Eighteen Months of the True Khan

  • I had a strange sense come across me sometime after I ran my loops tonight.
    That is that no matter what I’m going through, it can’t really hurt me. I’ve already crossed the abyss so to speak on DR and Khan Stage one. Now, while I may feel bad in the moment, I have no sense that it’s going to destroy me like I sometimes used to.
    That was actually one of the biggest things I got from DR. The knowledge that emotion is temporary. Of course I always knew that intellectually, I mean the visceral knowing of it even when I’m “in it”.
    That is immensely helpful.
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  • I was talking about something to the wife and I stumbled across good wording for a concept that I’ve been trying to adopt lately without really thinking about it.
    That is “Don’t just sit there and keep taking damage”. As in don’t stay in a situation that is harmful to you.
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        **12/12/22 STAGE 2 CYCLE 1 WEEK 4**
        **WASHOUT WEEK #5**
  • I went to two events for the ethical non monogamy crowd this weekend. I am putting myself out there. I have to do that if I’m going to get anything out of this as far as results go.
    The first one was a discussion group and social thing.
    A couple of interesting things happened there. First one of the discussion topics involved loneliness. I mentioned that loneliness really doesn’t effect me much. The female half of the couple that hosted said she was the same way and went into how it was because she had a dysfunctional family and had to “parent a parent”.
    She went on to list some attributes of her behavior that sprang from that. It was like listening to myself, and it helped me fill in a few blanks in my understanding of myself.
    The second was that while we were all discussing things this very cute girl who was being quiet in the corner was making very direct, but kind of weird eye contact with me.
    I kept thinking about how to approach her, but a little while after the formal discussion ended she somehow ended up over where I was and talking to me.
    And talk she did. Mile a minute nervous babble about everything and anything with barely a pause for breath. I needn’t have worried ab my verbal game because I barely got a chance to speak.
    She talked and talked, and showed me pictures of everything from her cat to some very low cut costumes she wore to cons.
    It was crystal clear that she was attracted to me. Very.
    Turns out that she was twenty years younger than me, aaaannnndddd not into actual sex.
    Yeah, you read that. She is in some kind of weird multi partner thing, but she doesn’t sleep with any of them. Virgin as a matter of fact.
    She WAS attracted, I’d bet good money on it, so I don’t know what she actually has going on in her head.
    I’ll just take having a hot twenty something clearly into me as a huge win and move on.
    The second was a coffee meetup that happens once a month in the morning. I had a long very cool talk with a lady I know who is cool as hell, but definitely not what I’m into in the looks department. Cool anyway.

  • I had some major recon for the last few nights. Or something is upsetting me more than it should. I am going to have to check in with the wife about a few things on Saturday when I’ve had a full week to wash out and let things settle.

  • The garage door spring broke on Sunday night. That costs a LOT ago fix, but the wife’s parents paid, so we’re out nothing and it got fixed within a day.

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What a peculiar girl :joy:

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  • Peculiar group of people in general. I’m talking about the whole polyamory ethical non monogamy crowd. I feel like I’m the only physically and mentally healthy person left in the universe when I’m around them.
    (Once again I’m TRYING not to inject politics into the forum here but this is relevant. These people are almost all of one of the political “sides” and the attitudes I’m talking about are endemic to it. I’ll dance around it as best I can)
    Seriously, what is with people announcing their mental health issues and other limiting factors and wearing them like some kind of badge of honor or status symbol?
    And they (some of them) get very angry at any differing opinion. What I’m talking about is victim mentally. The sense that one’s life is out of their control and anything unsatisfactory about it is someone or something else’s fault.
    I had some of that going on myself for much of my life. I’m sure I’m not absolutely free of it now, but I have a hell of a lot less of it than I had.
    I’m not like these people. I take responsibility for my life and realize that the condition of it is pretty much entirely the result of a series of choices I made. The good is my doing and the bad is my fault.
    While that can be heavy it’s liberating in that it lets me know that if I make better choices and put in work I can improve the parts that I don’t find satisfactory.
    I’m in charge of me, not the traumas I’ve suffered in the past, not the case of CPTSD that I probably have. More like had thanks to DR.
    I don’t fit in with them. Matter of fact, I kinda look down on them. I’m starting to think of looking for a partner in this crowd as fishing for dinner in the sewer. The sewer next to a sketchy toxic waste dump.
    I’ll either have to change how I’m thinking about that it, or find a cleaner pond to fish in.

  • I think that I’ve figured out why my wife using her part of the open relationship is so upsetting to me now when the concept wasn’t before.
    It’s causing me recon. That is to say no woman who had the man the sub is pushing me to see myself as and eventually be would WANT to step out. Even if she was allowed to. Even if he stepped out himself.
    That clearly is not the case, so I have a major discrepancy between how I’m increasingly thinking my life should look and how it actually looks. One that I have no direct control over. That is causing some really brutal recon.

  • The recon is starting to ease a bit on the first night when I’d normally run it. This washout will tell some tales.
    I just keep telling myself that there is no growth without tension and to keep going forward.

  • I am making good progress on my strength in the gym and I definitely am starting to see results in the mirror.

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Interesting and good catch. That recon and issue sounds like a promising challenge to grow from.

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  • The recon is abating a bit more today. That’s good in that i feel better.
    However, I’ve been thinking about how I’ve reacted to similar things while on subs.
    I usually get more and more distressed until it reaches a head of some kind. Then snap, I’m ok or reach a resolution of some type. The tension needs to build up enough to break through though and in this case it hasn’t yet. Given how distressing I’m finding it the peak is likely to be very unpleasant. Once again there is no growth without pain. I just wish to get it over with.
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  • This is the last day of the washout, and the recon is mostly gone. I’ll be nice and ready to start again tomorrow.

  • we went to one of our son’s friends birthday party at a local roller rink. I didn’t notice any social effects that I’d expect from Khan or Wanted, but the place was crowded and noisy so it twitched me out a bit. I wasn’t really trying to make eye contact or anything like that.
    I suppose I was a bit less uncomfortable in the crowd than I usually would be, so there’s that.

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I had that today too. Complete absence of my usual crowd response.

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It wasn’t a complete absence. I still have a reaction whenever there are people behind me and whatnot. It’s just not as bad.

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Also keep your antennae up for WHY they are involved in the community. If the couple is having problems, they might think pulling in another person will solve the issue. It won’t solve anything. It will merely distract for awhile.

Another is that the other person is going along with the nonmonogamy simply to get along with their partner, which means resentment might be building.

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All true, but not what I have issues with. The problem is that they all, or almost all are full blown members of one of the two political camps that we’ve divided into. That informs their socialization, discussions, and just about everything they say at these events.
While I’m not actually a mindless follower of the other camp, I’m a lot closer to it. So I have to bite my tongue a lot or I’ll get a lot of conflict and or just be unwelcome. Square peg, round hole.
For instance, the last time there were a few of them discussing how they’d cut family members out of their lives because they voted for (political candidate). It was something that everyone at the table was agreeing with. Well, I voted for (political candidate).

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      **12/18/22 STAGE 2 CYCLE 2 WEEK 1**
  • I have determined that all of the mental turmoil I was experiencing toward the end of the last cycle was recon.
    Number one, it abated at the end of the week. Number two, I’m getting some insight into it now.
    For some reason I am afraid of becoming the guy that this Khan Wanted combo is pushing me to be. I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s just so radically different from how I’ve seen myself for so many years that it feels alien to me and therefore causes some level of anxiety.
    I have always seen myself as someone who has trouble getting women into bed. That is despite having a body count several times the lifetime average for a man. And that happened without really trying.
    The girls I’ve been with pretty much just threw themselves at me or it seemed to “just happen”.
    I’ve seen getting from meeting the girl to the bedroom as some kind of mysterious process that I had no real control over or ability to gain a clue about. I just get lucky sometimes. Making it happen when I wanted to seemed to be an insurmountable challenge, I didn’t even have a clue about how to start. I hesitate about taking any steps because in my mind it’s something that I am incapable of figuring out.
    I think that one of the challenges of stage two is simply going to be shifting from thinking that this is a near impossible thing to thinking that getting women is easy and I can do it any time or place of my choosing. I MAY be starting to feel a shift on that now after my first washout. Still a bit hard to tell.
    That’s what the recon stemmed from, why I was focusing it on the wife having a playmate, and why it was making me want to back off from the concept of an open relationship entirely. I was afraid that she would be able to and I would just have to sit there while she had her fun and I got nothing. Thats just insecurities talking and I shouldn’t be listening. My personal history has shown me otherwise, and I am ready to start taking control of the process. I’ve already taken control of two of the factors that are under my direct control.
    Im hitting the gym five days a week and the results are starting to show very clearly in the mirror.
    Second, I’m making the effort to get myself out there where women who would be down for relating to a married guy would be. It’s a politically hostile environment for me? So the fuck what? Does the khan let something about himself being unpopular keep him out of anywhere? HELL NO he doesn’t. I may even be able to make going against the grain and being the “rebel” in the group work to my advantage. If everyone else in the room hates me but I get the female company I’m going for, screw em. Why should I care?
    That does not mean that I’m not actively looking for other ponds to fish it because I am.
    So what I have to do next is shift my thinking from “finding new sexual partners is an incredibly difficult, arcane, and confusing process that I couldn’t possibly gain any kind of mastery over” to “finding new sexual partners is easy and simple, and I already have as much mastery as I need”. Simple shift. I say simple, but I didn’t say easy. I suspect that the shift will largely have to have already happened in my mind before I start seeing external results, but that the more of those I have the easier that shifting in my mind will get.
    There is no reason to be afraid of becoming that guy. I’ve wanted to be that since puberty.

  • It’s a bit harder to tell what this is doing because it’s adding new beliefs rather than confronting old ones so I’m not getting the insights about my past that I was on DR or stage 1. Something is happening though. I’m sensing a kind of new persona emerging. So far I can tell that it’s a lot more brash and in your face.

  • I went to another event the other night. Of the twelve people who responded that they were coming only myself, one other guy, and the couple who set it up showed.
    It’s rude as hell to say you’re going to show and not, especially if someone paid money to rent a space.
    I did have a great conversation with the other three people who showed up though.

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  • Today I still feel that I’ve turned a corner of some kind. I still don’t feel any distress about what I have been for the last five months or so. I’m ok with it and I’m going to be moving on and having some of the experiences that I’ve wanted to have.
    It seems that was brought up a lot on stage one and it was still active during the first cycle of stage two. The washout week did something though. It’s almost like it allowed stage two to “set”. Like it wasn’t actually active in my subconscious, or not as active as stage one until that week off allowed it to really start to kick in. The insecurities that were brought up on stage one really seem to have faded and I’m a lot more confident about the trajectory that I have chosen.

  • Were having some money problems right now. A while ago I’d have been crawling out of my skin with stress. That’s changed big time. Now I just kind of know that it’ll be ok. I’ve been successfully making it work under even worse conditions for years. I now seem to just subconsciously trust myself to keep doing it, and the universe to provide what we need. Thanks RICH Elite.

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  • That brings up something about Khan Stage one. I think that unlike some of the other healing programs (this MIGHT apply to some of them too, I don’t know) you won’t necessarily feel better while you’re running it. If you’ve been hiding insecurities and negative thought patterns, it will aggressively dig through the bullshit that you’ve been hiding them behind and make you face them head on.
    There is a very good chance that it’ll make you feel worse while you run it. Now that I’m starting to see the other side it’s making sense.
    ONCE AGAIN. DO NOT USE THIS AS A FIRST SUB.
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  • I continue to feel better about all aspects of my life. More optimistic about the good things happening and more relaxed about the outcomes.
    It kind of feels like the things I’m looking forward to are inevitable. It’s just a matter of time and doing the simple things that I’m already doing and of course it’ll happen.
    On the one front, if I keep putting myself out there in places (real life and online) where there are women and talking to them then I’m eventually going to wind up in bed with some of them.
    When I look at my life without the negative lens that I used to have it really bears that out.
    I’ve had offers most times when I’ve been somewhere that casual hookups happen. And I’ve gotten more than a couple just going about my life from co workers, fellow students ect. Plus there were a lot more who I see now we’re dropping strong hints, I’m talking half a step shy of blatantly offering it. The slightest initiative on my part would have worked in those cases.
    There is no reason that that is going to change. Why hasn’t it happened recently? Because I’ve been pretty isolated for the last few years, and it hasn’t had much chance to happen. It doesn’t matter how good your bait is, if you’re fishing in a swimming pool you’re not going to catch anything. (Or if you do, have a talk with the company you have cleaning it). I haven’t done much other than work for the last few years, and my work environment doesn’t provide me with the kind of regular contact with women that can lead to those opportunities. If I go places where it CAN happen regularly, it WILL happen. It always has.
    And if I keep improving my physique, confidence, and have the wherewithal to make the little bit of effort when I see those not quite blatant chances, I’ll get a lot more and better opportunities than I ever have.
    I’ll call what I feel about it “casual inevitability”.
    I’m also pretty blasé about the “bad” side of being in an open relationship now as well.
    Money wise, it seems just as inevitable. I’m running RICH Elite. Of course I’ll get opportunities to improve the situation. It kind of feels like knowing my work shift is going to end, or the weather will warm up eventually. I don’t know exactly when, but it will happen.
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  • Today I was able to look unflinchingly at why the wife wanting another playmate still bothers me a bit. And it is actually somewhat good news.
    What I want out of this is to have a partner who has no inclination to stray from me because I am so awesome that she doesn’t need anyone else, but she doesn’t mind that I have casual playmates on the side.
    I’ve wanted that for a long time. But I always brushed it off as “unfair” or “arrogant”. What was really happening was that I thought I wasn’t “good enough” to merit that. I shouldn’t even be asking (the universe or whatever) for that because it’s a ridiculous request.
    Now though. No, that’s what I want and deep down I feel that it’s what I should be getting.
    Am I going to get that with my current partner? Well, not tomorrow, but I can look at the desire without self judgment or thinking that I’m not good enough to have it.
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  • Every version since the original Q has seemed to have a more subtle effect. That is to say that I feel less and less that something is going on while the program is playing and immediately afterwards.
    There is less of a sense of noticeable difference in my day to day life too.
    It used to be that when I was running a subliminal, I’d constantly think about the subliminal and how it was effecting me. It was one step shy of obsessive. Not really in a bad way. I was just very cognizant of what the sub was supposed to be doing and how that was lining up with my thoughts and my life.
    Now I’m not really sure what stage two is even doing to me. I know it’s doing SOMETHING, I just can’t put my finger on what yet.
    Really thinking about it, I’ve noticed an almost complete lack of negative thinking, some optimism, I’m pretty unflappable when things go wrong. I have the attitude of “of course I’ll find a way through this”. And I do.
    I’m experiencing much less stress on all fronts.

  • As far as finding other sexual partners goes I seem to have the same thing going on. I take it as a matter of course that it’ll happen if I keep putting myself out there in the right places. I’m worrying less about that and focusing on living my life and developing myself.

  • Perfect Style and Smell is really showing itself. I’m developing a look of my own that fits the persona that I present to the world. And it feels natural.
    That is in stark contrast to how I used to be. I remember when I was a teenager I tried to look like a number of things. You know, the classifications that kids group themselves into. And I ended up looking to my own eyes just like a pale mockery of whatever I was trying to look like. I don’t know if thats how others saw me, but it made me feel very self conscious. Maybe a better way of saying that is that it brought my extreme self consciousness to the surface. It’s hard to look cool in anything when you think that everyone who lays eyes on you is mocking you.
    Come to think of it, I’m really not self conscious at all anymore. That’s a huge change. One that I think has been happening slowly throughout the years I’ve been using subs.

  • I’m going to a New Year’s Eve party and I’m looking forward to testing the social changes that are really hard to detect in my normal life.

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  • I have this mental game I’ve been playing for years.
    I imagine that I have the opportunity to go back in time to the year after I failed out of the first college I went to and before I moved out of state to go to the second one.
    I have no memory of the future except an awareness that it happened, and my mind is the same as it was the moment I jump back in.
    The only difference is that I can bring back a letter to myself and I have access to the entire Subclub catalog including customs.
    I’ve thought about this a lot, enough that on long nights at work it almost seems like a real possibility.
    Tonight I came up with the custom I’d run for the first six months. I’m actually kind of proud of how well thought out it is. I took into account all of the problems I had to deal with at that time and assigned modules accordingly. I’ll share because I’m extremely bored and feeling whimsical.

I based it on Ascension and Rebirth cores.
The primary thing getting in my way was a lack of self worth. That has always been the primary driving force behind most of my issues, and it had just taken a beating.
The first step in getting my life back on track would be to start to raise it with Ascension, and Rebirth would help me start to see myself as what Ascension was pushing me toward.

1.Ascension Core
2.Rebirth Core

The next thing that would need to be dealt with is my obsession with ex #2. That had a lot to do with my flunking out and I repeated the pattern shortly after I moved to my new school.
The underlying problem that caused me to repeat the cycle of obsessing on my ex would have to be dealt with on a deep level later, but just breaking it at that point would help immensely.
For that.

3.Attachment Destroyer
4.Pride Unbroken
5.Courage Reclaimed

The next thing I’d want is to avoid the horrific relationship I had with #4.
She was friends with #2 and had decided that I was her soulmate (read that as property) as soon as she met me about a year before I’d be dropping back in here.
She had been trying everything she could to work me into a relationship all that time. She kept at it throughout that year, and eventually succeeded about a year later after I’d fallen into a major depression wjen #3 broke up with me.
For that goal

6.Manipulus
7.Ebon Manuver
8.Immortal’s Blade
9.Limiting people remover

Truth be told, I wouldn’t have put up with her throughout that year if she hadn’t been my only connection to #2 that I was desperately trying to hold on to.

I went to community college that year. I did pretty well, but I’ll throw in some modules that should help me do even better.

  1. Eye of the Storm
    11.Victory’s Call
    12.Orginization Perfected
    13.Purity Without
    14.Free Pass (for the admission process to the next school)

That year was an opportunity to really work on myself without much to worry about. I somewhat took advantage of it, but it could have been better if I had focused more and not been distracted by loneliness and trying to date.

  1. Solitude
    16.Stop PMO (and that would be easier before smart phones)
    17.Monk Mode
  2. Stress Displacement
  3. Extreme Exercise Motivation
    20.The Armor

That last one. It doesn’t exist at this point. I had a dream about it a while back. It prevents the user from taking damage from emotional abuse and similar things while they’re happening rather than healing the aftermath.

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I imagine it’s just a matter of time before they make it. It sounds like a winner.

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