I'm obsessed with the idea of being an affectionate and loving boyfriend and I HAVE to gush about it
I'm obsessed with the idea of being an affectionate and loving boyfriend and I HAVE to gush about it
I was born to love. I'm this soft and gentle introverted guy with a bottomless well of tenderness and affection. It is, without exaggeration, the greatest blessing I have ever received.
I vehemently ADORE the idea of making a special someone so happy and being so devoted to her happiness and well-being. I get so giddy just thinking about it! I'm this big bundle of joy and affection inside who wants to shower someone with hugs and kisses and words of admiration. And yet, I have a tender, steady energy to me that will dole out that affection at a calm and measured pace.
That's one of the things I love the most about this personality. I have this sweet, quiet, and unassuming presence, but under the surface is an enormous wellspring of love and care brewing of inside of me that I just HAVE to let out. My inner geek would meticulously observe and study my partner's wants and needs, her likes and dislikes, and the things that make her feel loved and cared for. And then, I would translate my theories into sweet, sweet praxis.
And when any kind of affection is shown back to me, I will completely MELT. There is no facade of masculine stoicism here. If my partner touches me, I'm going to turn into jelly. Everything she does will have me on the floor, incoherently blubbering about how much I love and appreciate her. I live for utter trust and surrender to someone who loves and cares about me, and my partner will surely know it.
I'd love a relationship where we treat each other as equals, where we listen to one another and make decisions together as a team. A relationship filled with mutual love and devotion where we can take turns lavishly melting each other with affection sounds like heaven.
I'm so endlessly glad that I didn't end up as some misogynistic jerkwad who treats his partner like dirt and orders her around all day, because my father was exactly that. But I shouldn't pat myself on the back too much, because I can always improve and I will always have blind spots. I need to be attentive to my partner's needs, communicate effectively with her, and honestly reflect on what effects my actions had. Cultivating a loving relationship is an ongoing process, not a one-and-done deal. It takes work and commitment, and that is an endeavor that I wish to dedicate myself to.
I've never actually been in a relationship (I'm only 22), but I want to actively grow and nurture a healthy mindset now. I'm an idealist at heart, but I know that ideals are goals to work towards, not promises to expect. In order to for a big, beautiful flower to bloom, you have to start from a seed and care for it over time. You can't just expect perfection to appear on the first day. The mindset I wish to cultivate is the knowledge and the heart required to become a gardener of love, to carefully attend to those delicate flower buds every step of the way so that they may blossom into big, beautiful roses.
But just knowing that I hold the power inside to create something so heavenly and fulfilling for someone else in spite of the world's hardship and strife... it's hard to describe to beautiful that is to me. And it's an incredible honor to have the privilege of creating anything even approximating that. I feel a moral duty to take good care of this part of myself and use it to create the most loving and supportive relationship that I can.
Whenever I indulge in my fantasies of a loving, nurturing relationship, I feel waves of euphoric warmth wash over me. It feels so cozy and comforting, like being wrapped in a warm blanket or a gentle hug. It's the ultimate life hack; I can trigger a whole deluge of positive emotions for free, without needing separately packaged, inferior versions to be sold to me piecemeal. It feels uniquely soul-mending, like something making me whole again, restoring a sense of safety and security that I seemed to have lost long ago.
It has made me so much happier throughout the day. I find myself wanting to be so openly warm and caring to other people. Negative things just don't impact me as much. Seeing who I am in these fantasies makes me want to bring that part of my personality out more, to say kind things where I may not have said anything before.
My dream isn't to become rich. It isn't to become famous, to become an astronaut, or to climb Mount Everest. My dream is to become the sweetest, cuddliest, most sensitive lovebug of a boyfriend I can possibly be, and make someone else so incredibly happy.
And I am so, so happy that I have the chance to embody that person.
Yikes.
Genuinely curious how this is a "yikes"?
Is it because I sound like some overly idealistic person who will have his dreams crushed?
Or because I sound so ridiculously overly sentimental compared to the jaded cynicism that pervades the entire Internet?
Or do I sound like I'd get psychotically attached to someone because most people show more restraint when they talk about romantic feelings?
I don't know how to interpret this comment otherwise.
Why do you write so much? You wrote 11 paragraphs but really only needed 1 or 2. I understand that you're probably really lonely but you're coming off strong and obsessive. Like it's fine to be sensitive and caring but it seems like you are dramatically and heavily tying your emotions to your partner's. What you've written reminds me of that creepy girlfriend meme from like 10 years ago.
This woman:
I write a lot because I have a lot of ideas that I want to express. I try to do some trimming, but I don't like to dilute my ideas too much. But I could definitely be more mindful about how much the audience cares to read and throw more of this in my own private journal.
I exaggerated what I said on purpose because I thought it'd fun to try expressing myself differently and not being so restrained, but clearly that style is reminiscent of the overly-attached girlfriend meme lmao. So, I'm gonna definitely keep that feedback in mind.
I experience strong emotions in general, and that's something that I need to learn how to manage—when to be more emotionally restrained versus when to be more expressive. Clearly here I just splattered raw emotions all over the page, which ends up being fantastical and disconnected from reality compared to what a relationship actually looks like.
I have a duty to my future partner to manage my emotions in a way that upholds a stable relationship, or leave if it's not going to work out, which means that it is most certainly against my self-interest to actually come across how I did here.
So then why did I make this post in the first place? Idk, it was kinda fun to write, even if it's suuuper exaggerated. Just kind of my own form of artistic expression to look back on and say "Wow, I was so weird and whimsical in my early 20s. How cute."
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You have already fantasized to an unhealthy degree in your head who you believe you are in a relationship, that when you do actually get into one, and they express in any way a problem that you should work on, or they don't react in the way you have expected in your head, it's not going to go well.
I grew up with parents who basically decided how they are to be perceived by others, and also focused on everything being perfectly as they assumed it'd be, and it's toxic and sometimes unsafe.
Most of what you wrote about how you are, are written in ways others might say about you, but saying it about yourself seems out of place and likely to lead to something bad when it doesn't turn out that way in reality.
Most of what you wrote about how you are, are written in ways others might say about you,
In retrospect, this IS a very weird stylistic choice, and definitely isn't how I would describe myself under normal circumstances. These are internal feelings of self-concept that are presented in a way that basically compliments myself, which, yeah, definitely comes off as odd. This was an extremely unconventional way of saying "I'm confident in who I am and I feel good about that." Pretty much a dead giveaway that I did not actually consider the audience when I threw this random jumble of thoughts out there.
My own self-image will never exist in other people's minds. Everyone I've interacted with holds a different version of me in their heads, and they are all imperfect projections with various degrees of distortion based on all of the information that their brains have taken in about me. To attempt to force someone to accept my personal image of myself would be ill-fated and narcissistic.
Take this post for example. I sound completely unhinged to most of the people in this comment section. Everything I do and say will be colored through the lens of that first impression, and there's no way to change that. So what else is there to do except own it, learn from it, and move on? People are gonna people, and you can't change them, so focus on building understanding and modifying your own actions accordingly. I've learned so much fascinating stuff from this thread about how other people perceive my words, and that will help me communicate better with people who think differently than me in the future.
When I talk about who I want to embody, I am not talking about controlling how others perceive me; I'm talking about what I aspire to be. It's the difference between telling people that you want to be a good person and telling people that you are a good person. The former describes your own standards and aspirations, while the latter sounds narcissistic. I meant the things I said in the former, aspirational way. I will never fully be a good person or a good partner, but that doesn't mean I can't keep working towards those goals. This is what I meant in the post when I said:
I know that ideals are goals to work towards, not promises to expect.
Nothing I fantasize about or imagine will ever actually exist. The feelings are real, but the situations I imagine are fictional. You're right that tying my understanding of reality to what happens in this fictional world would be disastrous, and one must daydream responsibly by being aware of this and regularly grounding their understanding in real life experiences.
Thanks for pointing that stuff out.
What are you looking for in a GF though? Do they have to be able to do certain things? Be a certain culture? Of a certain kind? A certain sexuality? Would being asexual be a deal breaker?
The last time someone mentioned what they want to embody, I was like "yeah I'll be your girl" before them pushing me away after the first hour.
I want us to be compatible in sexuality, personality, values, communication, life situation, and overall life goals. In other words, I want anyone who I can make a relationship work with.
I don't believe in defining rigid categories so much because it neglects so many edge cases. I would prefer to evaluate each situation on a case-by-case basis. For example, if I said that I only wanted to date introverts, I'm filtering out ambiverts or even some extroverts who I could be compatible with. I just need someone who I can create a balanced relationship with, not someone who passes dozens of logical heuristics. I'd rather see if we have chemistry and compatible lives and go from there.
The central miscommunication of this post, as evidenced by the comments section, is that I was posting vibes hoping that others could relate to them, whereas others, perhaps more analytically-minded, interpreted my words more literally as a blueprint for a real relationship, rather than what I intended for them to be: a freeform expression of romantic interest, disconnected from any of the implementation details.
I'm not ready for a relationship. I have no plan yet. I'm just excited to figure out how to make one happen in the future. That's what this post was actually meant to be about: feelings, not practicalities.
But I will say that, while my post came across as obsessive and manic, most of the time, I imagine us leaving each other alone and quietly doing our own things. We'd only briefly interact a few times a day for a few minutes at a time. Those narrow time windows are where the actual emotional intensity is, and that's what my brain zooms into and talks about, as if the whole relationship looks like that, when they are really just the absolute peak highlights.
I can kind of relate, though not in ways I think of every day. Maybe I don't reflect in the same way. I do agree it's demotivating a lot of people you and I might see everyday don't have a very significant-other-oriented nature. You'll make a lovely boyfriend.
I could fix her.
I'm like this, a LOT. One thing I've learned however, is that not everyone is the same. Some are the literal opposite. The honeymoon phase really hides this about them though and is something I wish I knew how to look out for prior to getting to deep into a relationship.
There was nothing worse then finding out in 6-8 months that they didn't like being showered in love and affection. It hurt actually, it felt like rejection every single time and caused massive heartbreak during the relationship.
Basically just be sure whomever you are interested in is aware of how you are and that they can accept it so you don't end up hurting yourself.