James Sexton: evaluation

Transcript context

…As you were talking, I’m trying to think of… Because publicly and privately, I’m the exact same person or try to be the exact same person. So I usually try to make sure there’s nothing to hide. But I was trying to come up with a counter example for you for if there’s good things to hide. Well, there could be past relationships. If I slept with thousands of women or something like this, maybe you want to put that to the side when you have the- Well, there’s a difference between being honest about something and being indelicate about it. I think we all do this with lovers. Any of us who’ve been in more than one relationship, you would not at the end of sex be like, “That was the third-best sex I’ve ever had.” It’s just indelicate. It’s rude. So I don’t think it’s a matter of total candor at all times. You were using the furry example, and I’m not picking on furries. I just think if that is a proclivity that is anything other than a passing thought, it’s something that you just keep coming back to, then you’re making a conscious decision to withhold it from your partner. And what is that out of? I would say it’s probably out of fear. I’m not a psychologist, but it’s probably out of fear, fear that they would reject you. Well now, see, I genuinely believe that this… I’m very conflicted in my religious faith, but I don’t know that I believe in the devil. But if there was a devil, I think his principle function would be to convince us that we are so bestial that God couldn’t love us. It would be to convince us that we’re awful and that we should just lean into the awfulness. And I know the greatest low points of my life came whenever I just went, “You know what? I’m just awful. I might as well just behave awfully.” And I really believe that when you push down parts of yourself like your sexuality, like your insecurities, your true feelings from your romantic partner, the person who’s supposed to be your number one, you are making sure you will never feel their love because they don’t love you. They love the you you’ve presented to them, which you know in your heart is not the authentic, honest, real you. And so if you know you’re super into furries and you don’t tell your partner about that, and your partner says, “I love you so much, and you know what I love, one of the things I love about us is we have such great sexual chemistry,” You’ll never feel that love because you know that’s not true though, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know that actually I’m not really satisfied, and there is this thing that I want that I know I can’t even tell her because I’m so ashamed. That doesn’t feel like a good option to me. Yeah. So that kind of vulnerability is essential to intimacy.…

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