Following the additions are excerpts from the book
241212 I say in the book that we have neither the words nor the concepts to define love. Love is undefinable. Nonetheless, it can be fun trying. My favorite definition of Love is Bucky Fuller’s. “Gravity is unit and undifferentiable. Gravity is comprehensive inclusively embracing and permeative, non-focusable, shadowless, and omni-integrative; all of which characteristics of gravity are also the characteristics of love. Love is metaphysical gravity.”
My current best definition is “I really really really really really like you.”
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MINE
- I offer you the gift of my true perception of
- your radiant beauty, and a field of consciousness
- in which you may know contentment in the
- certain knowledge of the inherent goodness
- in who you are and what you do.”
- HERS
- I give you the fullness of the ground of my
- being, and the grace of my nurturance in
- support of all that you may aspire to manifest
- in the worlds of spirit and form.
- As we gazed into each other’s eyes, our souls
- merged. In shared union, we agreed: So Be It,
- So It Has Been, So It Is, and So It Will Be.
- 241018. I feature Susan Campbell’s Getting Real work in my book and life: Relationships Can Get Traumatized Too
I know Susan, we were sort of friends with benefits while she was writing the Truth in Dating book which ended up being dedicated to me. Her approach to couple’s therapy often focuses on helping people clarify what they really need to say and be heard by a partner or other people in their life. She sees that most relationship issues come from people getting triggered and perhaps another then getting co-triggered. She recommends pausing, calming down and then work on figuring out what is in the subconscious that needs work. Her most recent book is Triggered to Tranquil.
She walks her talk and is perhaps the freest person I know. The way she lives her life is an inspiration.
Chapter 3 Enhancing the Depths of Intimacy
This chapter discusses various ideas and practices that have helped me mature as a loving person and partner. In a mature life, love, personal growth, and spiritual wisdom are sources of intuition, insight, and meaning.
As discussed in the last chapter, I support and celebrate all individuals who have found deep loving relationships in whatever form works for them, including coming to the unconditional love of oneself. In this chapter, I discuss the nature and characteristics of mature love within hetero-committed couples because that is what I know. I support others in finding their own ways to love. I discuss various ideas and practices that have helped me mature as a loving person and partner. In an evolving mature life and love, psychological growth and spiritual wisdom are concurrent ongoing sources of insight, intuition, and meaning. Many wise people believe what Rumi said: ‘What you seek is seeking you.’
This Is Not Only My Story
The following personal revelations come from my experience and intimate conversations with other mature lovers. Unfortunately, there aren’t adequate terms to describe altered mental states or sexual experiences. Talking about these experiences is like trying to explain a color or smell to someone without the requisite senses.
While many mature lovers are not in romantic coupled relationships, they can still have rich, loving relationships with family and friends. Whatever relationship forms people find themselves in, each individual needs to find what works best for them.
Trust and Respect
Having a deep and abiding trust in and respect for one’s partner are natural and necessary components of a mature relationship. I trust that neither my partner nor I will ever intentionally do anything to harm the other. I trust that while we may occasionally do something hurtful to the other, it will be mild because we are wise and aren’t acting out of repressed emotional distress or malice. I trust that on such occasions, we will do whatever it takes to resolve the issue and return to our usual mutual caring. There is real comfort in knowing this. My partner and I respect the quality of the life the other is living and the path it’s taken them to get here.
One important kind of trust is being comfortable giving each feedback about what best works and what not so much in how they touch and approach the whole realm of sensual, sexual and other life activities. We trust and respect each other’s autonomy.
The Love of Mature Couples
In a mature loving relationship, we meet the divine feminine and masculine in each other, and in a way within ourselves as well. These relationships are free of coercion and obsessions. The partners move around in and out of loving, laughing, engaging, and teasing. Lovemaking often becomes a spiritual communion. There is nothing else in human life with this unique preciousness. Is there any time when partners appreciate and adore each other more than when making love? I don’t think so. Mature lovers can have the best emotional intimacy and sexual pleasure. This is an assumption carried throughout this work. It is true in my life and for my peers. It isn’t just that practice improves one’s skills, although there is that. It isn’t that you get to know each other’s preferences better, although there is that. It isn’t that you’ve come to find your older bodies beautiful, although there is that. It’s more than all that. There is a quality to this love that is difficult to talk about because we don’t have the language.
Don’t we all know that humor is the magic elixir in relationships? It’s a beautiful feeling to know we have what it takes to keep this relationship as good as possible, given whatever may come. It’s a gift not just for us but also for those around us. It’s also a gift to the soul of humanity as we manifest beauty, goodness, and truth through our lives together.
It is self-evident that individuals in a mature, committed sexual relationship may have experiences unavailable in any other context. It isn’t accidental that humans tend to be drawn to long-term relationships. There are indeed many varied cultural patterns for primary relationships, sexual and otherwise, found in the anthropological literature. Nonetheless, I am focusing on hetero relationships. I don’t know how it all works in homosexual ones; I understand as I write this that gender identity issues are currently contentious. For this reading, please accept that I am an elder writing generally for other elders who are primarily embedded in more traditional notions of relationships. It doesn’t make us bad people, nor does it make us hostile to different kinds of relationships.
The Dance of Making Love
When sexual pleasure and true love combine, the heartmind opens into spiritual bliss. This is a dance with infinite possibilities. This art form, when done with consummate skill, is uniquely special. It is not about technique but opening up undefended in the moment. In no other way can the intimacy between two humans be so rich and deep and pure as in this dance of souls — a dance of energy beings freed from the limitations of physical, emotional, and mental bodies. There’s no obsessiveness about it; it’s open to easy-flowing spontaneity. Humor, passion, and conversation can, playfully or seriously, morph into the magic of the moment.
There are tactical and strategic concerns. The tactical decisions are about the direction and depth of pressure — all in the present. The strategic ones prepare and evoke the tactics moving the energy forward. In this dance, every couple will have preferences and practices when engaging sensually. It will shift some with the details of the moment and partner. Couples will develop optimal patterns, even if one of those is to seek more fantastic novelty. How the dance is led will be more or less subtle and attuned to the self and others.
Being the more active provider will naturally flow back and forth in couples. The dance can be incredibly pleasurable when giving and receiving are entirely mutual. This requires each participant to become unself-conscious. This requires a meditative self-realization process. Whenever a thought arises, the living experience isn’t fully present. As Robert Kegan pointed out, when what you are thinking and feeling becomes conscious to you as an observer, something changes. Being more aware in the most intimate moments is its special gift.
When not attached to the outcome beyond the present moment, leading takes any pressure off oneself and the other. When a receiver is not attached to an outcome, it takes any pressure off the provider. This allows all those present to enjoy the quality of the touch more fully since there’s no yearning for something different. Receiving non-sexual pleasure from loving touch, however delicate to firm, slow to fast, can be incredibly pleasurable. For our happiness, we don’t want our partners to feel that they must do anything they don’t like doing now. If a partner is sensually stroking one, it is essential to let the recipient lead the way at what rate and whether and how it gets overtly sexual or not. The giver can be creative in their experiments. The more attuned a couple becomes, the more spontaneously learning occurs in a mutually enhancing flowing union.
Love With My Partner Is Many Things
There’s the enjoyment of really liking everything about someone — their face, feel, mind. The softness of interactions with a few hiccups here and there. The sheer wonder of how it feels. It’s just so.…
In my relationship, I experience love the most when I don’t feel anything. Hearing this often elicits a ‘What?’ response. Of course, when I’m saying or just thinking feelings of I love you. I love you so much. You are so beautiful. This is the relationship I’ve wanted all of my life. You pleasure me beyond anything I could have ever imagined possible. That all feels very good. But there’s so much more to the quality of our loving relationship.
It’s most loving with my partner when we have a shared, quiet, deeply peaceful, immersive presence and sense of contentment, just being together. What we’re doing doesn’t matter much. She is a wise, compassionate, intelligent, and knowledgeable person. I know that she will never intentionally do anything to harm me. We have moments where we get triggered and reactive, which can be ouchy. Those moments are important because they’re learning experiences. Paying attention to such dynamics lessens their occurrences, intensity, and duration. These moments aren’t a threat to the quality of our relationship. They’re just one of the many ways our daily lives play out.
Reprogramming the Beauty Bias
This is so important, as we have a worldwide media that obsessively and relentlessly portrays the same images, reinforcing the assumption that young bodies are the most or only beautiful and sexually attractive ones. While these ideals vary in detail from culture to culture, I don’t know of any modern culture that idealizes the mature sexual beauty of older humans. I’ve heard this differs in indigenous cultures, although I don’t know where and how true that may be. Even in our culture, before photography, people had only their neighbors to compare themselves to. We all do better with that rather than when comparing ourselves to the media stereotypes. This is an important area for me for both personal and advocacy reasons, given how our society and, from what I’ve noticed, all contemporary cultures have become addicted to arbitrary ideals of sexual beauty.
The Grandmother Becomes a Love Goddess
Sexual organs engorge with sexual stimulation — the penis and, less obviously, several female organs: the clitoral head, shaft, legs, vestibular or clitoral bulbs, and the urethral and perineal sponges. The male organ acts as one unit and, after an ejaculatory orgasm, disgorges. The female organs don’t necessarily collapse after an orgasm and can continue orgasming. The male’s organ can also continue to orgasm if it is separated from ejaculation.
All of this had long been familiar to me, but after age 60, a marvelous thing happened, something I had no previous experience with, thus no expectation. I found my older lovers’ faces also engorged, not in a cartoonish way but in an oh-so-lovely manner. When the wrinkled pale grandmother I went to bed with got turned on, her face swelled slightly. There were no more wrinkles. Her skin became beautifully smooth and glowed radiantly, glowing pinkish gold. It was almost as tho she were young again, but it was so much more than that. A young face may be smooth and fresh, but life experiences create character. The Love Goddess’s face is rich, wise, and beautiful, too.
This is reciprocal. When we talked about this once, my partner said, “And you don’t look anything like the man I sat across the breakfast table from this morning, either.” Once, I took before and after photos of my lover in this thrall. And yes, the camera accurately captured the change — not quite the full aura effect, but close enough for her to get it.
Imagine what a difference it would make if the knowledge of this became the norm and was recognized by the larger culture for its delightful gift. Indeed, mature women can have a wondrous beauty that younger ones can’t have. When I tell my partner that she is beautiful, I mean it. That’s true in her normal unturned-on state, too.
There’s much more of this in the book.