Attraction

[shakahislop]

@suspended any suggestions for things to do around NYU? Heading down there from the Bronx now.

Meeting with a friend - a quaint environmentalist and chef-in-training - and her sister, and maybe our other friend - a "Natural Man" and a Trumper.

Dream House isn't a million miles away from there (actually it's about one mile)

if you like art installations there are some great ones round there. Dia:Chelsea. Earth Room. Broken Kilometer.

 

[shakahislop]

Dream House isn't a million miles away from there (actually it's about one mile)

if you like art installations there are some great ones round there. Dia:Chelsea. Earth Room. Broken Kilometer.

all of these will make any girl, or anyone for that matter, think you're weird. they're all weird.

 

[Clinamenic]

yr in NY, @Clinamenic? and you didn't DM me for lunch?

I'm socially centripetal; the other usually needs to initiate.

But last night I surprised myself by how comfortably extroverted I was, after not having socialized really for over a year. I can be quite comfortable in the center of attention, and I can harness that sort of electricity in ways that would make networking relatively frictionless and expedient.

 

[sus]

Leo ask Stan out on a Dream House date so we can get some great pics of you two drinking boba in pink neon light

 

[luka]

The funny thing about sex is that it is presented as a module you have to pass to be a human being

 

[Clinamenic]

Yeah that was really my primary compulsion toward it. Even in high school, it wasn't so much that I wanted to engage in and enjoy sex, but rather that I wanted to have sex happen to me, in the manner of a right of passage, a status badge, etc.

 

[luka]

I've also been the in the situation of being attracted to someone without there being a sexual component. And wishing there was, because it would rationalise it .
Don't listen to these boorish goons Stan that's my advice

 

[Clinamenic]

Yeah that was really my primary compulsion toward it. Even in high school, it wasn't so much that I wanted to engage in and enjoy sex, but rather that I wanted to have sex happen to me, in the manner of a right of passage, a status badge, etc.

After which point the load would be lifted, which was precisely what happened. Elation, without even having remotely enjoyed the act.

 

[Clinamenic]

I've also been the in the situation of being attracted to someone without there being a sexual component. And wishing there was, because it would rationalise it .
Don't listen to these boorish goons Stan that's my advice

Yeah, I would say that close friends feel this, but perhaps not everyone would feel inclined to describe it as attraction, because of the sexual connotation of the word.

I really mean it in basic way, as in you are attracted to somebody if you enjoy being around them and actively seek out opportunities to be around them, maybe finding yourself thinking about them with whatever frequency.

 

[luka]

Of course, it's very intense and and in a sense, very romantic

 

[Clinamenic]

And maybe there is some general tendency to want to consummate an attraction via sexual engagement, because it may seem strange in some cultures to admit and embrace intimacy with those for whom you needn't harbor sexual desires.

 

[Clinamenic]

Of course, it's very intense and and in a sense, very romantic

I agree, but also confusing, if we assume consciously or unconsciously that sexuality has a monopoly, or at least the ultimate claim, on intimacy.

 

[Clinamenic]

Not saying everyone, or even most people, do that, though.

 

[luka]

I don't know what would happen if you did. I've never gone that route

 

[Clinamenic]

I think it may help explain why men, at least on the more toxic end of the spectrum, may have difficulty expressing love for one another, that they may have been conditioned to ultimately associate attraction, in general, with sexuality.

Becoming closer with someone may seem to some to necessitate or at least strictly correlate with sexual engagement with said someone, whereas the breakthrough in understanding I was trying to describe would seem to debunk this and liberate the prospects of social intimacy from a confused sexuality.

 

[Clinamenic]

With this understanding, it seems much easier to embrace closer friendships without the schoolyard-normative aversion to being gay, seeing as sexuality needn't be considered requisite for intimate connections with other people, no matter what body they have in relation to yours.

Granted I didn't have such a discernible aversion to intimate friendships, but I nonetheless traffic through a socios where such aversions seem common.

 

[luka]

I would say true friendships are always a kind of romance and excite in a similar way. They quicken you and they seem to be able to bootstrap you into some more vital and coherent self

 

[Clinamenic]

Again I agree, but do you also think there is a prevalent yet somewhat off-base instinct to conclude, from these feelings of heightened vitality, that sexual engagement is the natural way to go about expressing this attraction?

Understandably that could make someone uncomfortable, the notion of sexually engaging with a person to whom they are not actually attracted to sexually, and such discomfort may dissuade someone from investing oneself so intimately in such relations.

 

[luka]

yes of course i think so

 

[Clinamenic]

Yeah really thats all I was getting at with this thread, the illustration of that point, rather than trying to systematize love or some such thing.