Dr. Spielvogel, you ask if I want to connect with you. Yesterday, all the interns talked about my desire to connect and how I kept analyzing it instead of just doing it. They noted I’m desperate to connect yet keep throwing up road blocks to connection. What does it mean to connect? I’ve never thought, ‘I want to connect.’ I’ve never said those words. I’ve never thought those words. But they are true. I want to connect.
But what does it mean to connect to you? That feels like it is out of bounds, unprofessional, breaking the rules, just plain wrong. It feels needy.
In our first session, you wouldn’t answer my question, "Are you Jewish?" Your name is Spielvogel and you won’t even say if you’re Jewish? Well, what’s the point of connecting to a brick wall? I thought you were saying I should treat you like a wall that I bounce a ball off. So I don’t care about your feelings. I don’t care about connecting to you. I don’t do anything for your benefit. I just talk at you like I talk at a wall because that’s the way you set it up.
I don’t know what it means to connect to my therapist. I know I can cry in here and you’re not going to tell me to buck up. Big deal, 99% of the time I don’t want to cry. I know I can share my feelings in here and you’re not going to say, ‘That’s wrong.’ I know I can tell you about unethical things I’ve done and you’re not going to say, ‘You’re a bad man, Luke Ford.’
Connection. When I have sex with someone, I connect. After we do the physical deed, than we both feel like we know each other and we pretend less. We’re more honest. We share the soul as well as the body. I feel closer to someone after sex than after a year of casual conversation.
I want 2 b 1 w u — not you Dr. Spielvogel!
I connect with people on Shabbat. We gather around the table and there are no phones ringing or TV blaring. We’re in sacred space and people open up.
I’ve written on rabbi-predators for years. Whenever I hear the term, "complicated sexual interaction," I immediately think rape. What women call rape, rabbi-predators call a complex sexual interaction.
Is there a difference between getting a woman to do a physical act she doesn’t want to do — without physical force — and rape? Is there a difference between unwanted sex and rape? Once in my life, my girlfriend of the time said I could have sex with her even though she wasn’t into it. And I did. And she just lay there. And afterwards I felt horrible. I felt emasculated because I couldn’t move her.
I have a problem with boundaries. I tend to keep pushing people until they lay down boundaries and then I resent them for laying down boundaries. Sometimes people are too shy to put up boundaries against me and then I feel like a bully. I have a bad tendency to take what isn’t mine, to reach for what doesn’t belong to me, to push people’s buttons to their very limit and beyond, to write as raunchy as I can without getting tossed from my shul.
Joe emails: "Rabbi Dr. Ford, what you are describing is what analysts would call “transference”. You are supposed to develop insight from this set of feelings evoked by the difficulty you are having with connecting to your analyst. Is this what happened in relationships with your parents or others growing up?"
I have my cam on. I blog. I do yoga. What else must I do to connect?
I want to go where love is. I want you to show me.
Maybe I treat you like a brick wall doc because that’s my default position for relating to people? Unless there’s something special going on, I treat ’em like bricks.
I want to connect to you doc. Next session, we’re gonna look in each other’s eyes until I find the most profound thing I want to say to you.
I was gonna do this with —- in white tantric yoga…
How could I connect with you? What kind of relationship could I have with you? How do we do that?
I want to connect with you Dr. Spielvogel, but what if we connected and then I fell in love with you? I’d feel like a right chump.
For the first six weeks I loved yoga. For the past week, I’ve hated it. A week ago, I was doing 90% of the exercises the teacher led. Now I’m down to about 50% again. I have so much resistance. I sit in class and I’m hating it — though afterwards I’m always glad I went.
I start my day with a cold shower like the Guru suggests. But the rest of day feels like a cold shower too. I do all these exercises and chanting that are supposed to bring happiness and wholeness and prosperity, but every day I keep getting kicked in the gut. Every time I think I’m making a glamorous new beginning, I just get kicked in the gut. Disappointment after disappointment. My life is nothing but grim duty. No comfy rolls in the hay for me.
UrlTurner: Who’s the bear?
guest13: that my dear is the million dollar question
guest13: the technique is wearing off
UrlTurner: A friend told me to go here.
UrlTurner: Guy I met at a gay bar.
UrlTurner: Said this is a good hookup spot
UrlTurner: Said I could see a good show here
guest13: did you say your asher yotzar
UrlTurner: Is this where he brings in the Gimp?
RussianDragon: his suggadaddy comes on tuesdays
YourMoralLeader: I have my cam on. I blog. I do yoga. What else must I do to connect?
UrlTurner: anal
UrlTurner: An anal connection is tough to break
guest13: get rid of the following 1. kippah 2. beard 3, gay music 4. yoga
UrlTurner: Is this some weird muslim thing?
YourMoralLeader: will you then give me your body?
UrlTurner: He looks like a terrorist
YourMoralLeader: or do you not care for me?
guest13: get the following: 1. hot jewish chick 2. hot goyish chick 3. hot chick of any kind
guest7: ENABLERS ALL OF YOU
guest7: You are to Luke what a fat welfare check is to a Satmar Hasid
guest7: Did you know that the city/town/settlement with the HIGHEST rate of welfare dependency in AMERICA is one of those weird, incest-peopled Satmar settlements where everyone shares a few grandparents with their spouse?
YourMoralLeader: I’m lying on the ground and feeling my feelings and reflecting on my therapy and
ReverendIke: The Holly Ghost will hook you up
gaz: we got dot to dots over here and you can color in the different colors
YourMoralLeader: how i can connect more deeply with my therapist
YourMoralLeader: i have a lot of feelings right now
guest13: stop reflecting and start connecting
YourMoralLeader: can you sense that?
guest3: feelings nothing more than feelings
gaz: i think i see someone playing air guitar with a keyboard
YourMoralLeader: this is sacred space
ReverendIke: Luke, this does not work for you.
ReverendIke: It just doesn’t.
guest13: go roams the streets of pico blvd and look for interesting women
ReverendIke: Hang out at some Mexican fast food place
YourMoralLeader: I know how to connect with people via sex and via Torah. Everything else is a muddle.
guest13: stop playinig with your balls
guest3: Work on your Purim costume
guest3: Make some hamantaschen
ReverendIke: Why do Jews make so much out of Purim, when there is no evidence that this "Queen" Esther ever existed?
guest3: Get your Kedem jugs out
guest9: great beard bor hoe long that take to grow thats to be proudof man << not takin the piss btw 🙂
guest13: go to Nagilla and stare at the bais yaakov girls and give them your full attention
ReverendIke: This music spawned a generation of faggotry and open borders.
ReverendIke: This music acoustically destroys testosterone
ReverendIke: This music is why you do not have a penis
