Melting walls

Wolfgang:

this is the contradiction inside these [abysmal] creatures
She reject like, and desire to be liked
the doomed creatures
cursed

Me:

Those are the creatures who really need love most.
But they build walls around them, so they cannot feel the love that's just outside the door.
So they keep looking for it and craving for it.

Wolfgang:

yes something like that
and when they feel it around, they get panicked
or strangled by

Me:

Because it means the walls melted and they feel vulnerable.

We were talking about one of his personas, but my responses were also about me.


That was part of the hour-and-a-half conversation that we had on Saturday (yesterday). During our twelve-and-a-half meeting today, the walls melted away.

Yesterday, I challenged him to let me do something that I knew he would never agree to. It was just a joke. After a lot of back-and-forth about levels of gifts, he agreed. I thought it was still a joke.

Today, we shopped for what we needed. I still thought he would back out. Or we'd call it just another RP and have fun. He later admitted that he also delayed it by taking me shopping at another store. He was nervous about it. But it was almost time for his bedtime. And he promised it today.

Just a few moments before I started, I realized how significant this was. And almost instinctively, I tried to distract him, like the best doctors and dentists do when they know they are about to do something very uncomfortable for the patient. I asked him detailed questions about what he had for his RL dinner.

It was over in less than a minute. Then, I held his avie tightly. I was very overwhelmed. My tears fell irl, and I told him so.

There are a few very significant moments in our relationship. The first time was during our RP when I felt as though we became wedded, because I surrendered to him. In that moment, it felt as though our relationship fast-forwarded to a deep intimacy. Today's experience felt just like that. Except it felt like it was he who surrendered to me. The effect was the same and just as strong as the first time.

And I realized many things. I understood many of the things he told me in the past, and now I believe him because I experienced it myself. It is very illogical, but I cannot deny what I felt.

My anger dissipated. My pain was soothed. He gave me a very big gift. And I felt it. And he felt my response. For real. Today, he paid his emotional debt.

Many men have lost sleep just to spend a few more hours with me. But not Wolfgang. Until now. He went to sleep three hours late. because, as he said, "it s hard to leave when you are sweet like that."

I've never returned to a past lover. Until now.

Sweet little porcupine

Alt #6 met someone on Sunday. Actually, I'm meeting a lot of people lately. But this one wanted to meet again that he actually scheduled the second meeting, which was last night.

He said he wanted to get to know me. And so he did. Well, he got to know just the things that I thought were important for him to know.

I learned about him too, of course. And I realized that there's no way he could understand me. He might imagine that he does, but he had a fairy tale life and one tragedy. How could he understand a life comprised of a string of tragedies?

To his credit, he showed an honest respect for my experiences and how those shaped me. And he understood why I have my "rules" of engagement. Or disengagement as the case may be.

At some point in the conversation, he called me "a sweet little porcupine." And I remembered something I wrote a long time ago, when I was very new to SL. Then I realized that I've become the sculpture that Starax Statosky had built. The woman in the armor.

But there's more. In another post around the same time, I wrote, "when we open up and realize that it isn't safe, we quickly put on an armor. And, more often than not, the armor has long poisonous spikes."

I suppose the spikes multiplied through those years. And I've morphed into a porcupine.

Not a good thing, I know. And maybe someday I'll work on peeling off that spiked armor, but not likely anytime soon. Like a porcupine, my defensive spikes have become part of me.

On second thought, maybe he really understood me anyway. After all, he chose the perfect metaphor.

A seven-minute gift

Wolfgang was thinking of gifts for my alts. Belated Christmas presents. He took a long time to decide. But I had a better idea. Instead of the dress and the shoes that he had planned to get, I said I preferred to see him in Skype.

Although he had sent me several selfies, I had never seen him in Skype, although he had seen me a few times. It's just one of those imbalances in our relationship.

But he hates Skype. More than he hates phones.

"so why to torture me with?" he asked.

"I just want to see you," I replied, "with expressions on your face... to see how you smile..."

"i m not spontaneous," he explained. He receives the message, analyzes it, and responds with the expected reaction.

"And I thought I was funny.  :\ " I pouted.

He LOL'd and explained further, "a good joke make smile inside ... but it is inside." For him, the facial expressions are a way of communicating externally and are, therefore, "fake."

He reiterated that he isn't spontaneous, but he added that he was told he had an expressive face.

We continued talking about fake smiles. I had already accepted the fact that I wouldn't get what I wanted, but he said, "No smile. Just a short time of cam. ... It will be just 2 mins."

He gave me seven. :D

In those seven minutes, he didn't speak to me by voice, so we were typing in IM. Then his phone rang and I listened to him talk fast in French. It sounded like he was hurrying to hang up, but the caller asked another question so the call became twice as long, although probably still under a minute. He sounded impatient, which was understandable, because he really hates talking on the phone for longer than necessary. But I loved listening to him talk. And I told him so. That's when he realized that he forgot to mute himself on Skype. We continued to chat by IM anyway.

In those seven minutes, I was mesmerized. I had to consciously type something and reply to him or else I'd just sit there quietly, drinking him in.

In those seven minutes, he tried to seem cold and distant. But I saw very brief glimpses of emotion. Like the half-second of instantaneous joy when he saw something on the screen in the beginning, when my video came on, although I later realized my image was very dark because I had no lights on in my room. Like his eyes darting to the sides as though looking for escape in the beginning of the call. Like his left hand curling against his left jaw for a moment, then the index fingers of both hands steepling in front of his lips as though he were trying to strike a pose, again for only a brief moment, then both hands disappearing from view. It was as though he didn't know what to do with his hands.

In those seven minutes, I saw a man who tried to project being calm and collected. And, yes, I sensed that coldness, that distance. But I also saw very brief glimpses of discomfort and uneasiness and self-consciousness and vulnerability.

Maybe he really does hate Skype and that's what causes the discomfort and uneasiness and self-consciousness. But it is also very telling that he would do the thing that he hates most, simply because I wished it.

Frog anxiety

There's a well-known metaphor about a frog that goes like this: If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out right away.  But if you put a frog in a pot of lukewarm water, and then set the pot on the stove, the frog will boil to death.



My experiment in BDSM isn't going well.  I've lost my objectivity.  Not that I've been objective about it when I started anyway, because of my unflattering preconceptions of doms.  But with emotions mixed in, this whole experiment became mixed up.  I can't even analyze what's what and where things are coming from and why certain emotions are coming up and whether they're BDSM emotions or something else.  It's all a big mess.

Wolfgang has been very gentle with me.  Too gentle.  And sometimes, I regret that I tell him about my worries and anxieties about the whole BDSM RP that we are doing.  It made him nervous.

I think he himself noticed it when he said that I had become "soft."  Initially, I thought that he meant I had become more tender, more loving in the RP.  Maybe he meant something else.  Maybe he meant I've become more fragile.

We were transitioning into a different type of RP, but I felt that we had to give the old one some closure.  Even he said, when I initially expressed my concern about this RP, that it was like throwing a book away before finishing it.  Then later, it was I who insisted on finishing the RP, even though it is uncomfortable for me.

So, last night, we started a scene in our RP that's part of the transition to the new one. It was a female-to-female scene and he was using one of his female alts.  Then in the middle of the scene, he asked OOC if I was enjoying the RP.  Damn.  Why did he have to ask?

I told him that it feels a little awkward, and I jokingly added that I'd survive.  He didn't understand what I meant by "awkward" and he asked me to explain.  I said that the scene was for him and that I don't have to enjoy it.  (He had mentioned once that he enjoys watching female-to-female seduction.)

I said, "I've never had sex with a woman irl, so I don't have the experience to draw from.  And I don't have the inclination to, so it doesn't arouse me."  There was a long pause before he responded, so I kept babbling.  I had a feeling he would protest. He always insisted that he wouldn't do anything unless we were both getting pleasure out of it.

He said that he thought I had some female-to-female experience in SL in the past, and he figured that I might enjoy it, if the other female was more agreeable.  I had told him about a foursome experience I had with a lover and two of his female lovers, one of whom was a dom who hated me, probably because that lover preferred to be with me.

I explained to Wolfgang that that experience was when I was very new in SL.  At that time, I didn't know how to RP and all I did was simply sit on a poseball and my lover did everything else.  I was able to dissociate.

But Wolfgang refuses to do anything where I have to dissociate from my avatar.  He says it makes him feel lonely to be the only one gaining pleasure from it.

He told me a story of one of his affairs where his partner pretended to enjoy the female-to-female interactions and even encouraged it.  When he found out that she didn't enjoy it at all, it sullied his enjoyment of it and he stopped seeing her.  I told him it was the lie that soured the relationship, not the fact that he was the only one who enjoyed it.  But he disagreed.

He started wrapping up the RP scene, skipping what he had originally planned.

I asked, "Why can't you accept a gift?"


But he is stubborn and so am I.


I worry that without the BDSM, he would be bored and move on.  He worries that without BDSM, our relationship wouldn't be special anymore and he would be just another lover in my life.  It didn't comfort him when I explained that each of my relationships is special.  There is always something that sets each one apart from the others.  And when I miss a lover, I miss that specific lover.


At the same time, the more I think about BDSM, the more I hate the concept.  And, yes, I understand that "hate" is a strong word.  And, yes, I understand that the intensity of my reaction to it is probably a reflection of my own psyche fighting my shadow side.  (That last sentence is for you psychologists out there.)  And that's probably another reason I'm delving into this.  To face my demons and learn to accept my shadow side.

I don't know where this would go.  I don't know what would happen when we get on the other side.  His caring, his concern for my emotional well-being and my enjoyment, his empathy all touch me and awe me.

But I worry that that same gentleness, in the context of BDSM, might be even more dangerous, like the lukewarm water that slowly heats up.  I wouldn't know when to jump out, and then it'll be too late.

Rib-bit.

Disaster averted

It's over. As quickly as it started, it's over.

Day before yesterday, something happened that made me worried sick about him, and no message from him at all for 24 hours. When we finally met, I gave him my phone number to call in case of an emergency.

He refused to give me his. That raised a red flag.

When I confronted him about it, he tried to turn the tables around. I was asking legitimate questions; he was avoiding answering them.

I commented that Googling for his real name only returns one item -- the Twitter account he created for me. His reply: "I'm slightly startled by this new side of you."

I reminded him that I revealed more about myself than he did about himself. His reply: "Now i'm intrigued, maybe i should learn more about you"

He asked if he needs to be a public person like me. I said no, but if he had to hide from me, if he didn't trust me enough, why did he ask me to marry him?

I accused him of playing me.

He accused me of not being into "this" at all.

I said, "There is no "this", is there?"

I told him that I wanted the truth. And I reminded him that he promised me brutal honesty.

He stood there for eight minutes without a word. Then he logged off.

He replied to my tweet about allowing myself to be gullible and said that I'm a victim of my own imagination. When I logged into SL, he still would not explain and started the argument again. He said that, if I was hoping for an amiable parting, I wasn't going to get it from him. He dissolved the friendship, and that was that.


I respect people's privacy. I respect people's need to be anonymous. I don't mind if people hide their information from me, but I won't tolerate lies and I won't risk my personal safety.

Everyday, people all over the world exchange contact information all the time. Phone numbers, email addresses, postal addresses. We give this information to strangers all the time. I would have been fine if he never gave me any personal information, except he wanted me to marry him in real life! And we were talking about him spending a month with me so we could be sure it was what we both wanted. That meant, I was inviting a stranger into my home. *That* is risking my personal safety. Yet, he could not give me something as benign as his phone number. Any normal person would seriously wonder why not. *I* panicked.

Rocky is the only current lover whose real-life identity I do not know, and I inadvertently found out why. But he had given me enough information about himself for me to comfortably risk meeting him in a public place someday. Besides I had witnessed how he behaves; I even teased him by calling him Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes. And, ... he didn't ask me to marry him.


6969 said "no secrets". When he said that, I gave him the names of all my alts; not even my RL sister knows all those names. And I gave him the website with all the links to all my online presences and personas, both virtual and real. Full disclosure. Now, I realize that, when he said "no secrets," he really meant I wasn't allowed to hide secrets from him, but he's allowed to hide his basic information from me. [sarcasm]Silly me. How could I have missed that?[/sarcasm]

The last thing he said today was "thank god this didnt go any further." I agree. Disaster averted.

Vulnerability in Second Louvre

Headman Taringa recommended Second Louvre. The building itself is a very impressive recreation, although the statues outside the second floor startled me more than once in a who's-that-looking-in-through-the-window way.

There are sculptures and paintings and photographs. But I'm partial to sculptures, so I noticed those first.

I've seen large sculptures throughout SL before, so the huge warrior "Achilles - 2006" at the entrance didn't quite generate a "wow!" reaction. But, hey!, it was worth a photograph with me sitting on his left shoulder. I didn't much like the Sully Wing displays either. And the first floor of the Richelieu Wing had technically impressive, but emotionally barren, displays.

But the Denon Wing had a few thought-provoking treasures.

And the single piece that touched me the most was on the first floor of the Denon Wing, the first sculpture on the left as you face southwest. It is a woman fully covered in armor, which was sliced and folded open at the chest revealing human skin. And she holds out what looks like a can opener. It was created by Starax Statosky. Something about this sculpture held my attention, and I stood in front of it for a long time, searching for why it resonates with me. I knew it had to do with vulnerability, but exactly what? Is it that, by being vulnerable, our humanity is exposed? By offering the can opener to the viewer, is she inviting us to slice open the armor around our hearts too? Or does that can opener represent SL, which allows us to be open and vulnerable in-world, even as we wear our armor in the real world? Or does the armor represent our own avatars that hide our identities but expose our emotions?

Other works worth mentioning are Stella Costello's "What to Expect When You're Expecting Utopia", Heidi Herbst's sculpture recreation of "The Birth of Venus", Meleni Fairymeadow's swan sax, Koee Few's interpretation of Icarus' fall, Abraxas Alphabeta's photograph "Next Dance for Me", and Saeya Nyanda's abstracts.

So what happens now?

There is nothing that could make us feel as incredibly vulnerable as an intimate relationship does, even if that relationship is just a fantasy. Trusting someone frees us to open up. If we feel safe, we trust a little bit and open up a little bit. If we still feel safe, we trust even more and open up even more. It's a necessary spiral towards deeper intimacy.

But, when we open up and realize that it isn't safe, we quickly put on an armor. And, more often than not, the armor has long poisonous spikes. So the mere act of putting on that armor hurts the people who are closest to us, whether we intend to hurt them or not. And that pain makes them feel vulnerable, so they also put on their armor, which hurts us back. And the spiral reverses.

Trust is so fragile. So difficult to earn and so easy to lose. And the only way to stop that loss is to take off the armor and be vulnerable again. But, oh!, the pain.

These past couple of days, I kept hearing a song from "Evita" in my head -- the one sang by Peron's lover after Evita arrives and sends her packing.

I don't expect my love affairs to last for long
Never fool myself that my dreams will come true
Being used to trouble I anticipate it
But all the same I hate it -- wouldn't you?

So what happens now? (Another suitcase in another hall)
So what happens now? (Take your picture off another wall)
Where am I going to? (You'll get by, you always have before)
Where am I going to?