MysterionMuffles

OMG I remember I used to watch these just a couple months ago. Have you guys made anything new since?

No can't afford it right now. If you're implying sexual abuse in my history I haven't experienced any. Though I do vividly remember getting hit and neglected. I dont recall spanks on the bottom just belt strikes on my arms and body. It's not that it's unsolicited, I enjoy the touch of women. Just sometimes I pull away randomly even in mutual interactions. If I had to guess why my comfort levels are inconsistent, it's simply because I got no affection growing up so Im not used to it.

Oh wow Wesley good call on the masculinity research. I forgot about that board topic.

Whoa this level of HTML looks weird. I'm only used to the [tags] like this [/tags] hope this worked btw. In which case, thanks! If not. Pooey!

He's gonna grow up with identity and sexuality issues...

Well I definately preferred being touched in a way. I used to be a little reflexive about it, particularly when I just ended a relationship. But in more recent years I've learned to accept it because it is just playful and, now that I'm not so closed off emotionally and physically, I welcome the good touch. Even if it is a slap on the arm because as Stef mentioned, it's just wanting to touch someone to break barriers a little bit. Also thanks for the reassurance that most humour has implicit sexual undertones. I thought it was just me making too many sexual jokes all the time, but I've come to think "screw the people who get offended," by even the lightest of innuendo. I've been working on being positively receptive to it, but due to my upbringing and maybe some other reasons, I feel a little touchy at times. It's less trouble now that I've started hanging out with women platonically again and have gotten used to the warranted slap if I say anything funny or daring. Ah Pepin I like how you described it as an improvised dance lol. I guess I should also start becoming comfortable with initating some touches with women, but I don't know. I feel really nervous or feel like it's very random when I'm not saying anything significantly charming or anything. All I could ever manage is a shoulder touch, but I don't know what causes me to retract from touching a woman's hand or anything else lol. I guess as an expansion to this topic, a question I want to ask is: how can I be equally physically playful with women? I'm not one for slapping them in any way since I don't usually see guys doing that to women, always the other way around. Any advice?

Interesting take. Gotta start off by saying props to your openness to share this dream and what you personally thought it may mean. Even more props for sticking it through with therapy. Here's what I interpreted from it, and if you have a girlfriend or fiancee/wife already then this may not be valid. I will agree that the woman in your dream may represent your feminine side, but I kind of looked at it differently as if she symbolized a woman you have yet to meet in real life. The hairy hacker guy may be yourself and you're just happening to see him as a seperate entity for either a personal reason or for the sake of the dream wanting to be all cryptic. Perhaps he represents your online presence here on FDR and you're not really hacking anything in particular...perhaps life and reality with philosophy? And the reason why the research subject is never revealed is because of an impending passion you may come across in your life that you just don't know is even a possibility as of yet. I don't know how to put this, but 3 things may be pre-requisites to eachother: 1. Finding a woman who is a prisoner in some form or another who is on the same self journey as your are. 2. Your online and real life presence have yet to merge so that you pretty much are conrguent with your interactions online and in real life. 3. Discovering a passion you probably don't think of consciously, but may possibly sneak up on you that you just might fall in love with. But that's just my interpretation of course. I like to romanticize everythign lol.

but wait how did you get the user name, date and time in two split quotes? does it automatically happen when you

Joelle...you are not at all weak and I hope you realize that it took a lot of strength and courage to be able to open up about this. And wow for someone who just joined recently, that says a lot about you. It says you are ready to understand yourself better to improve your lifestyle. That you've unhooked from The Matrix, so to speak, and are ready to face reality. Also, what a lucky find through iTunes indeed, welcome to the community! God I hate how you mention that in your self defense in being sexually abused by your brother's friends that YOU got in trouble. There's just some really fundamentally wrong with the world if things like that happened. I...cannot express how much contempt I have for such an occurence. I know we don't know each other personally, but I really feel for you. To be a victim AND a scapegoat is a horrible fate to befall a human being, and it's about time such victims as yourself understood the immorality in it all. If you don't mind me asking, how are your relationships with men in your life in spite of what your father and brother have done? I really hope you healthy if not the healthiest of relationships at the present...that kind of treatment must be really hard to recover from. I also am more interested in what else it took (other than Stef's podcast) for you to learn how to examine your life in this rational kind of way. And Cheryl, when you said it benefits our friends to believe that our weak...I felt tears well up at the back of my eyes. That statement punched me in the soul...makes me realize why I used to argue with teachers a lot in high school. It was me displacing my hatred for my parents towards corrupted authority figures that acted as stand in parents to some degree.

Oh Joelle, I'm just about in the dark as you are about this. First of all, I'm really sorry that you had to experience something so horrid. The irony of the situation is that you, as an outsider, actually listened to the sermon. This man may have heard it but not really listened. Though I doubt that he did and I'm more leaning on him being the kind of person that simply going to church is a good thing without context to what the priest has to say during the only (imo) interesting part about church aside from the strange rituals. I cannot imagine what kind of trauma this man have to had suffer to act in such a way. That's a clear sign of low self esteem and scapegoating. He must've had a crappy childhood of being chastised for not following in the edicts of his religion. Speaking of childhoods, although you didn't detail too much about it, I have sympathy for you when you simply mentioned the whole idea of denying the true self. To me that's just one of the biggest F yous you can give to a child. But I'm glad you remained Atheist throughout your childhood and fought the urge to want to fit in just because people around you were wrapped up in mythologies. I'm also on the same page with you about being a child's God parent even though you're an Atheist. When my neice was first born, I kept referencing my self as her God-father, just because I always intended to have a deep relationship with her and wanting to have a name separate from the other uncles she has in the family So eventually my cousin pretty much appointed me as a God-parent and I went to that baptismal mass...as an ex-Catholic and being pretty high at the tiem, the whole thing seemed just as foreign to me as it had for you. It was really weird that we had to waste an hour of our time to sit and listen to this old man in a robe babble on about God knows what, and then for him to eventually splash some water on my neice's head to appoint her a part of the "faith," or whatever. ANYWAYS how this relates to you, let me let you in on a little info about the cracker you refused to eat. Catholicism consists of this strange notion that a Jewish man named Jesus was the Son of God whose miracles were frowned upon by the Romans. He claimed to be the Son of God and they didn't like it, so they subjugated him to torture in front of a huge audience. He got whipped in the back 40 times, had a crown of THORNS put on his head, and had to drag a wooden cross over his shoulder for some distance, the very same crucifix in which they nailed his goddamn HANDS to! I don't know the correlation, but basically the cracker you refused to eat is called communion and it is supposed to symbolize his flesh. FRIGGIN WEIRD!!! I know! But that's basically what you implicitly said in not eating the cracker. You were refusing to become a symbolic cannibal, and why that was offensive was because after all the weird ass rituals during church, to continue to validate your "faith" is to eat the flesh of dead Jewish zombie. Yeah...my mind is blown trying to explain it.

Ok last night I was hanging out with a friend and every time she drank from a beer bottle, it would foam up and escape the tip. She wondered why and at first I just said, "I think if you suck on it, it causes the beer to gas up or something. Some kind of science crap happens that I wouldn't be able to understand or explain." And she accepted my premise, decided to take another sip without sucking like I said, but it still foamed up. "Ahh why's it still happening?" She asked. Then I said, "maybe the bottle got used to it and wants you to continue sucking it now." She just laughed and proceeded to try taking another sip, and while she was taking that sip, I almost made her spit it out because I said in a voice speaking for the beer bottle, "oh yes I can't get enough of [friend]'s lips!" That's when she decided to give me a light slap on my arm and my guess would be that I embarassed her a little bit, but not so much that she would take it personally because our interaction just continued normally afterwards.

I dunno just like I said, outlandish jokes or something that teases the woman. No personal attacks of course, but the emotion I think that is conveyed through it is embarassment and release of ego. The way I rationalize it is: I said something that she can take personally if she wasn't of healthy self esteem, but laughs it away because she notices not to take herself too seriously.

I've noticed that when I flirt with women and I make outlandish jokes or tease them, I get lightly slapped on my arm. Obviously those arm slaps are not aggressive and are just basic flirting body language, though I want to know how to classify that. It is still hitting, but it is also harmless. Is this one case in which there IS such thing as non-aggressive violence or is it not even considered violence at all? What I also want to understand is why it's such a reactionary thing for a woman to do when she feels charmed by a man. I understand that it happens regularly, but I want to know why. PS. I'm not a ladies man, but I do like to have fun once in a while Also I don't know how this topic got duplicated, but if someone could delete the copy that does not get any replies that'd be nice. I guess in the new forum format we can't delete our own topics.

I've noticed that when I flirt with women and I make outlandish jokes or tease them, I get lightly slapped on my arm. Obviously those arm slaps are not aggressive and are just basic flirting body language, though I want to know how to classify that. It is still hitting, but it is also harmless. Is this one case in which there IS such thing as non-aggressive violence or is it not even considered violence at all? What I also want to understand is why it's such a reactionary thing for a woman to do when she feels charmed by a man. I understand that it happens regularly, but I want to know why. PS. I'm not a ladies man, but I do like to have fun once in a while

Cussing at someone randomly is a form of aggression. You're using hurtful tone and words to modify their inner physiology to get scared of you or get shocked.

AI, can you elaborate? I want to know what makes you so sure that it is equivelant to any other abuse. Especially if you have personal experience in the matter. Not disagreeing btw, just curious.

I am so confused by this topic...

Awesome, welcome to the boards. Feel free to reccommend some documentaries to us also, there's a forum for it.

Awesome thanks! And thank you to the people on the chat who told me you've checked my channel out also. Even MORE thanks to the people who helped me draw out some more deeper philosophical points that I can bring up on my next review for Kick Ass 2. Which you can watch RIGHT HERE!!! I'm working on trying to limit my synopsis summaries so that I can fit in more philosophical points. Tell me what you think so far!

LOL I still find it funny because he was infantalizing her in his attempt to romance her. You're my cutie pie something something, 3 months blah blah will you marry me? Ok I don't think the violence is justified, but the rejection was the only logical outcome.

ah cool thank you very much. Guess that would be the standard way to go about it. I dont know why I was getting the impression it all happened really quickly. But yeah good for you, man. Now if I could only do the same for my family. For some it's just a past time hobby of "lets always go to church on Sunday so we don't feel guilty about the copius amounts of shopping we do afterwards." And that lame "it feels good to go" crap. I would much rather convert them to Atheism and NOT have to put up with the drama that would occur if and when...let's say...I have a kid and don't want to baptize him/her. That and the shame they try to put on me for not going to church anymore, which I do not and can not feel for obvious reasons. Anyways thanks again!

Again, sorry to be annoying--and I get that that family is uber nice--but it still doesn't explain how you convinced to believe otherwise. What I was asking was what methodology did you use to disprove the existence of God, and did they not at all worry at first about abandoning the church? Did they not at all have some oppostional arguments or was it really that easy? That they really like you, you presented your case quite intelligbly and they just so happened to accept it all?

what kind of evidence are you finding anyway?

Don't hesitate to act. Take action as soon as you've gained the courage to do what is neccessary and follow through with it. That may include talking to the abuser about it first and see if they can reform (small chance of that) or if they'll justify what they do. At that point, take it to the authorities. Dont know how you'll get evidence of it but somehow you gotta just get it to stop.

Since you guys had that back and forth chat in this thread, I've been wanting to give my input, but I don't have anything to add but my most sincerest apologies for what you have gone through. And of course to express my pride in your choices to understand this trauma and overcome it. Fiddler, I was resisting reading your post because the huge block without paragraph breaks, but I got over it and read it. And you have some really helpful advice that I will take to heart. I never saw it that way: getting my mother to even SEE the relationship at its present state as dysfunctional as a good starting point. Also, not making it about the blame game. She likes to transfer the blame on me when I try to call her out on her BS, so I just end up getting stuck in storytelling and the blame game because it's what I'm used to. Gotta break the damn cycle! Thanks a lot!