How do you decide if someone is right for you?

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Fair enough. My thought process is more aspirational > fundamental. But over the years I have moved in spaces with people I am probably incompatible socially with. As I have gotten older the need to do this has dissipated because my focus is on my wife and daughter. But if I was single then I would be open to be friends with a wide range of people.

I am open to being friends with a wide range of people, too, just not everyone. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned what is important to me as far as friendships and partners go. It’s not something that happened overnight, and it’s not something that came about without earnest reflection and serious thought. It took me a long time to figure out what I do and don’t want in my life when I so often didn’t have a choice. You don’t really have a choice when you spend your childhood and young adulthood in a religious cult and then an abusive marriage.

even if you and the other person know each other for years, many if most most of us have selective blinders that, for whatever reason, obscure the rough edges of the other's personality, for way too long. there are some who are just so flawed, that they are simply insufficiently "right" for another human being, no matter what. i've ended up hurting the people i love, no matter how much i tried to avoid such, the devil just happens.

Fair enough. My parents were religious but flip flopped going back and forth from church. they were, however, very strict and conservative and my father was often abusive/physical with my brother and me. I think the trauma impacted both me and my brother in the way we interact with other people. We were both not allowed to socialise at school as most of the muggle folk didn't meet my parent's exacting standards.

My sister was shielded by mom and allowed to go out with friends and coincidentally grew up to be a social butterfly, wealthy and fairly successful in life.

Ive had to improvise, adapt after leaving home and has to teach myself how to socialise all over again.

Well said, we all put up filters, often no choice.

My parents were also abusive when I was growing up. They were all about “spare the rod, spoil the child.” I experienced more abuse than my brother did. I was a good kid but not always blindly obedient like they wanted.

the role of bad parenting in how we grow up and make friends is something real. I think additionally childhood bullying makes us cautious in approaching/opening up to people. I had to re-learn what comes naturally to most kids. So yeah I can relate.

Actually I am amazed any of us got through our teenage years at all...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-14/ ... /104175854

the article says being a girl who is neurodivergent is extra hard.

^^I wasn’t quite meaning that. Abuse I experienced as an adult made me reevaluate what I find important and need. I didn’t have any concept of that before because I wasn’t raised to believe that what I wanted or needed was important. It’s more complex than that, but leaving an abusive spouse and religion enabled me to figure some things out - things that are no longer dictated or infringed upon by others. Sure, I’m more cautious now, but my preferences aren’t just about that.

I think as adults we are better equipped > children to be resilient and pick ourselves up after experiencing abuse. Not to say the scars aren't still there though.

I have PTSD and find life very difficult on a daily basis, but the freedom from various forms of control has been especially meaningful to me.

Sorry for going off-topic bee.

Actually on topic, since the level of trauma you experience in life does determine how long you take before being comfortable with the company of another person. And ultimately deciding if they are right for you.

*SIGH* Just because broccoli is healthier than popcorn doesn't by proxy make popcorn toxic. "Better" and "worse" are relative qualifiers, neither of which mean "good" or "bad" on their own. Healthier indicates a state of better health. Less-healthy is not the same as UN-healthy. Your own words indicate that it is your interpretation at work here. English, on the other hand, recognizes the above differentiations.

As usual your perspective is... interesting, and revealing... but thank you for sharing.

I shall add my response to Bee33's question as well.

While I can be friendly with most people instantly, I'd have to know you at least a few days or weeks before I'd feel comfortable making plans to meet up at places other than where we happen to cross paths already, even as friends - to be the kind of friend I'd let into my house, I'd probably have to know you for at least a few weeks / months - to live together, easily months if not over a year.

Usually what makes me feel as though "yes, this person is a good match" or however you'd care to phrase it, is that we have a few core traits in common, just enough that we tend to move more in concert than in opposition. The issue with simply "meeting people" or being in the same place, and relying on just "being there" as a criteria to move on, is that lines that intersect can still be perpendicular, and just cos two people end up in the same spot doesn't mean they're both on the same path. Friends often come and go as they progress through their lives. People often drift apart as their lives continue in different directions.

So, to me, it's important to know if the person you plan to be with, even remotely shares some semblance of a common trajectory in life. The longer you get to know a person, the more you can learn what a person's core qualities are, where they plan to go in life, and where they actually are going in life. Someone with a very different trajectory than mine, is probably not right for me. Fine as a friend, maybe even a close friend, but not as a life partner.

A couple of common interests on top of that don't hurt. But I tend to share at least one or two common interests with anyone I become regular friends with, anyway. So that's not usually an active concern.

There are also a few things about me, my life, my hobbies, personality, etc, that any potential partner would have to decide if it matched their path in life. I suppose one might over-simplify it as "she doesn't run away", but it's definitely more nuanced and tactful than just that. I recognize the optics of how some things might seem to others, and differences in comfort levels. So I make sure people get to know who I am as well, not just by telling them, but by being that person, so they can see for themselves.

You seem to me to be an exceptionally kind and thoughtful person, but I still understand how stuff happens and it can hurt the people we least want to hurt. And I also agree about having blinders that don't let us see the flaws that we maybe should before jumping in with both feet.

Even though I have a wonderful new boyfriend now, I am still completely gutted by being thrown off a cliff by my best friend on 40 years and former partner who I thought I was getting back together with and thought I would spend the rest of my life with. I suppose I had some blinders on, and I still do because as painful as it has been for over two years now I still think we will go back to being best friends.

That's a good healthy attitude. I think it can be difficult to show our real selves instead of trying to be who the other person expects us to be or thinks that we are. I'm still navigating that with my relatively new relationship, which is about 9 months old at this point but I still feel like I'm walking on eggshells. He isn't doing anything to make me feel that way and he is very kind and accepting of me, but I feel that way nevertheless.

In your enthusiasm you might have missed that I mentioned speaking in "operational language". Operationalising health on some type of continuum (I understand this to be your intention) means any thing that reduces health can be interpreted as unhealthy (reducing both health and wellbeing). the agent acting on our health is by default toxic.

Something being toxic isn't of course fatal. If we are talking about words then maybe its stressful which if used to often leads to stress and an early heart attack. (Sorry the analogy is for illustrative purposes only).