No moral to the story or metaphoric insight today. 🤷🏻‍♂️ I'm working on an article about AI and consciousness, and this anecdote, while relevant, was a darling that had to be killed, as writers say. So I thought I'd share it here.
6/6

I wasn't thinking about what I was doing. When we realized, everything got clear. But now I had to distract myself. Watching him work, my pulse would slow. It wasn't a reliable signal. I had to look around the room, let anything catch my attention, for him to get a decent reading.
5/6

Later, I went to a Chinese medicine doctor, who diagnoses ailments by reading your pulse with a gentle touch on your inner wrist. He was confused as fuck. He kept listening, frowning. He could tell something was off and couldn't make sense of it.
4/6

Like I said I didn't really think much about it, it was more of a conditioned response to the blood pressure cuff.
3/6

I didn't give it much thought. I just got that lower was better—"Are you an athlete?"—and that if I was nervous—as one sometimes is in the doctor's office—it would go up. So my thoughts would quiet, my body would relax, and my breathing would slow, and my heart rate would drop by maybe 10-12 bpm.
↓

tana.pub/Y72m1pl3zWCS...

If you're equally familiar with the nuances of your partner's body and pleasure and your own…

If your two different tastes, sensitivities, responsiveness, are brought into a single deeply shared experience…

That co-experiencing can extend all the way to and through climax.

🔗⬇️

B. You co-create, from scratch, a new vision for your relationship that surpasses either of your individual preconceived visions. Two minds and hearts are better than one; together you envision something better than what either of you could ever have come up with on your own.

A. You blow their mind with a vision for the relationship that's even better for your partner than their own. You have a vision so powerful and beautiful that they fully agree it surpasses what they imagined or hoped for. Or...

Is it a fire under your ass to evolve toward who you want to be, aspire to be?

Or a mandate to make compromises to who you are in order to be loved?
4/4

The question is whether the relationship is requiring you to GROW, or to PRETZEL yourself.
3/4

Sometimes you do have to change in order for the relationship to be its best. Or even for it to continue.

My relationship has called upon me to change on multiple occasions. Ana too. And we're both vastly the better for it.
2/4

4. Be open and transparent, even when it's uncomfortable. Take a break if you're emotionally flooded, then as soon as you can, proactively re-engage on the hard conversation so it isn't swept under the rug.
<- 5/5