*** PhoenixMoon86 has signed off ***
In control systems engineering, there is the concept of positive and negative feedback. Many systems are self-regulating: in engineering terms, their results, or output, "feed back" into their input and influence how they behave. Negative feedback is, for example, the type exhibited by a thermostat reaching its desired temperature: as the temperature approaches the desired value, the system stops reacting to it, since no correction is necessary. Positive feedback is the opposite, such as that exhibited by an amplifier fed back into itself: it increases the intensity of something in an endless loop, because the amplified output is fed back into the input, becoming louder still. Sam's brain had now reached an endless feedback loop like this: because he was sexually aroused, he wanted to relieve that sexual pressure, but not being able to do so was also a turn-on, meaning that the more aroused he became, the more arousing he found this experience of irreversible arousal.
If he could somehow release some of his sexual tension, he might have been all right. But the problem was that he had no release valve: normally, he could have eased his sexual tension by masturbating, but now, touching himself had become like touching a table. There was no sensation to it, no satisfaction from it. Reading her words was so much more sexually exciting than masturbating that masturbating had lost its ability to satisfy him. He needed more words from her. He needed to feel her hold on him, to experience the thrill of her messing with his thoughts and toying with his emotions to churn him into a sexual frenzy. Without the experience of her wonderful manipulation, he was unable to satisfy the powerful need he felt.
At the same time, however, the experience of being thus sexually trapped was also a turn-on for him, because he liked the fact that she had made him so sexually dependent on her. It was a sexual fantasy come true: he was her plaything, a weak toy so addicted to her that he would have done anything to experience her playing with him. That turned him on even more, which he would normally deal with by masturbating... but since he couldn't, his predicament turned him on still more, creating an endless loop of sexual arousal and intense thoughts about her that he couldn't control. With no way to physiologically or psychologically get himself out of this loop, he entered something of a state of mental stasis, as if his brain were a computer that had crashed. He could think only of her, only of the things she said and did to him. These thoughts were an order of magnitude more powerful than any other thoughts in his mind, and they drowned out the possibility of thinking about anything else.
This was, in fact, the beginning of a sequence of self-reinforcing events. Just as an audio signal undergoes successive layers of amplification as it passes and re-passes through an amplifier, Sam went through a repeated series of online encounters where every time, she would heighten and reinforce his state of sexual excitement and desire, then suddenly disappear, leaving him in a state of overwhelming arousal that he had no way of dissipating. He came to dread the thought of her leaving; every time she left, he was suddenly alone, and she would always leave suddenly to maximize the effect her leaving had. He came to understand, subconsciously if not consciously, that her absence meant regret, and her presence meant gratification.
Sam was arguably a man of questionable mental stability, especially after Sam had begun working on him, but he saw clearly enough to realize that it was best to distract himself from Sam if he wanted to stop thinking about her. The more you try not to think about something, the more you end up thinking about it through that very act of
not
thinking about it. So he did what many young men do when they have a lot of free time on their hands and no clear outlet through which to expend it: he got heavily into video gaming. This was something he, like many other young men, had already enjoyed before, but with a Sam-shaped hole now palpably gaping in his life, he decided to try to fill that gap by distracting himself. It didn't really matter whether he was playing shooting games, role-playing games, strategy games, or whatever-he just wanted something to get his mind off her.
It was also at this point that he opened an account on a dating website with the hopes of forgetting about his obsession. He reasoned that there are plenty of fish in the sea, and that he had erred by focusing too hard and too long on one particular woman. Surely, if he would just get himself out there into the dating pool and start talking to other women, he could forget about her, right? He just needed some time to meet new people, to reassert his humanity and his status as a person, to attain the new perspectives gained by talking to other people, and he would feel like a new man.
What he had not understood or accounted for, perhaps because he was inexperienced in matters of dating, was that women recognize a guy who is still trying to get over an ex, a man who is somehow too emotionally tied up in the past to be able to move forward, and will instinctively avoid a man who is emotionally unavailable. He had little success on the dating site despite seeing several interesting profiles and sending several well-intentioned messages to various women. He became well acquainted with the single response: many people on the Internet, when they receive a message which appears reasonably well-composed and polite, feel obligated to send a single conciliatory response, an answer which communicates that they appreciated the communication, but says nothing further. If he sent a response to this response, no further messages would be forthcoming. This pattern repeated itself again and again.
Finally, a woman ended up messaging
him
instead. It quickly became apparent that the woman was reasonably intelligent, attractive enough to not smash the sky with sheer hideousness, and most importantly, interested in talking to Sam, which were all the criteria that he was looking for in a woman at that moment. They got to talking for a while, and a few minutes of talking which turned into a few hours of talking then became a few days, and they kept talking, or rather, she kept talking. It was apparent that she was a fantastically boring person, the kind of person who would talk for literally hours about whether she should eat an apple or an orange, which probably helped to explain why she was single, but he didn't mind too much, because he was a boring person as well, and so perhaps they suited each other well that way. She would talk for no reason and he would listen for no reason. Surely there have been relationships that were sustained on a less compatible dynamic than that.
It might have gone on for much longer if the other Sam hadn't turned up after a few days and asserted herself.
<PhoenixMoon86> Why haven't I heard from you for a few days?
<APyreInside81> Was I supposed to message you?
<PhoenixMoon86> Of course. When we're not together, your job is to tell me how much you miss me when I'm gone.
<APyreInside81> I wasn't aware of that. Last time we talked, YOU were the one who went offline and left ME alone.
<PhoenixMoon86> Yes, and you were supposed to send me messages telling me how much you missed me and begging me to come back so we could talk some more.
<APyreInside81> Why would I ask you to talk to me if you don't want to talk to me?
<PhoenixMoon86> Because you want me and need me. All you have is me.
He was in a unique position, a position he hadn't been in before: what she was saying was no longer true. Now he had someone else, another woman to talk to. And he didn't have to do what Sam said anymore.
<APyreInside81> Not anymore. I found someone else.
<PhoenixMoon86> Oh? Who?
<APyreInside81> A woman.
<PhoenixMoon86> Is she better than me?
<APyreInside81> She's more stable and reasonable than you.
<PhoenixMoon86> That's good to know. That means it won't last, because you don't want someone who's stable or reasonable.
<APyreInside81> What makes you think that?
<PhoenixMoon86> I know you. I know you well enough to know that you love a woman who has no limits, someone who'll do anything to you because you're a thing for her to use rather than a human being with your own independent will.
He thought about this one for a long time. The more he thought about it, the more he came to understand that she was right. She knew him better than he knew himself. And there was a passion, an intensity in his few minutes of interaction with Sam which he'd never felt in the days of talking to the other woman.
As usual, his prolonged silence confirmed to her that she was right.
<PhoenixMoon86> Where did you meet her?
<APyreInside81> On a dating site.
<PhoenixMoon86> Oh, you've got to be kidding me. Give me the login and password to your dating site profile.
<APyreInside81> What? I'm not giving you that information.
<PhoenixMoon86> GIVE ME YOUR PASSWORD OR I WILL COME TO WHERE YOU LIVE AND MAKE YOU REGRET IT IN MORE WAYS THAN YOU COULD EVER IMAGINE.
He told himself that he didn't really know why he did it, even though he knew perfectly well why. He could have just said no. It would have been easy to block her, to ignore her, or to just tell her no. But he gave her his password. There was something horribly wrong about it, something deeply violating about the knowledge that she was now reading all his private conversations with the other woman, and yet at the same time, that was precisely what made it so satisfying. He waited quietly for several minutes. He knew that during this time, she was probably copying-and-pasting all his conversations with the other woman so she could read them later. And yet he submitted to this treatment for reasons that he did not want to admit.
Finally, the message which he'd been awaiting arrived:
<PhoenixMoon86> I fixed your problem.
And then she was gone again. He logged into the dating site to see what she'd done. It was pretty much exactly as he expected: she'd sent the other woman a message from his account full of insults and obscenities, declaring that she was boring, a bitch, someone whom he had no desire to carry on any further contact with. Part of him wished that there was a way to delete messages on the site, but he understood that what was done was done, and it had to be this way.
The other woman was perhaps smarter than Sam had given her credit for, however. She perceived immediately that it was not the male Sam who had sent the message, but rather someone else: a woman. She showed up a few hours later and sent a message.
<TootieFrootie8746> Who's this woman who sent me this crazy message?
<APyreInside81> Just some psycho stalker ex-girlfriend... Sorry about that. You can just ignore her.
<TootieFrootie8746> So... She read all the messages that we sent to each other?
<APyreInside81> I'm not sure if she read all of them. She probably read some of them.
The situation was not without its comedy. But it was pretty clear where things lay.
<TootieFrootie8746> How did she get into your account?
<APyreInside81> I gave her the password.
<TootieFrootie8746> Why did you do that?
<APyreInside81> I don't really know.
<TootieFrootie8746> That's a lie.
He put his head in his hands for a moment. It was true: it was all a lie. He knew exactly why he'd given her his password. He knew exactly why it had all happened this way. He'd done it because Sam was more important to him than anyone else ever could be, and as intrusive as it might have been to let her read a private conversation with someone else, he was more willing to give Sam what she wanted than to do anything else.
<APyreInside81> I'm sorry.
<TootieFrootie8746> I'm sorry, too.
<APyreInside81> For what?
<TootieFrootie8746> I'm not willing to put up with this.
<APyreInside81> I wouldn't expect you to.
<TootieFrootie8746> You understand that means I'm gone, right?
<APyreInside81> Yes. I'm sorry this happened. I wish you all the best.
<TootieFrootie8746> You too. You should go back to her. It's obvious that you want to.
<APyreInside81> How is it obvious?
<TootieFrootie8746> Don't be stupid. Anyone would see it right away. You don't mind that she's a psycho stalker ex-girlfriend. You like that she is, because you want to get back together with her more than anything.
As had happened so many times between the Sams, his long pause indicated that she was right.
<TootieFrootie8746> I should have known. Don't contact me again. Goodbye.
He should have been sad. Sad that he'd betrayed TootieFrootie8746, someone who, after all, seemed like a nice person even if she was more boring than watching snails paint a wall. He should have felt guilty, cruel, and worthless. But somehow he could not. Somehow, he could only feel a quiet, happy satisfaction: she had chased off another woman. She had interjected herself into his life to make sure that he was not able to date anyone but her. And rather than feeling outraged, violated, or wronged, he saw that this was the fulfillment of their destiny together. Conventional wisdom would have said that it was unhealthy. Any therapist or counselor would have said that it was unhealthy for someone to do what Sam had done, to drive friends away because Sam only wanted to have a significant other in life, without friends on the side. But the Sams were united by their desire to turn fantasy into reality, to go beyond the boundaries of normal life and take their relationship to the next level of intensity. Her act of driving off someone who could have at least been a friend wasn't abusive; it was an act of love, and he realized that he loved her all the more for her having done it.
