A Life of the Mind

"Detachment is a rare virtue, and very few people find it lovable, either in themselves or in others. If you ever find a person who likes you in spite of it--still more, because of it--that liking has very great value, because it is perfectly sincere, and because, with that person, you will never need to be anything but sincere yourself."  - Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night
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Greengirl and I were discussing the subject of detachment. She had commented in a recent post that she used to be very detached during sex. That her mind would wander, but now "pain keeps me in the moment and in the place."  I'm sure that to many, the concept of experiencing sex in the third person seemed a bit foreign. But I know exactly what she is saying.

I'm not sure that I agree with Ms. Sayers that detachment is a virtue. To me, it's more of a knack, one that tends to become a habit. (It's pleasant up here, floating with unsullied feet above the muddy ground of involvement, after all.) Whatever else tho', it is a fascinating trick of the mind, not just because of what it does but also WHY.

Sometimes, one is detached (;-p) simply because one just isn't bothered. If you can't engage me and bring me in to the now, my mind will stay on that academic plane in which it seems to operate best.

Detachment is also a form of self-defense. If you put some distance between yourself and the situation, you're less likely to get hurt. That distance acts as both shield and obfuscation. It creates a space that protects the Inner Marshmallow.

Often, however, detachment is simply the means to an objective appraisal. You have to be able to step back in order to consider all perspectives. I've been trained in detachment all my life. I'm a tech who troubleshoots for a living, I was educated by Jesuits, and as a little kid, I was always told to, "Stop and THINK about it..." I am indeed a practitioner.

The difficulty with that, however, is the possibility of getting stuck at a distance. It becomes very easy to hide amid the big picture. Detachment lets you surf above your emotions and sometimes you lose your knack of expressing them. SP once suggested that my writing was sometimes "too distant, too academic", and that I ran the risk of my words being nothing but "a sort of philosophical treatise."
His charmingly-worded advice was that I should "Speak straight from the cunt."

A valid point but for those of us who tend toward detachment, it can be tricky. A lot of times, we need help coming back down to solid ground. We are so used to reining ourselves in that we may require assistance letting ourselves go.

That's where, as gg noted, masochism can come into play. Or, more accurately for me, masochism and submission. I'm not sure if pain keeps me in the moment so much as it snaps the cords that keep me aloft and I plummet back down into my body, with all of the attendant sensation and joy. Once back into the here and now, focusing on my submission, attending to his reactions, policing my own, these all occupy my mind sufficiently that I stay in the moment. When I'm kneeling in front of him, I am NEVER thinking about how I should really be mowing the lawn right now...

People make the mistake of viewing detachment as being dispassionate. While I can't speak for every detached person, I don't think that's the case. We may not express our emotions as well but that certainly doesn't mean we don't have them - we just don't reveal them easily. A former beau once noted that, "Unrestrained volatility is not to be confused with passion." Passions are deeply-felt and highly-personal emotions. They are no less strong directed from the head, not the heart. It could even be argued that by evaluating before we commit to unleashing the tiger, we create a focused channel that maximizes the effect of the feelings.

And isn't that the same thing that submission is meant to do?

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When his lips had reluctantly freed themselves, [Peter] had said:
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake the whole zoo. But I'm glad, my God! to know it's there-and no shabby tigers either." ...
"Nobody else, thought Harriet, had apparently suspected the tiger..."  -Dorothy Sayers, Busman's Honeymoon