Transactional view of society and dating does help me a little but like you said it is wide open to misogyny and I’d rather be miserable than have misogynistic views of the world.
But to better quote my therapist, it went like this:
I told her what I basically said here, that as I go down the laundry list of qualities of people who even could be compatible with me, and who I’d simultaneously find interesting enough to be around, as well as attractive to me, that the person probably does not exist. So, the choice is to change who i am, what my standards are, or be alone.
She nodded and said if I ever really do find a meaningful relationship it would need to be unorthodox and that I would likely need my own bedroom if I were to cohabitate. She even has gone so far as to say I’d maybe even need my own apartment. This is because I very much require isolation and a space of my own and when I don’t have that I feel like I’m suffocating.
So who the fuck is compatible with that kind of arrangement, first of all, and who in their right minds wouldnt look at someone like that and not ask if there’s something deeply wrong with them?
I would describe the things that prevent people from pairing successfully as toxicity and attraction to slash tolerance of toxicity. It’s important to note that there are a lot of toxic people out there and it’s absolutely normal to be raised by toxic people and become toxic as a result. Toxicity for the sake of defining my own mental terms is just -EV interpersonal behavior like cheating, being unreasonable, lying a whole bunch, and a tons of other stuff people do when in relationships. Toxicity is also a spectrum. On one end you’ve got me who is extremely transactional and annoying about it and on the other end you’ve got a guy who beats his wife because he has a personality disorder.
Take my transactional view of the world as an example. I am that way because I grew up being constantly gaslighted by the people I was supposed to be able to trust the most. As a defense against the attempt to always take every interaction to a manipulative and frankly pretty exploitative place I started evaluating things in a pretty concrete way pretty early in life.
I am how I am. Ask my wife to describe how annoying I can be sometime… she’s got a standup comedy routine at this point.
“Unorthodox” sounds like code for “open relationship”.
You’ve said you don’t want to change, but will you always feel that way? At the same time, you believe that there is something deeply wrong with yourself, since you expect others to view you that way, so why would you not want to change that?
I guess I am measuring myself by society’s standards and not my own. To me, I feel like the only sane person in a world of crazy people. If I were to judge myself by my own standards I’d say I’m pretty fucking awesome.
But unfortunately I also have big blind spots so I tend to just go with society’s standards when evaluating myself.
I am perfectly content with who I am and have known who I am for a while. Everyone else is the problem (which is impossible, which is why I bring myself back to evaluating myself by other standards than my own).
Same with my bf. His personal best was 6 months at 26 and he truly thought he’d be forever single until he met me. He is very attractive fwiw before someone decides he was obviously ugly because his relationships ended early. You just need to find the right person.
Not all attractive people are toxic and when you’re in a good relationship you want to do things for the other and vice versa. You don’t have a mental list tallying everything up.
When I have times like these, sometimes it is comforting to me to try to realize that hard times don’t last forever and eventually it’ll be over. Probably not much help but that’s what gets me through.
You’re not alone. I think many of us know that feeling of trying to get everything done and right and it seems like absolutely nothing is easy. It will pass.
