161 Transgressive Polarity: When It's Ok For Love To "Hurt"

In ancient Sparta,

If a young man and a young woman wanted to be together,

They couldn't just do that out in the open.

There was no dating in ancient Spartan culture.

Men were doing man stuff,

Warrior stuff,

All the time,

Living together in the city barracks.

Women were with women.

They could observe each other,

But they didn't really interact that much.

If a young man and a young woman wanted to be together,

It had to be done semi-in-secret.

The way the marriage custom worked is that the bride,

The bride in quotes,

The woman,

Would be taken to a dark room by one of her female relatives.

Her head would be shaved.

She would be dressed in coarse clothes,

Sometimes literally a burlap sack,

And she'd have to sit there and wait in darkness for the groom,

In quotes,

The man to come in and forcibly abduct her.

Now obviously this would be consensual.

She'd be prepared for this whole thing,

But she was expected to fight back.

She was expected to give him a challenge because in Spartan culture,

To just give in would be a sign of weakness in the woman,

And the Spartans did not appreciate weakness in women,

Nor in men of course.

Every time after that,

This man and woman,

This essential,

They'd be a couple,

But every time they want to spend time together,

They would have to do it in this way.

He would have to sneak under the cover of darkness and not be caught and forcibly take her.

Only at age 30 was the man allowed to leave the city barracks and move into a home with a farm with his wife.

But until then,

It was very common for a man to father multiple children by his wife while never having spent any time with her in the daylight.

The primary reason for this strange custom was that they wanted to ensure that couples,

Married couples,

Maintained lust and attraction for each other.

The Spartans believed that if they had to fight or put in a lot of effort to see each other,

Because even after the first many encounters,

The man still had to sneak.

If he got caught,

He'd be punished.

So he had to sneak.

There was a lot of effort involved in just seeing your partner.

By having all of this,

It would increase the lust,

It would increase the mystique.

By having this great separation,

This chasm that had to be crossed in order to have intimacy,

They would always appreciate or they would appreciate the intimacy much longer.

And basically it was a way to avoid something that's pretty common in domestic couples where you spend a lot of time with each other and slowly the passion fades,

Even if you still like each other a lot.

When it comes to polarized relationships,

Sometimes separation and friction and conflict,

To a degree,

Is a good thing.

In a recent episode on how to help her enter a feminine,

I spoke about how in a healthy polarized relationship,

There needs to be a balance between asymmetry and connection.

All asymmetry and no connection,

Well then you probably hate each other.

But all connection and no asymmetry means you're probably kind of like brother and sister or roommates.

And that's also not fun.

In a more recent episode on how to fight with your partner,

I spoke about how while fighting should not be a common thing in any relationship,

When it does inevitably happen,

It can be used as an opportunity to build intimacy.

But also conflict and emotions that we might call dark when it comes to relationships,

They're also an opportunity to increase passion and lust and polarity.

And even in the absence of something dark like that,

We can kind of like the Spartans manufacture opportunities to create a little bit of friction,

A little bit of heat for the sake of rekindling passion and romance and real like visceral attraction in our relationship.

It does require us to take off our PC nice guy masks,

It does require us to at least dip into maybe some taboo feelings or thoughts or actions,

Which is why I'm calling this transgressive polarity.

There's a transgressive elements to increasing heat in this way.

Because it's okay and actually perfectly natural to have some have emotions in your relationship other than lovey doveyness.

That's one really nice one.

But there's other great ones.

There's other great ones can also contribute to the mutual fulfillment of the relationship if you're willing to go there.

Love and lust are certainly not supposed to be comfortable,

And sometimes it's okay for things to hurt a little bit.

This episode will speak about alchemizing,

Repulsing feelings into attracting ones.

We'll speak about the wheel of consent.

We'll talk about dread game from the red pill world,

And also some simple actions that you can take in your relationship to increase the heat.

This is episode 160,

Transgressive polarity,

When it's okay for love to hurt.

A number of years ago,

I was in a tantra retreat where they taught us about Betty Martin's wheel of consent.

Betty Martin's a sexologist.

She has this model that she teaches where it breaks people up in their essential,

It's kind of like personality styles or how they tend to relate to people or in a given situation you can relate.

Where on one axis you have doer versus done to,

And the other axis you have giving versus receiving.

I'll share a link in the show notes to Betty Martin's website if you're curious about this model.

But essentially these two axes create four quadrants,

Four types of people.

There are givers,

There are takers,

There are allowers,

And there are acceptors.

In this workshop,

This is day one of this tantra retreat,

They divided the room into these four quadrants and said,

Everyone go to your quadrant,

Your style.

There's maybe 100 people in this workshop,

And a vast majority went into the giver quadrant,

More than 60.

Almost all the men in the class went into this giver quadrant.

In fact,

They had to actually make it bigger because they didn't section off most of the room for this,

Assuming it would be an even distribution.

They had to stretch out this square just to accommodate all the supposed givers.

Diagonally across from the givers were the acceptors.

These are people who,

I mean this is mostly in a sexual context,

But it applies to maybe all kinds of relating they like to receive from the givers.

They like to receive touch,

Attention,

Gifts,

Acts of service,

Whatever.

This group was,

I think almost all women,

It was a smaller group.

Actually,

There's probably the same number of women in the giver category and the acceptor category,

But there's no men in the acceptor category.

In another corner were the takers.

These are people who like to,

Well,

Take.

There's only three people in this category.

Myself,

An older gentleman who had done a lot of stuff,

I mean he just seemed very secure in himself,

And one woman who,

She was kind of like a masculine lesbian.

I don't know how else to describe her,

But hopefully that gives a good image.

It was the three of us only in this whole room.

And diagonally across from us was our counterpart,

The allowers.

These are the people who like to be taken from by the takers.

I remember looking around at the wheel of consent,

At these four categories,

Me being in the extreme minority and thinking to myself,

And I later told one of the facilitators,

My friend Laurie Handler,

Handler's over dinner that most of the givers must have been kidding themselves.

Especially the men who I feel I have more opinions on.

The men,

I think most of the men,

If not all the men,

Were there because the giving category is the one that seems good.

It seems the most noble.

It seems,

It fits the nice guy paradigm of like,

Hey,

I'm here giving.

But I strongly believe that many of them were kidding themselves.

Maybe they were hiding their taking nature for the sake of looking good to everyone.

They wanted to be seen as a nice person.

Or they really just were super blind to their own true nature,

That they actually were takers,

And it just seemed nice.

And maybe that is the role they've always fallen into in relationships,

Where they're giving and giving and giving.

In relationships,

Giving is super important,

At times.

It's important to be selfless.

Hopefully you care enough about your partner that certainly at times,

If not most of the time,

You do want to give to your partner.

But giving,

This one-way street of giving,

Giving,

Giving,

Almost always breeds resentment.

And on the flip side,

Giving,

Giving,

Giving is also not sexy.

If I look between the male givers and the female acceptors,

Across the diagonal from each other,

This is the pair,

Right?

I'm sure that the acceptors would gladly receive the gifts and attention and maybe even touch from the givers.

But they wouldn't be attracted back necessarily.

And in fact,

The more that they received one way,

Probably the less they'd value the gifts,

The more they might even resent or be repulsed by the givers.

And the women in the giver category,

I even feel worse for,

Because I would guess that in their relationships,

They end up in a mother kind of role,

Where they give,

Give,

Give,

Give,

And maybe overgive and don't get much in return and are often drained by their relationships.

In fact,

This hypothesis was later confirmed in different parts of the workshop.

Because I did feel that the takers,

Me and the other two people,

Were being a lot more honest.

Because especially when it comes to sexuality,

I mean,

Lust is transgressive,

Right?

There is that kind of natural element,

Especially masculine lust has a taking kind of quality to it.

Whereas the takers counterpart,

The allowers,

Diagonally across from us,

This was the second smallest group.

It was all women.

It was maybe eight women or so.

I actually think they were the most brave,

Because it's fairly taboo for a man to admit that he likes to take or conquer or consume in a sexual setting.

It's even more taboo for a woman to admit that she likes to be taken.

I think at least in most circles.

And I found this minority of women in the allower category,

They're actually the most free.

They had the fewest hang ups in their intimate relations,

Because they were just totally at peace with their nature of liking to be taken.

Because this kind of transgressive intimacy is a lot more in line with nature.

In the Dark Masculine episodes,

I gave a bunch of examples from animals,

Whether it's the cat's barbed penis or the fact that many,

Even fish,

Even betta fish,

I told the story of my pet betta fish and how they sometimes break each other's spines in the mating process.

Yeah,

Nature is metal.

And it's not that we as humans should take it to that extreme or do anything outside of consent,

But recognizing that the things that typically get our blood up,

How we've evolved to have a sexual response and lustful response,

Is often counter to the more socially acceptable,

Nicer,

Symmetric,

Peas in a pod kind of relating.

And we can see this down to the most innocent childhood level of the kindergarten boy who has a crush on a girl and he pulls her pigtails and makes her cry.

Why does he do that when he likes her?

It's just the thing.

In fact,

I can think of various examples and maybe all of us have stories of this from our awkward teenage years where we really like someone,

We have a crush on someone,

But then by accident,

By our own awkwardness,

Instead of being nice to them,

Which would make more sense,

Maybe we end up being cold to them just as a gut response.

So the question of course then becomes,

Well,

What do we do with this then?

How do we use this?

And I say all this just first to frame our disconnecting emotions.

I think for anybody in an intimate relationship at times where you feel like you really need to take space,

Where maybe you even have like an instinct to be mean in some way,

Or like you're feeling these emotions that don't line up with how we typically think a loving relationship should be,

It's not that that's wrong and has to be suppressed.

In fact,

Of course,

No emotions should be suppressed,

But it's that we can look at the little boy who pulls the pigtails.

There is a way to express it in a way that can add something to the relationship.

To frame this emotion,

I'll give the example.

It's actually a Louis C.

K.

Bit.

I forget what the actual joke is,

But he sets it up by saying,

You know how sometimes a puppy is so cute,

Like so cute that you just want to bite its face?

That actually might be the whole joke,

But that kind of feeling doesn't really make sense rationally.

Like when a baby is so cute,

There's something in you that just wants to squeeze it to death.

That I would say is this kind of consumption instinct.

It's like a very primal,

Pre-rational instinct,

Which maybe goes down to our circuit one,

Like our reptilian complex and our nervous system of like at that level of proto-consciousness,

The way you interact with the world is by eating it,

By consuming it.

Everything is through the mouth.

This actually might be one of the roots of why we use our mouths in lovemaking.

Because when a non-sapient predator,

Whether it's a snake or some other reptile or a fish,

When it sees something that it wants,

Another living thing that it wants to put inside of it,

It makes it feel good.

There's pleasure and various other motivating hormones that release in the body.

It does so with aggression.

It does so,

It's not that you can say that the snake is angry when it eats a rabbit or something,

But there is like an instinct of aggression to consume it and to take it into its own body.

For a softer example of this instinct,

And actually almost a counter to what I'm saying by things the same instinct,

Is like when you're feeling super in love with your partner and you are feeling in that super lovey-dovey mode,

Sometimes when you cuddle,

You want to cuddle so hard that you can't get close enough.

You can't quite merge as much as you want.

That kind of cuteness,

That kind of cute feeling where you just want to maybe crush your partner and consume her into your body,

I think is also the same thing.

It doesn't make sense rationally,

But it is a feeling that I think is pretty universal.

Back to how,

What do we do with this?

The way I've played with this is anytime I feel like a slight hint of,

It might not even be fair to call it annoyance yet.

I think when it compounds or it's ignored or suppressed,

It can end up being a more conflicting emotion.

Anytime I feel like a slight bit of annoyance with my wife,

Which I think is natural.

You live in the same space with someone who is different than you.

I mean,

And men and women are different,

Especially in a polarized relationship,

Which is different.

I think it's natural to have little bits of annoyance.

Whenever I feel like a little bit of annoyance,

I try to use it.

I'll try to honor the instincts in a more acceptable and loving way,

Usually with humor added on top.

So for example,

My wife is a fairly dominant woman.

I think just the way she's grown up learning to speak to people is pretty direct.

And sometimes,

I mean,

This might be a European thing,

She's Dutch,

Sometimes comes off as a little commanding to my American perception.

And sometimes,

Especially when she's tired,

Overwhelmed,

Maybe a little annoyed about something herself,

She'll speak in a kind of commanding tone like,

Hey,

Come here,

Do this,

Go get this.

And in itself,

It's not a big deal,

Right?

But it does hit on some level of like,

Well,

For one,

I would not want her to talk to me like that on a regular basis.

That would detract from our polarity.

That's setting up a negative dynamic,

Even if it's just a tiny little bit.

But also,

I don't know,

You call it my ego,

You can call it insecurities.

I just don't like to be talked to that way,

Especially by my wife.

So there's like a knee-jerk reaction in me.

It's very small,

Because it's a very small example,

But it's something that it feels like I want to push back.

So I'll approach it with humor.

I'll honor my instinct while doing it in a way that is fun and playful.

So usually,

When she tells me to do something,

I'll get in her face and say,

Don't tell me what to do.

And I'll grab her by the neck or by the waist and pick her up and throw her on the couch and do something silly and maybe kiss her,

Right?

We can say like a playfully transgressive way.

It's obviously silly.

It ends up being just a moment of physical touch between us.

But it still expresses the real instinct,

Maybe even insecure instinct,

If we want to really be critical of me.

Maybe an insecure instinct to attack in some way.

But it's in a way that feels good.

It's a way that restores the polarized dynamic that I like to have with her in a way that also communicates clearly that I love her and care about her and this is not an attack against her.

And I've actually found that if I can honor the instinct when I hear it at a whisper,

So to speak,

When I can honor the instinct when it's very small and not so consequential,

It prevents future times of having to blow up.

If I let that happen 50 times where she makes these comments to me that doesn't feel good and I don't address it,

Of course it will be extremely difficult to address it playfully at that point,

Right?

It will have built up so much pressure that there's no way for it to be expressed without it being aggressive and leading to a fight as opposed to leading to a play fight,

Which is much more fun.

Because the principle here,

And this applies to everyone,

Both men and women,

Is that if you are really,

Really honest with yourself about everything in your relationship,

Every little thing,

Even the little things that you maybe don't want to think about because it might lead to conflict,

But you're really honest with yourself,

From the beginning,

Right?

You're honest from the get-go,

It becomes a lot easier to find ways to express those feelings in a way that can actually increase the fun in your relationship as opposed to having to be a fight.

And this goes for every kind of negative feeling,

Like the feeling that you want more space,

The feeling that,

You know,

Anytime I feel anything that,

Or I try to do this,

Right?

Is the ideal that there is something that could lead to resentment or a little bit of ounce of resentment.

You know,

Yes,

You know,

What I think most relationship advice would say is like,

Okay,

Have a talk,

You know,

Takes,

I know,

I know some couples that seem to be very healthy.

They have like scheduled,

Let's talk about our relationship time.

I think that's cool.

I'm all for that,

But I prefer my way better.

I think my way is a little bit more fun,

Or it can be addressed in the moment without having to have a serious conversation in a way that can be a little sexy sometimes.

I mean,

One of these common feelings I think is periodically comes up for both men and women is the desire to be apart.

Sometimes the desire to take some space,

Spend some alone time,

Be it for hours or for weeks or for days,

But maybe weeks is a long time.

It depends on what kind of relationship you have,

But,

Uh,

You know,

When it's not listened to early,

It ends up breeding resentment where it's,

When it is listened to,

It can be at this fun thing of like,

Oh,

It's,

It's great to miss each other sometimes.

If you've been together a while and you're used to spending a lot of time together,

Like to a codependent level,

It might feel very transgressive to be like,

Hey,

Maybe we should spend less time together.

It can feel like a little shaky,

Like,

Oh my God,

Is this gonna,

Is this gonna come off as rejection or this and that?

But if you're honest with the feeling,

I mean,

The sooner,

The better,

The more,

The more easily it can be transmuted into something attractive.

And the last thing I'll say on this point,

And this is specifically when it's maybe gotten a little bit past easily turned into humor,

Like where you have like kind of a hostile fighting energy,

You can use this too.

And I have to say this with caveats because for some people it might be very foreign,

A man very steeped in nice kindness or a woman very steeped in people pleaserness.

This might just seem so foreign that it's like hard to put this into a consensual context.

But if you have fighting energy,

Right,

You just feel hostile to your partner and maybe have an instinct to make them feel bad by saying mean things,

Or maybe have even an urge in you to hit them or something,

Right?

This is going into,

You know,

Dark,

Dark feelings when it does happen in people you don't want to think about it,

You don't want to admit it to yourself.

There's a way to express that too,

In a way that's fun.

It requires a little bit more buy in and communication between the two of you when you're not fighting.

But you know,

This is something,

You know,

In my relationship,

Like sometimes we get physical and like,

It's like,

There's almost like an underlying understanding that it's not about being angry at each other,

But that there's some feeling like this like aggressive feeling that needs to come out and like play fighting or,

You know,

Some form of wrestling or pushing at each other with acknowledgement that you're doing this for the sake of fun,

Of like letting out these animal instincts in a way that you don't actually hurt each other,

Of course not physically,

But in lieu of saying mean things to each other,

Which might be the baser instinct.

That is also okay.

And I'd even say,

You know,

With respect to the ancient Spartans,

I think this is,

You know,

This is also a thing that tends to increase lust,

When done consensually,

Of course.

So with that,

I need to address an even darker part or a darker application of these ideas,

Which is what in the red pill community they call dread game.

The general idea behind dread game,

According to the red pill philosophy,

Which to be clear is not my philosophy exactly,

Is that dread game is when a man in some way makes the woman feel anxious about the security of the relationship,

Which when done well,

In quotes,

Has her try harder to make the relationship work on his terms.

And I'll speak to both sides of it,

Because I do think there are times where this is what has to happen,

Right?

This is maybe,

It should be a last resort.

I actually have a client who actually is the one who introduced me to this concept.

He used to be big in the red pill world.

He's in a very difficult marriage.

He spent a number of years,

A lot of time,

A lot of energy,

A lot of money trying to rekindle the intimacy,

Trying to make his marriage work.

And his wife really just was not down,

You know,

She just wasn't interested in contributing and she wasn't doing anything close to her half of trying to make the relationship work.

And the only time she ever showed any sort of interest in the relationship or affection towards him or caring about anything was when he said,

Well,

Okay,

If this is going to be how it's going to be,

Let's get divorced.

And it did seem that at least the first time he did this,

They did have a sort of breakthrough in intimacy.

Like she actually,

It was kind of a wake up call of like,

Oh shit,

If I keep acting super cold to my husband,

He's not going to be my husband anymore.

And she did want to stay in the relationship and it was a wake up call and she did move towards him.

However,

You know,

I think when you do something like that,

When you do something that potentially disconnecting where you're actually threatening disconnection,

It is effective in that,

You know,

It can maybe shake things up and,

You know,

Force everybody to really take a hard look at reforming the perimeter around the two of you.

But you can only do it maybe once,

Maybe once every very long period of time.

It really should be a last ditch,

The last resort,

Because one,

If you're threatening it all the time,

It'll be like,

Boy,

He cries,

Cries wolf.

And eventually your partner is going to be like,

Okay,

Well,

They say this all the time and nothing ever happens.

And two,

And I say this is specific to men doing this to women is that if your woman is concerned that you might leave at any point,

Especially leave according to circumstances that may be outside of her control and her perception,

Well,

Then she has every reason that to keep her walls up.

And actually that's a kind of a dynamic you definitely don't want to enter into your relationship because that's only going to cause her to do more things that are counter to what you want.

And I do think there's also a difference between male and female psychology when it comes to this kind of stuff,

Because it does seem to be more normal for men,

Even in a happy relationship or even in a relationship where he's not actually thinking or planning on leaving,

It's a little bit more normal for men to think of alternative timelines,

Different permutations,

Different like,

Oh,

What if I was with her and what if I lived here and what if I did this?

This is just anecdotal on my end,

But I do have,

I've spoken to a lot of people about their relationships.

This does seem to be a little bit more normal,

Whereas when a typical woman is thinking about being with another man,

That's almost always a very bad sign,

Right?

She's,

You know,

Women tend to be a little bit more,

We can say Newtonian or Aristotelian in their view of relationships.

It's like if they're with a guy and they're in love with him,

That's the timeline they're committed to.

That's the permutation they're focused on.

They don't think about other things.

When they start thinking about being with other men,

That almost means that they're not interested in being with the man they're with anymore.

I think this is important for men specifically to be aware of because while every little annoyance or even when you're otherwise happy in the relationship,

Your mind might wander and think about what it would be like to be with various other kinds of women in different situations.

I think there's also a game theoretical reason for this with our biology.

Sperma is cheap,

Eggs are expensive.

It's natural for a man,

Especially with abundant resources,

To think about mating with a diverse set of partners.

Whereas women,

They have every evolved reason to really commit to the relationship they're in.

They can only have one man's baby at that time,

So they should really focus on making that one work.

So for men,

I think it's important to recognize this,

That you don't want to introduce this idea of ending relationships unless it really is necessary.

If you do do that because it's the last resort,

Because everything else has failed,

Either you should be serious about ending or more importantly,

As it should happen beforehand,

If you're going to have this break in reality of,

Hey,

The relationship could end if certain things aren't met,

When that talk happens,

You should really focus on making,

Rebuilding the perimeter such that hopefully it never has to happen again.

But on that note,

While it's not healthy for your woman to be constantly worried about the security of your relationship,

That's not going to incentivize her to be in her feminine,

It should be understood in some way that your relationship is not unconditional.

And this is the one,

If you're going to go that far,

I would say just make sure this belief has gotten across and don't push it beyond that.

You don't want to threaten or anything like that because that's all,

It's all going to lead to probably the end.

However,

Both parties should understand that the relationship is not unconditional.

They can't just flail about and dump all their traumas and otherwise just be a really shitty person to their partner just because they believe that that person is going to stick around,

Which is kind of the unconscious,

One of the unconscious reasons why we tend to be mean to the people we love the most,

As discussed last episode.

If you do ever go in the direction of dread game,

The only goal,

I would say,

If you're going to dip in that dark water is to get across that understanding.

The relationship is not unconditional.

If certain negative things keep happening or certain positive or wanted things don't happen for a very long time,

That should also be the end of the relationship.

But on an ending note,

Whether it's gone into super dark waters of an explicit fight or a humorous fight,

A pre-fight or embedded conflict,

We can call it,

One of the great things is when you come back,

And this is essentially the root of what makes makeup sex feel so attractive,

Is that you are now closing the distance that has been created between you.

Again,

Just like the Spartan lovers,

Some separation has been created and it becomes so much more fulfilling and viscerally rewarding to come back together afterwards.

Transference and symmetrical intimacy is a fairly human experience.

There are a few mammals that pair bond in a romantic way,

But it is a very human experience.

Mammalian sexual intimacy,

Lust,

Is a lot more dictated by this feeling of transgression.

And I think it's a natural feeling to experience periodically.

In fact,

When two people are falling in love,

It's kind of mixed in with all the hormones,

So it becomes very easy to express.

But there are ways to recreate this,

Kind of like the Spartans did,

In a way that is not damaging,

Where these,

Maybe we could call them darker impulses,

Can be expressed in a way that feeds the lust and intimacy rather than harming each other.

So I hope that was useful.

If this happens to be the first episode of my podcast that you've listened to,

You might want to go back and listen to the episodes on high polarity relationship principles,

How to fight with your partner,

If that's a thing you have going on.

And specifically,

If you're a man who wants to be in a polarized relationship,

Check out the episode,

How to help her into her feminine.

Thanks for listening.

If there's anyone you know who may enjoy this episode,

Please share it with them.

Goodbye.

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