She says that with the Aids thing, talking about having been celibate long term may actually help me with women, but that I shouldn't mention Wallace. (Maybe it's a sign that I am improving, but I don't mention Wallace to anybody but Erica, Carrie, and Samantha. (And, I have been changing the line I use from "I have been mostly celibate for 5 1/2 years." to "I have been celibate for 5 1/2 years, but have still averaged once a day over the last 17."))
She also commented that I should try to overcome my sensitivity a little. (I know I should, but I don't know how!)
She says she has been feeling bad about her pattern of building relationships with men and then throwing them away to chase someone else. (She calls herself "selfish"; but I wonder if that is it? (Maybe rather than "selfish", it's a defense mechanism to protect her from the potential pain of intimacy and commitment?))
She says I am missing out by not having relationships. (I may not have relationships which possess the dimension of physical intimacy, but my relationships with her and Erica run very deep in the dimension of emotional intimacy, and that is what one is missing when one feels loneliness. (That is why a one nite stand is experienced by so many as unfulfilling. (It lacks the emotional intimacy, which is the true root of the loneliness they are experiencing and trying to satisfy with the one nite stand.))) (I do need to work at developing the ability to cope with physical intimacy, but I have what is most important in existing relationships! (And, I think, that is the dimension of intimacy that holds the greatest risks! (Tis easy to use the excuses of Aids, herpes, pg, …, to rationalize avoiding sex; but it's laying one's soul bare to another that holds the greatest risk for pain!)))
She says they have a new law there that allows the officers to arrest a man for abuse, regardless of whether the woman who has been abused presses charges. (I think that is a good law! (It gets the woman out of the middle of a messy situation.)) (Based on the women I have known and the stories I have heard, it seems like the problem has been a combination of factors like not wanting to put the man they love in jail, threats by him of more violence if she does press charges, fear of losing the financial support provided by the man, …; and I think it's best to take the question of prosecution out of the hands of the woman. (Another factor is that those relationships are often addictive in nature, which, at their roots tie back to self hate; and I think there is often a factor of masochism, where the woman somehow feels she deserves the violence. (I know I continued on in my marriage longer than I should, and that part of why I continued on enduring the psychological abuse was an element of masochism.)))