Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Cuddle world

I recently had the privilege of spending a week with a group of (non-asexual) people where the social norm was that cuddling was allowed. Where emotional and physical intimacy and openness were welcome. Where hugs were freely given and received. Where it was okay to gaze at each other and even spoon with each other and it did not mean "I want sex". It meant "I feel affectionate and want to share it with you, if you want it too." And because that was the understood norm, and well, also because the people involved in this were pretty awesome and having-their-shit-together specimens, there was a lot of freedom and very little neurosis around touching. I felt so at home. Yes, it is possible. I even came to a point where I had my fill of group cuddling and wanted to step away. I'd always suspected that I would be the cuddle-craziest in a situation like that, but turns out I wasn't. I discovered it was possible to feel "I've had enough". And I feel fulfilled and encouraged by the whole experience. That humans can be that loving with each other without the manipulation of sexual and predatory and possessive games. What joy.

5 comments:

  1. !!! I would have figured that was just a myth! Wow. Congratulations!

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  2. Sounds excellent. I know that "enough cuddling" warm feeling all too well. Its frustrating in shortsight but I find that when I relax it really is all good.

    I think I know some of those people and have yet to hang out with them despite many opportunities. I have a fear that my heterosexual-sexual conditioning may sneak up if I were in such a situation causing an emotional tumult instead of a pleasurable weekend. But this post is reassuring. My fear is ...illogical. Maybe I'll uphold the next invitation.

    Plus over the past few weeks I've been watching my mind and reactivity in public, and when I'm with others, squishes and friends. I've found it's fairly simple to catch the "predatory and possessive", objectifying thoughts in their initial stages of generation. It's a dirty feeling. But when I spent some time with my squish I was uber aware of the mind's tendency to objectify and sexualize and felt as though I was operating with mostly my logical mind. I managed to keep it clean and asexual without too much effort...i'm still trying to figure it out through practice. and i may have a long way to go because the majority of my asexploration has been theoretical, psychic.

    did you have that trouble, too? where you felt like you had to retrain your mind?

    (sorry for blogging at your blog :P)

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  3. Hey Raymo. Good to hear from you. You know I'm all for letting conditioning sneak up and looking at it. Maybe even expressing it out loud. So I don't really relate to "managing to keep it clean and asexual". What I really want (and am also afraid of at the same time) is, if sexual attraction comes up, to have it laid on the table, and sit in the discomfort. But to answer your question, with these particular people very little conditioning was being triggered because it was so clear to me that I wasn't being looked at as prey. A little fear came up about what wrong messages I might be sending, but it was negligible. And yes, the mind has been trained to interpret things in a sexual way and will come up and pose its own questioning about what is happening. That's why I don't find the logical mind a particularly useful tool in such situations. When the mind wants to find out what is happening by referring to its past conditioning, I see it as a signal that it's time to sink into the body and check there about what's really happening.

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  4. I definitely agree, the logical mind is a tool best reserved for other situations. I guess I've trained myself to use it to avoid or veil fear. But fear of what? What can reasoning veil? I think I can cite two incidences:
    1) Sneakiness of sexual conditioning, as opposed to asexual Being
    2) Squish's sexuality (oriented) and respective conditioning, which I sensed in the conduct and dynamics of our time together.

    I'm unsure whether their conditioning and experiences caused me to seem predatory, or wheter I actually was being predatory. Or if there was any predation! Well, there were specific factors that could have sexually charged our rendezvous.

    ah, I'm doing it right now... the logical slicing..ugh...I think you're right. I need to sit with my feelings without intellectualizing the situation. Anyway, such thought processes are neurotic and completely unZen. I should have caught that right off the bat.

    So... practice for the next couple of weeks:
    Rely less on logical mind and sink into body more often.

    Thanks Trix, you're great! :)

    ((Epiphany: Squish and I were running on two differing dynamics. I was in "cuddle mode", while they were in another mode: not cuddling and not squishy, probably sexual and defensive (a psychosexual, social condition of "prey", embedded in (self-)identity as ... "prey" or predator in other instances) again... I apologize for blogging at your blog ...it's probably going to happen again and again)

    <3 Ray

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