Tunnel Vision Continued
Limiting thinking
This still is just about the restrictive mode of thinking pattern influenced and grounded by various facilitating and self-supporting arguments. As a result, this continues to have an increasingly, permeating further and gaining priority, often unconsciously and with the best intentions. It may now be recognizable that these "best intentions" are paving the one-way road of tunnel vision.
Even someone experiencing SSA feelings who decides to continue their marriage cannot escape this.
The origin of this, I believe, lies precisely in the underlying meaning of choosing MOM: SSA feelings are denied or deprived. Choosing an MOM is saying: I am continuing to lack something I need TO BE myself.
In other words, I choose to maintain the marriage but simultaneously cling to what I don't choose.
Because sexual intimacy with the same gender is fundamentally seen as the gateway to fulfillment and wholeness, where you are truly and faithfully yourself.
It's as if room is being made for a kind of other power of morality, principles, and values, and a sense of one's own identity-first.
As if the tracks are shifted to allow the wagon (marriage) to move forward...
The fences are put in place that direct thoughts in only one direction and limit choice.
A forced connection, a choice always has two sides.
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For the SSA partner, understanding the deep inner needs, feelings, and emotional rollercoaster of the heterosexual partner becomes increasingly challenging. Needs and feelings that are equivalent to those they (SSA individuals) themselves have. Understanding the depth of the connection and interaction fades.
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The why or origin of the 'two becoming one unit' relationship, which is the marital state, becomes increasingly twisted and distorted in being internally tuned to the alternative and better need where the SSA partner feels trapped (‘lack’ = I do not have).
As a result, the promise or being faithful is not (anymore) understood in value and depth.
Down the rabbit hole, increasing tunnel vision.
Opting for marriage thus becomes a willing sacrifice, a burden of connection and loyalty to each other.
I stumbled upon a beautiful cryptic description of evasion: Not realizing they are not leaving.
Because that's precisely what happens....
Where (essentially) the desire to choose is not truly central, where ‘choice’ and ‘being true’ to oneself essentially go hand in hand because accepting your own choice = following through in your thinking + letting go of what you don't choose.
Allowing and thereby shifting the primary importance....
Henry Cloud (in: '4 steps to a strong identity') describes:
As an adult, you have choices. Start by taking responsibility for these choices and owning them. For example, if you give something, you choose to give, and then you shouldn't act like someone is forcing you. You make an adult choice... You are responsible for what you choose.
Taking this responsibility will change your life.
Voluntary acceptance of choice is: being content. Without the gritty sand of just ‘having to’. It's approving of yourself, from the complete willingness to follow through with that choice. Every subsequent step stands firm like a house because it aligns with and belongs to what you want!
But tunnel vision prevents this acceptance towards creating this freedom; instead, it is (unconsciously) seen as an obligation (often at the expense of the partner).
As a result, there is actually no agreement with the choice that has been made, and deprives oneself of the potential to be who they truly want to be and stand for.
It's a poverty for both.
Constantly reminding oneself to focus on one's marriage, one's partner, with whom one wants to go through life. Especially physically. For example, no longer wanting to be touched, or being unable to touch the partner oneself..., even developing a repulsion towards the partner in a physical sense...
Intimacy and connection become increasingly difficult to muster or find from a place of peace and tranquility within oneself.
No wholeness, no completeness, no purposeful choice.
The purpose and emotional significance of the heterosexual partner become insignificant and inadequate and excluded.
The emotional significance and purpose of the (hetero) partner are not comprehended, and the image becomes increasingly fragmented... As a person, as a gender, and as a spouse. Tunnel vision does not allow a full and equal internal introspection.
But the heterosexual partner also has to accept and integrate this 'new' fact.
As they are of the opposite gender, directly the opposite... a 90° different emotional and sexual perspective and ideology make this new fact (acceptance of the same-sex attraction of the partner) inadequate and undecided and excluded from the unity that the heterosexual thought to be for the other (= the now same-sex attracted partner).
It involves so much more for both than 'just' dealing with the SSA feelings and experiencing the spouse.
The result lies in looking much deeper and more internally and intimately at the other person and what you mean to that person.
What you meant and mean to each other in the present.
Because that is where the pure, genuine, and total identity of who you are lies.
I already mentioned that it mainly arises unconsciously, like some underground river that can only flow in one direction.
And it is precisely here where the difficulty lies in recognizing it oneself.
Through all the affirmation that the 'inner thinking' receives and essentially supports and shapes it actually lays the foundation for all the conditions that you are indeed on the right path!
-That it is okay how you treat yourself,
-That you do not want to deny yourself,
-That this is who you are.
-You have no other alternative.
This fills the 'sexual preference' gap, feelings and voids that have arisen.
But ultimately, it's merely a substitute for total individuality and therefore also sexuality. But it feels like it and therefore that is who you are. With the crucial consequence: this mutation controls and dominates the identity.
Partly supported and emphasized by the spirit of the times, in which culture almost demands and prohibits denying yourself, and claims that if you go against this tide of feeling, you are shortchanging yourself and allowing yourself to be deprived of something you (still) deserve.
While the question of recognizing and acknowledging your sexual preference is actually a very different question and definition than recognizing your total identity.
Sexuality is and entails so much more than just the sexual preference you have.
