Single here.
I have said to almost anyone who has asked and several who haven’t that it is a mixed bag. There are many nights I come home and am lonely, or had a bad day and it would be nice to have someone to hold - and sex again would be nice.
But there are many nights I come home and want to be alone and if I want to go out and drink I don’t have anyone to account to or if I want to stay up and work until midnight I don’t have anyone needing something from me.
And the number of those nights are probably about equal.
So if I found someone to love and be with, I would be glad for it - but I know it is work to make a relationship work.
I do and I don’t want an SO. There are some people in my life whom I really do want to see every day, and hug and lean on and share Emotionally Significant Moments with. I don’t want to have sex with any of them.
I’m just not that interested – I don’t think I’d care if I never got laid again. I’m not philosophically compatible with the ‘no sex until marriage’ crowd for a number of reasons, mostly that the mindset tends to go along with a lot of other religious stuff I don’t get along with well, and that I am not now and never have been interested in getting married. When I say I want to see these people every day I typically mean ‘briefly to chat most of the time, for longer periods now and then’; the longest I have spent continually in the company of another person without wanting to hide in the bathroom to get away from them is three days, and we were at Disneyland at the time. And unfortunately, IME, once you start officially ‘dating’ someone they start to get possessive of both your time and your attention, not in a creepy stalker way, but in the sort of way that led to the concept of ‘emotional infidelity’ that I’ve been seeing people bandy about lately.
So, to sum up: I want to have someone around to hug and hang on and have dinner and share life events with. I’m not willing to wrestle with someone’s else’s libido and continual tally of how much time I should be spending with them to get it. There are some things I miss, but on the balance I’m leaning towards ‘don’t want anyone the rest of the world would think of as my romantic partner’. I assume other people do because the libido thing and the time-tally are either not problems, or actually a plus for them.
Happily long-time-married fellow here.
I think the truth is that most people initiate a relationship for ‘selfish’ and even ‘shallow’ reasons (I want her because she’s so damn hot!); but that, if you are lucky, it does not have to stay that way … over time, your “selfish” reasons become less shallow (I want her because we are best friends and boon companions!) and indeed less “selfish” (we are a team, I want what is best for her).
Over the years, you grow together, each supporting and helping the other, until you reach a point where it is truly “me and you” on one side and “the whole damn world” on the other.
Thing is, you don’t really start out looking for that, and I think you really cannot. It is a process of evolution of a relationship. Not everyone gets there or even wants to get there. Some people are more interested in the intital stage - where all you can think about is how damn hot your SO is; and of that fades, they are on to the next. I do not criticize this, it is just that some are after different things.
Companionship, I think, is the biggest reason why I’m in a relationship. My friendships tend to be kind of transient and casual, and that’s okay, but I like having one person who’s going to stick around. My SO is my best friend, and he knows me better than anyone else. I don’t have to hide my weirdness around him for fear that he won’t “get” me, because he does. And he can be himself with me, instead of having to keep up his usual “cynical asshole” persona ;). We’re both a little antisocial, but we have each other for company.