How do you relate to boundaries? Do you stay far away from them? Run up to them and stop just short? Dangle a toe over them? Sneak past them? Bound past them? Defy them?
For some, they’re sexy; for others, scary.
I spent much of my life in a dark closet. Much of my existence was on the wrong side of every boundary that one could imagine: I was a CPOS, an absent father, a derelict worker. I took no pleasure in this – not even subconscious pleasure, I believe. I felt myself in a prison, and desperately wanted out.
I remember a day in my twenties when I realized that you don’t have to drive between the lines on any given road, that they’re there to help, not to confine.
All of my instincts are to perceive boundaries – emotional boundaries, in particular – as electric fences, erected by some unseen other, touching of which can be fatal.
I don’t want to cross any more boundaries.
I recognize this is an ironic thing for a recovering sex addict, semi-polyamorous-monogamish-sometime-swinger. But the truth is, none of the joy I take in anything is a function of its transgressiveness. If anything, transgression is a damper on my joy.
Does the joylessness stem from a feeling of knowing that you’re in a relationship where you want and need something, but that you know that A) getting that thing will hurt the person you’re in a relationship with and B) you don’t feel equal to the task of even talking about your desire for that thing, because you think your partner would be hurt even by the awareness of your desire for it, and thus you’re stuck with a secret longing and the loneliness of being in a relationship longing for things that you cannot admit?
No, no, not at all. Here’s an example: some people like sex in public places -they like the idea/danger of “getting caught.” I don’t. The possibility repels me. Some people like having affairs, transgressive relationships. I hate the idea. It’s not that transgressive ideas repel me; it’s that the fact of transgression isn’t, for me, a turn-on.