Everyone knows relationships are hard work. Everyone knows that relationships hit roadblocks and whatever the fuck else. Fucking why. What’s the point? Be with a person that you mostly tolerate most of the days that you exist? And even then, they still might betray you in a horrible way. I’ve dealt with a lot of pain and stress and loss in my life, and when the happy shit gets sour, I just don’t fucking get it. Why not just live my life fucking off and dying eventually.
It’s a viable strategy. Most people seek comfort in the presence of others, but you can have that with friendships and occasional hookups just as well. In fact most long term relationships I know really revolve around raising kids more than anything.
A great relationship with another person is worth more than the effort involved. They provide more to your life than you need to invest.
The problem is finding that person that does that for you.
You could go through a hundred or a handful of relationships to find that person. Until you have enough relationship experience to understand what you need in a partner, you will never know what it is like to find that special person that makes everything before them worth all that you have experienced.
The numbers aren’t great. You are almost guaranteed to have to deal with some shit and have bad relationships in order to find that person. The worst part? Sometimes you aren’t enough to deserve that person and it is up to you to become the person that your perfect partner deserves. Understanding that you aren’t good enough for your perfect partner is hard, and becoming that person is harder. You do deserve to find that undeniable perfect love, if you can understand and work on your faults to deserve them.
The fault is almost certainly you. Strive to be better than your perfect partner deserves and be that person for them. Know when you find that person and understand what you need to be to surpass their expectations, surpass those expectations because they always deserve better than you are and you can be better than their needs in a partner.
That being said, if you can be happy alone, then be alone and live your best life without someone factored into your happiness equation. There is nothing that says you must have a partner to be happy, except your own needs. If you can be happy sexless and living life, great for you. That is a harder path because having someone to lean on when you need strength is hard, but not inviable.
No matter, be a better person to other than you were yesterday.
Understand yourself and be who you are, meant to be to be happy, even if that means your path in life is traveled alone.
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This is really solid advice here. Unfortunately most people are not able to follow this thinking. Sometimes you find someone but they change later. This usually happens when you get together at a younger age. The person you were with at 22 is totally different than the person they are at 30. Sometimes you “jump the gun” and get pregnant or get someone pregnant before you really get to know them. This happens when it’s been less than a few years and you haven’t experienced all the different emotions and feelings that happen with life and shit going wrong. How a person is when life is good is not a reflection of how they will behave when life turns sour.
My suggestion for people is to just wait. Wait before getting married. Wait before having kids. And wait before buying a house or other large purchases together. It took me to almost 40 and 5ish serious relationships and many not so serious relationships before finding my wife.
Game theory does not apply to relationships, my friend. A healthy relationship requires hard work from both parties involved, so that you can be stronger and happier together that you would be alone. I hope you find that love in your life and when that day comes, that you are ready for it.
I find more joy and contentment in being a bachelor, to be honest. I also have a lot more spending money as a bachelor, go figure.
It’s okay to go that route; no relationships or only limited, superficial ones.
Voluntary bachelorhood is bliss. More money, more time, more travel. No looming decades of childcare bills, healthcare bills, or the relatively high probability of maintenance payments til death.
I had a bout of this thinking a few years ago. If you keep at it, improving yourself and nudging the other person along, you grow out of this fugue state. If it reaches breaking point and one of you can’t relent, you’ll break up and move on.
But if you don’t, and it blossoms, it becomes a wonderful space to be in.
A very wise person once told me that the person you spend your life with must be first and foremost, your best friend. If they’re not that, then it’ll always be an uphill battle.