How important are relationships to you?

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I really can't say then, I'm so cut off from physical contact with the outside world and with it; physical females my own age, that I don't recall how I feel exactly.

I think this is how I feel: Right now romantic relations are missed and wanted but impractical and arguably damaging given my current state, but when I have "recovered" from all my c**p I think finding a partner would become moderately important to me.

Though even thinking about it has caused something very unexpected: butterflies in my stomach, who'd have thought I cared so much.

There is one friendship that is very important with me and is interacted with everyday

Oops: There is a second person I talk to daily, and I barely know him. We mostly talk about Bioware's CRPGs. This only started in the past couple of weeks, and it takes me time to compose replies because what he writes is pretty dense and thought-provoking.

Anyway, I think I could have also asked whether people who don't find them important know if they would be open to one if it came along. I think that I might be, but past experience would make me very cautious - I suspect it might be hard to find someone who would appreciate the level of contact I prefer, or at least be able to compromise to something we can both live with. Plus being asexual I suspect that would eliminate a lot of people who consider sex to be fairly important.

The fact that finding someone would be difficult doesn't particularly bother me, however.

Relationships do matter to me, in the romantic sense. In that when I am in one, it is very important to me, and I value that person a lot.
I don't go out of my way to find one normally though. They tend to just happen or not happen. And they do bring difficulties with them.

But friendship is more important to me overall. Any person I am in a relationship with would ideally be a good friend as well. I can't see how it would work in the long-term otherwise. I'd rather have one or two very good friends, and no relationship, than a relationship with someone who wasn't also a friend.

Indeed. I find the idea of a romantic relationship with someone who isn't a friend to be rather perplexing. In my ex's case, we were friends beforehand, but she hid her more antisocial/predatory behavior until after I'd been with her for a bit - or I just was oblivious to it until she started targeting me with it, which is all too likely.

Yes something like that, though I also find it comforting to stroke a cat, and I get a sense of companionship from pets. For me there's nothing to beat the warmth of snuggling up to a loved one.....I often get sensory issues at first and can feel quite stifled, but for the right one, my body seems to adjust to them in time.

It's just knowing there's somebody there for me.

Sex is good too, though I don't see it as the most important aspect of a relationship....I suppose I tend to give it a high priority because most other people do, and the chances are that if you're in a relationship, your partner won't be happy without some kind of fulfilling sex life. I sure wouldn't want to farm out the job to anybody else. One of the nicest things about sex for me is that I feel so accepted at the time.

So many things get better - watching a film, pigging out, cooking, drinking, listening to music - it feels empty if I do those things alone.

I like the sense of responsibility too. Nobody can be completely responsible for the well-being of another, but as a partner you can make a huge difference by sharing material and intellectual resources, boosting their self-confidence where appropriate, warning them of harm (always with the same light touch you'd expect for yourself of course), and just keeping that nest of warmth there to come back to at the end of the day. It's good when you notice that you have some "pull" on another person, when you can see that they care about you and want to make you happy, and that they feel the same way about you as you feel about them.

Of course there needs to be some degree of compatibility if it's going to work.....loves and hates have to overlap enough to give ground to build on and to keep that emotional connection alive. But I don't think it needs all that much as long as the two people are basically genuine.

Do you think she had a personality disorder?

I am not really sure about that. I know she was diagnosed with PTSD, but that's all I know. But her tendency to belittle others who didn't think like she did or agree with her may not have been a PTSD thing. She was also very anti- everything cultural, such as television, movies, holidays (not vacations like the UK term, but the American term referring to days like Christmas or Valentine's Day) and tended to read motives into other people. For example, we went to a bookstore where someone I gamed with worked, and she stormed out almost immediately. It turned out that she was mortally offended at being subjected to Bette Midler's "From a Distance," as if just by having that on the store's music system, they were proselytizing Christianity at her.

I also did much of the cooking and housekeeping, which I should add I was very imperfect at. All the meals I cooked were fairly simple (made from store mixes, or meat and potatoes type stuff or stir fry) and thus not confusing. My mother sent me recipes I wanted to try but they made my head spin and nearly caused a meltdown trying to actually cook one. I went back to the easy stuff. Anyway, whenever I failed to take the garbage out the instant the can was full (whether I knew it was full or not) I never did anything worth anything to help out around the house. It was literally, I was a good person or I was the devil. There was no in between. I couldn't be slightly flawed, but all bad.

The cooking thing was interesting. My ex's logic was:

* She cooked dinner, so I should wash the dishes
* I cooked dinner, so I need to clean up the mess

I also prepared dishes with foods my ex liked but I wouldn't eat, and she made a huge deal about how the fact that I wouldn't eat them (texture issues) meant she assumed it wasn't safe to eat. It was safe to eat, and I even liked the taste - I mean, it was just simple salads with a kind of homemade salad dressing, lettuce, cucumbers, that sort of thing - but the texture of lettuce in my mouth and throat made me vomit.

Er, anyway, yeah. The thing about always being all good or all bad is splitting, and is common in borderline and narcissistic personality disorders.

I think ToughDiamond has captured the essence of being in a long term romantic relationship. I'm NT but perhaps not a particularly typical one. For me sex is at best of moderate importance. Due to periodic insomnia and other issues with dleeping i don't sleep in the same room as my husband. Trying to (not) sleep in the same room just meant I didn't get any sleep and couldn't function at work.

The physical/spatial setup is a very important factor for me, having a house that's big enough each of us can do our own thing if we want, so we are not forced together by lack of space.

I have a small number of social contacts but I have always felt that after many years of living on my own (I got married in my late 30s) I really want to live with and be in a relationship with one other person.

Important enough that I feel isolation and loneliness without them but not important enough for me to go through the trouble of seeking them out.

My relationship is very important to me. I don't function well without him at all.

Relationships as a whole are very little important at all. I completely don't understand people actively seeking relationships.

As for what my relationship is, its someone who's always there for me. It's someone I can just be myself around. It's someone who supports me and who I support.

Pets do a lot for me too, but its a different sort. The pet, I do care a whole lot about on both levels.

There is more than one way in which a relationship is not important to someone. I understand that some people don't ever care much either way, but I'm not one of those (because of the things that Mdyar said so well). Even so, periodically there are solo times when a relationship is 'not important', when there are other matters which must take priority - when, as Phonic said, your own crap must be dealt with first. But here's the thing: relationships have a way of turning up when you're not looking for them. So your question about being open to a relationship is a really good one, best thought about before it happens, while heads are still screwed on and facing in roughly the right direction.

While sorting out personal crap you're sort of looking the other way, so it's possible to get involved with someone before you realise what is happening, or even find yourself persuaded into an attachment you don't feel ready for. Once that has happened, instinct becomes unreliable. So I say at the very first whisper of 'This is not right' just cut and run, because that might be the last sensible whisper for some time. It's easier to make mistakes than good decisions at the best of times, but when non-asexuals are running on limerence all good judgment flies out the window. So this turns out to be one kind of de facto openness to a relationship, even if it wasn't deliberately done. Whether it's a good idea or not remains to be seen.

One good result of getting into a relationship when you're trying to sort out personal crap is that the relationship can help bring it to a head (like a boil) and help resolve the crap quicker than would otherwise happen. One risk of this could be that you plough all the newly-released crap back into the relationship. One unknowable, even at the best of times, is whether the encounter will trigger fresh crap in you and how that will play out ... and then, of course, there is the other person's crap ...

So, on balance, I think being ready is more important than being open, and either is better than being ambushed. Each person's job before entering a new relationship is to know themselves as well as possible, and deal with stuff they know has caused trouble in the past. Then they have to trust the other person to have done the same thing ... and nobody can really know about that until it does or doesn't blow up in their face. It's a risky business, this partnering thing. But for my money a life free of risk is no life at all, nor does a risk-free life keep us safe. So I'll be coming back for more ... just as soon as I've sorted out the latest load of crap got dumped on my doorstep. Maybe grow some nice veggies in it ...?

I feel I have to ask something, and it doesn't really deserve its own thread so I'll just post it here. It seems some talk about it as if their relationship would just be with any average person, or based off of past and not so great experiences. Would anyone change their mind on the issue if, hypothetically, said relationship would be with somebody ideal? Does anyone have their own kind of "perfect" partner?

I guess that kind of behavior or that kind of set of expectations may not be realistic or healthy, as everyone is different and has their own faults. However, "perfect" doesn't necessarily have to be objective(if there is such a thing). There are a lot of differing values that people have, and some may be a lot more important to others. Of course I would not want to be with somebody I disliked, but I think that is true for just about everyone. But to be with who my idea of perfect is, is something I strive for.

Perhaps I'm just more needy than others, though, I guess. It's understandable that some just would not want a partner at all or just don't care much. In my own experience, while I've always been a bit reluctant to try to approach people, it's sort of been a conflict for me because I hate the feeling of being maybe not so much as literally alone, but only ever being in the back of someone's mind and not being as important to them as they are to me.

I love women. I have been in several romantic relationships with good women. BUT, everyone of them wanted marriage, and realistically i was not in a position to offer it. Intimate relationships are very important to me. The honeymoon period , when each person appears to be perfect in the other person's eyes, getting to know someone, frivolous and intellectual conversations, long walks, moments of unspoken understanding, all of IT.

BUT here is the thing about me: i have no problem forgoing romantic relationships IF i have not accomplished certain goals i am driven to.

This is where i stand, now.

*note to add: I am sort of like Tristan in Legends of the Fall. I can lead the domesticated life, interacting, and socializing with people FOR so long before(nature calls) and i need more personal space than the average person.

TheSunAlsoRises

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I really don't care much. It's not strictly about "not so great experiences" but about all of my experiences with relationships. They just don't really work for me. I don't have an ideal partner, and I am sure if I were to conceive of one, such a person would be unlikely to exist. I do understand there's a value in having a relationship with a supportive partner, but the tradeoff and my likely lack of interest (sustained, if not initial) would make it difficult.

I am interested in a romantic relationship. I have never had a romantic relationship before, having only dated people without knowing that I was dating them. At this point, I am much more interested in one stable romantic relationship than any number of friendships.

I sort of expected you'd say something like this - and it makes a lot of sense.



I suspect there is some element of relationships and connections with other people that I don't really get, which makes it hard for me to invest much in the idea of a relationship.

I can't tell if you're making observations or offering advice, however.