Hard Questions.
I am no longer young, though I’m a long way from old, and I have spent my adult life asking myself – and sometimes the world – what I call ‘the hard questions’.
Quick blast of theory: I’ve said many times that the most dangerous lies are the lies we tell ourselves. They’re often the most insidious, too – from the ‘one more biscuit’, ‘one more cigarette’, ‘one more drink’ won’t hurt lies of the dieter, the smoker and the alcoholic through to the ‘well no doesn’t always mean no’ and ‘women like it a little bit rough’ or ‘he keeps hurting me but he loves me and I know I can change him’.
They’re all lies, all self-deceptions, and I believe we accommodate them in part because to the human being the brain is an environment which, like any environment he/she lives in is one that we want to keep ‘comfortable’. It’s the furry gonk, the family photos, the plant in the isolated workstation, the cushions on the sofa, the carpets underfoot, hot food and drink at home, the choice of color on the walls, the hangings and the bedding. We adapt our environments routinely to make them comfortable and I believe the brain is little different.
So we tell ourselves self-comforting lies. If we’re rich and powerful we convince ourselves that poverty is not our problem, if we’re weak and afraid we convince ourselves that we are better than the person of different race or color, creed, gender or sexual orientation.
And the only way to get round this is to ask ourselves hard questions.The first of which always needs to be “do I believe this because it is true, because I have genuine evidence, knowledge that it is true, or do I believe this because – fundamentally – I want to.
The answers are not always easy to deal with. In the next instalment I’m going to share with you some of my questions and particularly some of my answers.
See you soon.
4 responses to “Hard Questions.”
Leave a Reply
© Information
All works by RV Raiment appearing on RV Raiment | Erotic fiction and images are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at rvraiment.wordpress.com.
R V Raiment 
Well, first of all, what is wrong with consensual cybersexual activities? Interesting piece of writing.
Hello Assia, and thank you for responding.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing wrong with consensual cybersex activities. I think cybersex has potential for a very great deal of good and my own experience of it has been very pleasurable. It does, though, have a catch 22. Because so many men will say anything, do anything, indulge in any fraud or deception (or even self-deception) in order to obtain sexual gratification, it is risky for a woman to accept men’s words at face value (I am speaking in hetero terms, of course, and I’m sure the same catch 22 arises in the gay and other communities). For many men, a woman in pain, a woman circumstances have made vulnerable, appears to be an easy target. Flattery, cajolery and a clever pretense of sympathy, solicitude and understanding are too easily employed to gain a level of intimacy which, if the woman really knew the man concerned, she would not offer. Images and information may be exchanged which are potentially damaging, given the wrong exposure.
Women, too, frequently have an expectation of a cyber relationship, just as they have of day-to-day romantic/sexual relationships. There is often a desire for exclusivity and, as has happened to me on at least one occasion, my cyber lover came to demand an exclusivity that was never, ever on the table, because she had fallen so much ‘in love’ with me. We both survived the inevitable break-up, but neither of us was in a period of deep vulnerability at the time. Had either of us been, the end of that relationship could have begun to assume the proportions of the end of a physical/romantic relationship and could have been deeply painful for one or both of us. ‘No strings’ is often a self deception, more easily entered into than abandoned.
The lady in my thoughts when I wrote the post has experienced a profound tragedy and, relating to what I have just written, was concerned that my real interest in her was solicitude rather than in the color of her underwear. Were I one of the exploiters and were she to gain real value from my support, I’d be too likely to abandon her if she did not meet that hidden agenda and she would be the one to be betrayed and suffer.
That exploiter isn’t who I am, fortunately, but I am glad when women are at least wise enough to question. Hope that makes sense.
I understand. Personally, I only do the cybersex thing with the person I am in love with, when I am far away. I respect the people who enjoy doing it with strangers, and I have also been single and more inclined to meet new people in the past. I think the key issue here is TRUST. Yes, LUST with TRUST, I´m all for that.
xo
Assia
Hello again,
Lovely to hear from you.
As may emerge in later posts, my perceptions are possibly a little different. I take enormous pleasure in giving pleasure – it’s the reason I write and, if and when I enter into a cybersex relationship – it is the reason I do so.
For me, the sex act itself seems to be somewhat over-rated, so my cyber-whatever-it-is has more to do with being supportive, sharing gentle intimacy, coming as close as one can, in many ways, to the the hug. It’s the things which according to many women are more the pre-coital and post-coital pleasures – the lasting pleasures of humans truly relating to each other,rather than merely indulging a mechanism. Things to do with tolerance, patience, acceptance and, on a particular level, with love. That’s how I see it anyway, though I could always be mistaken or deceiving myself.
Perhaps what I value most is that trust to which you refer, and in order to deserve that trust I seek to meet any needs of friends that I can legitimately meet.
Like I said, lovely to hear from you,
Richard