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What, exactly, do people mean when they say "own your sexual desire"?

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Lemminkainen
Dan_Brodribb
Gman
Gentleman Johnny
Mel
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The Wisp
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What, exactly, do people mean when they say "own your sexual desire"? - Page 2 Empty Re: What, exactly, do people mean when they say "own your sexual desire"?

Post by The Wisp Tue Oct 07, 2014 9:06 pm

[quote="Gman"]
kleenestar wrote:Aaaaannnnnddddd were back to square one of the "damned if I do, damned if I don't" perdicament..... :-/ So it's either "wait because it's your choice or go foward because it's your choice", which is basically what was said earlier and yet I'm also being told that being too direct is bad but being too indirect is also bad.... so where is the middle ground in all of this?

So, I feel pretty much exactly the same way. I think you can't get around the fact that some people will just not like you or not like something you did no matter what you do. There are two kinds of ways you can cause somebody to dislike you/have negative feelings: some are just a product of the fact that people are all different and we can't read their minds; some are unethical. I feel like, for me, I have to accept that some people will just not like me unless I completely withdraw from the social world. I wonder if you are too caught up in getting everybody to, not like you, but at least not feel any negative feelings whatsoever. A woman being annoyed that you were too forward may just have different values/experiences than you, but there's nothing unethical about that on your end. It's not equivalent to groping somebody's breast without consent, you know?
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What, exactly, do people mean when they say "own your sexual desire"? - Page 2 Empty Re: What, exactly, do people mean when they say "own your sexual desire"?

Post by nearly_takuan Tue Oct 07, 2014 9:27 pm

Gentleman Johnny wrote:Whatever you're going to do, make it your choice and embrace it. Don't sit and wait because you can't do anything. Sit and wait because its the best option available and damn it you're not going to go rushing into the lion's jaws until your sword is back from the blacksmith.

Don't forget it goes the other way, too. When you are ready to take a chance, charge forward without fear. No one ever grew as a person by staying inside their comfort zone.



Incidentally, my driving instructor loves The Karate Kid and I brought up this scene when he talked about the importance of committing to a lane change.

Gman: Maybe break down what the actual problems are with being too direct, too indirect, too stubborn, and too noncommittal.

Too direct usually means overstepping boundaries, ignoring propriety, and just generally being rude or inconsiderate. You're being too indirect if you're not clearly communicating your intent. So the sweet spot on the directness-indirectness axis is to commit to being clear about your intentions/desires without being crude or ignoring the other person's sense of what's appropriate (both for the setting and for your personalities in general).
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What, exactly, do people mean when they say "own your sexual desire"? - Page 2 Empty Re: What, exactly, do people mean when they say "own your sexual desire"?

Post by Gman Wed Oct 08, 2014 5:43 am

The Wisp wrote:
Gman wrote:
kleenestar wrote:Aaaaannnnnddddd were back to square one of the "damned if I do, damned if I don't" perdicament..... :-/ So it's either "wait because it's your choice or go foward because it's your choice", which is basically what was said earlier and yet I'm also being told that being too direct is bad but being too indirect is also bad.... so where is the middle ground in all of this?

So, I feel pretty much exactly the same way. I think you can't get around the fact that some people will just not like you or not like something you did no matter what you do. There are two kinds of ways you can cause somebody to dislike you/have negative feelings: some are just a product of the fact that people are all different and we can't read their minds; some are unethical. I feel like, for me, I have to accept that some people will just not like me unless I completely withdraw from the social world. I wonder if you are too caught up in getting everybody to, not like you, but at least not feel any negative feelings whatsoever. A woman being annoyed that you were too forward may just have different values/experiences than you, but there's nothing unethical about that on your end. It's not equivalent to groping somebody's breast without consent, you know?

Hmmm..... Wisp, I think you hit the nail on the metaphorical head of what I was trying to get at. It's not that I don't understand that there will always will be awkwardness in me and it's not that I can't own it and/or accept it for what it and realize that some will accept it and some won't - that is completley fine by me. I think that my problem more relates to this - I do think that I have a tendency to be as much pleasent as possible and avoid conflict/friction, sometimes to a fault. I remember my parents kind of yelling at me once, after I told them I was giving rides to people all across town, people who weren't exactly friends, but I felt that I wanted to just be nice to them. They told me that I am NOT a taxi and that if I want to give someone a ride, they should adapt to my route and schedule, not the other way around. They were right - some people were kind of using my naievte and my insecurity and thankfully I have improved on that since then.

But like you wrote, I think I kind of DO want people to at least not be negative about me and I think that scares me more than the rejection itself - that somehow being rejected will completley blow my reputation in my social group and no one would want to talk to me ever again. It's pretty obvious that that is a bogus and extreme variety of my anxiety (and again, from being rejected so far, that didn't happen yet so it's safe to say that that isn't true at all) and so I think that my problem with dealing with the ambiguous situations maybe relates to this fear as well.
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Post by fakely mctest Wed Oct 08, 2014 1:49 pm

Gman wrote:But like you wrote, I think I kind of DO want people to at least not be negative about me and I think that scares me more than the rejection itself - that somehow being rejected will completley blow my reputation in my social group and no one would want to talk to me ever again. It's pretty obvious that that is a bogus and extreme variety of my anxiety (and again, from being rejected so far, that didn't happen yet so it's safe to say that that isn't true at all) and so I think that my problem with dealing with the ambiguous situations maybe relates to this fear as well.

This makes me think it's less about owning your sexuality than it is about developing strategies to handle your anxiety.  I super get it, because I have a tendency to catastrophize as well (high five!).

I've always thought that the idea of owning your sexuality was less a collaborative thing where you're with someone of your preferred gender all, "Here is my sexuality, let me show you it" and more an individual effort where you recognize yourself as someone with particular sexual needs.  I think that people who are more interior or contemplative can sometimes have a problem reconciling their brain-selves and their body-selves and the societal dross going around that either enforces the Cartesian split as a binary or places a pretty strict Puritanical framework over feelings and attitudes concerning sex is not helpful in that regard.  Personally, when I went through the process of owning my desires the two most important things that happened were that I recognized that I even HAD sexual feelings (and had a right to them!) AND that I didn't somehow become a different person if/when I indulged in them.
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