for women who want more from love than a humiliation ritual

spiritual eroticism is what we’re after

true love vs real love

i’m being haunted by ghosts i’ve never met. apparitions who seem keen on reminding me that the best is yet to come. and that’s why, from time to time, i find myself dissatisfied with the current state of things. not out of ingratitude or suffering, but because i know i could be so much more. i could have so much more.

there’s a narcissism in thinking that you’re destined for greatness. in thinking you’re special enough to raise above the system’s programming. to transcend the mundane.

in my last essay, written for those who are spiraling; dancing between being the best the game has ever seen and simply deciding you’re too beautiful to work (hard), i told you to consider a third option:

transcending into something unprecedented.

specialness comes out of a relentless commitment to one’s point of view. not to the point of stubbornness, lest you’ll have no friends, but to the height of taste.

in cultivating one’s point of view, one gives themselves a purpose. a raison d’être that imbues all that one does with meaning; with hope.

it seems silly to say, but hope really is the most powerful thing in the world. it’s the closest thing we have to god. i reckon, it’s the true definition of love.

i told you in my essay, love as spiritual redemption, that dante awoke, alone and afraid, in a dense forest, deep in the depths of hell. and that moment reminded me of genesis 3:9, where god calls out to adam but adam does not answer. scholars have said that this is the first moment man hid from the divine. not out of play, but out of shame. for who wants to face their father after they have sinned?

in dante’s story, he starts so far away from god, that it is not his maker who comes to his aid, but instead a saint, virgil; who, himself had been sent by the angel beatrice; who herself swears she was acting on love’s orders.

“love moved me, and makes me speak.” she tells dante.

in reading the fuller context of her words, one can’t help but think about hope as the true definition of love:

“i am beatrice, who sends you.
i come from a place i long to return to.
love moved me, and makes me speak.
when i am before my lord, i often praise you.””

love, in a heterosexual context

when i say that hope is the true definition of love, i mean that hope is the only thing that keeps human beings alive. faith that tomorrow is better than today. so when we are loved truly by someone, that person is witnessing our potential. that we will be better tomorrow than we are today. they are choosing to walk by ourselves through faith, not sight.

hope is the dimension that turns real love into true love. the difference being that the truth is a function of power, as nietzsche said, and its agreed upon definition is wholly contingent on who is in charge; whereas real things only exist in one’s own reality. so, to have both real love and true love is to experience a love that is both present and undeniable.

it is not the work of 21st century situationships, with their lack of emotional availability and communication. no, it’s the stuff of 19th century unions that were at once trysts and life-long love affairs.

true love is imbued with hope, and thus, it’s a way of reaching god in someone else. when you look at them, you do not see faults, you see potential. you do not care for the hardship, because the mundane is elevated simply by their presence. true love is a powerful, but dangerous thing. the danger is that it makes you realize that it is not the materials that make life worth living, but the spiritual. the state of being seen at the level of your soul, not the shape of your curves. and in this way, true love lowers the profitability of countless industries sustained by the manufactured insecurities of women. because true love inspires you to meet yourself, not run as you don every trend in order to escape you who are underneath the piles and heaps of artifice you place on yourself.

and artifice is just find when it’s fulfilling your fantasy, but when’s the last time you even articulated that to yourself?

maybe you’re just so busy in your day-to-day that you have no time to truly sit and reflect. as the task for us all is to become operators who can exist, and ultimately thrive, in a system such as ours. and how does one thrive in capitalistic society? by being of use. being useful to others within the system.

but it’s hard, isn’t it? in between your existence as a woman, you have to find a way to mold yourself into a masculine shape the system will recognize so it can let you through; and once in, all that awaits you is work, work, and even more work. if it’s not work, then it’s sycophancy that awaits you. and in the dullness of all this late-stage capitalism, you find your escape in shoes, bags, and impeccable jewelry. but that adds up, and so you find you have to become of even greater value for the system to reward you enough for your shopping sprees to no longer make a dent.

and this is exhausting work. soul-crushing, meaningless work. so you decide, fuck this. and you make pains to meet someone who can rescue from this system. who can be useful for the both of you. problem solved.

but life, even a rich one, is not without its problems.

it would be ideal if you loved him truly, but it’s enough for it to be real. who needs god when you have a 30-carat natural ring? and no concept of how much the mortgage costs? after all, you’re god’s daughter, and god wants you to be happy. and you weren’t happy when you were slaving away in that capitalistic system. so a “traditional (read: wealthy)” marriage will have to do.

but even in your escape, you find that you still exist in an economy of favors; one you had hope would evolve into an economy of love.

the best example i can give of this realization is a scene from a recently published netflix series, sirens.

when the lady of the manor is flexing her powers by firing the head of security who, to be fair to her, did not do what she asked, to which he informs her that he works for her husband, and not her.

and she’s genuinely stunned to realize that the truth was in front of her all along: even in the glamour, the ease, and the beach-front views, she had gotten herself trapped in a prison. one where she thought she was free of the oppressive systems of her past due, not only due to her proximity to power vis-à-vis her husband, but her lack of any financial responsibility as he was “the provider.” (but he couldn’t provide peace of mind)

and she realized all the labor she put into being her husband’s wife; labor, that her young assistant had now perfected due to being in such close quarters with her and was quite literally positioned to take over. and it dawned on her that she, too, worked for her husband.

i took some liberities with the last paragraph to prove my point, as it’s unclear when “kiki” realized she was fucked—if she ever did; as her husband announcing his wanting of a divorce was genuine news to her but his desire to be with her young assistant was of no surprise to as his tossing of women when they no longer served him was how she became the second wife.

it seems that in our collective unrest with the system we find ourselves in; our collective tiredness from being perfect in all aspects of our lives and the burden of becoming; we’re seeking a way out.

and because we’re human beings who are biologically primed towards companionship, our relationships offer a fertile terrain for us to “have it all.”

but we can’t even have that.

not because we’re unwilling, but because the vast majority of us are willingly accepting the emotional lobotomy of being with a man who “provides,” but does so at the cost of our being able to voice a shred of anger towards him; and if it’s not the emotional lobotomy of being provided for by a man you can never become angry with, than it‘s the other emotional lobotomy of being provided for by a man you don’t love. or it’s a special hellspace of both under of banner of “sprinkle sprinkle.”

as a christian-pagan, i adore shera because she’s a witch but i will continue to say that she gives relationship advice only a self-selecting subset of women should really be following. and unless you subscribe to the debbie jelinsky playbook of “marry them, drain them, and divorce them,” shera’s advice really isn’t for you. none of the gurus’ advice is, because their advice roots itself in assumptions of hierarchy dressed up as self-esteem. and if it’s not that, then it’s marketers dressed up as “trad wives” selling you on a traditionalism not rooted in any type of book of scripture but an algorithm.

it’s just an economy of favors: he “provides”, and you tend to the home (and the kids, and his life, and the kids’ lives, and the farm if you have one).

that is not an economy of love.

at it’s best, an economy of love engulfs two people in their own spiritual eroticism. it’s napeleon writing sex-obsessed love letters to joséphine in the middle of war and lotting entire countries for treasures and trophies to present to joséphine when he returns to her. it’s a man indulging your every fantasies, not because “you’ve earned it,” but because you wanted it and he believes you should have what you want. this is a fantasy best suited for true love. love that is both present and undeniable. love that will see your anger before you’ve uttered a word. love that will provide from the spirit, not from a scorecard. meaning, that it’s not about the performance of masculinity, but the eroticism of polarity. it’s the physical manifestation of a passage that has haunted me since the moment i read it:

“he bears her such love and keeps such faith to her that all of his subjects…say that she has bewitched him, and they call her the witch.”

mistresses: a history of the other women

now, there are logistical steps one can take to find themselves in a situation such as this. but if i were to begin to articulate my understanding of those steps, i’d be no better than those gurus who keep disappointing their audiences, so i’ll remain quiet on what i know.

but the one thing i can share, as it relates to positioning, is just that: “positioning.” my only advice is to study the lives of the women, public and historic, you admire and analyze how they positioned themselves to receive what they wanted. the answer just might surprise you.

dear philosopher-king…

although i make my living in an economy of favors, my spirit will forever live in an economy of love. i’ll forever be a woman who demands more from the world, not less; a woman who has experienced being understood at the depths of my soul, not the outline of my waist.

and it’s in that dreamscape that i met him. when i came to him with despair at the men my age, he told wrote me a soliloquy to which he ended, “…no wonder you find yourself unimpressed.” he told me my bubbliness reminds him of champagne, and my wit homeric. he spoke to me in shakespeare references and knew long before i that investment banking was not for me.

“playing banker, or playing with bankers?” he once quipped.

i’d love to tell you that he was a figment of my imagination. that his absence is the result of me no longer dreaming that scene, but he’s as real as you and i. but even he paled in comparison to the love i’ve longed for since i read stephanie meyer’s twilight. a love that will find itself in the hybrid of alexander skarsgård and jamie dimon. a man who reminds me of the following passages, poems, and quotes i’ve had in my notes app since i was 16:

“devour me. if you really think you can stomach me.”

“monks renounce their vows for me.”

“i have loved men weaker than and have suffered from this.”

“she wanted unspeakable intimacies…to drink him down…

“their bodies met in perfumes, in sweat.”

“don’t wait for it…create a world, your world. alone. stand alone. create. and then the love will come to you, then it comes to you.

“he had not touched me. he did not need to. his presence had affected me in such a way that i felt as if he had caressed me for a long time.”

“trust is the groom of love.”

“i want to be able to trust, not live in perpetual self-defense.”

“…a glorification fantasy wrapped in the language of submission.”

i told you i’m being haunted by ghosts i’ve never met. but the haunting roots itself in a feeling i’ve known before.

have you heard the laugh of a child? a young one, no older than three. it’s a circular laugh, such that as soon one is about to end, the other begins, louder than the last one.

take that meta feeling of a child’s laugh, with the magnetism that can only be found in polarity, no matter the circumstances, and you’ll begin to see the ghost that chases me.

shes my future self, daunted by my current state. her patience is waning, hence her haunting.

but there’s nothing much more i can do, expect ride it out. after all, venus attracts the union for which you are prepared.

and i ask you, “are you ready?”

sweet dreams,
a diouana woman

p.s. truth or dare

you know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.

truth: if you haven’t already, create your diouana womanomics account!!! by tracking your beauty expenses through the app, you’re contributing to the world’s first dataset on erotic capital!!! this means we’ll finally have the hard data to answer questions such as, “what is the psychological, financial, and social return of skincare products for black women in their 20s?” and “which archetype of women are most likely to actually receive money because of their beauty expenses?” important, mission-critical questions.

dare: do i even have to say it lol

disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.