Angela > Recent Status Updates

We can make sense of our attachment history by creating a coherent narrative of our past experiences...by putting together the story of what we went through as a child and examining how our attachment history impacts our present sense of self and our relationships... By telling the stories that have previously been unspoken, we allow ourselves to feel what has been unfelt and bring love to what has seemed unlovable.

You must be a priority in your own life. Secure attachment with yourself means being aware of your feelings and desires, as well as being able to tend to your own needs and knowing how to advocate for them in relationships.

When we rely on the structure of our relationship [to forge secure attachment], we run the risk of forgetting that secure attachment is an embodied expression built upon how consistently we respond and attune to each other, not something that gets created through structure and hierarchy. Secure attachment is created through the quality of experience..., not through the notion [of a primary partner].

[Lifestyle nonmonogamists] are often proud of and committed to this choice, but [it] in their case might be something that comes and goes depending on the partner or partners they are with, the phase of life they are in or their overall life circumstances. [Orientation nonmonogamists] describe [it] not as a choice, but as who they essentially are and how they are fundamentally wired.

A common predicament that arises in relationships is [distancer/pursuer]... the pursuer has projected outward the parts of their self that crave autonomy and independence and that are actually afraid of truly being vulnerable... the pursuer is drawn to the distancer, who will act out these needs and fears for them so that they don't have to. They are both trying to achieve wholeness.

“I have been stuck in the business of books for so long, I forgot how much fun being part of a story can be.”

You will experience your partner as "lacking" in some way. Or, you'll perceive yourself as "lacking" a partner altogether. But the minute the hungry ghost gains enough awareness to see that in truth, a mechanism of ever-present, seamless, circular, self-confirming fulfillment is at work, then he perceives that fulfillment is actually much more real than deprivation.

When you succeed in getting off on a given topic in Existential Kink, you are succeeding in releasing your fixation on ordinary beauty (or the lack of it), releasing your fixation on the content of your experience, and instead opening up to the larger beauty "that is not beautiful and is not ugly"--the context, the fundamental love that is You.

Some folks... are willing to feel highly valued with money but are totally unwilling to be highly valued with love, or vice versa. Other folks are massively uncomfortable with all kinds of "being valued" sensations. Your havingness level is deeply connected to who you know yourself to be... who you know yourself to be is a kind of fictional blueprint that defines how much good stuff you'll let yourself have.

This material world we live in is a world of polar opposites--love and hate, joy and grief, hot and cold, night and day, wet and dry, birth and death, health and sickness. If the Self that we are didn't want to experience all of this dizzying array of polar variety, it would have just stayed floating in cosmic undifferentiated bliss. But as it happens, our Selves are more adventurous than that.

...take all the embracing-approval-seeking-inherent-perfection-perceiving power of your spirit, tell your ego "thanks but you can shut the fuck up for a while," and send [that power] down to your actual life, body, emotions, and present situation[...] your life on Earth--right now, right here, in this animal, human body--is actually exactly what it has always wanted to celebrate with its exultant songs of perfection.

I loved Howard [Stern]. I still do, though I had to achingly bow out as my feminism solidified. (In a certain light, feminism is just the long, slow realization that the stuff you love hates you.)

I retreated into fantasy novels, movies, computer games, and, eventually, comedy--places where I could feel safe, assume any personality, fit into any space. I preferred tracing to drawing. Drawing was too bold an act of creation, too presumptuous.

Yet when we get to know [our managers], we find that they are generally much younger than they first appear and are overburdened with responsibility and fear… they are in over their heads and, consequently, have become rigid and punitive. They often feel unappreciated and hate their jobs but think that somebody has to do it.

…consider what might be good about having parts. What would it be like if you knew with confidence that your most repulsive or disdainful thoughts or feelings were coming from little parts of you rather than being the essence of your identity?

You have to close something. You can’t have a pain-free life… pleasure is the easy question. And pretty much all of us have a similar answer. The more interesting question is the pain. What is the pain that you want to sustain?

I think too much to avoid feeling too much. I think that’s it, or I feel that’s it.

Conditionality creates the irreducible gap between the world as you wish it to be and what it actually is: a place ill suited to creatures in search of meaning.

As the blank fields in her family tree gradually became populated, the growing orderliness felt good. She dug out the histories of her distant relatives in cutting libraries and registers, and found that they had the grand, inclusive sweep of novels… [it] constantly reminded her that death, viewed from far enough away, amounts to no more than faded ink on dry paper.

...when [people] asked how I was, I would reliably respond by saying how I perceived my girlfriend's disposition toward me that day, how likely it was that I had upset her in some unforeseen way. It is the shared technique of... many who benefit from unequal power structures and wish to continue benefiting from them: to convince the disempowered to identify with the needs of the powerful instead of their own.

Early in [our] relationship...she commented that [my first sexual experiences with boys and men] sounded somewhat traumatic. "No," I said quickly. "It was completely consensual." She made a skeptical noise. "Even when it's technically consensual, if there's a big power differential--" I shook my head. I knew women who had experienced sexual trauma, and what I had experienced did not compare to what they had survived.

There is a difference between the fear of upsetting someone who loves you and the danger of losing them. For a long time, I couldn't separate these.

Imagine a structure as delicate and intricate as a honeycomb. One that has weathered many blows... that could so easily be crushed by the sweeping hand of error. The dread did not rise from my thoughts but from my gut, from some corporeal logic that had kept meticulous track of every mistake before this one. That believed there was a finite number of times one could break someone's heart before it hardened to you.

Like a bitter divorced parent, I accepted that [my] collaboration [with my body] was mandatory...Despite my deep sympathy for all other animals, I was sociopathic in my cruelty...When she disobeyed me--in her hunger, in her clumsiness--I was punitive and withholding. I scrutinized and criticized and denigrated her ceaselessly, even in dreams. Not before or since have I felt such animosity toward another being.

...it is the persisting part of me that hates my young self, that is still afraid of being the girl in the mirror. Or even the less young self, who sought attention as if playing the slots, handed herself over for the impossible chance that it might pay off... "I forgive myself for ingesting shame I did not choose but was fed anyway," says Aja. "I may not yet be unashamed, but I am wholly unapologetic."

...when I got in trouble and wanted to be seen as good again, I would clean my room. But only when I wanted to be good, not because I wanted to be clean. I already understood that goodness was something you earned, that existed only in the esteem of others... [being good] was not a thing to care about alone in my room, unless I was thinking about the people outside and the ways I might need them to see me.

A slut was a careless girl, hands sunk haphazardly into the dough, broom stilled against her shoulder--eyes cast out the window, mouth humming a song, always thinking of something else.

And even in the old days, were you ever loved enough? Once upon a time, our parents did... But did you ever trust them? Fully? No. The full weight could not be put on anyone... everything inside us was too heavy.Even before this happened.So maybe you will say that this too is not love, but the mutual acceptance of that weight, each to someone strong enough to carry it.Still, let me call it that.Let me say I love you.

Such a refreshing question. In our cast of leaders and vocateurs one would almost think we had regressed to the olden days when people were their jobs. Mr. Smith is a banker, Mrs. Christian is a nurse, as if those 20 or 40 or 60 hours made the other hundred of each week nothing. How do you introduce yourself at parties, reader? Are you a cook? A hiker? A reader? A moviegoer?

Trauma is anything the body perceives as too much, too fast, or too soon. Whenever trauma is involved, the first step in mending any relationship... involves working through that trauma. And in order for someone to do that trauma work, he or she must first learn to slow down, observe his or her body, and allow it to settle. A settled body helps the other bodies it encounters to settle as well.