Thread by @EpistemicHope

@meditationstuff,

This seems to have shifted for me in the past few weeks (months?).

It currently seems much more "ok" to not end up with the kind of deep partnership that I have longed for.

I don't know if this is a robust / permanent shift or not.

https://twitter.com/EpistemicHope/status/1362205042476937219

And I hypothesize that this shift is related to my finding traction in my work / world-saving mission.

Which is pretty interesting. Is romantic partnership a substitute for work that feels meaningful?

How much of my romantic longing was just pica for wanting a sense of progress in my work?

Or the other way around: Is world saving stuff having traction pica for romantic desire?

Closer to correct I think, is that I was (am?) counting on / hoping for a romantic partner to keep me "anchored in my values" and on mission.

But to the extent that the project is "flowing", it doesn't need anchoring in the same way.

Or another (entangled) tack: I wanted a partner to help me grow into, and to grow with me into, something great and Good.

But there's at least some ways in which I now feel like I've "made it". I don't need that any more. I've grown out of that need.

Although, I already felt like that, sometimes, a few months ago. And at the time, it would make me sad. A melancholy sense that I have missed the window in which someone could grow into something with me.

More recently, the emotional tenor is more serene.

Another tact: the more I grow and develop, the further my world drifts from the "mainline" and the less and less it seems possible for another person to meet me where I am.

But the kind of "its impossible" that has release to it, as the part of me that is doing the longing actually updates that there's not something tractable here.

The painful thing is when some part of me believes that there's possibility, but it is being denied.

Seeing that it is actually not a nearby possibility, I settle into this world, and am open to other possible kinds of connection.

Or maybe I'm just wrong, and this shift is not connected to the new sense of traction in my work at all.

Related?

https://twitter.com/EpistemicHope/status/1336807781559640065?s=20

(In case this was somehow not obvious from the above: I've recently had a new feeling of traction, or clarity, about my work / the mission.

Not that everything is more optimistic-seeming, but less "slippery"; I feel more like I can robustly take steps that bear progress.

I'm not sure what caused that change. I should probably go back over my notes and try to tease it out.

It might have been that I sat down and asked myself "If I were solely responsible with seeing the world to safety, what do I need to do?"

But that is probably an effect, not a cause.)

Oh. And another possibility that I should have noted above: it isn't so much that one thing is pica for another so much as it is a matter of emotional misattribution:

I feel "bad" for some reasons. My mind is drawn to my lack of romantic satisfaction, because that is known-to-be-unsolved problem, and going to that headspace is habitual.

But it isn't actually the _main_ lack that is causing the "feeling bad".

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