kitandkat.com

My Dear Kat,

One of the peculiar things about you and I is the sense of change, of progress, of adventure.  Sometimes the externals – doing the crossword, curling up, reading the paper – seem identical, sometimes there is a change in flux – we’re very sexual, or get into a movie-watching jag, or do some activity we haven’t done in ages – but there is always a sense of newness, even within any elements of repetition.

I can only put this down to our ability to be in the present.  One day differs from another the way one page in a book is different from another page of the same book.  They may have the same color, thickness, weight, layout and typeface, but our experience of the two pages is completely different.  Write on!

Kit

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My Dear Kat,

Last night we came together late and just hung out, did the crossword, talked.  We both said how delightfully cosy it was, and so the question arises again, how do we do this?  The scientist would say that we each adjust our expectations and behavior to synchronise with the other, but look as I may, that is not what I see, for if that were the case, I would expect to see compromise, trade-offs, weighing the pros and cons.  I don’t.  Instead, I see a process that is non-verbal, that I don’t “make decisions”, but instead, the activities “come to me”.  But it does feel intentional on another level.  It feels as though we eschew words and thoughts and planning and allow some natural balance to take place.  It is like trusting the us and not letting “words with charge”, to use your memorable phrase, take over.

The result is a feeling of incredible lightness, airiness, freedom, liberty.

Many years ago I had the opportunity to ride rear-seat on a tandem.  I was used to steering on a bike, and I jerked the handlebars so fiercely that the forward rider could not keep the machine in balance.  Neither of us are doing that now.

Kit.

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Dear Kat,

Using the term “100%” reminds me of the phrase “100% commitment”, which has undertones of being trapped, of loss of freedom.  Criminals are committed.  It doesn’t sound fun.

I’m not questioning my commitment, but I am saying it can be a hard sell to many people.  When I’ve talked about 100% before, I was talking about 100% acceptance.  Although there are similarities, it’s not the same as commitment, and we should make this difference clear to avoid commitment phobia.  Our focus is elsewhere.

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Dear Kat,

We have been struggling to put one of the fundamental issues into words.  You used the phrase “100% solution”, meaning that we accept each other 100%, and that this is qualitatively different from 90% or 95% or 99%.  The complete absense of criticism, attacks and control attempts from the other gives a wonderful sense of liberation, of the possibility of being oneself, of acting naturally.

A partner who is only ninety-something percent accepting gives the feeling of being on a leash; you can run free most places, but at some point, a violent tug will occur, so the response is to run cautiously, or not at all.  But at 100%, a transforming quality occurs.

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My Dear Kat,

Last night, when we came together, we once more embarked on that extraordinary sexual journey.

We go into a place of sexual ecstasy that seems independent of what we are actually doing physically; we can arrive there by lying, touching, holding, kissing, and it seems we can remain in that state indefinitely, or at least until we collapse, totally sated.

But here’s the peculiar aspect of it: that it has its own unique quality; it is different every time we’ve made love, and this happens again and again; it is as if there is a huge space there to explore, and each time, we start off with the knowledge of our previous experience.

This may not qualify as erotic writing; there are no bodily fluids, no licking or sucking or stroking or moaning, but it seems appropriate because what we share seems to transcend the simply sexual.  Calling it that doesn’t begin to capture the experience, and though I struggle for descriptions, it is so far beyond words that afterwards, the details are lost to my verbal brain, like a dream that vaporises in the morning.  But my body knows and remembers.

Kit

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My Dear Kat,

We talked yesterday morning and night about our agreement on things both big and small; whether it’s making love or watching a movie, going for a drive or separating and working, we reach a mutual decision without effort.  This happens so regularly that it is a statistical impossibility that we should always want the same things.  What must be happening is that we weigh the importance to ourselves against the importance to the other person and just flow with that, but it happens so naturally and rapidly that we do not notice it.  This sounds like Choice blindness in action.

But how, exactly, are we able to do this when other people can’t?  It does feel like it is a conscious action in some way.  I don’t say that other people are intentionally choosing to disagree, but there must be some pay-off for them; the situation of pain or anger must be, at some level, comfortable and familiar.  So I think the process must be one of seeing that fact, and choosing not to go there.

Another way of phrasing it is to say that neither of us are attached to particular outcomes; there are no sticking points, no areas of friction.  This, of course, is Buddhist non-attachment.

Kit

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My Dear Kat,

This morning we covered so much ground.

• The importance of touch.
• The possibiity of talking instead of being sexual.
• What would happen if we talked for 6 hours?
• Accepting the other rather than reacting.

The subject of touch is interesting.  I hypothesise that people communicate through touch, whether galvanic, chemical, physiological, thermal or otherwise, and that it is understood by some non-verbal part of ourselves.  I wonder how it would affect people having an argument if they were to remain in physical contact during it?  If you had an urge to withdraw or flee, that would be really hard, but it would bring the underlying issues right into focus.

That’s all cerebral guesswork, so let me counter it by saying how much I love being in physical contact with you.  It doesn’t have to be all the time, but to lie in bed with you, touching from shoulder to foot as we talk (or not) is a wonderful comfort.

That makes it sound like an infantile regression, but it doesn’t feel like it.  Instead, it feels like a natural way of being that is lost in every-day life (or my male everyday life, at least), but just happened spontaneously for us from very early days.

The, of course, there’s the actual sleeping together.  We lie in contact the entire night!  I don’t think that happened ever before for me.

Lastly, we’ve observed that a number of other couples who are at peace with each other hold hands or make contact some other way.

Kit

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My Dear Kat,

I have been deeply involved in work for the last few days.  In the past, that has been very threatening to my partners; they interfered, pouted, accused me of withdrawal, demanded more of me.

With you, no.  You give me the space to be myself, do what I want to do, just as you always do.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  The shadow of the past still makes me cautious, makes me check to see how you are, but hallelujah, everything is fine.  That’s why I say thank you.

This all fits right in with our theme of permission, non-interference, allowing the other to be and do whatever they wish.  Maybe it is an emergence from childhood: as we grow up, our parents and teachers admonish us, guide us, teach us to make space for others.  I do think that we have a natural capacity for empathy, but it has to be grown and nurtured, otherwise we get stunted self-involved adults, or worse, sociopaths (though they may have a genetic deficiency).

But this upbringing of rules, rules, rules teaches us also that this is the way that people interact, and we carry this into adulthood, feeling  unconsciously that we have to guide, admonish and control people.  For certain people and on certain occasions, this may be true, but in general, it is possible to leave all that behind; the vast majority of people are benevolent, cooperative and doing the best they can at their present stage of development.

In fact, the whole idea of development is fascinating.  Reading Wilber turned me on to this, but I’ll expand on this another day.

Kit

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Dear Kat,

I want to expand on your post about joint experience.

After making love, we often talk about the experience, and every time, we are in complete agreement on what we have just experienced.  When I talk, you always concur with my descriptions, and furthermore, this is not at all surprising; in fact, the surprise would be if there were any significant differences.  This is true the other way, too;  you describe how it was for you, and I go “Uh-huh, uh-huh” in concurrence.

For events like watching a movie or going to a play, we have also “experienced the same thing”, but in those cases, we often differ in interpretation or meaning; our experience of the event has been mediated by our history and viewpoint.

That’s not what is happening here.  It is as if you and I actually touch, and I don’t just mean physically, but in some other dimensions as well, to use a hackneyed metaphor, and our descriptions of the shape of the surface of contact must necessarily correspond.  (One shape would be the inverse of the other, but that’s a simple mapping.)

That’s rather abstract, mathematical, scientific, but that’s my language, I guess, and as you say, we are engaged in finding a language for this experience.

Kit

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Dear Kat,

I’ve been thinking about our posts on being suited to each other.  There are two aspects to this very necessary prerequisite:

1. You have to know what to look for in the other, and also, what to avoid (I know you don’t like negatives, but I think they’re important here).
2. You have to be that same desirability for the other person.

I’ll tackle the latter first.  I don’t (at this stage, anyway) want a laundry list of behaviors.  I would rather just say “Do as you would be done by”, and point out that this embodies the concept of empathy, of being able imagine oneself in the place of the other, and furthermore, that this is the first step in merging, or union.

So that’s a requirement for the other person’s behavior, too.  There must be much more to work out here – what about preferences, kinks, hobbies, interests, goals, politics?  They may be necessary, too, but I don’t need to go there now.  By the way, I fail miserably at this assessment, or I would never have spent so much time with A____.

Kit

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