I am a mistress right now. I love my boyfriend very much, but I am very confused about everything that I have researched about mistresses and wives. Apparently, I am supposed to be a homewrecker, an evil temptress whose only desire is to take him away from his family. Nothing could be further from my mind–I even give my boyfriend advice on how to get along with his wife. The more I look around the net, the more I find sites that tell me how I am going to be disappointed because he will not leave his wife, because he uses me sexually, because I will not have an intimate emotional connection with him. But I do not want him to leave his wife, and if the affair was ever discovered I would call her and promise her that I would never see him again so that he can be with his family. I don’t get money from him, either; I don’t really understand how I am supposed to fit into the expectations society has of mistresses.
When I was a teenager, I figured that my sexuality made me a weirdo. I didn’t think sex was some special, magical thing to be shared only with certain consecrated people; nor did I believe it was dirty and polluting and had some special power to destroy my soul. I was attracted to men and women equally, was willing to try new things, and was polyamorous at a time and place where that term didn’t exist (we called them “open relationships”, and some of my older partners called it “free love”). The idea of jealousy made no sense at all to me; I didn’t care if my partners had sex with other people and I probably had more three-ways before I was 20 than more conventional girls have had sex partners of any kind. But society told me that was all abnormal; sex possessed some kind of magical mumbo-jumbo taboo energy which made it different from all other human activity, and if I had “too much” I would be “ruined”, and I should be angry and hostile and hateful and throw my relationship away if I discovered a boyfriend or girlfriend had slept with somebody else. I didn’t believe any of that crap, but I did believe that believing in it was “normal”; I was therefore a freak. By the end of my twenties I had a much broader outlook; I felt that everyone was different, and that my way of perceiving sex was no less “normal” than the more common view. But after 18 years of harlotry, I’ve begun to realize that my initial position was closer to the truth, except for big difference: I’m not the one with the freakish way of looking at sex; society at large is. Sex isn’t any more magical or holy or special than any other thing we can do with other people; it doesn’t have any unique power to destroy souls, and it isn’t “ruined” or “polluted” or whatever if one has it with multiple partners, or pays for it, or engages in it for reasons other than “love” or “pleasure”. Rape is not a fate worse than death, sex society brands as “illicit” is mostly harmful to young people because of the stigma society inflicts rather than because of the activity itself, and extramarital sex has no intrinsic power to “wreck” a home; it’s jealousy and insecurity which do that. The taboo/magical/possessive paradigm of sexuality is deeply sick and twisted, and has probably caused more evil, sorrow and destruction than any other single cultural construct on earth.
There’s an old adage that goes, “in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” but that’s total bullshit; as H.G. Wells illustrated in his story “The Country of the Blind“, the real response of a nation of blind people to someone trying to describe the concept of sight would be to conclude he was an imbecile. Were the hypothetical one-eyed man to peruse the (Braille-like) records of this blind nation, he might discover other cases of “sick”, “crazy” and perhaps even “dangerous” individuals who had claimed to possess this imaginary power called “sight”; he might even find analyses of why these people should give up their delusions of a fifth sense, and how they’d never be happy or fit into society until they stopped claiming to see, or possibly even descriptions of how such troublemakers had been sentenced to have their eyes plucked out to rid them of this twisted delusion of “sight”. What I’m getting at is this: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you or your way of looking at your relationship, but since you live in the Country of the Blind, don’t be surprised if the great majority can’t understand your gift of sight. And because they can’t, they will all try to convince you that you’re the one who’s wrong and sick.
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Well said.
Society has a more than pathological attitude towards sex and it harms a great many people.
In the country of the blind, I wonder how many people are really blind and how many are just pretending to be because they think everyone else is.
Absolutely spot on. Societies are very big on telling everyone how to conform while also having total disregard for the happiness and well-being of those who question the reasonableness of these edicts or those who will never fit their blinkered view of acceptable normality (a normality which frequently condones mass violence, attacks the weak and vulnerable, denies the individual freedom from persecution, fears a future that might be better than the present and would rather let abuse of the innocent flourish than acknowledge the wrongs perpetrated by its own members). Thank you Maggie for advice to this bright healthy woman because it applies to all of us (well) round(ed) pegs that are mercilessly pushed into the confines of our society’s square holes.
Reblogged this on Loki's Bruid and commented:
Food for thought; I dunno if I agree with all of it – I tend to think that sex is holy if those participating want it to be – but the author’s Country of the Blind analogy is full of good thinky thoughts.
I’m not sure I fully agree with the analogies being made here.
First, with regards to sex I agree there’s nothing that makes it intrinsically more ‘good’ or ‘bad’ than anything else. However, until humans perfect artificial wombs and they become widespread (if they haven’t already) or begin reproducing asexually, then sex is the one activity that can (very often) result in the creation of another human life. To me, that does make it significant, if not exactly special.
When I ask myself how all these taboos and hang-ups about sex could have come about I have to look at it through that prism, plus the fact that long, long ago the idea of property became inextricably linked with the idea of one having progeny to hand it off to. If not property, then at the very least the continuation of the human race. Thus, anything that could threaten or interfere with the creation of that progeny (masturbation, same-sex marriage, extramarital or non-procreative sex, etc.) was treated with suspicion which then curdled into outright hostility.
This has been going on for millennia. It seems like it’s only been within the past 100 or so years that effective birth control began to control the progeny issue (because there’s way too damn many of us) and only the past 50 that other taboos (like those against masturbation or same-sex marriage) have finally begun to weaken.
To put my own spin on the ‘blind leading the blind’ comparison, I’d liken it more to the idea of being blindfolded for a very long time. For the purposes of this discussion, blindness is permanent, a blindfold can be removed. Either the blindfold can be lifted gradually, allowing one to see that the light (and the future) is not something to be feared until the blindfold is gone completely, or it can be ripped off without warning, and thus run the risk of the light permanently blinding the onlooker, leaving them to curse both the darkness and the person responsible for it.
Telling a society that has, for better or worse, evolved over many centuries to tend toward a certain attitude toward sex to ‘grow up’ in a few decades seems like a fool’s errand.
Which brings me to the letter-writer. I don’t think the comparisons to polyamory are suitable here. Wouldn’t that require the consent of all involved? Right now, there’s one party (the wife) who is being purposefully kept in the dark. The writer states that she gives her lover advice on how to get along better with his wife. Is she preparing him for a day when he no longer needs a mistress because he’s repaired his marriage?
Further, since she writes that she rejects the notion that she’s some sort of homewrecker and also the notion that her lover couldn’t have an “intimate, emotional connection” to her, would she be prepared to end the relationship if the gentleman were to one day declare he’s ready to leave his wife because of the connection he shares with his mistress? Does she think the wife should have her blindfold ripped off, lifted gradually so she can honestly evaluate her marriage without panic or overwhelming emotion? Or is the wife better off blindfolded?
One final thing. I can understand the writer’s rejection of conventional wisdom that she says does not fit her situation, but I must say she has one very big thing going for her. Should she be exposed, she might be publicly ridiculed, maybe even sued, but because she is not accepting money, she still is not likely to be beaten, raped, and caged by the state.
Agree in parts, quiet man. Thoughtful comment.
Maggie: we know that sex makes babies, but beyond that there’s quite a bit of mystery involved. It’s not unreasonable to reject the idea that this makes sex “magical”, I suppose, but the contrary is not unreasonable either.
None of which is to say that you’re not making good sense about society’s pathological taboos, and how harmful and unjust they can be.
Reblogged this on Crazy Little Redneck Goth.