Heart vs. Head

[it_matters]

Excellent post in_matters. Some really good stuff there. Also, welcome to Lit.

You hit me between the eyes with these words. Real pain is in giving up. I'll take the heartbreak, it is far better for my soul then not ever had opened my heart at all. Thanks for reminding me of that.

whoa. twenty-two THOUSAND posts? :humbled: thanks to a Master for the welcome.

have you considered editing all of that text and publishing it? that has got to make one hell of a journal.

 

[Nightbird]

This is still a great thread..

 

[thewantonscribe]

I tend to follow my heart though I listen to my head as well. Unfortunately my head often thinks too much and too suspiciously so I think it's good to fall back on the heart. I'll also add gut instinct in there. Sometimes it's not about what's logical, or what I feel, but what I believe down deep.

When I get into these kinds of conflicts I've found the best thing for me to do is to focus on the day to day for a while. Give it a break, if you will. Focusing on family, work and my personal goals outside of any relationship issues can help put the important things in perspective and I find I'm more relaxed when I come back to the issues that caused me conflict in the first place.

My head and my heart seem to be always in turmoil. Since my conception of love was corrupted by someone older than myself when I was too young I am always guessing. I often wonder if I truly know in my head what a love of the heart is? Its difficult at this point because my marriage of 17 years seems to be more poisonous of late. I have someone I feel a great deal for and think I love but we don't know each other yet. I know that he has been there when he is able and that he cares about me. But we are separated by distance so I continue to long for a connection with him. Each day seems like an enternity but we just keep missing each other.

Going day to day has helped somewhat but my husband has made some days worse than others. Those are the days that I wish for escape. Some release from the torment that he inflicts on himself and me. I haven't always felt this way. Just here in the past couple of weeks the tension seems to be greater than before. I never know which is right my head or my heart. Either way I tend to talk myself right out of going with whichever one is leading at the time.

 

[lady_sensuous]

 

[Cathleen]

This is still a great thread..

Totally agree NB.

I still have trouble with balancing the two domains. I have a feeling it's supposed to be that way - at least it seems reasonable. There are times my head is so stubborn and inflexible and other times I'm a mess of emotions. Neither extreme is particularly effective but maybe bits and pieces together, sharing the lead, is best. I have a lifetime to figure it out.

 

[Cathleen]

My head and my heart seem to be always in turmoil. Since my conception of love was corrupted by someone older than myself when I was too young I am always guessing. I often wonder if I truly know in my head what a love of the heart is? Its difficult at this point because my marriage of 17 years seems to be more poisonous of late. I have someone I feel a great deal for and think I love but we don't know each other yet. I know that he has been there when he is able and that he cares about me. But we are separated by distance so I continue to long for a connection with him. Each day seems like an enternity but we just keep missing each other.

Going day to day has helped somewhat but my husband has made some days worse than others. Those are the days that I wish for escape. Some release from the torment that he inflicts on himself and me. I haven't always felt this way. Just here in the past couple of weeks the tension seems to be greater than before. I never know which is right my head or my heart. Either way I tend to talk myself right out of going with whichever one is leading at the time.

I'm sorry for your touble.

 

[it_matters]

Going day to day has helped somewhat but my husband has made some days worse than others. Those are the days that I wish for escape. Some release from the torment that he inflicts on himself and me. I haven't always felt this way. Just here in the past couple of weeks the tension seems to be greater than before. I never know which is right my head or my heart. Either way I tend to talk myself right out of going with whichever one is leading at the time.

Sorry to hear about the hard times, Scribe. The head and heart can shout for your attention all they want... as long as you are physically and emotionally safe. If it's part of the play, where we are all working through our shit, and causing a lot of it, fine. But if safety is a question, there is no confusion allowed. That's a bottom line you can stand on, firm.

 

[Sirsminx]

I've have/had it terribly confused..

most recently, it was six months of NOT listening to my heart. My heart was telling me no, this isn't right for me... the relationship was causing me stress, my body was reacting...alls I wanted to do was be quiet and still... with him blindfolded & gagged and bound (that wouldhave been nice...but I'm teasing)

we rushed in w/ our hearts... and our heads didn't slow us down. then my heart turned around and my head told me to keep up. edited here *my head kept finding reasons to remain... he WANTS to be with me.. he says he likes me... hes sexy & handsome & successful and and and... he wants to be with me. My head won out over my heart until I just couldnt' handle it anymore. the entire time I thought it was my heart that was confused ... I mean, shouldn't you listen to you head???* It's boundaries for me.

I will go in w/ my heart behind my head--- and soon they'll be walking hand in hand... and i do believe there will be some point where the head completely submits to the heart

 

[Sensual Man 05]

I just found this thread and have to say this is probably the most interesting question on Literotica. I think we've all debated this question in our minds. I think there are two kinds of love. One kind involves that safe, you can always depend on me kind of love. That's the love you choose with your mind. Then there's the exciting, heart fluttering, unpredictable kind of love. That's the love you choose with your heart. Is it possible to have both? Does the heart fluttering go away once the relationship is secure? Are women (and men) naturally drawn to the challenge of taming the wild animal? Are my questions making any sense? lol.

I don't know. I just liked this question. Sorry I'm not adding anything that great to it. Just made me think out loud. Anyways, thanks for posting it.

 

[it_matters]

Is it possible to have both? Does the heart fluttering go away once the relationship is secure? Are women (and men) naturally drawn to the challenge of taming the wild animal? Are my questions making any sense.

Everything in this world pulses, the ocean beats waves in and out, the blood pumps and pumps, wind blows then becomes still.... heart flutters and heart grows quiet and calm. Interesting thing for me in your excellent question is does the heart flutter, then still, then stop?

I know it doesn't have to stop, and I know that if you hang out by the fire -- if you BOTH choose to hang out by the fire -- you can keep feeding it wood as long as your body is warm. Imagine being together for years, imagine having explored all the rooms of the heart that are easy to reach. Right down the main hallway. You can walk through the house of your love and keep opening the same doors... Hmm, sitting room. Hmm, kitchen. Yeah, made love in all of those rooms.

Some people bring new toys or more people into the same rooms... but that doesn't change the room. I think the real challenge -- and I hope to have the chance to try it out, cause the first time around didn't afford it -- the real challenge is not to hang more decorations around the place, not to find a third hand or a lover outside your circle. The real challenge is to get even more vulnerable, to open up even further than you ever have. Take your lover and your little bonfire (which may have become embers) and go to a Couples Retreat, read about Tantra, take up Couples Yoga, take ballroom dancing lessons together. Write literotica stories to each other.

Got to want to be courageous, got to want to go beyond that next frightening hurdle (emptiness), got to go to a deeper place in the heart -- and go there together. Damn it, now that is hard work, but I think it is the only work that takes you anywhere other than in circles. Even if the fire dies out, you grew larger, and you know more about the flame.

 

[Cathleen]

Everything in this world pulses, the ocean beats waves in and out, the blood pumps and pumps, wind blows then becomes still.... heart flutters and heart grows quiet and calm. Interesting thing for me in your excellent question is does the heart flutter, then still, then stop?

I know it doesn't have to stop, and I know that if you hang out by the fire -- if you BOTH choose to hang out by the fire -- you can keep feeding it wood as long as your body is warm. Imagine being together for years, imagine having explored all the rooms of the heart that are easy to reach. Right down the main hallway. You can walk through the house of your love and keep opening the same doors... Hmm, sitting room. Hmm, kitchen. Yeah, made love in all of those rooms.

Some people bring new toys or more people into the same rooms... but that doesn't change the room. I think the real challenge -- and I hope to have the chance to try it out, cause the first time around didn't afford it -- the real challenge is not to hang more decorations around the place, not to find a third hand or a lover outside your circle. The real challenge is to get even more vulnerable, to open up even further than you ever have. Take your lover and your little bonfire (which may have become embers) and go to a Couples Retreat, read about Tantra, take up Couples Yoga, take ballroom dancing lessons together. Write literotica stories to each other.

Got to want to be courageous, got to want to go beyond that next frightening hurdle (emptiness), got to go to a deeper place in the heart -- and go there together. Damn it, now that is hard work, but I think it is the only work that takes you anywhere other than in circles. Even if the fire dies out, you grew larger, and you know more about the flame.

The real challenge is to get even more vulnerable, to open up even further than you ever have.

So, now you've revealed the scariest thing in my world. I had been trying to live peacefully in denial.

I couldn't agree more with your thoughts. Courage is needed to reach the level of vulnerability that truly matters.

So many excellent posts here.

 

[pisces21]

I think its hard for most people to distinguish the two but its very important to know when to let one override the other and when not to. I just think its a matter of finding the middle ground between your heart and head.

 

[it_matters]

Courage is needed to reach the level of vulnerability that truly matters.

Yes, because if it truly matters, you're going to take a beating. You are guaranteed to take a beating, not because someone did something bad to you, but because you let yourself open up, and once you have let something or someone be special to you, losing it (even if it is at the end of your life) is going to beat the hell out of you. Everything passes, even love, even love changes into something else, a bigger or quieter kind of love, so that it looks like it is passing, and then the heart breaks into pieces. Takes courage to walk into a roughing-up.

But you are the seed, you can know that, somewhere you can figure that out. You can imagine incredibly beautiful love-making... and you know what? Whatever you can imagine exists. You can't think you are a God, that you invented something from the ether. If you imagined it, it exists, and you are the seed that can become it, you imagined the flower, the flower is inside of you. So you don't have to invent some herculean Courage to do away with Fear, that's like using war to end war. You simply have to find the courage to find a safe placewhere your fear is diminished. The only extra courage required is the courage of a researcher: OK, who says they know how to open up? How did they do it? Have they made an environment that is safe, so my Self, this little seed, can safely practice blossoming?

Oh, and by the way, Self, I want the safe place to include good sex, creative sex. I don't want to be safe in a monastery or convent.

Got to be the body, because every opening, every act of forgiveness, every realization, is physical. Got to get grounded. I think you start with a good, mature massage therapist, so your body can start to feel safer and more open -- like soaking the seed in warm water for a couple of days (instead of taking a hammer to it). Later move up to some intensely intimate massage practice, like Thai Yoga Bodywork -- all clothed, but with greater sharing and compassion between the practitioner and the receiver than other forms.

And then... what? You get softer you can see that there others around you who are softer as well, and more able to meet you in this new place. You move in this direction and that warm southern horizon starts to show you more and more options to choose from? And... you'll meet one person there, then another.

And the heart will be confused. And the head will be beautifully confused. But the confusion will be because you are learning and training into something you never thought could even exist, it won't be confusion of the type "WHAT in the hell am I doing with this jerk??" "WHY wasn't I out of here months ago??", but instead "It's hard to find out how to open to this woman/this man -- am I locked up? Wonder what I should try next?"

Every right step gives you power. Every good lovemaking confirms what you knew all along, just one good lovemaking erases every empty connection you ever had... because those just didn't matter.

 

[Sensual Man 05]

the real challenge is not to hang more decorations around the place, not to find a third hand or a lover outside your circle. The real challenge is to get even more vulnerable, to open up even further than you ever have. Take your lover and your little bonfire (which may have become embers) and go to a Couples Retreat, read about Tantra, take up Couples Yoga, take ballroom dancing lessons together. Write literotica stories to each other..

Great post, it_matters. You know, the challenge for me is letting go of my freedom. I don't mean sexual freedom. I mean my freedom to be me and not me and the other person all the time. Your suggestions take the lovers to a new level of oneness. And I think that's great. But you have to be prepared to let go even more of yourself in the process. And that makes you even more vulnerable. Just a thought there.

 

[Pyro Paul]

an age old aurgument which just all depends on the person. either or it is a losing battle.

i always listen to my head, do things slowly and thought out, simply because i could not get a good enough feeling from my heart to do so. but this leads me to alot of pain from the simple saying. "As Long as they are Happy, everything is alright."

that is a sentence one says in their head, it helps you cope with lost love or denial.

"but, what if they are Happy with out you?" which is a question from your heart. what is love if not yours?

a big debate about this simple thing tends to pan out and show that your heart tends to make you look selfish (of course, you want to be happy) but your head makes you lonely (for when they leave, you will let them, it is for the better.)

in the end, you must ask yourself which do you rather more, being lonely but have others around you happy? or being happy yourself and possibly making those around you sad?

 

[Denae]

MY HEAD IS SPINNING!

Great posts everyone. I thought this thread had died a long time ago. I'm still very interested in what everyone has shared with us.

As for me, I still can't define the two.

 

[it_matters]

Great post, it_matters. You know, the challenge for me is letting go of my freedom. I don't mean sexual freedom. I mean my freedom to be me and not me and the other person all the time. Your suggestions take the lovers to a new level of oneness. And I think that's great. But you have to be prepared to let go even more of yourself in the process. And that makes you even more vulnerable. Just a thought there.

Yeah, I hear you, Sensual #5.That's what it would seem... "surrender" means "unfree", that's why everyone shies away. They say "right, I already feel I can hardly breathe, why would I want to disappear even more?" But the opposite is true. When you are resisting, resisting, you have lost all of your strength, and given away much more of yourself than when you open. You are actually more bound up in the whole thing than if you learned (using some of those practices I tossed off in the previous post) how to hold and release more gently. Heart and Head get so tangled up in being or not being the partner, that you lose any chance of being Just You.

I did some partner yoga last week -- just a first taste: I felt the most accompanied and accompanying I have ever felt. My experience is these things give you more to play with, more ways to say "hello" during the day... and also to say "see you later" without that huge fear that the connection won't ever return!

Anyway... lots of words. See, Denae's head is spinning (not sure about her heart). All I know is that letting go and diving in -- with a clear framework -- is hugely liberating. Love is like a fire, it needs air to burn higher.

 

[ZGuy32]

This is the hardest thing to tell about ones self.

Your heart will only give you a true feeling when you meet that one special person and you will know.

You head is the problem because you have to see if its your body or you mind that is say things and it just takes time to be able to tell the difference.

^_\ hope this helps.

 

[Nightbird]

Bump for a good thread

 

[Flyin_Free]

just found this thread and have to say this is probably the most interesting question on Literotica. I think we've all debated this question in our minds. I think there are two kinds of love. One kind involves that safe, you can always depend on me kind of love. That's the love you choose with your mind. Then there's the exciting, heart fluttering, unpredictable kind of love. That's the love you choose with your heart. Is it possible to have both? Does the heart fluttering go away once the relationship is secure? Are women (and men) naturally drawn to the challenge of taming the wild animal? Are my questions making any sense? lol.

I seem to let my heart win every time. Well actually, sometimes I let my head talk me out of letting my heart feel the way it's feeling, but I couldn't do it in reverse---I could never chose to be with somebody just because they were safe and predictable and my *mind* thought it would be a good thing to do. Does that even make sense? (I think it kind of goes back to the "do you feel deeply" thread--and weather you'd rather *feel* and have the possibility of being hurt or *not feel* and not get hurt)

I think that if your lucky(maybe very lucky), then what starts out as the "exciting, heart fluttering unpredictable kind of love" can in time turn into the "safe, you can always depend on me kind of love". (or maybe a mix of both)

 

[Denae]

For the first time in my life I allowed my heart to lead. Despite my head, I allowed myself to love him. Right now, I don't think that the high of love is worth the price of the pain I am feeling right now.

 

[Guest]

 

[Denae]

Oh, Denae, I'm sorry to hear things did not work out for you.

Thing is Scaly, we're kind of on a fence right now.

(thank you for caring though)

 

[Denae]

Thing is Scaly, we're kind of on a fence right now.

(thank you for caring though)

Who the fuck am I kidding. It's all over except the actual words

 

[Cathleen]

~Heavy sigh~