Eyes Wide Shut, and pub

[ciphergoth]

First off, come to the pub tonight!

Second, I watched Eyes Wide Shut on C5 last night. What was that all about then?

Lots of impressive but meaningless imagery, very very slow plot development, rather irritating incidental music and an inconclusive conclusion. I saw lots of sex-related imagery, but if there was a sexual morality fable in there, a warning against "empty, meaningless sex" or otherwise, then it passed me by. To me, it was a warning that if you gatecrash a party and someone warns you to get away before they kill you, do as they say. Also a warning against telling people you don't know very well about things you've been paid to keep secret; or against working for organisations that have people killed in the first place.

At one point, taxis refuse to pick him up because he's crossed the Bad Guys. What did they do, send a fax to every taxi driver in New York saying "don't pick this guy up, photo attached, signed the Bad Guys"? Or did they write "don't pick me up" on Tom Cruise's forehead while he slept, in a special ink that only taxi drivers can see?

I think EWS doesn't work for me because it depends on the audience imagining that sex parties are the most forbidden and secret thing there could ever be. I'd like to wave a little flag at this point and say that, in common with many of you reading this of course, I go to sex parties quite often, they're generally jolly good fun, and people hardly ever get murdered! After watching EWS, I wanted to write that on banners and hang them out the window.

Though it did make me wonder if an opening ceremony at a sex party might be a cool thing. Unfortunately that would require people turning up on time...

Comments

[nickys.livejournal.com]

> how two intelligent, attractive, sentient people can share a bed, a child, and a life for years on end when erotic yearnings elsewhere are inevitable.

I expect it depends on the personalities of the people involved. Some people prefer monogamy, others prefer to be poly.
So long as nobody's telling lies or taking advantage, either arrangement is fine.

In the bad old days men got to be promiscuous and women (on the whole) didn't. These days, since we have a principle of equality in relationships, there are other options.

One comment I would like to make is that the statistic that 70% of married women have affairs was greeted with howls of derisive laughter at a drunken night out of a group of married mothers - not because any of us would claim that we have never looked at people other than our lawfully wedded and found them attractive - but simply because we don't have either the time or the energy...
Keeping one emotionally fulfilling adult relationship going while trying to raise children is hard enough - the thought of managing more than one is not exciting, it's exhausting.... :o)

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

They didn't claim to have multiple emotionally fulfilling relationships. Just one of those and one or more affairs.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

If there was only one emotional relationship to be managed that would be more workable from the point of view of expending less emotional energy in juggling priorities.

But you do then have to consider what basis the affairs would be run on. As we have discussed previously, women in general aren't as good as men at seeing the point of having sex just for the sake of sex. We're more likely to either only have sex where there is already an emotional connection, or to become emotionally involved as a result of having sex.
And once there's an emotional connection then the complications start up again.

Obviously it is possible to make arrangements which are acceptable to all parties, since there are poly people who make a success of their relationships.

I'm rather skeptical about being able to manage the practicalities if one is also involved in parenting on a day to day basis, because that takes up so much energy and affects every other aspect of life so profoundly. Although I suppose the original quote was written by someone who expected the actual work of raising the child to be done primarily by a Nanny, in which case the parents would have enough free time for affairs.

[pavlos.livejournal.com]

From what I understand based on accounts of people who have affairs, the idea is to have an uncomplicated part-time relationship that gives you sexual pleasure and makes you feel attractive and desired. As soon as one of the affair partners begins to love the other, a mess results.

As I say I never get this myself. What I want is to have affectionate or sexual relations with my friends, since we get on very well and they seem like the right people to do this.

Pavlos

[nickys.livejournal.com]

> As soon as one of the affair partners begins to love the other, a mess results.

That certainly seems to be the case in all the affair situations I've seen.

> What I want is to have affectionate or sexual relations with my friends, since we get on very well and they seem like the right people to do this.

It seems to me that that could be a lot easier to manage.
Particularly if the friendship is a longstanding and stable one then feelings of both people are less likely to be drastically changed by adding sex to the relationship.