Confessions

One thing I've learned through my previous experiences is that if you decide to engage in infidelities, then you need to set some communication rules with your partner(s). Being that these activities aren't really legal, openly communicating about them can cause trouble for both parties involved, especially when the person you're in a legal relationship with is constantly checking up on you. Which is the reason why I set certain rules for communcation. I don't want to go into details because "a magician never reveals his secrets" (but really, I don't want to make anyone a better "player" of the "game") so I'll just talk about general concepts.

The most important guideline and I think the first rule that needs to be established is there needs to be a way of determining if (1) you've reached the right person and (2) if it's a good time to talk about what you need to talk about (3) without revealing too much if it turns out that you're not talking to the right person.  All three conditions  need to be met before both parties can start talking about what they want to talk about.

The second guideline is both parties need to establish alternatives for "unsafe words" just in case someone happens to gain access to the conversation. This is to avoid having to blatantly state anything, and one can't ever be certain that the lines of communication (text messages, emails, chat conversations) will always be secure. It's easier to persuade someone to dismiss suspicious behavior than it is to convince them not to mind any hard evidence.

The third guideline is establishing a quick and efficient "out", something that will inform both parties that the communication has/will end or has already ended. This will prevent one side from sending any unwanted communication signals because they had no clue that it's not a good time to continue the conversation.

Now that I'm reading this, I think it's still too specific, I'm sure it's going to give others some good ideas. Oh well, I don't want to simply delete this. I'd like to hear other viewpoints about this topic, so I'll have to trust that anyone wishing to use these as a guide knows that they're responsible for their own actions.

The idiom "what you don't know won't hurt you" applies to acts done without one's knowledge that may be directly harmful to that specific person or not. And from personal experience and observation, I can attest to this idiom's truthfulness. When I was completely unaware that people I was working with were talking behind my back, I felt nothing. But when I found out what they did, I felt hurt. I would have never felt anything had I remained oblivious to the situation. In several aspects, this idiom is very similar to the popular saying "ignorance is bliss", the main difference is that saying "what you don't know won't hurt you" is specifically talking about any potentially hurtful act done against you.

This fact of life is one of the reasons why people are able to do hurtful things to those whom they love or care about. Now, the degrees or level of pain that different acts can cause varies depending on the act and people involved, but the basic idea remains the same. Everyone (and I dare anyone who can claim that he/she has not done anything consciously to hurt their partners/friends/families to speak up) does hurtful things to our loved ones at one point in our lives or another because we know that they will not get hurt if they never find out about what we did. It can be as minor as a white lie about not going to a party because "you're not feeling well" when in fact you don't like the person who invited you, or can be as bad as sleeping around behind your partner's back. It can involve lying to your parents, telling them that you'll spend the night over at a friends house to finish a project but in reality you're just out partying. It can be lying to your son or daughter about not being able to purchase a copy of their favorite magazine because the magazine stand "ran out of stock", but in reality you just didn't want to bother going out of your way just for a silly magazine.

So when you find yourself talking to a person who's supposed to be caring for you and loving you, and they claim that they "never meant to hurt you", they could be telling the truth. I'm sure they never meant for you to find out what they did, because "what you don't know can't hurt you".

Why can't I make love to you? Is is because:

• we're too familiar with each other? Has it become too ordinary now that we spend almost every minute of our lives together?
• I don't find you physically attractive any longer?
• I get more pleasure when it's taboo?
• I'm guilty about what I've been doing behind your back?
• there's never a good opportunity for making love?