Feisty Repartee

You Did WHAT?!

Disclosure is this week's Diva and Men's Club topic.

When and what should a person of interest reveal regarding his or her sexual past?

While making a concerted effort to check my idealism at the door, I do recognize and understand in the everyday interactions with others most of us make do and muddle our way through the circumstances with which we are presented.

Not surprisingly, I am of two minds of this issue. I guess I should be grateful it is only two.

My first thought is that two people who are seeing one another and interested in pursusing a relationship together should be inclined to discuss and share their respective pasts. Further, it might even be a good idea to delve into those histories prior to engaging in more intimate relations.

However, with a second thought I want to throw that crap straight out of the window. There's a time for thinking and discussing and a time to realize that some things can be over-examined and talked to death. Unless there is a significant health concern (i.e., STDs, AIDS, hepatitis) at issue or one of the parties is a well accomplished cross-dresser completely unbeknownst to the other, not everyone need know every sordid detail of our past histories with other people.

I am who I am because of my cumulative experiences. We all are and that is expected, particularly once most of us reach a certain age, in this instance I am arbitrarily choosing twenty-eight. There should be a presumption that by twenty-eight we each have been involved with at least one other human.

My worth and value as a person, a potential girlfriend, lover, wife or mother should be weighed by who I am now, not by the pieces of my past and what I did or did not choose to do.

If the interested party becomes a significant person, such as a spouse or life partner, then the couple has years to discover more about one another over the passage of time.

Not that I am trying to hide anything, those past revelations should not change how someone should feel about me now. Those disclosures should only be "pieces" of the puzzle to help someone understand how I became the person I am today.

This is not to say that particularly relevant pieces of information should not be shared. What constitutes "relevant" is a gray area and depends solely on the parties involved.

For me personally, if someone has been convicted of crimes against a child or women, that is something I would definitely want to know before I became involved with the man. My reasons should be obvious.

In fact, I am one of those humans who like the acquisition of facts and information; however, I recognize there are few willing to be interrogated within the guise of polite conversation.

Yes, I think it is important to get to know someone, but knowledge can be attained through listening and observation, as well as direct questioning. As much as I hate to admit because it is not my preferred method of operation, the information obtained without asking is often the most reliable.

Bottom line, there's at least one instance where I wish I had been less concerned with full disclosure and observing what was honorable and polite. I wish I had thrown caution to the far winds, looked into the eyes of the object of my desire and simply said: "Let's get it on."

{sigh}

I will be updating here as the Diva Ladies and Men's Club Gentlemen post on the topic of du jour.

Lady Silk asks: Disclosure before declothing?

The Wizard says: considers utterances of what was a secret

The Minister of Propaganda has hard and fast rules! (My favorite was never share the fact you blog about your sex life...)

Phin splashes by with some interesting and humorous insight.

Lovely Sadie's slippery slope appears to be a sliding scale...

The wise Kathy has speaks volumes with "not everything in your past is relevant to the future"

He THINKS he will be male when he dies.

Ummmm, Moogie shares quite a bit of visual imagery.

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