Help me understand relationships

In My Humble Opinion
1

Ok, some background first.

I’m almost 20. In my life I’ve had one girlfriend, an online relationship which didn’t work out so well once we met in person; not due to any specific difficulties between us, but I think we both weren’t ready at the time, or mature enough to handle a very long distance (different countries) relationship. Since then I’ve been ‘interested’ in a few people since, but for the most part haven’t acted on it (the one time I did nothing came of it). I was at the time a bit depressed about being perpetually single, thinking it was because of something wrong with me, but it bothered me in a rather vague way for the most part, rather than obsessing about particular people.

At some point a year or so ago I came to terms with the fact that I was bi (It’s perhaps a bit more complicated than that, but that was how I saw it at the time). Didn’t really affect much one way or another, but heightened my confusion about life, love etc.

Anyway, in recent months I’ve been doing a fair bit of thinking about the whole thing and come to one significant conclusion: I don’t get it.

Not just in the sense that I don’t understand it on an intellectual level; I suspect that’s true of a lot of people. The whole idea simply fails to appeal. In retrospect most of my attraction people was based on the fact they were nice people who I could like as friends, fairly good looking and based on a vague feeling about what I was supposed to want.

Some additional information:

I’m not a loner. I have a fair number of friends, and wouldn’t want to try and get through all of life without the love and support of friends and family. I’m somewhat introverted, but mostly just with people I don’t know.

I have little interest in sex. I mean, I’m not completely disinterested in it, but my interest could be better described as ‘mild curiosity’ than anything else. I probably wouldn’t reject it out of hand if offered by someone I liked, but am not seeking it out in any way. I do find people attractive, but am rarely myself attracted to them, if that makes any sense.

I particularly don’t understand the attraction of forming couples. Putting someone else above all others and vice versa just doesn’t seem to be that great an idea to me. (In the sense of not being something I’d really want to do, rather than I think it’s a bad idea for everyone).

I don’t really see gender differences. I’m aware of them as generalities, and more of my friends are female than male, but in the end it’s a person’s personality that matters. Gender seems almost irrelevant except insofar as it tends to affect other relevant traits (e.g. There are certain personality trends between genders, although not ones which are at all concrete).

At this point I suppose I could describe myself as asexual, bisexual, polyamorous and a good number of other words, but in the end they’re just words. It doesn’t really describe what I mean very well.

So, it boils back down to what I said earlier: I don’t get it. I would, however, like to and thus was hoping that the collective wisdom of the SDMB could help me try and understand.

This isn’t intended as a request to help me understand so I can ‘get better’. I’m pretty much happy with who I am as a person (there’s a lot of room for improvement, but I’m happy with most of the overall features), and not really looking to change on the relationship front. It’s just something that I’d like to understand, because it’s so important to many other people, so I thought I would see what the various Dopers’ takes on the matter were.

Hmm. Rereading all that, I don’t feel I’ve expressed myself very well, but hopefully it’s enough that it’s coherent enough to get my point across.

Kit

(On a side-note, I found my vocabulary very limiting for this post. There aren’t many good words for describing this sort of thing that don’t have unwanted extra meaning).

2

Interesting post. I don’t think I really have any answers, more a few thoughts that I shall throw in your general direction:

  1. I think it’s fairly normal at the age of about 20 to get most of the support and company that you need from your friends rather than from a SO. It may not be universally true, but certainly a lot of 18-24 year olds that I know (I’m 22) are like that and that makes relationships harder for them.

  2. Romantic relationships become more important as you get older. I’m talking in social terms. After you’re past a certain age (it’s just starting for me at 22 although it may start at a different point depending on your social circle), your friends are all in serious relationships or married and are not as willing to really be there for you. Not that you’ll never see them again but that they have less to “share” with you because they’re sharing so much with their SO. You get to see their personality much less often. And when that starts to happen, you may start to feel differently. I’m not saying that this is a good thing particularly, but I think it happens to a fair proportion of young people - wanting a SO because their friends aren’t around as much.

  3. Some people are just very picky. I have a few friends who seem to have only met one or two people that they found attractive in the past few years. My feeling with you is that you just haven’t met someone whom you relate to in a physical as well as intellectual/emotional way. It’ll probably happen at some point, but isn’t worth rushing.

  4. Related to the last point, in reply to “why do people have relationships?”, I’d say that for many people wanting company, support, sex comes into it, but for people who either already have or don’t need those, the only reason to go into a relationship is if you feel a strong desire to with a particular person. I’m not sure if this is making much sense, but with my current boyfriend, I’m not with him because I need anything from him as such, I’m with him because I couldn’t not be. There just is a physical dimension to our relationship, and sex and emotions and intellectual stuff are all bound up together. I tend to think that sex shouldn’t be seen as something you “add” to a friendship to make a relationship, but rather the sexual aspect of the relationship should be part and parcel of the friendship and if you don’t feel that with anyone you shouldn’t date them.

3

Sappho:

No dammit. People aren’t allowed to say “You’ll understand when you’re older” any more. :slight_smile: s’not fair.

As to being picky, I don’t think I am. There are a lot of people whom I find attractive, and a fair number I am attracted to (although exactly what I mean by that is difficult to pinpoint) and like. It’s just that I don’t really have any real desire for a relationship with them beyond friendship.

Also, I really don’t want to get together with a particular person because I want to be in a relationship. It just seems to be entering things with the wrong intentions. In at least one previous conversation I’ve had on the subject I’ve been given the “Everyone else is going to be in one, and you’ll be all alone” argument (I’m paraphrasing of course, but that’s basically what it boils down to), and it just rubs me the wrong way. Firstly, it seems like trend following. I’ve never really liked doing something just because that’s what is done. Also the idea of focusing on someone to such an exclusion of others… it just bothers me. Maybe that will change, maybe not, but right now I don’t like it.

Point 4. Well, what does being with him mean exactly? I think that’s part of what I don’t understand. I’m not really sure what it’s supposed to involve, beyond the obvious.

Thanks for the reply. You’ve definitely given me some things to think about.

4

I agree - the “when you’re older, you’ll understand” line is annoying! Sorry!

My feeling is that if you don’t feel a desire for more than friendship with someone you aren’t really attracted to them. Attraction is tricky to pin down as a concept. You say that you’re not very interested in sex, so if you don’t want to have a relationship with the people you say you’re attracted to, then what precisely does that attraction consist in?

I think (possibly irrelevent, possibly not) there’s a distinction to be drawn between being attracted to someone visually because you enjoy looking at them and being attracted to someone physically because you want to touch or be touched by them.

I would agree with you on the not wanting to be in a relationship for the sake of it thing, but I think it’s more subtle than that. I think it’s more that as you get older it becomes much harder to get emotional support, intellectual stimulation, or just fun from your friends and that’s why you start to look for them in relationships. It’s not that you don’t have reasons for a relationship, it’s just that what you’re getting from a relationship is what you used to get from various friendships. It’s not something that I like, but it’s something that does happen and it’s difficult to resist. Well, this is what my 30-something friends tell me anyway!

The exclusion of all others thing. Well, I’m probably not the best person to talk to about this, as I don’t really like exclusive relationships much either. What I would say is that I’ve tended to find that I have a different level of physical intimacy that feels right with different friends. Some friends I’m very close to but it wouldn’t feel right to hug, other friends I’ll hug or cuddle with, still others I might kiss or have some kind of sexual contact with. I don’t see a relationship as entailing lack of contact with other people and even though others might disagree with me on whether or not you can/should be physically intimate with other people I think most people would agree that a relationship shouldn’t exclude other people.

What does being with my bf mean? I’m going to duck the issue entirely here and just say that it feels right. I like to talk to him, to hug him, to kiss him, to have sex with him. I don’t really see the bf/gf tags as meaning a whole lot on their own. The only thing it perhaps does is make more explicit that we care about each other. E.g., I don’t worry that he might be bored during a conversation with me because he’s told me that he loves me and wants to go out with me, nor do I worry about whether he’s attracted to me because that’s just clear from his dating me. It just means, I guess, that these questions are answered and make me feel freer about being around him. Whereas friends that I have a looser relationship with, for example, kissing occasionally, I don’t always know what’s expected or wanted. Conventions can be fun, I think, as long as you’re willing to play with them a little.

I think overall what I’m trying to say is that once you’re not thinking about A Relationship as some kind of entity that’s Out There, but just how you relate to a particular person than these issues concerning independence and other people seem to melt away. If anything being very close to one person makes it easier for me to relate to other people.

I do understand where you’re coming from though - I felt very similarly a year or two ago. But a relationship (god, this sounds soppy!) with the right person makes you realise that however “conventional” relationships look on the outside, in practice they don’t have to be and even when they do conform with conventions they don’t feel as though they do.