I would be surprised if the kinds of gradual-exposure techniques khafra endorses here for making same-sex partners more erotically compatible didn’t work equally well (or poorly) for making them emotionally compatible.
Umm, no. To make erotic stimuli more attractive, it’s enough that you think about the stimuli often enough and learn to like it. It may be slow, but there’s relatively little risk. Learning to bond and relate to the kinds of people you’ve always had difficulty bonding and relating to requires you to open yourself up to them in an attempt to connect with them. At worst, you can end up embarassed and hurt and have an ever harder time trying to connect to them in the future.
It’s also a lot more complex, since it’s not enough to modify your own reactions. You also need to learn how to get the right responses out of other people.
I’m not saying it can’t be done, or that you couldn’t apply similiar techniques as you would to developing an erotic attraction. But those are techniques are only a small part of it, and it’s a lot harder.
Agreed that learning to get the right responses out of other people, and risking social penalties, are eventually required for this sort of social conditioning. (Though not necessarily initially required.)
It seems to me the same thing is true of erotic conditioning of the sort we’re talking about. That is, if I want to train myself to respond erotically to X, sooner or later I have to stop exclusively interacting with pictures or books or whatever and start actually interacting with X, and that can be difficult, and risks social penalties. But I don’t start there.
That said, I’m pretty much speaking hypothetically here; I’ve never actually used this technique. So I could easily be wrong.
Umm, no. To make erotic stimuli more attractive, it’s enough that you think about the stimuli often enough and learn to like it. It may be slow, but there’s relatively little risk. Learning to bond and relate to the kinds of people you’ve always had difficulty bonding and relating to requires you to open yourself up to them in an attempt to connect with them. At worst, you can end up embarassed and hurt and have an ever harder time trying to connect to them in the future.
It’s also a lot more complex, since it’s not enough to modify your own reactions. You also need to learn how to get the right responses out of other people.
I’m not saying it can’t be done, or that you couldn’t apply similiar techniques as you would to developing an erotic attraction. But those are techniques are only a small part of it, and it’s a lot harder.
Agreed that learning to get the right responses out of other people, and risking social penalties, are eventually required for this sort of social conditioning. (Though not necessarily initially required.)
It seems to me the same thing is true of erotic conditioning of the sort we’re talking about. That is, if I want to train myself to respond erotically to X, sooner or later I have to stop exclusively interacting with pictures or books or whatever and start actually interacting with X, and that can be difficult, and risks social penalties. But I don’t start there.
That said, I’m pretty much speaking hypothetically here; I’ve never actually used this technique. So I could easily be wrong.