Anyone Know Anything About Lube?

THEY have told me that this day would come -- for years.  Ever since I entered into surgically induced menopause, doctors have been clear with me that there would be a time when I would no longer be able to rely on my own natural lubrication to make sexual intercourse a comfortable and pleasant experience.  Frankly, with each passing year, I've allowed myself to believe, just a little bit more, that THEY might have gotten it wrong with that prediction. 

Call me "Pollyanna."

It is seeming though, in the last few weeks, that I am having more and more trouble achieving enough lubrication to make it work well.  The dryness is, surely, uncomfortable for me, but I am thinking it is starting to be an issue for both of us...  the slip and slide seems to be out of business.

Probably, I'm going to need to deal with some kind of artificial personal lubricant product.  And that's a challenge.  I don't know much about lube.  I avoid lube.  It is icky.  Slimy.  Gross.  Back in the day when we were still able to pull off vaginal fisting, we bought an inexpensive, store brand version of KY Jelly -- and then used it by the quart.  It was yucky, but it worked in that situation and got the job done. 

Today, getting to some kind of pretty good sex is a tricky business.  I need to really be able to focus.  I need to be able to feel subtle cues and subtle shifts in muscle tension and friction.  Sticky, gooey, slimey glop is a real distraction in that process.  It makes everything way more difficult.  And... it irritates my girl parts. 

So.  I am hoping that I am just not aware of the really good stuff out there on the market.  I am wishing that there is someone out there who knows the "ins and outs" of lube, and knows the secret to finding one that is both functional and nice to use.  Is there such a product? 

swan

October 22, 2011

A week has come and gone; another seven days; the weather has turned definitively to fall; the first quarter report cards are due in a week; meals prepared; bills paid; the usual round of meetings and groups and therapy completed in its course -- of such is our life.  I am pulled into the writing urge tonight.  Wanting to somehow wrap words around what is, and feeling inadequate to the actual doing of that.

Sin wrote on her blog today about the breadth of purposes that the writing there serves, and she wondered what it might mean that her comments seem to have dropped off.  Is there disapproval in the silence?  Are people tired of hearing about it?  What is going on?  I know the feeling.  When one writes this type of blog, a mixture of sex and daily happenings and mental meanderings, it is hard to know where to pull the curtain -- and easy to feel the weight of judgement.

One new recommendation from our therapist is that we acquire and go through a workbook about post traumatic stress together.  So, Master ordered us three copies -- they will arrive next week, and we'll begin that study together.  She is the one resource that we've acquired in this passage that truly does seem to be positive and helpful.  She is utterly accepting of our family.  She works to understand our dynamic.  She gives every sign of being honestly and sincerely in our court -- appreciative of our efforts to love in a unique way in a world that is not always supportive of different relationship styles.  We are coming to understand, with her help, that while we are certainly dealing with the aftermath of the events of last fall and last winter, there were underlying issues resulting from childhood abuse that set the stage for that to be the "perfect storm" in our lives.  She is clear that nothing that ensued in terms of the interventions and involvements of the legal system was appropriate or helpful -- and has set herself to help us find a way to deal with it and move forward in spite of all of that.

We were touched by many of the responses of our readers to our latest crisis.  The gentleness with which some touch our lives here is remarkable and a gift that we have no way to ever reciprocate.  Some of you seem to understand that we don't need lectures, reprimands, "I told you so's," accusations, judgements, or blame.  Some of you really do seem to have an instinct for being tender with us.  To find that there are people who will simply stand with us; hold us; give us their support is ...  There just are no words.  Thank you.

Of course, the flip side is that some just cannot seem to resist the snide comment.  Some cannot stop themselves from taking sides and trying to stir up battles between the three of us.  Some are quite certain that they know what we ought to do, and they are just peeved when their unasked for advice goes unheeded.  Some are clear that we are people of low character who deserve what has happened to us.  Some, I am sure, are praying fervently for our ultimate downfall.  And, what is more, those are the folks who insist that when we object to their consistently negative input here, we are the ones who have it wrong.  They are quick to suggest that we "suck it up," or quit being here, or take it private, or only write what THEY would write, or...  Everyone of them is an expert it would seem.

We are not experts.  We are ordinary people with ordinary lives who have fallen into an extraordinary mess. No doubt, there is some significant part of the "blame" for the mess that belongs squarely on our shoulders.  That would be the opinion of those who are sure that we "made our own bed."  What we have learned, in the last year, spans a whole range of disciplines.  We've looked into what the science says about addiction, and trauma, and the workings of the brain.  We've picked up the tarot, and tried to figure out "The Power of Now."  We've gone together through all the facets of the rehab program, and that continues.  One thing that we've been told over and over and over is that alcoholism is a disease -- like any other, and that is an interesting and somewhat helpful notion.  Except that -- It is the only disease we know of that you can get yelled at for having (and I have done my share of that yelling, to my shame).  It is the only disease for which the sufferer is subject to arrest, trial, enormous fines, and incarceration.  There is no other disease that is "treated" by forced participation in bogus religious brain washing, ritual, and practice against one's will.   I know of no other disease that exposes the victim to ridicule, humiliation, and public censure like alcoholism.  We may find our way through this in time.  We may survive all the impacts that have come about as a result of our family's encounter with those who "protect and serve" in our community.  We may manage to come intact through our required association with the AA cult to which we have been sentenced (in absolute denial of the constitution of the US).  We may.  Time will tell.

Whatever becomes of us, our world will be forever different.  We will have learned a great deal about ourselves and each other.  We will have learned just how strong we really are.  We will have fought and raged and cried and laughed.  We will have learned who our friends are, and we will have learned that some only seemed like friends when things were good and easy and sexy.  We are a long way from the end of this road.  We've only just begun to find our way out of the murk.  There is not going to be much lightness here for the foreseeable future, but for those with the strength to bear with pain and growth, I bet there will be something to see in time.

swan

Better

Tonight.
We are some better.  Things have settled.  The weekend insanity seems to have passed on, and we are tired and tentative.  It feels as if each of us is peering out from behind our protective cover, like shy and timid forest animals.
We are a little befuddled by the suddenness of the storm that crashed over us; brought on by seemingly small things; convoluted and obscure and senseless -- and no less painful for all of that.
We survived.  Again.  Intact.  Still all here; altogether.  It seems a miracle -- and what is that we wonder...
So the blackness is gone from this place again.  We are, still, The Heron Clan.  A bit older, and no claim to wiser.  A lot more battered and beaten up.  Walking a path that makes no sense to us; that leads to where we cannot know; that seems fraught with hazards and barely imagined risks.  We are feeling clumsy, unsure, and awkward -- and so no graceful herons in flight; we'll stick (for now) with the image of the funny, rumpled baby heron.  He seems to epitomize our current ruffled state.
We've shared as we are able here.  Not fully, to be sure.  There aren't enough words to paint the picture of this passage in its entirety.  We write as and how we may here depending on our capacities in the moment.  Some of our days are better than others.  Sometimes we are stronger and wiser than others.  Sometimes we see more clearly than others.  We are not very sturdy.  We are tender.  We are touchy.  We are easily wounded.  We'd be grateful for gentleness and kindness.  Negative, judgmental, critical and confrontational messages are not helpful to us.  That is the honest truth.
Tonight, the fall has arrived with a great stomping line of storms. It is blustery and rainy and cool.  We are tucked in warm and safe.  He and I took a walk when I got home from school.  We debated about what to do for dinner; then ordered pizza delivered, and enjoyed our simple meal together.  We are sitting watching the Republican presidential debate -- because we remain political junkies.  The cat is curled up on the middle cushion of the couch, purring contentedly.  The dishes are done.  The bills are paid.  Except for our various and sundry aches and pains, we are in pretty good health.  There is not one thing about our life right now, in this moment that is horrible or awful.  Around the country and around the world, there are plenty of people who suffer and struggle in fear and desolation and pain.  We know how truly lucky we are.  We are coming to hope that the hurts of the last year may fade away in time.  In time...

swan

Horrible Weekend

It has been an awful weekend.
Criticisms lodged here by various commenters set off a firestorm of bitterness and depression.
I can't imagine what people think their negativity achieves.
I am so tired of it all.
If it were up to me, I'd delete this whole blog.
He won't allow that.

swan

Comment Commentary

weirdgirl thank you for commenting even when you feel uncertain how your input will be received. It takes courage to do that in the interest of trying to be helpful.

I do find it difficult though to follow your reasoning. sue has responded to morningstar's input that I should discuss how hypothetically I would have preferred for sue and t to have handled their interactions with the police about me last October, November, and January. sue explained that we decline to do that. We can't change what happened in any of those incidents right wrong or in between. Nor can we change whatever harm resulted or enhance any benefit that ensued either.............for any of us. We could though revisit recriminations, that we all have had months of to no end, and that we work to find a way to end. God knows I would have had those events handled differently if I had been able to control sue's or t's decisions. How could my expressing that yet one more time help us...............or do anything but further wound our family. It would achieve nothing for any of us. You feel that would have value. We disagree. We have enough real issues to live through without wallowing about in hypothetical actions we wish had occurred.

Having said that you believe it would be helpful for us to do that, you then go on to decry my reliving what happened to me (or as you put it, what I "perceived" to have happened to me...............which makes me wonder whether you question if I know what happened). Why is it that it would be helpful to replay what sue and t did in light of what I wish had happened, but it is harmful if I relive what actually happened to me? I re-experience what happened to me when I was in police custody and in jail several times each day. These were not hypothetical events. They were real. The feelings and thoughts that well up when that occurs to me are not mere unhappy memories. They are experiences that repeat in my consciousness and push other thoughts and feelings from my mind when I am awake and asleep. It would be wonderful if they would stop. Can you really believe that I am so stupid that I wouldn't stop thinking about them if there was some way I just could? Gosh why didn't I think of that! Perhaps you have the new cure for post traumatic stress. I shall have to ask my therapist next week, "Gee, why didn't you just tell me to stop thinking about it and move on."

You go on to posit that by now I should be enjoying the "quiet treasures" of sobriety. I had quiet treasures in my life. Many of them are detailed in posts here over the years but they were before my sobriety. There have been none since last October 28. You suggest that I should enjoy these quiet treasures despite the horrific way that sobriety was forced on me. That reminds me of reasoning that perhaps someone who has been violently mugged and robbed should somehow enjoy the opportunity to experience the quiet treasures of poverty. I hope I have quiet treasures in my life again. They have not existed since the end of last October.

As for whether I will drink again I am working on that by deciding I will drink again ........just not today. The decision to drink in the future quiets a huge internal debate that I have, and helps me feel not quite so humiliated and subjugated by having no choice whether or not to drink.............other than prison. The decision to not drink today assures my continued sobriety.......................and as painful as it is to acquiesce to any of the 12 step mantra......"one day at a time."

I'm glad you are so joyous in your sobriety. I want my/our life to be joyous again . If that joy is in sobriety fine, I will perhaps get past what has happened to be able to enjoy life even without freedom to decide how I live it. I find myself thinking of an interesting reversal of the mind techniques alcohol rehabilitation professionals recommend you use when you are tempted to drink. They tell you that if you are tempted to drink again because you are thinking of how we enjoyed drinking at times in the past, you should "complete the tape," that is we should remember the horrid consequences that befell you, that brought you to alcohol rehab in the first place, and remember too, that will happen to us again if we return to drinking. I am finding myself these days imagining my life going forward as it is living in sobriety, and AA meetings, and aftercare meetings, and step work and ...............................that I need to play it forward....to complete the tape. If this is the life I have left, I think my thoughts on my death bed are hardly going to be that I am grateful to have lived.

Tom

Polyamory Observations #19

The polyamorous community has its own particular, and sometimes rather peculiar, vocabulary.  I suppose that is true of almost any subgroup that  shares some esoteric interest -- we have to talk to each other, and since we are animals that are wired for language, we invent the words that work for us.  Talk with poly people, and you will hear them describe their relationships with words like quad, triad, web, network, clan, and tribe.  We'll give you words meant to evoke the geometry that we perceive in our relatedness:  hinge, vee, triangle, and line.  We'll name our hierarchies, and we'll mess with the labels for our partners, referring to them by ordinals (like primary, secondary, and tertiary), or the cute appelation for plural spouse-types:  spice.

Much of our inner-circle jargon is borrowed from the larger culture, and tweaked to serve our purposes.  That is not true, however, of the word "compersion."  Compersion is the gold standard of poly loving.  It is understood to be the feeling of pleasure experienced when one's love finds pleasure in another lover.  There's a lot of good writing out there about the theory and practice of compersion -- like this.

I've mostly avoided discussions of the how to's of polyamory; choosing instead to share what the practice looks like inside of our household.  There's no "poly for dummies" lurking in the archives here.  I've particularly eschewed expounding on the idea of compersion because, frankly, I suck at it.  THAT you can find in our archives -- over and over and over.

To be fair, although it is sometimes true that compersion is paraded out in poly circles as a "should do," most of us understand that compersion may or may not be the first response to the appearance of a new love in the life of a partner.  There are poly people who claim that they do not experience the emotion of jealousy.  Others, though, acknowledge that compersion develops over time as the underpinnings of jealousy recede.  We know, intellectually, that jealousy is often the over-arching emotion when a person is experiencing fear, loneliness, anger, and uncertainty at the start of a partner's new relationship.  I seem to drag through that development phase really, really, really slowly -- irritating the crap out of Master in the interim.

Now, I am finding that there's a new wrinkle in my uneasy dance with compersion.  I've come to ponder the possibility that if He were to find a new love -- a new play partner -- then maybe He would work out some of His current ambivalence about His Dominance there, and so be restored to me.  Yeah.  Compersion with a selfish bent -- "find another lover and work this thing out so I can have more of what I want from our relationship."  Maybe that isn't really it (compersion).  Or maybe it is...  Maybe that's what all those proponents of the "compersion" miracle keep trying to tell us -- set the partner free to love fully, and that love will come back to you.  Enlightened self-interest.

Hmmmm...   Interesting.

swan

Let's Try This Again

Commenting on my last post, Kate said...

"You've been very clear that you do not wish to hear from anyone unless they are supportive and encouraging, and that any opinions short of unconditional positive regard are not wanted."

No.  Kate.  You have it wrong.

Support and encouragement are, of course always welcomed.  We have been through a very long, very difficult series of events, and those who find it in their hearts to hold us up are treasured.  Is there any human anywhere who doesn't appreciate being treated kindly when life seems challenging and dark?  We are no different, whatever you might think of us.

We do not, however, limit the participation here to only those commenters who are "supportive and encouraging."  Not everyone that comments here sees things exactly as we do, and there are surely those who hold ideas and opinions that vary from our own.  If the hallmark of that "unconditional positive regard" that you find so objectionable is a reluctance to confront us and offer differing opinions, then some of our longest-standing, most reliable commenters seem to be lacking in that quality.  They have no problem at all suggesting that we try something different, or encouraging us to investigate another path, or asking us to consider things from an alternative perspective.  We really don't have a group of rubber stamp friends.

What we do have is a group of people who understand the notion of respect.  These are decent people who understand that nothing is served by mean-spirited and abusive commentary.  They come here as visitors, and they behave like visitors.  They mind their manners.  They consider whether the things they want to say will contribute in some positive way to the dialog, and if the answer is no, then they don't say it.  They do not call names.  They do not try to set us against each other.  They don't take sides.  They own their own opinions, and they offer advice for what it is worth (taking no offense if we choose to not take what is offered).

I really don't know why this is so hard for some people to understand.  This is our place. We created it years ago.  We've kept it going with some 1200 posts to date.  We've poured our hearts out here, and we've nurtured this through a lot of ups and downs.  To us, this place is important and valuable.  It is a refuge; the place where we can safely pour out the confusions and worries and hurts along with the joys and triumphs and giddy moments.  We do defend it.  We reserve the right to have it be what we choose to have it be.  And... we fully understand that some people may not want to "play" inside of those constraints.  That's OK.  No one should feel compelled or required to be here.  There are probably hundreds and hundreds of blogs out there.  If somewhere else seems more congenial, then we will wish you well.

There are a few cyber denizens who seem drawn to our blog, and perhaps others.  They cannot seem to manage to say anything positive, or even polite.  They must find fault.  They are driven to be insulting.  They are disrespectful and ill-mannered.  They seem convinced that we somehow NEED them to point out our faults, failings, and pure fuck ups -- that their clear perception of our imperfections will, all by itself, endow us with the magic to turn everything around and convert us to the right path.

I imagine that these people would not accost some total stranger, out in a public place, and lambaste them with obnoxious and abusive nastiness.  Consider -- who among us would walk up to someone in a crowded grocery and begin to rail at them about being enormously fat and slovenly and disgusting?  Doing that would create a scene-stopping social crisis.  The target of such rudeness would be entirely justified in taking whatever actions were available and appropriate to protect themselves and end the assault.   We have commonly agreed upon social norms that almost always prevent that sort of scene from happening -- in real life.  Here, though, on the Internet, it seems that some forget (or choose to ignore) the customs of civil interaction.  Most often, here, the worst and rudest commenters will not only break all the rules, but then they will insist that it is their right to do that.   "How dare we react negatively to their abuse?" they will wonder incredulously.

That sort of thinking just causes me to shake my head in wonderment.  So, I am afraid, Kate that you will continue to be offended and disappointed in our recalcitrant insistence on having things our way here in our place.  I imagine our opinions and attitudes will continue to annoy and irritate you.  Maybe you will keep on coming here for some unfathomable reason.  We won't move to stop you...  And even when your opinions differ from ours, as today's so clearly did, we'll respect that.  Just keep it civil.  I don't think that is too much to ask.

swan