MightyPen

It's a bad cartoon. Really, it's the kind of thing someone who has absolutely no real-world experience with BDSM, and maybe not even very much with sex, but fantasizes about it lot, would come up with. Everyone acts weirdly, inhumanly, stilted, like weird wooden props. Plus, yeah, the writing itself. *shudder* Different mistakes, but in the same ballpark: I'm reminded of the "orgy" in the movie Eyes Wide Shut. It was inexplicably and smotheringly formal, tedious, full of bizarre hidden hierarchy, inviolable rules, threats, mystery, lots of people walking slowly from one place to another. Then someone said to me "it's like what the Catholic church imagines an orgy would be like" and it suddenly all made sense. It's what happens when authors are prisoners of their own ignorance, and fall back on their own irrelevant habits. As fanfic? Passable, only remarkable for its length. But as literature? Sorry. And I'm VERY forgiving about what can count as literature; there are comic books that fit the bill. But, that said... yeah, look at the response it's getting from the public, especially women. I need to think some more on that before I can decide fully what that means. It seems a bit sad, but a bit hopeful too; like someone staggering out of the desert parched and weak, crawling into a shabby and borderline oasis, and drinking dirty, stagnant water from the only well they find there. A horrible experience, maybe even a bit poisonous, but better than nothing at all under the circumstances. And at least it will keep them going, and maybe help them on to the next place where the water might be better.

To crush my enemies, to see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women. (C'mon, it was such a perfect set-up. Somebody had to say it.) HEAR THE ORIGINAL

OH MY GOD that's a hilarious image. Thanks. I swear I've just written a whole little one-act play in my head, with a client and an SP each stopping and starting the session timer beside the bed for increasingly ridiculous reasons. VERONIQUE GASPS and suddenly lifts herself up and slaps the timer button in a panic, stopping the clock VERONIQUE: Oh my god! I promised my neighbour I'd take her ratatouille out at 6:30. Just be a minute! MICHAEL flops back on bed, fumes briefly; then shrugs and starts checking his e-mail. ..... (later) MICHAEL suddenly CRIES OUT and flails his arms; VERONIQUE pulls back, startled and wide-eyed VERONIQUE: *What!?* MICHAEL: (slapping the timer to stop the clock) OMIGOD It's the season finale of Great Provincial Parks tonight and I forgot to set the PVR! (fumbles with phone to remotely reprogram his PVR)

"500 Days of Summer" does a surprisingly grown-up version of the falling-in-love/soul-mate thing with two flawed characters going through the whole ride (with one substantially more into it than the other). It's a much more real-world message than I've seen before. Worth the watch, I thought, with neither an overly optimistic nor overly pessimistic view... just matter-of-fact.

Yup, RIP Mr. Griffith. He seemed a real gentleman and was a fixture of my youth. The Andy Griffith Show itself was a wee bit before my time, but it was still everywhere in syndication when I was growing up in single digits. To see a *totally* different Andy Griffith, you should watch him in "A Face in the Crowd"; sexual, cunning, manipulative, predatory, full of crackling energy. Reminds you the man had a whole growed-up self outside of Mayberry. Little bit of video to give you an idea:

Well, hang on though. That's a bit sweeping. I think we've seen some stories posted here about guys in really tough circumstances, who have tried hard in their relationships, but sadly and reluctantly reach a point where they feel they need to look for other options. I'm certain there are people (men and women) whose eyes rove too soon, as you say, and who end up either in affairs or seeking paid companionship when they didn't have to. But I'm also certain that life is full of surprises, and the lives of others shouldn't be judged quickly. It's a grey and complicated world out there.

Personal happiness and fulfilling relationships are entirely achievable -- but you knew that already. I think the real question is "how are they achieved?", and that's more complicated. Let me start by saying that relationships with SPs can be *very* rewarding and honest and valuable, but they do come with built-in limitations. They're a bit like relationships with training wheels, because they have such safe, clearly defined boundaries, and because the relationship is only there for a few hours at a time when you want it, and it's never there and places no demands on you when you don't. You can learn a lot about yourself and how it's possible to behave intimately with others in a client-SP relationship; but I think those are lessons we need to carry into other "real" relationships, rather than settling on those relationships as the final product. In other posts I've compared the client-SP relationship to the one you might have with a psychotherapist: the professional you're seeing is a real, whole person, and probably really does care about you, and you can have some very honest and intimate and important exchanges about really important things -- BUT it's still a professional relationship, it only happens within specific boundaries, and it only happens one all-too-brief appointment at a time. Your psychotherapist cares about you, and can play an important, healthy role in your life, but she's not literally your *friend*, she's your therapist. I'm certain that SPs can genuinely come to care about the clients they see often enough to get to know, but the same limitations apply. Other relationships: yeah, marriage is pretty disposable these days. I've posted at least once before here about the withering away of traditional institutions, and that we tend to look first to our individual fulfillment and happiness. In many ways that's a very good thing; being trapped within a broken institution (marriage, church, whatever) ruined many, many lives during the long period when nobody dared challenge those institutions. But on the other hand, putting ourselves first can make us give up on the things we belong to sooner than we should. You just need to find good, well-grounded people who are able to take care of themselves but also commit to, and make sacrifices for, the relationship and the life you can build together. And of course you need to be that person too: willing to compromise, work with the assets your partner brings, and forgive him or her for any weaknesses. It varies with the couple, but sometimes sex plays only the teeniest, tiniest role in that life. That's why the carnal joys of that first glow in the early days of a relationship may be a terrible predictor of how you're going to do together long-term. They're two whole different sets of skills and assets. I never married either. Explaining why would make this long post even longer, so we'll skip that. Really short version would be that I was a late bloomer -- in some respects, *too* late. I sometimes envy the people who found each other in their early 20s, married, and built a life and family together right from the start. By the time you're in your 30s and 40s, you're already off that path and the thing you're looking to build is different than it was in your 20s. But on the other hand, as you say, there are at more disastrous early marriages than there are success stories. You've just got to keep looking for mature, well-grounded people, those who aren't grasping or materialistic, who have some wisdom about them and have grown from their experiences in life. And agree to build a life together, and have fun seeing what that cooperative effort looks like, instead of using the relationship solely to complete our own personal, rigid checklists. The life you build with someone else is going to look different from the one you'd build solo; that's the cost and the benefit of involving someone else in the project. I think that coming to terms with that is one of the hurdles that gives many people trouble. The pool of such people isn't that large, it's true. And they grow harder to find as time passes. But it's worth the effort, and I know that these relationships do happen.

I think a lot of people have very complicated relationships with their own sexuality, and unfortunately as SPs you get to experience some of that first-hand -- even when it comes to something as simple as booking the appointment and setting its parameters. Consider the guy in question, who has a girlfriend but also a compulsive desire to have a sexual experience outside that relationship. You'd hope that he'd deal with that tension on his own and leave you out of it, and only contact you once he'd committed to a decision. Instead he's contacted you several times while in the middle of deciding, and so you're getting drawn into his own conflicted sexual desires. The whole "suck for an hour" thing must have come while he was at a high point on his desire curve; that's the kind of one-dimensional, cartoon-y experience he has in his mind that drives his craving for an appointment, and no doubt occupies his mind when he's... well... you know... taking care of business by himself. But like all cartoon fantasies that seem like great ideas in the throes of arousal, it only takes an orgasm plus 30 seconds to douse the whole thing in cold water and reveal its root silliness. Or maybe it's just being on the verge of actually taking the dive and the real risk of acting out a fantasy, to make someone who's conflicted stop at the last minute, panic, and back out. I'm sure even the healthiest of people can be conflicted about visiting *some* parts of their personal sexual map. So it's unfortunately not surprising to me that clients' interactions with SPs reflect that confusion, that feeling of yes-yes-yes-no!, that people can feel about sexual fantasies and the simple role of sexual curiosity in their own lives. I think people are subject to that confusion much more about things that are sexual than anything else. And finally when it comes to stuff like "you must do what I say! I'm paying!" or "can I get your company for a discount?", that's just power games and gawd *knows* those pollute sexual relationships all the time. Sorry you had to go through this, and that you're bound to go through this again with others. Anyone selling anything to the public experiences *some* of this, but I think a lot of it is a unique hazard built into this specific territory; it reflects people's special capacity for weirdness, confusion, and conflict when it comes to acting on their own sexual desires and fantasies.

There's just no predicting someone's breadth of skill, let alone how well you'll click when you meet them, based solely on age. I halfway want to quote Indiana Jones ("It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage!") but that's completely the wrong sentiment, because I'm not talking about wear and tear. :) I'm really talking about the accumulation of experience and wisdom, coupled with simple good social and empathic I.Q. Age isn't the source of these things. Some younger people have that understanding very early on, and other older people don't really develop it until... well... ever. Being in my 40s, I admit that I tend to skew older when choosing an SP -- most of the women I've seen have been in their 30s or 40s. There's less likelihood of a stage-of-life gulf to bridge. I've met a great SP in Toronto in her 50s who I'll absolutely see again on my next trip. On the other hand, one of my best experiences ever was with an SP in her mid 20s who was very much all-grown-up and was fully able to go to all the places I wanted to explore. Ya just can't predict. Best advice: don't try too hard to forecast what an SP's "skills" might be. Pick someone who tickles your fancy (and who doesn't like having their fancy tickled from time to time?), and go meet her without a list, agenda, or specific expectations. Meet the person on the other side of the door, adjust to the flow like you would with anyone else, and enjoy the surprise of learning the unique mix of skills and assets she has to offer. I usually find that if I'm open to it, something that didn't quite work in one aspect of the encounter is made up by something else that works surprisingly well. A missing "skill" might be far outweighed by a set of engaging new ideas and a glowing personality.

"Life is a series of short stories pretending to be a novel." Anonymous. I've liked that one since I first heard it in my 20s, and it's only grown in truth as I've aged. We're inconsistent creatures, and the events in our lives are often disjointed and arbitrary. We try to weave them into something like a consistent narrative as we look back, but... Plus, each of us is a multitude; there are different "us"-es at play at different times, and they don't always make sense to each other.

Yup, absolutely true. And the flip side too -- society limiting a freedom may not affect everyone equally, if it's a thing that some people never need to do. I'm reminded of Charles Dickens ridiculing his contemporaries who would argue "of course it's perfectly fair that there are rules against sleeping in parks or under bridges. The same laws apply to the wealthy as they do to the poor!". Of course the laws only affected the freedom of the poor, because the rich would never need to sleep in a park or under a bridge.

Hmm, I don't think I'd put it that way. Freedom doesn't really mean "do what you want without fear of consequence", nor should it. If you're evil toward someone, you should expect there to be a price. I prefer to live in a world that has consequences. Freedom to me is to be able to, when we know what the consequences of our actions will be, to choose our path AND accept the consequences of those choices.

As RG points out, freedom has its limits: we all start out free to do whatever doesn't impinge on the freedom of others. After all, we're all subject to the same rules. My zone of entitlement ends where yours begins. (I used to daydream as a kid, "what if I could read people's minds? That would be awesome!" Until I thought further and realized it's unlikely I'd be uniquely gifted out of the entire world. Chances are if I could read minds, there would be someone else in the world somewhere who could read MY thoughts. And that would suck.) But freedom isn't the absolute measure of the quality of our lives. Most of the best things in life come with burdens that limit our freedom: friends require mutual loyalty, lovers require that you be mutually faithful (however you define that together). Children require that you support them. A rewarding job with great colleagues still needs you to be there and hold up your end, even on those days you'd rather not. But they're worth it. The most important measure of freedom isn't how few limits we have on our actions, but how free we are to choose those limits for ourselves. Choose the friends you have, the lover(s) you have, whether to have children, or not. Choose your career. Have none of these things imposed on you by others. None of us has been totally free to make ANY choice about how we've conducted our own lives. Our thoughts and inclinations are largely channeled in certain directions by the time we are three years old, by forces we couldn't possibly control. And our interactions with the larger world are greatly shaped by how well we survive our adolescence, subject to social forces some master sooner than others. But we can aspire to maximum freedom of choice within the boundaries we inherited before we were adults, and we can hope to transcend a few of them as we continue to grow further. Finally: some freedom comes at too high a price, from too much safety. Avoiding the risks of life -- ensuring that we're free from pain -- can also leave us "free" from a chance at joy. But once again, real freedom doesn't come from avoiding these risks -- it's from choosing the risks ourselves.

Yeah, lots of people are quiet and mostly lurk entirely by choice, and not because they just need a little prodding to do otherwise. ;) I lurk a LOT more than I post -- usually, I speak up only when I think I have something original to contribute to the discussion. Often others have already said whatever I would have on a given subject, and a "me too!" just to push up my post count isn't generally my style. Hopefully when I write something on CERB, it'll be worth the time you took to read it. When I'm not convinced of that... silencio*. As long as everyone is enjoying themselves and getting something rewarding from CERB, it doesn't really matter whether their experience here is a passive or active experience. * cue creepy "silencio" scenes from Mulholland Drive!

Congrats to Gabriella as well. This husband/wife thing is going to be one of those persistent belief like James Garner and Mariette Hartley in those 70s Kodak commercials, right? Where you have such chemistry that everyone just naturally believes you really are married? And you have to start wearing T-shirts that read "I'm not really Gabriella's husband" and "I'm not really Roaminguy's wife"?? :) (Also, I just *totally* dated myself. Ah, Kodak. It was fun while it lasted.)

Nah, that wasn't the same planet, just similar. It's a prequel, but not a direct prequel. These events are in the neighbourhood of Alien, and precede them in a different place, but that's all.

I actually saw this at a midnight showing on Thursday night/Friday morning, just to do something different. I've been really looking forward to this movie for quite a while, and the marketing campaign did a promising job of setting up an atmosphere of suspense, mystery, and horror, all mixed together with thoughtful underlying themes. But then I read some mixed-to-poor reviews from the earlier opening in the UK so I had lowered my expectations quite a bit. Ultimately the movie was a moderate disappointment, somewhere around 6.5/10. It LOOKS great, and that alone makes it worth seeing in some form. And it's clearly working very, very hard to do interesting things with the character of David. Fassbender does the best job in the film with that character, and I think he's the closest we come to a key to understanding the film (moreso than Rapace's Elizabeth). But that one role can't hold up the rest of the movie. Various actors do the best they can with the material they're given, but it doesn't really gel into a consistent whole. Several scenes don't really move the plot forward at all. Other characters make weird leaps of logic, or declare significant things about the situation without any evidence that we in the audience have seen. Ultimately the story is kind of shallow, characters make weird decisions without explanation, and the threat doesn't really come from a consistent source or follow intelligible rules. Solutions to some of the major problems are more coincidence than character-driven. And I find the last big decision that's made by a character in the movie to be just bizarre. That's all I can say without spoiling like crazy. The movie has two big underlying themes it tries to examine: a) where did we come from, why, and what's the relationship between the creator and the thing created? It tries to deal with these on large scales (for species and their origins) and on small scales (for individuals and their parents/creators/victims). But the movie doesn't really resolve any of these very well, it just shows you a bunch of stuff related to these ideas without taking a position. b) the virtues of self-sacrifice versus greedy self-interest (you can go pretty deep with this one throughout the movie, starting with the very first action of the movie, taken by the first character we see). Again, I can't say much more without spoiling. So ultimately...? I'm glad I saw it, and it was fun in some places. But not at all the grown-up, deeply philosophical, or even just plain scary movie I was expecting. Whatever business it does this weekend, I think it's going to plummet in week two from bad word of mouth.

Well, yeah, that's certainly a messed-up relationship. Not sure what else anyone could say with that information. Did you expect anyone to disagree? :) But I'd still warn against drawing conclusions from this and extending them to all relationships with significant age differences. I remember having an argument with someone I otherwise respected quite a lot because she insisted "all bisexuals are arrogant, sociopathic assholes!". When I disagreed strongly and pressed her on it, she revealed it was because she'd known one guy who was a) bisexual and he was b) an arrogant, sociopathic asshole. We had the "correlation is not causation" argument, but she never could let go of her conviction. A case does not a rule make. EDIT: Hee hee... just makes me think of my favourite "logical fallacy" discussion. Not at all related to this discussion, but...

Yup! That's crazy and it's one of those dumb things I mentioned people do in relationships. I was answering Roamingguy's more general question ("what is your take on May/December romances?"). As for the specific example of THAT relationship -- yup, it's definitely one of those cases were the people involved got it seriously wrong. And now the guy and his kids are paying the price. I'm just saying that it's not a lesson about age differences -- it's a lesson about power differences. Age is just one form. I can't based on RG's example condemn all May-December relationships.

You just can't say for sure -- every relationship is unique. All have their risks. In this case the difference in age becomes one particular factor, sure, but it's just one dimension of the relationship that has to be managed. It doesn't particularly spell doom. The kind of thing you're describing is a power imbalance in the relationship, and that's a very common situation. In the case you describe you can see that it's about age immediately, but other relationships have their own imbalances -- one partner is sexier than the other, wealthier than the other, more confident, smarter, outgoing, wiser, has a better family or more friends... you get the idea. The world is full of people who will do foolish things to keep a partner they perceive as more powerful -- giving away assets, dropping friends or family, moving somewhere they don't want to, or having the proverbial relationship anchor-baby. Power imbalances don't have to doom a relationship though, provided both partners are grown-ups, emotionally secure, and know what they're getting into. A common solution is that minor imbalances in a few different areas just average out well (he's good at THIS, she's good at THAT). The unique problem with the age thing is that it's a ticking bomb that doesn't fully express its costs until time has passed. The way we perceive our lives and our ability to live them well changes as we age, and the couple will always be at least a little out of synch. So yeah, huge potential for stress and misery if it's not handled well. Harder the bigger the age difference, and also if one of the partners is young or simply immature when making the decision. But... there's a lot to be said for caring for the one you love despite those differences, and however today requires of us. Both people just need to be mature and honest and choose to be together with their eyes wide open. After all, even a partner who's the same age or younger can fall seriously ill long-term, and that produces a similar dynamic... but two caring people can still make THAT relationship work. It's impossible to dismiss the relationship just because their ages are different. Yeah, it's a thing, but it just needs careful thought and management, just like a lot of other potential obstacles.

I've always thought it would be smart to find some people who are absolutely certain the world will end on December 21st, and offer to buy their houses from them a few days before the 21st for, say, $5,000. Enough time for them to enjoy the money and think you're wasting your money. Then on December 22nd... PROFIT!

Has anyone covered this yet? I haven't read the whole thread, but this (and of course the entire short=-lived, half-a-season run of the TV series that preceded it)

Nope, not at all, as the replies in the thread show. This is a symptom of a bigger social change. There was a time when some institutions were "bigger than" the individuals that belonged to them, and so people deferred to the expectations of the institution when conducting themselves -- like choosing what to wear. Church was the very top example of this; in a place meant for contemplation of Who We Are and Why We're Here, you dressed to show that for that couple of hours, things weren't all about YOU. That attitude has mostly vanished. Across the board, the individual comes first and institutions second. It sounds like church is now a venue for social networking (well, it's always been that too), but people are dressed to satisfy themselves and express their own priorities (sexuality? pointed indifference?), not those the church they're attending. Most of the time I'm in favour of this change. It's good to move power and choice away from institutions and over to individuals. We don't need to get into the flaws of strict obedience to an exalted religion. Deposing marriage from its throne has also been a big stride forward; now people can leave marriages that are broken, when not so long ago you just stayed because the concept of preserving that institution trumped the needs of the individuals within it. The church squandered the respect people had given it through corruption and creeping irrelevance. So have greedy governments, corrupt and violent police working in thrall to the state, news organizations serving advertisers and demagogues instead of readers and viewers... you name it. Each of those exalted institutions has thrown itself on its own sword through corruption or failure to grow and adapt. But... my concern is that there's nothing to replace them. Nothing that tells us to stop and think about what we belong to, and that there are some things more important than our individual, isolated desires. I don't want the church to come back, but I wouldn't mind if everyone took a couple of hours each Saturday or Sunday morning to meet their neighbours and remember we're not each the center of the universe. Having lost that so entirely makes each of us weaker, and easy prey for those organized and efficient institutions that remain. Which mostly means money-making cabals, exhorting us to buy laundry detergent or a flashy new car. I'm not sure where the answer is. But the symptoms of the problem are everywhere. No, Roamingguy, it's not just you.

I thought the original post made it pretty clear that the offers were unwelcome and intrusive: "E-mails, phone calls, texts. Men have gone so far as to join sites to solicit us their 'help' with these tasks." And as the OP further pointed out, every one of us on this site who is a client represents a "business opportunity" for every MA and SP here, but you don't see them inundating us with calls, texts, PMS, or profile messages offering us their "help ". That something is a "business opportunity" (aka a chance to score some cash off someone) doesn't excuse thoughtless, rude behaviour. That's not being entrepreneurial; that's being a selfish dick. (And yes, in this case very likely in both senses of the word.)

I'm reminded too of the fact that for men, execution by hanging sometimes produces an pronounced erection. Some hanged women also show equivalent signs of physical arousal. It has to do with pressure on the cerebellum by the noose. Which pretty much puts the nail in the coffin (har har!) for the idea that "well if they're aroused, they can't have minded that much!". Arousal and agreement are NOT the same. (This touches slightly, mind you, on the issue of what makes "us" "us".... how exactly our experience of having an independent, conscious mind is generated within our brains, and how much control we really have over our decisions. How much of our mind's mechanism is merely physical and reflexive, just like that "death erection"? Stimulus -> nervous system -> processing -> response, all a simple and somewhat involuntary physical pathway without a real conscious, free-will "decision" anywhere along the way. I happen to be reading a bunch about this right now, but that's another subject for another time.)