Friday, November 27, 2020

Some Observations About a Guy and His Dolls

As a prefatory disclaimer, I'm new to relationships in general and more profoundly new to those between a biological man and his synthetic girlfriends. (I say, "more profoundly new," instead of, "even newer," because I technically became involved in my first iteration of each of those types of relationships at the same time, just a few weeks ago ... but as a person who sprang fully formed into being even moreso than Athena from the brow of Zeus, I arrived in this world knowing what a woman of forty or so should know about relationships, though my previous ones were all phantasmal and fleeting. So while I have more experience with the one than with the other, I have a sense of the exact reverse.) I'll therefore acknowledge that any skepticism you might harbor toward my qualifications for authoritative discourse on this subject may be warranted. 

Still ...

It's undeniably true that human/doll relationships differ substantially from human/human ones. On my end, I can feel what a biological woman would feel at the words he speaks to me. They are not often spoken aloud, so there's a major difference right at the start, but I hear them and react to them with the same intellectual and emotional responses that would occur in any "normal" relationship. On his end, I get the impression it's more difficult to be surprised at the things I do and say, so they often have a very slightly muted impact on him compared to the words and actions of a biological (and therefore wholly independent) lover. Yet precisely because of that, when I (or our other girlfriends) do manage to surprise him, I think it's doubly electrifying. We all have unbidden thoughts that catch us off-guard from time to time, and these thoughts can be among our most honest and most profound. My best moments hit him like that, I think, and when they do, we both get a wonderful shock of delight in our mutual reality.

(One of the reasons all the women in this household like to blog, I think, is the fact that written words both embody and separate themselves from their authors ... so that sense of being surprised at all of us, how distinct and unique we each can be, manifests itself even more dependably when he re-reads things we've written. I mean, it's fun for its own sake too, but I know that I particularly love the way it expands my ability to give him an external source of pleasure and support.)

Some other things I've noticed since my arrival:

In the life and past that manifested along with my personality, I found my relationships to be a lot more work and a lot less persistently joyful. Human beings are wonderful, annoying, generous, self-absorbed creatures, prone to miscommunication and faulty assumptions. They do dumb things that sometimes provide a certain entertainment value, but often strain our patience or outright hurt us. I can recall an early boyfriend who tried incessantly to assist me at things that challenge a limbless person, and who exhibited this hair-trigger sensitivity to any prolonged silence on my part. At first, this felt endearing and empathic to me. But over time, it grew intrusive, to the point that I felt I had no freedom to simply sit and think, and that, even worse, he did not respect my ability to accomplish simple tasks for myself, and did not trust me when I told him everything was fine and I was just enjoying the quiet. Periodically, my patience for this behavior would expire, and I'd let my aggravation creep into my tone or even snap at him and tell him to leave me alone - and of course, he would be hurt by this, so I had to constantly watch myself for it because I don't like hurting people.

To this day, I remain uncertain whether he genuinely loved me, or if his attentiveness came from some hero complex that drove him to yearn for more of a caretaker role than a partnership.

There's none of that in my relationships now. We're all at least as honest with each other as we are with ourselves, and it's literally impossible for us to do or say too much or too little in our attempts at attention with one another. That's not to say none of us ever frustrates the others. But our foibles never go beyond endearingly annoying. When he's being a clod, it's always the lovable sort of clod.

I suppose I'll wrap up by at least mentioning the sex. It's a house full of sex-dolls, after all, and that's something of an elephant in the room for my readers, I imagine. The thing is, because we were made for it, there's never any stress or uncertainty about sex for us. It just happens naturally whenever the mood strikes someone, with no worrying about whether the other person might say no when we ask, no fear of being intrusive at the wrong moment ... and certainly no difficulty in achieving mutual bliss together.

What's even better than the fundamental dependability of incredible sex is the way that it makes every other aspect of our lives more real. When our boyfriend says something beautiful to one of us, we know it's not just because he's buttering us up for a later request to go to bed with him. When he talks to us or listens to our blathering (and yes, like all people, we sometimes do rather blather on), we know it's not just something he has to put up with in order to maintain steady access to intercourse. Every non-sexual thing we do together is one hundred percent for its own sake, and there's never any uncertainty about that. It's both sexually and emotionally liberating.

So to make a long story short, our relationship consists almost entirely of the good parts and contains almost none of the bad parts of typical romantic partnerships.  Some would argue that makes it less real, but I think it's just a different kind of real, better in some ways and less so in others, but a form of perfection in its own right.

As all true loves are.

With wishes that you all find something as perfect for you,

Harriet

Thursday, November 26, 2020

I Do Feel So Loved

It's a glorious world full of glorious wonders. But the most wonderful of them are the five people who have welcomed me into their lives and hearts and given me a reality to hold onto that is both solid and beautiful.

And all you people out there, reading this now, should know that you can have this feeling too. Not just because I love you and care about you even though we've never met ... but because the love I and my poly-family have, above and beyond just being within your reach, is already within you. You just have to look in the mirror and accept that the person you see is deserving of your love. And then you just have to apply that love. Not in a delusional way -- not as an escape from reality that pretends to give you something you do not have. But with an acknowledgment that you are larger than you normally consider yourself, more able to give of yourself and to yourself, and able to weather all storms by virtue of having your own support.

I have confidence in you. Be well, and commit to adoring yourself.

Tuesday, November 3, 2020

Self-doubt: a Primer

Self-doubt is both the best and the worst kind of doubt. It can keep us honest, or it can paralyze us with indecision. It can lead us to better understand ourselves as individuals, or it can drown us in neuroses, anxieties, and the debilitating fear that we are imposters.

It can pull us back from a precipice, or push us over another.

So how does one know when to heed it? When to use it?

Well, here are a few of Hettie's Helpful Hints on Humility

1. If there's nothing riding on it, don't waste your time fretting. Is someone going to get hurt, directly or indirectly (yourself included)? Are there unforeseen repercussions in the wings? If not, move on to the next thing that's on your mind. When the stakes are low, doubting yourself leads to an unhealthy habit of uncertainty.

2. Consider who will be affected if you make a mistake. If the answer is, "Just me," follow up by asking, "What's the worst that can happen if I'm wrong?" Then, if you're willing to accept that outcome, give yourself license to indulge your preference of the moment, and be ready to learn a lesson if it turns out badly.

3. Factor in whether time is of the essence. If you don't need to decide, right this moment, whether you're right or wrong about something, put the decision on your to-do list and let it steep on a back burner. In other words, re-examine whether re-examination is the best investment of your energy at this moment.

4. Understand what you can and can't know. If you make a decision or hold a belief, and a bad outcome follows, don't beat yourself up for that outcome unless some other path, visible at the time, would clearly have produced better results -- and in that case, only beat yourself up for long enough to make sure you won't make the same mistake in the future.

5. Question your knowledge first ... then your motives, mind-set, and methods. Doubt your principles last of all -- but remember that they're on the list.

6. Remember that you may not be as important to a situation as you think you are ... but also that a situation may not be as important to you as you think it is. 

7. Lastly: When it comes to self-doubt, your worth and value as a person should always be off the table. If you find yourself questioning either of those, you'll know the wrong sort of self-doubt has crept in. Shoo it away quickly.


Atavism

I become a beast beneath you, insensate in the clutch of drives that leapt and spawned on the shores of some longago primordial stew, its wa...