Connecting with desires

«Who wants to play? Attached male looking for something discreet and dirty. I'm very attractive, intelligent, and love to be creative and wild once mutual respect and a sense of ease is established. Looking for someone similarly hot and wild.»

I read this personal ad the other day, and made me wonder how often people can be attached and not achieve the level of intimacy they need in a relationship. I've been attached in the past, and I mean very attached, and more than once, and yes, I do remember periods when there was something lacking... not to the point to leave a relationship, but maybe near enough to take the risk to initiate a conversation, and just let things take its course.

Talking about your deepest desires and basic needs is not as simple as it sounds, we need to bear our souls, but at the same time we don't want to be judged or have our feelings trivialized. We don't want to hurt the ones we love, we don't want to make them feel that they should doubt us, we just don't want to fail, period. Yet, we have these emotions we yearn to express, and we cannot find a release to do it.

We blurry our own selves by having these inner incoherences, and we feel restless. Placing an ad might seem like a shout in the dark with the hope to alleviate the current state; and even though it might be sexual in nature, I wonder if that is really what is sought. After all, sex is just a layer of connectivity. Maybe what we truly need is to express our true desires to help us resolve our own inconsistencies. So, let me just ask: Would you consider talking to a stranger to achieve this?

So, we walk around portraying an image that may not be entirely consistent with our inner personna, and that may hurt or just make us feel uncomfortable. I don't want to pass a judgement on infidelity... I think that is a moral statement each one of us needs to answer on our own, but I do see why it might be necessary sometimes; and I say this even if I think it's unfair to the rest of us, who are unattached and would like to share a certain touch with somebody, no matter how tenuous it may be. However, what I think is fair, is that people try to find their own authenticity when relating to others.

There are certain barriers to this... mutual consensus to start. Maybe in the past it was permissible or understood that a man could find himself a mistress, or a concubine, or simply pay services with a sex professional. Now, other configurations have entered the scene like friendship with benefits or simple fuck bodies. Personally, I would always prefer an unattached man even if it was for a casual fling. The main reason is again, that I wish to have that authenticity for myself. Maybe I wouldn't be looking for a relationship at all, but at least I want that moment for me and for me alone. Selfish, I know... but I prefer not to have an inner conflict.
Going back to our attached male, I wonder if just talking about his unfulfilled desires would help him regain that connectivity to his loved one... Maybe he'll recover the perspective he needs to feel authentic again. I truly hope he does...

So, who wants to play?

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Music: Caetano Veloso in "Talk to Her"

If you listen to Caetano Veloso in "Talk to Her", chances are that you would never trace his style to British rock...

As a young musician during the 60s, Caetano was politically involved, and his activism had him arrested during the military dictatorship in Brazil. That made him move to London where he lived a few years in exile, and then returned to Brazil in 1972. Asked about his experience in London, Caetano said, "London felt dark, and I felt far away from myself." However, he improved his music there while working with British music producers. He's been labelled one of the greatest songwriters of the century even though he sings mostly in Portuguese.

Caetano appeared in "Talk to Her", one of Pedro Almodóvar's films, where he performed "Cucurrucucú Paloma", a Mexican folk song about longing for a lost love. This is arguably the most emotional rendition of the song ever, and a definite theme for the story of the film which revolves around the difficulties of communication between the sexes, loneliness and intimacy, secrets and infidelity, and the persistence of love beyond loss.

The actresses who work with Almodóvar are labelled "Almodóvar's women", which I find somewhat ironic because most of them are beautiful women like Victoria Abril, Penélope Cruz, and Almodóvar is a well advertised gay figure. Maybe that is why he's been so successful in his directing career; he always seems to find a space where love is immaculate no matter the circumstances, and that is a beautiful thing...

Dicen que por las noches
no más se le iba en puro llorar;
dicen que no comía,
no más se le iba en puro tomar.
Juran que el mismo cielo
se estremecía al oír su llanto,
cómo sufrió por ella,
y hasta en su muerte la fue llamando:

Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay cantaba,
ay, ay, ay, ay, ay gemía,
ay, ay, ay, ay, ay cantaba,
de pasión mortal moría.

Que una paloma triste
muy de mañana le va a cantar
a la casita sola
con sus puertitas de par en par;
juran que esa paloma
no es otra cosa más que su alma,
que todavía espera
a que regrese la desdichada.

Cucurrucucú paloma, cucurrucucú no llores.
Las piedras jamás, paloma,
qué van a saber de amores?

Cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
cucurrucucú, paloma, ya no le llores.

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The search for love

What are your chances of finding true love in life? Maybe being a hopeless romantic is not a lost cause after all when the search for true love is approached with a certain strategy...

Depending on your personal persuasion, and if you're really serious about finding true love, you may decide to learn from religious advice; or to consult an astrologist that will ask you a number of questions for a fee; or possibly consider counseling of some sort, which undoubtedly take you to the realization that the problem lies in yourself and not on others, and this, at a considerable expense. Then there's also that important aspect of beauty. Wouldn't it be nice to find love in someone who's considered above 8 in the beauty scale? I'm sure you all have examples of celebrities that would fit this quality, so I won't even bother in mentioning names here.

And we all know how things are these days with internet dating. I don't know about you my male friends, but I think it's fantastic. I sit at home, in front of my computer, usually late at night in my pj's and really, not looking hot at all, and I usually find someone I like in just a few clicks. Ok, I grant it, my odds as a female are a lot higher just by the sheer disproportion between men and women in some of the sites I visit.

This brings me to another point. You try to maximize your chances by looking in the right places... I heard of a matching site exclusive to fit and beautiful people, and maybe some of you might want to give it a try, but not me... not that I fit the bill in the first place, apparently the site has only just over a thousand members, but there's something eerie about being picked only by your looks. It just doesn't feel right... Would you date someone who's considerably more attractive than you are? You begin to reckon so many things... For instance: Will this person leave me for someone more attractive? Does this person have deep emotional problems that I should know about? Is this person hiding something? Oh yes, those feelings of insecurity and aversion to risk start boiling in your head.

Maybe some of you had the chance to see the movie "A Beautiful Mind", a story about John Forbes Nash, a mathematician and economist, who had something to say about how we build strategies to find love by applying game theory concepts. Just take a look at the explanation given in the movie.

So, the scene basically makes the point for a stag hunt with all the guys at the pub, so they can all get laid by not choosing the stunning blonde in the group of girls that just stepped in. Wow, it seems that for the girl in the movie, being the prettiest meant being the loneliest.

Now, that was a strategy designed for the sole purpose of getting laid, but finding true love in life is definitely a higher endeavour... but before we should take some time in defining what true love is. I'm sure this might mean different things for different people, but one thing is for sure... unless we're impossibly narcissistic, we would need somebody else for true love to happen. So realistically, maybe we should consider that we can only find true love with someone who's willing to date us. If you have a better idea, please let me know.

Of course, when you do this there's always the ubiquitous time factor. You simply cannot look forever for your perfect love, but you can't pick the first one that comes along because really, you figure that you'll miss a better chance if you do that. You might get lucky if you decide your first date is your true love, but that's a big risk. On the other hand if you wait too long, the pool of possibilities can only get smaller because potential mates settle with somebody else and they are not available anymore.

I suppose the practical question is how many dates or relationships should you end before you settle with the one. And with this, let me just clear out that at no point you should be accepting a choice that is relatively worse than those you dated before. I guess, the question becomes one of whether you'll make a decision to settle at some point. Well, I figure you can see where this is going, and even though it's only science, it might be worth considering it when you pick a potential partner.

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