Sexual and Emotional Authenticity
Being authentic has become the new catch phrase for getting whatever you want whenever you want it. How can you argue with a partner of 28 plus years who claims all they want is to be in touch with their true nature, wants and desires. Sounds fair, right? Tenderness in the form of cuddling with someone other than a spouse is becoming a thing.
Men often self isolate in marriage and find themselves quite alone if their marriage ends. Suicide claims over 90 men a day in the US. How have we failed all these souls? Why are women so much better at keeping friendships alive throughout their married years? Seeking deep authentic connections with multiple friends and partners is on the rise and I am not sure it’s a bad thing even if it rocks a marriage and demands deep analysis of a couples agreements.
It’s like that old saying about unconditional love that if you love someone let them go. That by holding on too tight we can start to suffocate love and turn it into obligation. The only problem is that when people build a life together, raise kids and amass savings for a cush old age and one of the two decide to shift gears and go in their own direction it can leave unmitigated fallout.
I can’t say I understand humans all that well only that I see that love and passion seem to be a driving force in human nature. This desire to mate with multiple partners must be the true norm if everyone from the president, and billionaires to my neighbors in the country step out on their spouses and implode their marriages. The kids, if there are any, are the true fallout if the new agreements can’t be mitigated.
Let’s say that most people settle on a mate for one of a few reasons lust, companionship or money and security. Science tells us that lust or falling in love with another actually only lasts two years. Biologically for women we are hardwired to mate, procreate, birth and nurse our young and then they start walking away so we can repeat the cycle. This little love affair allows us to focus on success of our progeny. But what happens in our brains over those two years with a mate?
Madame Curie, the only woman Nobel Prize winner in two different disciplines, one in Physics 1903 shared with her husband, and one in Chemistry by herself in 1911, encouraged her daughters to marry a man that could be their best friend. She reasoned that when the sheen wore off the relationship in a few years they would ultimately still like their partner and enjoy a life of shared admiration and work as she and her husband did. The social science of marriage untangled by a physicist boils down to companionship creates a happy home.
Unfortunately Marie’s true match was taken from her early when her husband died crossing a busy Parisian street after being run over by a horse drawn carriage. Years later around the time of her second award nomination Marie was vilified in the French press for having an affair with a younger married physicist who was estranged from his wife. She sought refuge in a friends house with her daughters and threw herself into her research and volunteer work. Whatever circumstances bring folks together or tear them apart we seem to be hardwired to connect again.
Jump forward a century and listen to some conspiracy theorists who believe there are just a few very powerful men or families that control everything politically, financially and religiously throughout the world. This group of 1% uber riche men, dictate laws governing country’s, the financial markets worldwide and the way we worship. The average joe may see this as ludicrous but bare with me as I highlight my thinking on this.
The leader of the free world has stated publicly that he could kill someone and get away with it. Whether he is referring to in the court system, by having enough money to lawyer up and make his guilt go away or something more insidious like the murder of a Saudi journalist perpetrated in a foreign embassy with all fingers pointing to the crown prince and basically nothing coming of it for years. We can’t see the future but from where we stand it seems pretty clear it was a hit for hire. Are some individuals in the world basically untouchable due to their money or social standing?
Private meetings between our president and the leader of Russia with the interpreter sworn to secrecy about what was said seems odd to many Americans.The leaked info about video surveillance of our Presidents proclivity to be urinated on by Russian call girls leaves many of us scratching our heads. Is role reversal of dominance and submission sex play so repugnant to most citizens or is it the norm for wealthy or bored with the, same old same old, men.
Another billionaire was recently caught on video surveillance with his pants down at one of those walk-in Asian foot and back massage businesses popping up all over the nation in strip malls. If the women can’t even speak English how can they pass massage licensure exams? The fact is they can’t and are not required to due to lack of enforcement of these new age brothels or loopholes in the legal system. Now we are informed that some of these establishments are alleged fronts for sex trafficked women and children from half way across the world. My masseuse has to hold all kinds of degrees and certifications to even touch my back. Again who are the laws meant to protect?
It seems madness that our country is being held hostage in such a way that we are forced to endure more and more pornographic information about powerful men across the board with no political or religious affiliations left out. This is the white mans last gasp.
Who are the laws about sex and corruption made for? If sex for hire is the desire of so very many men and women why have the laws not been changed nationwide? More powerful men have been brought to their knees figuratively and literally by sex scandals in the last thirty years in the US than I care to count.
The richest man in the world recently holed up on his Washington State compound for weeks with his wife and four kids because the married journalist he decided to have an affair with shared his sexts with her brother, a staunch republican, who outed them to the press. After a bit of threatening and an alleged extortion letter the family man fought back. Did he and his wife of over 20 years have an agreement to be discreet but, once it got out she filed for divorce to save face? Are human men really so gullible? Did his “alive girl” really think her brother or friends, once privy to that kind of information could sit on it for almost a year without spilling to someone? How are powerful men and women not smart enough to use encryption passwords or burner phones when stepping out on their marriages?
Who has access to our personal phone texts? Our emails? Adults are leaving Facebook en masse due to fears about the behemoth sharing personal information and photos from their pages in unsavory ways. It seems incredulous that humans don’t think rationally when it comes to these basic desires. Is the mind really in control of us at all? Or do we suppress our bases impulses for as long as possible and then snap like a twig when the right opportunity presents itself.? It’s like saying what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Do people really believe that? Obviously that is rhetorical. Prostitution is actually legal in Nevada just not in the city proper.
We don’t always understand our friends or family members or leaders but there is obviously something really out of wack with what we say and what we do as authentic human beings. Someone needs to clarify the fact from fiction on our perception of ourselves. If the common goal is to connect on a deeper level with others maybe we need to loosen the noose on folks who feel trapped in monogamy. If polyandry is so prevalent let’s have an honest discussion about it as a nation.
The State gets involved in our lives for lots of reasons. Marriage and divorce laws were created to support women and children who are often pauperized after the male head of household leaves. Even the term Head of Household is an archaic term used to describe the Sole Breadwinner or highest income earner in a family which until recently was often a man in middle class families. As women ascend the corporate ladder and amass fortunes in banks and 401k’s across the country court outcomes have fluctuated back and forth to either crush the highest earner financially or cut them loose. Often the outcome is based on how good the attorneys are at wrangling each other.
With the rise in do it yourself divorces we are witnessing folks who want to agree unanimously and authentically how they see the separation of assets and child rearing to go as they disentangle from each other’s lives. Some couples separate but don’t divorce at all to keep health insurance intact. Often the children are left in place in their homes and one or the other spouses gets a separate place. This allows for the children’s lives at school or with friends to be undisturbed when their parents lives are virtually upended and imploded before being set right again according to their own parameters.
There is no right or wrong way to process infidelity in a marriage. Being open and honest in our relationships and voting for more balanced laws that reflect what is becoming the norm in our society is imperative. We can not bury our heads in the sand and assume human nature can be thwarted by enacting or preserving draconian laws that penalize folks for realizing years in, that they married someone for the wrong reasons. We all change and grow as we age and there are different deal breakers for each and every one of us be it drugs or alcohol use or a change in sexual desires in ourselves or our partners.
One thing is for sure, that more younger folks are operating from their authentic hearts and trying to mitigate the damage to their significant others as their sexual desires change over years of commingling their lives and negotiating new family contracts without the State or litigation involved. Coercion should never be the reason to stay together.
We must decriminalize sexual exploration for men and women and enact laws that protect the millions of sex workers already out on the streets. Outdated or obsolete laws must be struck down if they impede individuals rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Which is different for everyone, but, can be negotiated between consenting adults.
It’s high time we retire laws that vilify humans for seeking out sexual release, a biologically normal human function. And let’s be honest, it’s happening all around us anyways by the wealthy who can lawyer up and get the charges dropped for soliciting sex or the soccer mom next door who believes in trading up every few years with her friends husbands. Draconian laws don’t serve a changing society and often hurt the vary folks they were enacted to protect. The folks pushing the, “ be your authentic self” movement, around the country have got to win out in the end if we want to support our fellow humans sexual and emotional needs in safe and legal ways.
