The Friday Sex Blog [Adult Games]

¡Hola mi Gente!

It’s Friday and it’s all about sex (or something close to it). Have a great weekend!

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Games People Play

The one absolute in the study of human behavior is that people do things because they get something out of it. People's actions, however seemingly ridiculous, serve a purpose.

I once had a therapist tell me I had to learn how to parent myself. It may not sound particularly earth-shattering, but I had never even entertained that idea -- I never thought that could be possible. It was a liberating moment that also held some fear for me.

Modern research shows that the notion of being separate and apart is a myth. In fact, it's a very destructive myth, just take a look at what we're doing to our ecology and you quickly realize that the “me” attitude has dire consequences.

Along with the potential of being destructive the perception of ourselves as separate and apart from the rest of creation blinds us to the biological fact that we are all intimately connected, leaving many of us feeling isolated. Our neurology is a feedback loop. How infants interact with their mothers, for example, has a direct impact on the development of the brain. Infants need physical handling as much or more than food and those who are deprived fall into irreversible mental and physical decline.

Adults also need as much physical contact as children. In adulthood, sensory deprivation can lead to temporary psychosis, for example. But because close physical contact is not always available, we seek emotional fulfillment in other ways. A Facebook contact, for example, may seek emotional “strokes” from his or her friends list in the form of adoration or positive feedback. In the same way, a movie star may get her strokes from fan mail. A scientist may get hers from a positive commendation from a leading figure in the field.

In transactional analysis, the “stroke” is seen as the basic unit of social action. An exchange of strokes is a transaction and hence the phrase, “transactional analysis” describing the dynamics of social interaction. Bear with me here, there's a point to all this and one I feel you will find interesting.

For argument's sake, let's take this as a given -- that we have this psycho-biological need to receive strokes or intimate fulfillment. From this perspective, people consider any social participation -- even if negative -- as better than none at all. This primal need for intimacy is also why people engage in games as a substitute for genuine connection.

In short we play a game, defined as a series of transactions, to satisfy this inner hunger for intimacy, and it always involves a payoff. Still with me?

Let me take this a step further. As much as they will deny it, most people aren't even aware they are playing a game. For most, it's a normal way of interaction. “People games” are like playing poker in the sense that the better we can hide our inner motivation (essentially that we're all needy motherfuckers at heart), the more likely we “win.” In a professional context the payoff could be a raise or a promotion; people speak of the “real estate game,” or “playing the market.” In the relationship world the payoff is usually some emotional gratification or an increase in control.

I once worked with a participant, a former contract killer (a “soldier”), who once compared himself to a newborn infant in the following way:

You ever see when they first bring babies home from the hospital? How sometimes they have to put mittens on babies because otherwise they will scratch themselves? Well, that's how I feel sometimes. Like I can't help but hurt myself and I need psychological mittens to save me from myself.

Rewind back to the time with my former therapist and you can begin to see a model emerging. We all have within us different states or selves:

• The attitudes and thinking of a parental figure (Parent)
• An adult-like ability to rationalize and accept truth (Adult)
• The attitudes and views of a child (Child)

In any given situation, we can emphasize any one of these inner selves, and sometimes shift from one to another quite easily. For example, we can take on a child's wonderment, creativity, and curiosity, but also a child's tantrums and incapacity to empathize. The point being that within each situation we can adopt a role that can be productive or unproductive.

In playing a game, instead of maintaining intimacy to get what we want, we succumb to the temptation to act like a coquettish child, or take on the wise, rational aura of an adult.

Let the games begin! LOL

There are basic games people play. They may vary a little, but they're basically variations on the same theme:

The most common game between people in a relationship is the one in which one complains that the other is an obstacle to doing what they really want in life. For example, a person who may not be aware of her fear of real intimacy may choose to be with emotionally unavailable men and then complain of a lack of intimacy. The game then becomes, “If it weren't for you... ”

I believe people unconsciously choose partners because they seek to be limited. I do a lot of work around complaints. My experience has shown me that if you follow the breadcrumbs of your complaints, you will come face-to-face with your own bullshit. Playing the “if it weren't for you” game gives us the excuse of abdicating responsibility for our own lives, or looking honestly and compassionately at our own fears or character defects.

Another common relationship game is when, in response to a solution-centered suggestion, the partner responds by saying, “Yes, but... ” and then proceeds to find everything that could go wrong with the solution. In Child mode, this allows the person to gain sympathy from others for being inadequate to the challenge. In Adult mode, we would be more willing to examine and maybe even take on the challenge the solution presents us.

These games are like worn out loops of the same tape -- being played over and over. It's amazing how transparent the games appear on social media spots like Facebook or Twitter, with all the trespassing of boundaries, the naked grabs for attention, the openly desperate manipulation for sex. And the one common trait is that all involved deny playing the game.

These are the scripts we inherit from our childhood and though they are limiting and self-destructive, they are also a form of psychological comfort food -- a way for us to absolve ourselves from looking at our own issues.

For many people, games have become so integral to their way of being that they feel the need to create drama, or manipulate those they come into contact with because they fear they won't be as interesting. The more games they play, the more they expect others to play them too; a habitual game player will end up with a psychologically unhealthy tendency to read too much of their own motivations and biases in others.

My Name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization, motherfuckers… LOL!

The Friday Sex Blog [The Sex Wars]

¡Hola! Everybody…
I love New York City, the place of my birth and where I choose to call home. It is totally crazy, totally not like where you live, but who wants to live where you live? really LOL! I have lived here for most of my life and I can tell you I still haven't fully explored this City. With this in mind, please note that doors will be opened and welcome mats laid out all over the city this weekend (October 9 and 10) during Open House New York, highlighting many historic locations that are closed to the public for most of the year. Go to the Open House website for more information or pick up one of their guides (click here).

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-=[ Sex Wars ]=-

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
-- Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn

The erotic impulse should be the basis for a joyous dance between the sexes, a filter through which we could better with each other, a vehicle through which can understand the masculine and feminine essence within each of us. It could and should be an opportunity to experience a little of that which we are not, an honoring of differences; a way of seeing the world through the other side of the gender looking glass.

Instead, our erotic experiences are more like a war -- a battle in the sexual marketplace. Heterosexually speaking, we’re often reduced to men trying to get sex from women and women resenting the male preoccupation with sex. What happens is a lot of anger: Men angry that women have sex and won’t give it to them and women angry that men try to take something from them through sex.

I look at the sexual landscape and it seems to me we’re all embroiled in an elaborate sexual power game, both blatant and on the DL. Sex pioneer Wilhelm Reich pointed out long ago that sex becomes a commodity, whose value is exaggerated by a created and artificial scarcity. As it happens with all commodities, the basic question becomes who gets what from whom and at what price. Sex, in this context, becomes a basis for the exchange of money, financial security, attention, personal favors, and most of all, the illusion of affection. This illusion becomes even more pronounced in the cyber arena. I know of some individuals who act out sexually solely via cyber space.

If that isn’t whoring, then I don’t know what is… Welcome to the Thunderdome. Instead of love and appreciation -- instead of an exquisite dance of love and mystery -- we too often experience the erotic as an field of manipulation. And we’re left feeling a profound emptiness from which springs the anger, resentment, confusion, and tears -- all of which we then blame on the erotic impulse, as if it were to blame.

A great deal of this sexual confusion and pain comes from the fundamentally different ways men and women are socially conditioned when it comes to sexuality. The erotic training of boys is so radically different from that of girls that we might as well have been raised in entirely different cultures. In fact, it would probably more helpful to think the sexual wars in just those terms. If we were to come together with a curiosity to learn about each other’s customs, we might be able to begin to perceive, without blame and judgment, our different perspectives on Eros (the sexual impulse). It would be like one person saying, “Among my people, sex is generally a prelude to intimacy, a way of making one emotionally vulnerable.” Another person could respond, "Really? Among my people it’s the opposite -- emotional intimacy is required before a person would feel safe enough to allow this vulnerability of being sexual.”

No need to make one right, the other wrong. No need to laugh at or resent our differences.

Almost from birth, adults relate to boys’ bodies differently than they do girls’. Boys are held less, fondled less, and allowed to cry longer before being answered with touch. Later, they learn not to be sensual because sensuality is framed as feminine, and there is a masculine identity to be forged in which rejecting the dominant figure of the mother plays a big part. Boys are taught that it is not cool to want to be held and comforted, not cool to want to be softly stroked. What is cool, even necessary, is to want sex. The entire urge for touch, comfort, care, gentleness, and intimacy is reduced into the single outlet of sex.

At the same time, girls are taught that sex is their enemy. Sex is a monster, a male beast, and it is the task of the female to tame the beast. Sex contains the danger of pregnancy, and also the danger of destroying one’s status among the society of “good girls.” Sex as pleasure is only permitted if it’s essentially an expression of love for a partner, but sex for its own sake -- lust, desire -- is unfeminine.

So here we are thrown together in this mess. The boys, and later men, try to get all of what they have condensed into sex from the girls and women, who have reduced sexual desire to a romantic detail. Ultimately, the men are left feeling rejected and angry; the women feel pressured, objectified, and angry.

We all bleed.

Sadly, the first casualty in this war is the pure nature of the erotic dance. Lost, along with all of its potential for magic, healing, pleasure, intimacy, and fulfillment.

We need to take back our erotic impulse and begin looking honestly at the different perspectives on eroticism. We need to explore how desire is aroused differently in men and women. We need to take stock of the consequences of teaching men to pursue sex at all costs, while at the same time teaching women to be afraid of sex. Perhaps we can begin by looking at the basic childhood experiences of boys and girls. For example, how does the fear of being subsumed by a dominant mother, versus the fear of being abandoned by an emotionally absent father, affect desire in men and women later life?

While male and female perspectives on erotic desire and sexual union differ greatly, we can still share a deep appreciation for the depth and wonder of human sexuality that transcends the imposed social limits of gender.

Love,

Eddie

PS: Sex is good for you.

Adult Games

Games People Play

The one absolute in the study of human behavior is that people do things because they get something out of it. People's actions, however seemingly ridiculous, serve a purpose.

I once had a therapist tell me I had to learn how to parent myself. It may not sound particularly earth-shattering, but I had never even entertained that idea -- I never thought that could be possible. It was a liberating moment that also held some fear for me.

Modern research shows that the childish notion of being separate and apart is a myth. In fact, it's a very destructive myth, just take a look at what we're doing to our ecology and you quickly realize that the "me" attitude has dire consequences.

Along with the potential of being totally destructive, we are all intimately connected -- though many of us feel isolated. Our neurology is a feedback loop. How infants interact with their mothers, for example, has a direct impact on the development of the brain. Infants need physical handling as much or more than food and those who are deprived fall into irreversible mental and physical decline.

Adults also need as much physical contact as children. In adulthood, sensory deprivation can lead to temporary psychosis. But because close physical contact is not always available, we seek emotional fulfillment in other ways. A 360 participant, for example, may seek emotional "strokes" from his or her friends list in the form of adoration or positive feedback. In the same way, a movie star may get his strokes from fan mail. A scientist may get hers from a positive commendation from a leading figure in the field.

In transactional analysis, the "stroke" is seen as the basic unit of social action. an exchange of strokes is a transaction and hence the phrase, "transactional analysis" describing the dynamics of social interaction.

Bear with me here, there's a point to all this and one I feel you will find interesting.

For argument's sake, let's take this as a given -- that we have this psycho-biological need to receive strokes or intimate fulfillment. In this context, people consider any social participation -- even if negative -- as better than none at all. This primal need for intimacy is also why people engage in games as a substitute for genuine connection.

In short we play a game, defined as a series of transactions, to satisfy this inner hunger for intimacy, and it always involves a payoff.

Still with me?

Let me take this a step further. As much as they will deny it, most people aren't even aware they are playing a game. For them, it's a normal way of interaction. People games are like playing poker in the sense that the better we can hide our inner motivation (essentially that we're needy ma'fuccas), the more likely we "win." In the professional environment the payoff could be a raise or a promotion; people speak of the "real estate game," or playing the stock market. In the relationship world the payoff is usually some emotional gratification or an increase in control.

I had a participant, a former contract killer (a "soldier"), who once compared himself to a newborn infant in the following way:

"You ever see when the first bring babies home from the hospital? How sometimes you have to put mitts on babies because otherwise they will scratch themselves? Well, that's how I feel sometimes. Like I can't help but hurt myself and I need psychological mittens to save me."

Rewind back to the time with my former therapist and you can begin to see a model emerging. We all have within us different states or selves:

• The attitudes and thinking of a parental figure (Parent)
• An adult-like ability to rationalize and accept truth (Adult)
• The attitudes and views of a child (Child)

In any given situation, we can emphasize any one of these inner selves, and sometimes shift from one to another quite easily. For example, we can take on a child's wonderment, creativity, and curiosity, but also a child's tantrums and inability to empathize. The point being that within each mode we can be productive or unproductive.

In playing a game, instead of maintaining intimacy to get what we want, we succumb to the temptation to act like a coquettish child, or take on the wise, rational aura of an adult.

Let the games begin! LOL

There are basic games people play. They may vary a little, but they're basically variations on the same theme:

The most common game between people in a relationship is the one in which one complains that the other is an obstacle to doing what they really want in life. For example, a person who may not be aware of her fear of real intimacy may choose emotionally unavailable men and then complain of a lack of intimacy. The game then becomes, "If it weren't for you... "

I believe people unconsciously choose partners because they want to be limited. I do a lot of work around complaints. My experience has shown me that if you follow the breadcrumbs of your complaints, you will come face-to-face with your own bullshit. Playing the "if it weren't for you" game gives us the excuse of abdicating responsibility for our own lives, or looking at our fears.

Another common relationship game is when, in response to a solution-centered suggestion, the partner says "Yes, but... " and then proceeds to find everything that could go wrong with the solution. In Child mode, this allows the person to gain sympathy from others for being inadequate to the challenge. In Adult mode, we would be more willing to examine and maybe even take on the possibility of the solution.

These games are like worn out loops of the same tape -- being played over and over. It's amazing how transparent the games appear here on 360, with all the trespassing of boundaries, the naked grab for attention, the openly desperate manipulation for sex. And the one common trait is that all involved deny playing the game! LOL!!

These are the scripts we inherit from our childhood and though they are limiting and self-destructive, they are also a form of psychological comfort food -- a way for us to absolve ourselves from looking at our own issues.

For many people, games have become so integral to their way of being that they feel the need to create drama, or manipulate those they come into contact with, because they fear they won't be as interesting. The more games they play, the more they expect others to play them too; a habitual game player will end up with a psychotic tendency to read too much of their own motivations and biases in others.

It's not, as people like to say just Yahoo, it's you!

Love,

Eddie