I think it's hard to control your deep-seated, instinctive responses to things/people/situations. I think though, that once you become aware of them you can start to think about them and moderate them.
I don't think anyone could blame you for being uncomfortable about physical-contact-with-sexual-overtones with anyone you don't feel comfortable about being touched by. Especially if this is done in an intrusive way without your agreement. If this causes you to react instinctively in a more negative manner that makes sense. And as you've described, genuinely accidental brushing gets a much milder negative response out of you.
I think instinctive reactions to situations are a different matter to treating people differently depending on their sexuality/race/gender/disability whatever, or holding prejudiced views. I think as long as, rationally, you know that "the gays" are no different to "the straights"* and are as different from each other as they/we are alike, and you behave accordingly, then you're fine; especially if you're aware of your instinctive responses and try to moderate them.
*= and of course the same goes for the whites, the blacks, the Polish, the Welsh or the Congolese. The Mackems, however, are a funny lot and should be tret with extreme suspicion.
It's all about communication and being able to figure out how people tick. People work better if they can understand why they have to do what they have to do (and in fact if they understand clearly what they have to do). Everyone needs different things in terms of support, reassurance, advice, even different people to work with on different projects.
One of current bosses is brilliant. She has taken the time to figure out the direction each of her subordinates wants their careers to go and constantly feeds us the right experience and opportunities. She knows who works well with whom (and which combinations are just going to end up talking about the football...) and combines people in appropriate combinations depending on the task at hand. She will not leave the building before any of us - she sees it as a point of pride to work faster, harder, better and longer. This is shit for her social life, of course, but it does mean that we don't begrudge her needing us to work longer, because we know she's prepared to do it herself.
She's friendly and nice, which goes a long way. If anything approaching a telling off needs to be done it happens early enough to feel like more of a redirection. She's extremely competent, so it's easy to respect her abilities, but she also knows and uses the skills of her staff, and will ask for and listen to advice when she needs it.
She also has the finest arse in Christendom (I have a feeling I've said this before on here). We (it's all men who work "under" her) love it when she wears tight jeans, and I'm sure she does it on purpose to raise morale when she knows it's going to be a difficult day.
She listens, she cares, and she gets more commitment, workrate and effort out of us as a result.
I just realised how much I've been eulogising this woman. She just really stands out in contrast to my two other bosses (men with power complexes) in my two other workplaces, who are both fucking awful, with the clear result that none of their staff give a shit about them, their authority, or their objectives.
Yeah - it's nice when you hear people you don't really consider to be that sexual enjoying their sex. I have a housemate who never really flirts with his girlfriend at all; in fact they're more commonly kind of putting each other down (in a joking way; he's from Yorkshire and she's from Salford). A couple of weeks ago though me and another one of my housemates were watching TV when we heard her coming like a porn star... for quite a while. Wasn't really erotic, but it was nice to know he makes her happy.
What is kind of erotic is realising when my (university) students fancy me. Of course I'd never act on that... but it does give me a rush.
In a very rich and famous person's garden shed at a party. The reason this was awful was that it all went horrifically wrong.
His son was at my high school, they used to have massive parties like in the American teen movies; at one of those me and my first girlfriend sneaked out to the mattress in the shed to lose our virginities. We were just warming up when suddenly all our mates were banging on the windows laughing and shining torches in (it was more like a summer house really). We shouted at them to fuck off, and they did; being young, drunk and horny we decided to keep going, got ourselves warmed up again, and had just got the condom on when suddenly there was cold water everywhere - they had got a hosepipe through the window and were spraying us with freezing cold water.
By this stage I was fucking livid, I jumped up and ran out into the garden wearing nothing but the ice blue condom (a detail that will always stick with me) screaming at them all to fuck off and waving my arms. Then I noticed the camcorder. Didn't care by that stage though, I was so pissed off.
They all did fuck off, because nobody other than my girlfriend actually wanted to see me naked; we went back and got dressed - the mattress was soaked, the condom shrivelled, and the moment lost; I went back to the party, threw a pint of water over someone who had nothing to do with it, and stuffed the condom down the side of the sofa for the guy's parents to find (he deserved it!).
Thankfully we succeeded in losing our virginities a week or so later on her parents' living room floor.
Sex using food (yeah: you remember the "Asda game" thread?), sex with roleplay (I don't really mean Dungeons & Dragons), generally more play and experimentation and imagination with sex.
Sex in extravagantly public locations. I keep having a half-arsed idea to make some kind of "Indecent Exposure Bingo Challenge" website where people challenge each other to fuck in certain locations, put up (anonymous, obviously) pictures of themselves doing it, and award each other points. My biggest ambition was always the top of the Anglican Cathedral tower... you'd have to hide in there when it closed for the evening, and spend the night. Oh or on the stone altar out the back of the Catholic cathedral... I thought anal sex would be especially fun on an altar the pope has taken mass on.
Er, I hope nobody reading this is profoundly religious...
And then more MFM and an actual FFM. And more bigger groups of all flavours.
And I want to develop my dom side. And some other stuff but... that'll do for now.
Do it!
It's er... quite fun.
Just make sure you have an enema first...
The spanking great erection I've just woken up with. "Oh yes! hello penis!"
Yeah - it is just about the balance, so whatever to alter that balance fits with your personality...
Although I'm generally fairly slim I sometimes go through phases of being too busy to go for a run or get to the supermarket, so I end up eating crap all the time, not burning it off, and putting on a stone or so, and then when I get a balance back in my life it just goes off again. So I get to really clearly see the effect of this balance.
It's not about weight for me as much as it is about general health - I eat a lot of fat and I'm lucky to be able to metabolise a lot of it, but I do sometimes worry that I'm going to die of feta REEEALLY soon if I don't somehow earn it. And that drives me to go running when I feel guilty about my diet.
Also, being a fairly lazy person, and one that is prone to giving hobbies up after a few weeks, one thing I've found works is getting things into my life in a structural way - making tweaks to my existing routine rather than actually going out of my way. So - like cycling or walking to work rather than driving or getting the bus. If your workplace has a shower that's even better. That's much better than going in a sweaty room and lifting blocks of metal up and putting them down again while looking at people with bodies I could never match (fucking rugby players!). Going running is obviously even better for the calories but you have to be really careful how you work up to it, I caused myself a calf injury that stuck around for about four years by one day starting running to work every day.
Or walk/cycle to the supermarket and only buy what you can carry home - that instantly reduces the beer you drink and burns some of it off as well. I stopped eating feta in my own home, and only keep two beers in the fridge at any time. A mate of mine lost over a stone when he stopped using the lifts at work. You don't have to go nuts, sometimes just tweaking the balance a bit can have the effect you want.
Oh yeah, and fuck as much as possible :-)
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