did, the counselor asked us to describe how often we fought and over what kinds of issues, and it occurred to us that we never, ever fought. In more than five years, we never had a fight. This is not a boast, but a confession. This is definitely not desirable.

Joni Mitchell wrote in The Last Time I Saw Richard-- all romantics meet the same fate someday, cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark cafe. As foolish as it is to be a wide open romantic, it's equally foolish to be cynical and think that, thereby, one has gained wisdom and protection from human fickleness. There's a lot of room in between for resilient yet realistic skills. At the very least it's only fair that, if we open our chests up and say "here's my heart! be nice!" or if we wrap ourselves in a dark, hard carapace of self-protection, we might accept the necessary consequences of those decisions. Being wide open means being hurt, being armored means never experiencing intimacy and being hurt anyway. It's funny to me that yet another aspect of our lack of skill is that we choose to adopt these extreme positions and then lament the consequences.

Oooooh, sexy confessions!

What a trip. Having just finished the "sex inventory" along the way toward working through the 12 steps in AA (a project that began more than a year ago and marks the 3rd time working the steps in a focused way in 13 years of sobriety), and done the 5th step on it with my sponsor, I'm in the thick of steps 6 and 7. 

4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character

7. Humbly asked God to remove these shortcomings

(look at all that GOD up in there! Holy shit!)

"Don't grovel! No groveling!"

The "to another human being" part of the 5th step this time around took three evenings, stretched out over more than 6 weeks, and lasted about 9 hours altogether. Grateful to have a sponsor who is so generous with his time. Of course, the sense of "admitting to God" is involved in the reality of admitting to ourselves and another human being-- the subjective experience of "confession" seems only authentic when it is heard by another person, which has been a traditional aspect of confession for a long, long time. Not believing in "God," per se, I'd describe my subjective experience of that part of step 5 as one of cultivating the spirit of devotion specifically to complete transparency. Nothing to hide, a light turned to all of the shame, guilt, remorse, regret and denial, connected to a strong feeling of "coming home" into the world. 

Admitting to ourselves the exact nature of our wrongs is an interesting aspect of this process also. For me, this time around, it has been about self acceptance. There's no way I can come to know myself or have a relationship with myself of any quality or endurance until I can sit with myself comfortably and in appreciation of my limitations and the reality of my character. So this part of step 5 creates the space for that and paves the way to talk to another human being about all of it. I'd say admitting to "God" and to myself the truths of my values, conduct, harms I have caused others and myself and the whole story are prerequisites of talking openly with another human being. 

Another aspect of step 5 that seems often misunderstood, at least in my opinion, is "the exact nature of our wrongs." There is a deep wisdom in that phrase that gets deeper the more you contemplate it. The simplistic, moralistic consciousness thinks "confession" is merely about relating a laundry list of "sins." "I stole money, I cheated on my wife, I had impure thoughts about the bank teller, I lied to my employer, I yelled at my dog." That's okay as far as it goes, which from a spiritual standpoint, in my opinion, is about a millimeter. It is probably better than not taking inventory at all but also probably will not keep a person sober as a person ventures deeper into the process. 

I'm often working with myself, my sponsor and my sponsees on getting underneath all of that conduct-- why did you do these things? What is the ground from which you acted? Exactly what kind of harm did you cause? Ultimately, precisely what is the exact nature of "wrong" itself and exactly what is harm? As difficult as it may be to admit that I stole money, for example, it often feels even more difficult to admit the underlying "character defects" that were causes for that conduct. Fear, greed, selfishness, resentment and bitterness and hatred, entitlement-- character states that get to the core of my humanity and are down at the level of the *nature* of the wrong. The central "wrong" (i.e., mistake) is a spiritual sickness in which I strongly enforce my separation from myself, others, and everything. That's a huge mistake-- the biggest mistake there is. (cf. Satan in Paradise Lost).

"YES! I got what I wanted without regard for the well being of anyone else!"

The harm for the person from whom I stole the money might be, for example, that I stole the sense of the goodness of the world, the reliability of the world and a basic trust and sense of safety. It's not that I stole the money. That in itself is only harmful as a result of the hell states of despair and anger it induces in the victim of the theft. The real stuff that is stolen is spiritual-- joy, faith, trust, purpose, the ability to love. Those are *real* and *enduring* harms. 

So this leads to the extremely subtle and very tricky sex inventory. Bill W makes it sound fairly simple and straightforward in the book Alcoholics Anonymous:

"We reviewed our own conduct over the years past. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate? Whom had we hurt? Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion or bitterness? Where were we at fault, what should we have done instead? We got this all down on paper and looked at it."

The specifics are crucial, and each "character defect" (selfishness, dishonesty, lack of consideration, being a cause of emotional suffering, arousing jealousy, arousing suspicion, arousing bitterness) is quite distinct. But the overall, more essential questions are: how did we invite spiritual and emotional sickness into the lives of people we supposedly loved? How did we steal their basic trust in the world? How did we threaten to take away their ability to love? 

Rest in pieces....

And in this arena arise all of the fundamental realities of being human among other humans. Again, with uncanny wisdom, Bill W starts step 4 with resentment, with a grudge list. Then moves on to an inventory of fears. But he puts the sex inventory last, because this is the most subtle, private, shame-bound, aching and toxic part of the spiritual malady. In fact, one of the boldest statements in the Big Book is in regard to the failure of an alcoholic to unearth as much of this as possible, look at it, admit it and form a "sane and sound" ideal toward which to grow:

"If we are not sorry (for sexual misconduct), and our conduct continues to harm others, we are quite sure to drink. We are not theorizing. These are facts out of our experience."

This also goes to traditions that have been a central part of a great many religions surrounding sexual misconduct. The absolutism and inhumanity of some of the prohibitions are sick, in my opinion, and the other weird manifestations of mistaken fanaticism are dangerous, but these traditions definitely signal the intense power and potential for harm to ourselves and others in sexual misconduct. 

Anyway, this time around I made a list again of every woman I have ever had sexual interactions with. I was able to then look at the overall patterns. Specifically, I took from that general list 7 women with whom I had longer relationships, including marriage and domestic partnership, or women who seemed to have a profound and intense effect on me, from 1978 to the present. Then I looked carefully at each of those central relationships, writing in detail using the format in the Big Book Awakening workbook, a very helpful and thorough guide to the basic questions in the above paragraph. 

(Side note: combine the vulnerabilities of recovery with the plain fact that a great many alcoholics and addicts are also sex and love addicts and toxically codependent, and you get a sense of why "13th stepping" is such a chronic and awful problem).

Okay- so- are we having fun yet? I feel like this process of investigation (fact finding and fact facing) and confession (admitting the exact nature of wrongs) is a perfect stage on the journey through Hades. Maybe it is only in close relationship to death that we are able to get perspective on the truth of ourselves. If we contemplate the transitory nature of our lives and become more friendly with death, we are also able to let go of the sense of attachment to our look good, our denial, our sense that we are so important that we can't honestly take a look at ourselves. 

I apologize if you read this far looking for juicy details of my sexual misconduct over the past 40 years. "Admitted to God, to ourselves, on our blog, and to another human being" is not what step 5 says. Anyway, in summary, my wrongs in sexual relationships (and all of my relationships) were banal, typical and ordinarily human: selfishness, self-centeredness, dishonesty, fear, arrogance, entitlement, lack of consideration, jealousy, anger and resentment, codependent attempts to make the other person my Higher Power-- surely you get the picture. These are all the ways we act toward other human beings we supposedly love. For me, it is only through admitting this that I am able to start to love for real. 

Who is Responsible?

A woman was recently telling me about the sexual ignorance of her male partner-- he's in his 40s and still either pretends to not know where the clitoris is or honestly does not know. And it is too much trouble for him to listen and to learn. Or it may be that he does know where it is, but doesn't really know how to "operate" it so to speak. 

Common enough to be an entire series of Shutterstock (tm) images

Can you imagine a man putting up with a partner who didn't know where the penis was or how to work it, basically? The thought is utterly laughable. Even more unimaginable: a man whose female partner has never given him an orgasm. Never. I have talked with women for whom this is true: all of the orgasms they have, they have alone. Imagine a man during sex, maybe after his female partner has an orgasm, saying "It's okay, I wasn't going to come anyway," for 40 years. I get fairly exasperated by this weird double standard regarding sexual anatomy and sexual pleasure. Fundamentally, the basic physiological fact is that the clitoris is *the only organ* on the human body that exists *solely for pleasure*, yet it is problematic in our weird, still unrelentingly patriarchal culture. And the male sexual ego still seems so narroqwly rooted in the dick-- the attitude often being "well, if she won't come as a result of the magic powers of my dick, then she can take care of it herself, except not when I am around, because that huts my dick's feelings."

Dream girl completely unconcerned with her own body and always thinking dick

Another double standard that has been on my mind lately has been around parenting. I know a lot of younger women, many of whom are former students of mine, who are in the parenting thing. The men they are partnered with, usually with whom they had their children, are--basically-- fucking worthless. In fact, the young women who are happier being mothers do not have to deal with a male partner. What is up with this? The stories I hear are outrageous. One of my former students: "I have not been alone for more than 8 hours in the past 3 years." This seems unsustainable and absolutely not a good thing for either mother or child. Of course, the same young woman was quick to add: "I'm not complaining! I love my children!" Uh, well-- is it not obvious that one can love one's children and still want to take three or four days of an emotional and spiritual retreat? Wouldn't such opportunities actually enable one to love one's children *more effectively*? Why don't fathers more often say "You've been working, running the house and mothering like mad for months-- I'll take the kids, I'll take care of everything here, you go stay at a nice hotel that has a spa for a long weekend-- sleep! get some space!" Would FOUR FUCKING DAYS really be that difficult, you useless non-contributing spoiled rotten brat of a boy?

After A separated from her husband, she suddenly found herself with half of her time free from parenting, since they had an exactly 50/50 custody plan. This seemed so much better to her than the grind she had been in for about 3 years previously, where she was expected to work 40-50 hour weeks and do about 85% of the parenting and about 80% of the domestic labor (and to endure complaints about making noise while vacuuming, or how bad her meals were, or how his shirts weren't properly laundered-- this was in the *new millenium*, not way back in the 1950s). 

It's sadly ironic how the gains toward economic equity for women have been offset in many ways by the regressive realities of parenting and householding. Incidentally, the 50/50 custody arrangement also resulted in A's son's dad becoming a much better father, out of necessity. Isn't it sad that kids actually get a far better deal when their parents split? Two houses, two sets of toys, two bedrooms, often brand new loving step parents, etc. (I realize this is not always or even often the case when a mother is left to be a single mother, but in A's case, this is what her son got out of the deal, that everyone around the situation was horrified by-- "Oh, this will damage the boy forever!" Um, no.)

So here's what women generally seem to be able to look forward to: long work hours, boring phallocentric PIV sex preceded by pro forma lameass ignorant attempts at foreplay, no space or quiet time, hours and hours of domestic labor and parenting on top of long work hours, and being blamed for every problem their kids have-- even "little" things like wanting to go on a "girls' night out" (what are we, in 8th grade?) often prove problematic for male partners. It still seems largely true that men get to go to work, experience sexual pleasure, be fed, have their clothes laundered and their houses cleaned and their meals prepared, seem like fucking heroes for "taking the kids" for 3 or 4 hours (often so the woman can have time to get housework done), enjoy a larger social life, and then bitch about how cranky and unpleasant their female partners are or how unavailable or sex-avoidant or whatever.  

So-- as I ask in the title to this post-- who is responsible? Is it not an even sadder irony that many of the young women I talk with about this situation feel like *they* are responsible? "I could communicate better. I could set better boundaries. I could ask more for what I want, in bed." 

Here's a radical idea: men are 100% responsible for this lack of household equity. 100%. Would it be possible for men to stop taking their situations and their partners for granted and pitch in closer to 50% in domestic labor? In parenting? In bed? Of course. Of course it would. I suspect that men love the fact that their partners feel responsible for the inequity. It's just another way to reinforce male power at home. 

There's lots of "how to make a woman come" articles on the web, but they all ultimately make it the woman's responsibility to "communicate to her man" how she "likes it." I can see the value of this kind of communication, of course, and it's way better than mind reading, but there are some *fundamental areas of knowledge* for which *every man could become responsible*. The rest would be the distinct preferences of individual women, but at the very least, a knowledge of female sexual anatomy and an understanding of how the clitoris works and how the rest of the whole deal works *in general* would be incredibly easy for men to obtain. 

The other *hilarious* thing about these scenarios is that a lot of these men would definitely describe themselves as "feminists." Or at least they see themselves as being "all for" equity for women. But here again their attitudes just reinforce their own power, because what they really mean is they are "all for" their female partner earning money in order to take financial pressure off their own situation. It's all about equity in the work place (which hasn't even been achieved). There's either dishonesty or lack of awareness of equity at home. I think the term "the woke misogynist" is highly useful in this regard. 

It's been a long trip for me to wake up to this dynamic. I myself loved the advantages of these double standards in several partnerships, although I have only been involved in step fathering twice. I was entirely unaware of much of this inequity for a long time. I have always been devoted to the sexual pleasure of my partners, so I rarely allowed an orgasm gap for very long. But in domestic labor, I have been a lout. Many of my domestic partners have been unskilled in and indifferent to domestic labors, as was I (or so I tolerated), so the two of us lived in the fairly happy bliss of mild squalor, desultory meals, musky sheets and thrift store furniture. The bohemian partnership! Lots of fun, but not really sustainable once the reality of parenting kicks in. With A, I made a conscious effort to bring 50% to the table. I didn't always succeed, but I wanted to know what it would be like to *practice equity feminism* in my actual fucking life. 

It was hard work. I provided a lot of child care. I cooked half the nights of the week. I did roughly half the housework. 

In retrospect, this all seems fine and noble, of course. Until I realize: do women usually get to simply do *half*? Absolutely not. Then I try to imagine going to school full time, teaching half time and doing the vast majority of the parenting and housework. Very difficult to imagine. And yet, this is where the majority of the women in our culture find themselves, if they want to have children. 

I have heard younger women who have two children joke about how they actually have three children-- when they include their male partner, who lives on the edge of being an 8 year old boy who has all of his laundry done, his meals provided, his bathroom cleaned and even half of his bills paid. This just seems pathetic to me, not funny. 

Phoenix

Rising up again out of some of the very low lows of the past weekend. Weird times when all of my sense of worth, self-confidence, optimism, competency and agency burns down. And when that collapse coincides with bizarre fear, paranoia, lack of trust, self pity and what feels like inconsolable loneliness. A fabulously dark wallow of ashes. 

Moonrise in Bahía de Los Angeles, BCN

But I do have tools for working back to being more in the light. 

Sometimes the reversal toward light and hope takes "hard work," but in this case, it happened largely in a flash, soon after I walked into the Sunday night CoDA meeting that is now part of my regular schedule. 

The liturgical ritual at the beginning of this meeting is that the 12 steps, the 12 traditions and the 12 CoDA promises get read, up front. Right away, step 1 is always a powerful reminder of the root of my relationship troubles: "We admitted we were powerless over others--that our lives had become unmanageable." I somehow manage to forget fairly often that much of my suffering comes from trying to have power over others. Trying to get them to love me, trying to manipulate them into not abandoning me, trying to possess them or get reassurance constantly or whatever. It is *always* such a relief to just be reminded of the very fundamental turning point toward relationship recovery-- I am powerless over others. 

Then, when the traditions are read, tradition 3 is a simple, clear reminder also-- "The only requirement for membership in CoDA is a desire for healthy and loving relationships." I definitely have that desire, and it always reminds me by contrast what I am hooked on that is not healthy and not loving. I have some issues with the use of the word "healthy" in general, but in this case, to me, it simply means supportive, proportional and creative. "Loving" in this case, to me, means generous, forgiving, kind and respectful. So I definitely have a desire for supportive, proportional, creative, generous, forgiving, kind and respectful relationships. 

Then the CoDA promises are read out loud. Have I posted these before? No matter. Here they are again. 

"I can expect a miraculous change in my life by working the program of Co-Dependents Anonymous. As I make an honest effort to work the Twelve Steps and follow the Twelve Traditions...
 

1. I know a new sense of belonging. The feeling of emptiness and loneliness will disappear.
2. I am no longer controlled by my fears. I overcome my fears and act with courage, integrity and dignity.
3. I know a new freedom.
4. I release myself from worry, guilt, and regret about my past and present. I am aware enough not to repeat it.
5. I know a new love and acceptance of myself and others. I feel genuinely lovable, loving and loved.
6. I learn to see myself as equal to others. My new and renewed relationships are all with equal partners.
7. I am capable of developing and maintaining healthy and loving relationships. The need to control and manipulate others will disappear as I learn to trust those who are trustworthy.
8. I learn that it is possible to mend - to become more loving, intimate and supportive. I have the choice of communicating with my family in a way which is safe for me and respectful of them.
9. I acknowledge that I am a unique and precious creation.
10. I no longer need to rely solely on others to provide my sense of worth.
11. I trust the guidance I receive from my higher power and come to believe in my own capabilities.
12. I gradually experience serenity, strength, and spiritual growth in my daily life."

I do wish promise #4 would be reworded-- "I am aware enough not to repeat my past and to experience freedom in my present relationships," or something like that. The incorrect use of "it" always bothers me. haha. 

But anyway, even by the time these introductory incantations are done, I always feel better. And last Sunday was no exception. I suddenly realized that the root of my crash was not in anything whatsoever that was happening outside of me, but rather, in my being stuck like velcro to ideas of control, safety, predictability, and high stakes. In particular, that burgeoning sense of having a lot at stake is a danger sign for me. It definitely signals that I am far too attached to outcome and that I am projecting like mad. 

And that velcro-like attachment starts to spread like a toxic spill, and hooks onto everything in my life-- and then I feel desperately out of control. There's a whole universe of difference between feeling out of control and admitting powerlessness. Maybe I'll write about that sometime. 

Anyway, by the time I got home on Sunday I had let go of the entire mess and was buoyant, hopeful and serene again. This is the power of recovery for me. A simple solution to what feels like an unsolvable "problem."

The home group in AA last night was no exception. The topic proposed by this month's chair, after a thoughtful and meditative opening pitch, was step 10. "Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it." This became very important to me this week.

I had scheduled a committee meeting about 6 weeks ago for this coming Friday. My chair emailed on Monday, after I had sent out a reminder, that he had scheduled a thesis defense for one of his other students at the same time as my scheduled committee meeting. No apology, nothing-- just a one sentence email asking if I would reschedule. Of course, I took it personally, was angry and frustrated and felt put upon, all at once. 

But now I am more capable of watching all of those ego-related feelings go by and not acting on them. I was sorely tempted to make a fuss, to stand my ground, to complain. The fantasy of quitting the PhD program even crossed my mind, as did the idea of firing my committee chair. All of these outrages and impulses flooded into me. I felt ignored, devalued, kicked to the curb, etc. 

I didn't act out at all, however. I remembered step 10 and realized that, if I expressed any of this to my committee chair I would definitely have to go back and mend the relationship or that I might even permanently damage it. The weird thing about grad school is one is completely dependent on one's committee but they can absolutely do without you. It's just the way it works. It's humbling for sure. 

So instead of ineffective and damaging acting out, I just got started on rescheduling the committee meeting. I also realized that the upside was that I now had more time to prepare. After not very much trouble, the meeting was rescheduled for 10 days after the original date, in a better room, at a better time. 

And I owed no one any apologies and did nothing wrong. 

So-- am I grateful for 12 step recovery? Incredibly grateful. A great many self-sabotaging, destructive and ineffective behaviors have been eliminated or at least greatly reduced in recovery. This is a source of great hope and peace of mind for me, even while my own perspectives can be so delusional and distorted.