Thread by @EpistemicHope

There's a particular kind of romantic partnership, with a certain sort of person, that I've wanted since I became a self-aware, directed agent at around age 15.

Empirically, this kind of relationship has been hard to achieve. It hasn't worked out yet, at least.

And this sometimes leaves me wondering if my standards are unreasonable.

In years past that desire was often very alive.

These days, I'm rarely directly or viscerally in contact with it.

I sometimes contemplate aiming for some other kind of romantic and/or sexual relationship instead. In part because I might be more effective if I...I don't know, got laid more? But that's not really the thing. More like, if I had someone around whom I could regularly relax.

But mostly, I don't pursue those alternative relationship-setups out of a sense of something like loyalty to myself + a vague sense of wrongness and/or sadness about it. It often feels like giving up or giving in.

[I might elaborate on the wrongness sometime.]

(That said, it varies. I have felt more inclination toward dating people, in the sense of going out on dates with people with whom I am almost certainly not going to partner with, this year, compared to most years.

All of this is still reasonably fluid.)

But then, periodically, for some reason or another, I'll reconnect with the thing that I'm wanting in a visceral way.

And then I'll have a moment of "Ohhh...Yeah, THAT thing. THAT's what I care about. I want THAT." I feel the aliveness and open goodness that motivated my younger self.

All the other "options" pale markedly in comparison. It becomes obvious that they're not what I want.

Furthermore, when I am in touch with this desire, I feel slightly baffled that this seems so hard, and that it hasn't panned out yet.

It seems so...obvious, or in some sense, ordinary. It feels like it should be...well, not easy, but not crazily hard.

It seems like, there ought to be lots of people who want what I want. Not even close to the majority of people. But lots.

And then I feel confused that I've been going around in the world for more than a decade and I've had so few hits. It's not clear if I've ever gotten close.

I feel sort of like the world is trying to gaslight me into thinking the sort of partnership that I want is a pipe-dream.

And then I have moments when I "wake up", and I re-realize, that

No, it's the world that's crazy, the thing that I want is obviously Good and obviously worth guarding.

There is goodness and beauty that is worthy of love and committed-service.

The thing that I'm longing for is real. I'm not just hallucinating.

There's something that my love is FOR.

And, OBVIOUSLY, don't ape love of things that aren't worthy of it, for the sake of convenience.

I SHOULDN'T follow false gods because maybe they're the only ones there are. There's something that's not false.

And then I'll loose touch with it again.

And I'll stubbornly persist in half-heartedly seeking the thing, without really feeling why, mostly on the basis of a trust that the other time-slices of me are on to something real.

. . .

But this still leaves me with a hard problem of figuring out how to make it work out. How do I find and make the thing that I'm wanting?

What should I do? What should I try?

And additionally, what sort of "stance" should I have towards this?

Maybe I should maintain resolve and never give up until I find a way.

Maybe I should be "optimistic." Trust that it will work out, and doors will open.

But hope is painful. So, Maybe I should mostly live in the world where it doesn't work out, but continue to take steps anyway?

Maybe I need to be coming from a place of Surrender. (That IS what the trope book says.)

And all this also (maybe) leaves me with the problem of how to have meaningful companionship in the meantime.

(Or possibly "have meaningful companionship ever", depending on when the world ends. All of this has a somewhat different tenor when I consider that this might be my last decade on earth, and I ask, given that, how I want to spend it.)

These days, the main constraint on who I'm willing to date is "Do they have the necessary virtue and internal 'infrastructure', such that they can hold up their end of the connection, so that we can be fully honest with each other?"

(Because, in general, I'm not willing to warp my perceptions by pretending to believe things that I don't as a way to avoid tripping on the insecurities of people who are closest to me.)

But more specifically, I need to be transparent about this particular thing, because I'm not willing to loose track of the-thing-that-I-want by engaging in some other mode.

Which can be brutal, and is off the table if the person can't own their end of the connection.

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