bookofmirrors | Aug. 4th, 2010

A while back, I joined Model Mayhem, with an eye towards meeting up with photographers or whatever to get my fix for being art. I've only ended up meeting so far with one of the photographers who's contacted me (local guy, we have an outdoor shoot today, weather permitting), but I've engaged in dialogue with several, and I've made what seems to be a pretty strong connection to one in particular. He lives far away, and isn't particularly in control of his travel schedule, so he's not sure when he'll be in my area again, but we have plans to get together for the usual let's-meet-in-a-coffee-shop-and-make-sure-no-one-is-a-murdering-rapist get-to-know-you vibe-acquiring meeting. (I'm a stickler for safety.)

In the meantime, we've emailed, forumed, IMed, and talked on the phone. (Yeah, I know. Me on the phone, right?) And it became pretty clear pretty quickly that this rather unbidden mutual attraction was forming. And that when we met, something more than taking pretty pictures would be on both our minds.

Well, that brings a whole other dynamic into the situation, obviously. Because at the point someone has the potential to become more than a friend, the arrangement that

BlckwngdOrcl and I have is that we get to meet anyone our spouse plans to have a sexual relationship with. Our "rules" of engagement have changed somewhat over time, but that one's pretty much always been there. We recently added the caveat that a phone call would be sufficient for a one-night-stand in special circumstances (mostly something like gathers, or cons), but possible relationships involving sex require a meeting. We've agreed this is a common-sense precaution to prevent the other person from "thinking with their dick" and getting into a bad relationship.

Except this guy doesn't want to meet

BlckwngdOrcl.

There's a reason behind it, which hasn't been fully explained to me. Something about a similar situation in his past, that involved a couple in a BDSM relationship, if I understand it correctly. He thought at first that this was a dynamic in my marriage, since I'm a submissive by nature, but even when I told him that wasn't the case, he still has no interest in (my paraphrase) jumping through our hoops. Now, normally, this would be a huge red flag for me. And to some degree, it is. But prior to this, he's always been extremely respectful and reasonable. Hell, he's STILL being both those things and more. He even agrees it's a good idea to have that rule, and that he understands if the whole thing is a dealbreaker.

We've both found, though, that when we take the possibility of sex out of the equation, the energy between us just dies. Even the photography energy. Which is weird, really, and not something I've experienced before. And when the energy does flow between us, it's really strong, and has a sacred feeling to it. So it's not something I'm willing to dismiss offhand.

I would probably have come to that conclusion, regardless, if it weren't for him saying something about exploring why we had that rule to begin with, and what fears might be surrounding it.

And, of course, since my knee-jerk reaction to that was the idea that of course there was no fear involved, we were just trying to keep each other safe (ahem), it become obvious he'd hit on something there....

( This is probably gonna get long... )

P.S. The funny thing is, I did, in fact, read this post by the brilliant

Tacit back when he first posted it, and it struck me then... but not nearly as much as it's striking me now... Seems I needed a personal framework to tack it on for me to really grok the concept, even though I understood and agreed intellectually the first time around. Probably could have saved myself the trouble of writing my own post, if I had remembered his post at the beginning of writing this instead of at the end. :)
(And for the record, I have no idea how much of that post was floating around subconsciously in my mind as I was pondering this whole thing...)

But then, I wouldn't have learned anything, would I?