- "That's really cool! It's something I've always wanted to try. Yeah, I'm up for that!"
- "NO! No way! No! No! No! Nonononononononononononono! NO!.... but can I watch you do someone else?"
I have to say that for the most part this simple pattern has held true over the last year or so. What has, however, been far less simple has been the incredibly varied response the potential subject's partner has displayed. In fact there have been such a mixture of responses that I won't even bother to try to list them. Many are positive, others are negative, and others seem to be uneasy but neutral.
Imagine the situation though. You're entering a time in your life where nearly everybody you know is in a relationship. Hypnosis just happens to, admittedly with a little bit of shameless manoeuvring on your part, come up in the conversation. When someone expresses an interest to give it a try more often than not their partner is also around.
How does the partner feel about seeing their significant other being hypnotised in front of them? It's almost certainly a question that they haven't even thought about before, and so I nearly always find myself having to keep an eye on the partner for feedback almost as much as the subject.
The majority of the people I seem to end up hypnotising are female and that means that there's nearly always a boyfriend in the equation somewhere.
Now, my own experiences with relationships do rather lead me to empathise with the paranoia that comes with being with someone very special. When a beautiful creature places unremarkable you within the inner circle of their universe the last thing you want is for anybody to come along and tilt the axes, even gently. Goodness knows I'm still waiting for my own girlfriend to wake up and realise her mistake.
Quite obviously I am not going out with the intention of seducing other people's girlfriends, and I think I would be giving myself far too much credit if I said I thought that I or my hypnotist routine were especially attractive. No, my sole interest when I have a subject in front of me is in satisfying their needs or curiosity, whatever those may be, because it is through doing so that I get my own enjoyment. This is often enough to sow the seeds of discomfort in a partner though, especially a male partner, because what they see is somebody connecting with their beloved in a way that perhaps they can't or don't, and can also be seen to be quite intimate.
That's one perspective, another is the idea that hypnosis is scary ultimate mind control. This, in my opinion rather absurd, worry is usually easy enough to alleviate in most people although some hypnotists, usually the ones who will never be hypnotised themselves, I have seen refuse to let anybody else hypnotise their girlfriend on this basis. Or they will allow it but will insist on being there so they can hear every word, lest security be compromised.
Safety is quite a legitimate worry, and I do my best to assure everyone concerned that what I'm doing is safe, which of course it is. I don't think doing the "Zap" (throw your subject on the floor and just hope they don't get concussion) induction or anything similar would go down well, and it's completely unnecessary anyway.
There was one hypnotist I met whose girlfriend had a real interest in hypnosis and enjoyed being a subject too, but he wouldn't let anyone else do anything with her. She was a great subject and really receptive to the experience, and yet this guy kept utterly failing to do anything with her because he didn't have the patience or the empathy. That's the final thing worth mentioning here; jealousy. That was an extreme example of course, but I have found that some of the worse culprits for negative feelings about seeing their girlfriend hypnotised have been other hypnotists.
One thing that I think is clear is that hypnosis has a way of bringing to the surface deeper aspects of a relationship in the same way as it does for individual personalities.
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