This has to be one of my favorite essays yet from you. (And I have a lot of fav's.)
Love is a story. But lately, instead of finding our own stories and letting them unfold, we have written scripts and discard anyone who does not fit that script. As you pointed out, we once got those scripts from the bible. Now, we get them from whatever internet bubble feeds us the right words we so desperately need to hear. Pre-writing our love story is the worst kind of sanitation. We know the ending before it has begun.
I am a Chaplain officiating the marriage of my mentor. In my message affirming their nuptials, I make the analogy that love is the “air” of the relationship and lust is the “oxygen” of a relationship. 100% is unsustainable and ultimately harmful, 0% lust is suffocating. The goal is to keep lust in “breathable portion” (18-21%). When I presented my draft, I was asked to change “lust” to “passion”.
All that to say, reading your post today is spot on and affirms the message I didn’t have scholarly reference for. Please continue to your work.
this was tossed up into my feed by substack. Honestly the title drew me in, but the quality of the writing and subject matter was fantastic, and so you now have a new subscriber. thanks for all your hard work.
Well said! I feel the same about kink, which people seem to also want to sanitize. The big gotcha is a sort of expectation that a dominant woman is hot if she simulates being selfish or mean, but not if she actually behaves in a selfish or mean way.
Taking Mark Anthony and Cleopatra as archetypes, I think humans have all sorts of authentic but dark drives, and that modern kink is therefore - for some people - a framework of harm reduction rather than any sort of play.
This has to be one of my favorite essays yet from you. (And I have a lot of fav's.)
Love is a story. But lately, instead of finding our own stories and letting them unfold, we have written scripts and discard anyone who does not fit that script. As you pointed out, we once got those scripts from the bible. Now, we get them from whatever internet bubble feeds us the right words we so desperately need to hear. Pre-writing our love story is the worst kind of sanitation. We know the ending before it has begun.
I am a Chaplain officiating the marriage of my mentor. In my message affirming their nuptials, I make the analogy that love is the “air” of the relationship and lust is the “oxygen” of a relationship. 100% is unsustainable and ultimately harmful, 0% lust is suffocating. The goal is to keep lust in “breathable portion” (18-21%). When I presented my draft, I was asked to change “lust” to “passion”.
All that to say, reading your post today is spot on and affirms the message I didn’t have scholarly reference for. Please continue to your work.
this was tossed up into my feed by substack. Honestly the title drew me in, but the quality of the writing and subject matter was fantastic, and so you now have a new subscriber. thanks for all your hard work.
Well said! I feel the same about kink, which people seem to also want to sanitize. The big gotcha is a sort of expectation that a dominant woman is hot if she simulates being selfish or mean, but not if she actually behaves in a selfish or mean way.
Taking Mark Anthony and Cleopatra as archetypes, I think humans have all sorts of authentic but dark drives, and that modern kink is therefore - for some people - a framework of harm reduction rather than any sort of play.
Ahhhh fabulous writing, so refreshing and original, thank you.