Dating thoughts
I was asked recently if I still miss my ex, and I hadn’t really delved into that, recently.
“Miss” is a such relative term. Of course I miss her, on some levels. Occasionally, I physically miss, specifically, her. Not sex, though that was nice, but her particular self next to mine, my head in her lap, our silent connection together. I miss some of our friendship, as I got to know her pretty deeply, and I liked who she was underneath her public persona; it was difficult to ask her not to speak with me, but I don’t like being the shit-stirrer in an otherwise happy relationship.
There are some important elements to a quality relationship that I gave up in order to date her. I was going to make a list of them, but they’re unimportant individually, and they really come down to some basic differences in understanding. I love challenging ideas, especially my own, and think of a great discussion as two people tackling an idea together, but she thought we were fighting, and would take it personally when my perspective came out on top, telling me it made her feel stupid, when I didn’t think so at all. She’s a smart girl, but we never gelled on that, the joy of thinking. We argued constantly about definitions in the most minor of circumstances. Again, instead of something we could talk about together, it was always very personal.
There are at least a few people in my life right now, old friends and new, who really seem to appreciate the joy of thinking together, and readily engage me with that same perspective – it’s not a fight, it’s learning together.
We also never connected on gender issues. For being an independent and liberal-minded girl, she had some very traditional ideas about what makes a woman and man. She was raised in a small town, and I was raised by a family of go-to-hell independent women who didn’t give a damn whether behavior and attitudes were “male” or “female”, and I picked that up.
So the answer is… not as much as I thought.
I’m in no particular rush to run into that available someone who is as cool as my friends are – they do a pretty fine job of filling that void for me, already.
Somewhat relatedly, I was going to make a poll about whether you find it pleasurable or irritating when you have to engage your brain on your own time (do you prefer fluff movies when you get home from work?), but this is a hell of a biased set-up to start from.
Intellectual dialogue between minds is a wonderful thing. :)