Children and Relationships

Hola Everybody,
I will submit that when things are at their most challenging is when we most need to be vigilant and most need to apply the principles we live by. All this can very easily devolve into a huge mess -- or a bigger mess. 

A dear friend once asked, about the following, so imma try. But remember: I don't even own a cat!

Dating and our Children

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
 -- Khalil Gibran

About half of marriages in the US end up in divorce. Of the half of the people who stay married, 80% state that they are unhappy in their marriages.

Think about that for a moment… 

One consequence is that the odds are that you will more than likely date someone with children from a previous marriage. Personally, I have dated maybe two-three women in the past ten years who were childless. Children present yet another dynamic in newly forming romantic relationships and it is one that cannot be ignored. You have kids, you are still vital and you want to date.

At a previous job, I became the unofficial “therapist” for a select group of my co-workers until I put a stop to it (it got out of hand). One day, a co-worker came rushing into my office obviously upset.

“Do you think I have baggage, Eddie?” she asked.

I was like, Huh?

She explained that another co-worker informed her that because she had two kids, she had “baggage.” I found the idea so preposterous that I laughed, which made my co-worker cry. She had taken the observation seriously. After assuring her that any man worth her time would never see her children as “baggage,” she walked away feeling a little better, if not firmly convinced. In fact, I do think there are people who consider children as baggage. It is true.

For those of us recently divorced, we may feel that we will never love another again. Or, as my co-worker, you may feel that your “baggage” may preclude you from remarrying. Though many divorced people claim that they never want to get married again, statistics show that vast majority do remarry (proving the cliché about eternal optimism). Chances are that at some point you will feel ready to date again and will want to enter into a new relationship. As you explore the territory of new relationships, there are some questions you may find yourself asking and stages you can expect to go through.

The question put to me was thus:

How will children impact my relationships?

First off, your children, no matter what their age, are the first casualties of any failed relationship and it will take time for them to accept new ones. In order for this to happen, you need to communicate honestly and openly with them. Explain that you are beginning to date again because this is what adults do (face it: even the most ardent breeders need nookie). Most importantly, children need to know that a new relationship does not mean that you will love them any less.

At first, you may want to protect your children from confusion or anxiety by dating discretely and occasionally. Some people don't understand that it's not necessary to introduce every new date to their kids. Instead, you might wait until your new relationship becomes serious. It will certainly be confusing to your children if there is a parade of new people who come in and out of your life and, consequently, theirs as well.

When there is someone special in your life, explain to your children that you care about this person very much and hope they will get to know each other. Don't expect your children to embrace your new partner as a new father or mother figure -- this can make them feel guilty or disloyal to their other parent. Finally, give them time to adjust to your new relationship, and make sure that the children feel confident that they will get plenty of your love and attention, regardless of whether or not you are in a relationship.

The other side to this equation is that you will have to accept the fact that the biological mother/ father of your lover's children will always be a part of your life. This is an inescapable and sometimes unpleasant fact. Though it may be next to impossible, you're going to have to find a way to deal with that person. I'm always fond of saying that love ain't a feeling, it's an act of will. If you truly love your partner and their children, you will make that commitment work -- somehow. There are so many issues here, it's hard to stay on track, but another impact is being an effective step-parent. If you're in a relationship with a person who has children, somewhere down the line you will have to shape the influence you will have on that child's life. In many cases, you will called upon to act as a parent only to have to step back when the time calls for it. This is not an easy task, to say the least.

One last note: I find it offensive when women (and to a lesser extent, men) allow the romantic partners in their lives parent their children. I'm not talking about long-term, committed relationships, but relationships that phizz out after a year or so. When you commit to a relationship as a parent, you're also committing your children to that relationship and it isn't fair that a series of what are essentially strangers parent your children. That's a major impact of having children: they seriously limit how you do relationships.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

The Friday Sex Blog [Childhood Sexuality]

Hola mi Gente,

It's supposed to be a great weekend. Personally, I've spending he bulk of my free time looking for a place to live. Again, if you know of anyone renting a studio or room, please let me know.

Have a great weekend!

Raising Children as Sexual Beings

And I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every Child may joy to hear.

-- William Blake (1757–1827) Songs of Innocence

Throughout most of Western history, children have been brought up as innocent, asexual beings. But the fact is that children are most certainly not asexual. All the sexual organs capable of providing pleasure are present and children are sexual creatures from birth. Of course, I’m not proposing that theirs is the same sexuality we know as adults, but it is nonetheless a form of sexuality.

Freud was almost burned at the stake for essentially saying the same thing. 

The baby playing with your breast is at least sensual if not sexual. The two-year-old who crawls into bed between Mommy and Daddy is sexual, albeit not in the same capacity, nor the explicit sexual intent of an adult. The five year-old girl who dresses up and sits on her father’s lap kissing him and asking him if he will marry her when she grows up, is sexual. The seven-year-old, who is masturbating, probably to orgasm, is sexual. The eight year-old prancing around in blissful innocent nakedness is sexual. These are all examples of children passing through learning stages on the way to evolving into adult sexual beings. Many would find what I just wrote disturbing and I would refer those to my previous postings on sexual repression. The fact remains that some of the above behavior is a mimicking of Mommy and Daddy and some from natural bodily curiosity. Whatever the case, it is all sexual though not necessarily with the adult’s awareness or emotional capacity of what sexuality means.

The major problem in childhood sexuality has always been the adult’s own hang-ups, discomfort, and embarrassment with sex. There is the tendency to ignore children’s sexual questions and behaviors, a tendency to believe that we don’t have to answer children’s sexual questions because they couldn’t possibly know what they are asking. This serves to deny the child’s sexuality because of the adult’s own uneasiness. The consequence, of course, is that the child gets the message that she is asking an improper question that her parent disapproves of, therefore the child will stop risking her parent’s rejection or anger, keep quiet, and wonder silently to herself.

Meanwhile, the child feels embarrassment, shame, and, worst of all, remains ignorant of sex, many even reaching adulthood experiencing excessive sexual inhibitions, the inability to orgasm, or the experience of an unwanted pregnancy.

Modern neurological research has shown that our physiology is like a feedback loop. In other words, our bodies are wired for touch and relationships. This is why Eastern philosophies stressing that we are not at all separate sacks of flesh, but part of a web of reality are so on point. Cuddling, demonstrations of affection, kissing, etc., all actually have a direct impact on a child’s brain structure. For any interested in learning more about this I recommend the elegantly written A General Theory of Love.

Physical contact is essential for children. In many ways it’s even more important than food. Studies have long shown that children in orphanages, for example, who received adequate nourishment but were not held, cuddled, kissed, and caressed, could not thrive and often became ill. But in our culture, it is common to discontinue physical contact as the child grows older, especially with sons. Then, after marriage, we’re supposed to miraculously respond emotionally and physically without inhibitions. This is true of both men and women raised in household in which contact was taboo and emotional unavailability was the norm. What was initially natural for them as children was conditioned out of them as they grew older.

Many of us were raised in families in which touching was expressly forbidden and so we pass this down to our children. Others may be terrified of any sexual fantasies causing them to maintain an emotional and physical distance in an effort to repress unacceptable sexual feelings. Believe it or not, sexual feelings for our children are normal and begin early. Many mothers, for example, report having such fantasies at least occasionally.

There’s a considerable difference between sexual fantasies and obsessive ideation or acting out on them. That’s not what I’m talking about here. Acting them out will be extremely detrimental to the child, to say the least, while having fantasies is harmless. It has been my observation that repressing such thoughts often result in increasing the likelihood of acting out. This is why I always say that repression is not morality. Once we push aspects of our sexuality into the shadows, they emerge later as overwhelming and largely subconscious compulsions.

There is no reason to keep children from knowing that sex is an enjoyable, pleasurable activity; that sex is for fun first and for babies second. It is ridiculous (not to mention developmentally detrimental) to deny the physical side of a loving relationship. It is important for children to see their parents embrace, kiss, cuddle, and act affectionately toward one another. In our culture, however, this does not mean making love in front of the children, though if you’re a parent you’re probably aware of the fantastic ability young children have at opening up doors at the most inopportune moments. It might be good to let your child know that you make love in the privacy of your bedroom; that during that time you would rather not be disturbed and any questions or problems can wait until afterward. 

To treat sex with dignity and love rather than shrouding it in mystery and shame is an excellent way of instilling a child with a healthy sexual attitude. Children’s sexual exploration is like all other areas of exploration. For the child it is the primary way of learning about her environment and how to make a place for herself within it. Exploration can include a girl urinating while standing up like a boy, wearing make-up like mother, playing doctor with other boys and girls down the street, and later on even exploring sexual feelings with a girlfriend.

Physical and playful relationships with two or more girls or two or more boys is a more common than we like to admit and a natural part of the growing up process. It does not mean that the child is heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. Each child will have the chance to grow into its sexual orientation later in life. This experimentation is a part of the developmental process for many children and not a cause for alarm or worry. One should work hard not to have the child feel ashamed about the expression of budding sexual feelings.

As adults, we do the most harm when we bring our own guilt, shame, and sexually dysfunctional baggage to bear on our children’s’ upbringing.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Evolution's End

Hola mi Gente,

Sometimes I read stuff I’ve written in the past and I wonder, Who wrote this? LOL This was written some years ago.

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Evolution’s End

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.

-- Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

I think people who know me are under a false impression that I don’t watch TV. Actually, I watch tons of TV. My TV is on if I’m home. I watch a lot of garbage too: shit like Miami Vice reruns (don’t do it)!

I think people are under a false sense of security, thinking that if they don’t watch TV that they are somehow immune from its influence. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a theory, for example, that an element of a culture or behavior -- what some psychologists call memes -- can be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means. For me, this means that unless you have been totally deprived, you are not immune from the larger external forces that shape our culture. I actually think keeping yourself ignorant of what goes on the boob tube is probably not a good strategy if you want to understand, say, how collective consent is manufactured.

While we all like to think we’re different, or smarter, or more unique, we are not. Like it or not, we are, in many respects, just like the next person, statistically just as prone to social pressure as the average Jane. Doubt me? Well, I'm not in the mood to get all that deeply into it, but I’m sure you throw away more shit than you’re conscious of -- whether you want to or not. As a society, we let out a collective fart that’s choking the rest of the world. Scientists call it climate change. A big part of the crisis of climate change is that we consume disproportionately more when compared to the rest of the world.

We rationalize purchasing gas-guzzlers because “we have to drive the kids around,” or some such nonsense. We drive to work when we can take public transportation. We are the target of so many messages -- about 80,000 a day -- that we’re barely aware of them. And all this shit seeps in. It is not a matter of whether we buy into it or not, but rather, the degree to which we have been conditioned by these messages.

I don’t think the television is necessarily an evil thing. Television, radio, and the internet -- all media -- become problematic when we succumb to the impulse to become passive. And that’s the aim of marketing -- to condition us to become passive consumers. The rationale here is that becoming passive consumers is good for the economy. In fact, the population most targeted are children and marketers are extremely effective at molding the minds of our children. While you are worrying about sex, your children are being conditioned to become mindless slaves to an economic system that will shred them psychologically. In fact, children’s programs contain the heaviest concentration of commercials.

When my son was young, I would use TV as a tool for learning opportunities. Buffy the Vampire Slayer became an opportunity to discuss a whole slew of interesting and relevant adolescent issues. Everything from sex, to peer pressure, to the “horrors” of what it is to be a teenager in a postmodern world gone slightly mad. The X-Files was an opportunity to have discussions about conspiracy theories and the importance of questioning authority.

For my son, watching TV became an opportunity to learn basic ideas about cultural studies and critical theory, and it was fun mostly because he didn’t know he was “learning.” The drug commercials were the best and often the butt of our “critical analysis.” You know those commercials where there would be some woman in a filmy sun dress traipsing through a field of flowers selling a pill? Then, towards the end of the commercial, there would be like a 30-second rapid-fire sotto voce disclaimer listing all these awful side effects? Like, anal leakage -- what the fuck is anal leakage?! We would have a lot of fun, deconstructing the messages TV was trying to embed into our brains.

I think what I was teaching my son (and myself) was to be an active observer. I was teaching him how to form questions, to be a critical thinker. In this sense, TV was a tool for learning and we were fully aware of what was going on at some larger cultural level and in that way, were able to inoculate ourselves -- to a degree -- from the mindless push to consume.

I do not know where I got this idea, maybe it was the influence of my Tantric practice in which everything -- even what we consider negative -- can be utilized in the service of waking up. Shit, even fertilizer has its use, right? And isn’t waking up (not to be confused with analyzing, which is merely mental masturbation) -- isn’t waking up what evolving is all about?

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

The Friday Sex Blog [Childhood Sexuality]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I have to work this weekend (again!). But I do look forward to visiting with my mother, as I haven’t seen in quite some time.

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-=[ Childhood and Sexuality ]=-

Truth, Fictions, and Myths

We do great harm to children when we withhold sexual information from them. Today, thanks to Neanderthal conservative voices, sexual education is a joke. Sex Ed, under the new Victorian era, has been reduced to reading from a two-line script: “Don’t do it. Get married.”

This is a crime...

Freud saw childhood sexuality as a relentless quest for knowledge. The desire for information didn’t play as a substitute for physical pleasure, it balanced it. From the very beginning, sexuality seeks a language to explain itself. Freud was treated as an outcast for daring to endorse providing children with that language -- with information about their body parts and how they worked, about how babies are made and born.

At the beginning of the 21^st century, as AIDS still threatens and kids need information most, the pendulum has swung toward telling them less. A strategy of censorship has emerged and it wears a particularly scary disguise: advice to parents to speak more, to embrace their responsibility as children’s primary sexual teachers. This is a “family value” that the conservatives can get behind and very few can disagree with. However, a seemingly harmless parent-friendly idea can have a less than child-friendly effect.

I expect the sexual prudes who rally against school-based sexuality education are aware of what would happen if the task of sexual enlightenment would be left entirely to parents: almost nobody would do it.

And the studies bear out my suspicions. Parents do talk the talk: most agree that sex education is their job. However, when it comes to talking the sex talk, few can bring themselves to do it. One survey by the national Communication Association showed that parents identified sex as the subject they were least comfortable talking about. Similar research with kids shows that they rate their parents’ efforts less generously than their fathers and mothers. The first pattern that stands out is the difference between the perception of parents and teens, one study showed. When interviewing both generations of the same families, the kids consistently remembered talking about fewer topics than their parents did. One longitudinal study found that more than half of teens believed their parents understood them pretty well. The bad news was that almost half thought mom and dad got it somewhat or hardly at all.

Even someone such as myself, “Mr. Sexual Freedom” himself, didn’t have a problem-free sex pass. I remember once entering my son’s room full of 12-13 year-old males and bringing up the subject of masturbation. My son never forgave me for that one. LOL! Which leads me to state that while teens might tell researchers that they wish their parents would discuss sexuality more, I believe given the choice, they would rather talk to a different confidante (an “aunt” or other trusted adult, for example). I chalk it up to the incest taboo: children don’t want to know about their parents’ sex lives (or masturbatory tendencies LOL!) and, from the minute they might conceivably have a sex life, they usually don’t want their parents (ewwww!) to know about theirs.

What’s interesting is there is little talk about the dynamic of how trusted adults become substitute sex education teachers for children. I know that if I hadn't been able to get through my son I would’ve welcomed a trusted friend or family member to step into that role. In fact, sex education teachers are the professionalized version of trusted adults.

Children absorb their attitudes toward love, their bodies, authority, and equality from their families. They are trained in tolerance and kindness or their opposite. Few live in families comfortable enough to discuss the nitty-gritty details of sex. And when we (we meaning all of us -- society) don’t teach our children, guess who they learn it from? They learn it from others who are themselves ignorant (i.e., their peers) or those who may not have their best interests at heart.

So, if parents aren’t talking and federally funded sex educators aren’t being allowed to talk, to whom will our children turn? I’ll tell you where, on the internet or on the street. And most of the information there is geared toward selling sex. In other words, sex on the internet is mostly treated as it is elsewhere in our society: as something to use to buy and sell -- a commodity.

Then you guys bitch and moan about the supposed lack of moral character our children? Pfffft!

The myth that exposing children to sexual information before they are ready is detrimental to them was exploded when I took the time to actually listen to and talk with kids. People? They get it. Some of them get it better than you, believe it or not. Kids get the wide range of emotions embedded in concepts such as jealousy and desire, for example. Why not prepare them? What consequences do we suffer as a society when we choose to leave the most important discussion about the most powerful force known to humankind to random chance?

Love,

Eddie