who says words aren’t powerful?

you have officially charmed olive.

i can feel her tingle from here.

hey i don’t see how to link directly to comments on your blog.

hmm.

This is very well written. But I think you are sort of missing the root cause of this dissatisfaction.

There is a tradeoff between the kind of love that make one want burn rather than live alone, and the kind of love that would cause one to be centered and internally fulfilled.

Love, as most people know it, has a large element of possessiveness and self-reflection.

When possessiveness is present in both partners, this results in co-dependence on the other to maintain ones own self-image. This causes people to cherish their relationships as a reflection of themselves, however it also causes a lot of hurt and heartache.

In absence of co-dependence a sort of very spiritually enlightened relationship is possible, where each partner is intrinsically centered and fulfilled. But this changes the dynamics of the relationship in a way that it hard for the average person to relate to as romantic love.

(If I am loosing you here, read some stuff by David Deida, he advocates this self-fulfilled model. )

It may be that there is no good solution to this dilemma. Perhaps am important part of living life is to try regardless.

Broad strokes.

What about specifics? How can a woman support you in your own mission? What is the best thing you can gift a woman?

[...] which I have used for this post), which I will republish in a moment. The first is Yohami’s thoughts on what a healthy relationship looks like. It’s a little corny (I guess girls like that kind of thing though), but it is still worth [...]

Best. Post. You’ve. Ever. Written. Exclamation Point!! LOL
Seriously, I love the mutuality here too; none of that crap about how one’s giving up everything or else pulling the other around. Love and influence are more circular in a healthy relationship. And Yohami, dear man: what you describe has happened. I’ve seen it

This is possible. I’ve seen it. I have it. It’s not always perfect, but it is possible. There are people striving for it.

To get it, I had to throw out everything I thought I wanted and spend several years thinking carefully about what really mattered to me. I thought of it like a kind of Venn diagram. There was a group of men who shared the values I had. Within that group was a smaller group of men I could be friends with. And within that group was a yet smaller group of men (even if it was only one) who it was possible to fall in love with and desire, who would feel the same way about me.

My husband approached his hunt the same way. We were both very analytical about it, and unromantic, even cold, but what we have now is pretty amazing. Very romantic and anything but cold. I grew up in a really bad environment; I didn’t know it was even possible for marriage to be this good. But it is. It’s possible. And as the years go by, we keep working on improving what we have, forgiving each other for our many individual flaws, and supporting each other as needed and as best as we can. And it gets better.