Originally posted by jeepwranglerboi@Mar 11 2005, 03:09 AM
I think ebviking hit the nail on the head. For me, I have only told a few people about this place. I suppose that I am a bit selfish and I just don't wanna share. It's my place to get away, I guess it's my 'Cheers'!
[post=289822]Quoted post[/post]
Knight's innocent question raises some subtle but deep issues, doesn't it?
Even whole-hearted lovers need boundaries. They needn't be very high boundaries. But without them, you don't have a sense of self. Being in control of those boundaries is ta way you preserve that sense of self, without which you can't really maintain any self-esteem.
Knight, as long as your motives to share are simple, honest ones--wanting to share a pleasure, curiousity about her opinion of the place--and you're not "confessing" your visits here out of some misguided sense of guilt, do whatever you think. It sounds to me that while you aren't ashamed of being here, you don't want to make her uncomfortable. Right decision. I don't hide this site from my partner, but I haven't pointed it out to him. He's a bit tech-challenged in any case. The moment I mention the word "internet", his eyes glaze over and he retires to the couch with a beer.
It took me a long time to work that stuff out in my relationships. In my birth family, any attempt at privacy was considered an act of treason against my mother, who held the typical AC trait of feeling responsibility for everything and thus acting like a total control freak.
It was great to learn that NO, you don't have to share everything about yourself so that your loved ones might exercise their god-given right to disapprove of it.
My relationship is currently a long-distance one, so privacy issues are pretty easy to solve. But living in Tokyo with my partner, I had a kind of
Cheers that I rarely took him to...Mad Mulligan's Kamiyacho, the world's least-Irish Irish pub. I first stumbled into it because it was just around the corner, but continued to stumble out because the friends I made there were smart, supportive guys who enjoyed a drink or three.
Most of the regular boys were foreigners who lived or worked in the neighbourhood. Many had Japanese girlfriends, wives or boyfriends whom they loved dearly, but who caused them regular moments of (how shall I put it nicely?)
cross-cultural stress. The expat Australians used to joke that MM was a sacred place for Secret
Gaijin Business. We cried into many beers over the challenging love-lives we'd chosen.
My partner felt perfectly welcome there, and visited from time to time, mostly in my company. But he sensed that the friends were precious and the camaraderie important for my sanity in a strange city. He would often ask after these friends, and encourage me to spend an evening at the pub with the boys if I hadn't been for a while. He respected it as "my" space, not "our" space. I love him for that. And I miss the guys a lot.
Sorry to take the thread off on a tangent, but tangents are interesting, no?
hb8
