relationship for practicality?

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I hope this doesn't come off as sounding completely beyond horrible. But I feel a need to know if anyone else has ever felt or thought like I do about this one.

In my world it seemed there were generally three kinds of people where relationships were concerned. Some stuck with their mate for years and were happily married or common-law. Other just drifted from partner to partner, constantly in a new relationship or seeking one right of the rebound, unable to be single for long, with no wish to experience life alone. Then there were the third group. The singles, the desperate seeking love, and that sense of completeness, the hopeless romantics that believed in soul-mates and happily ever afters. I was none of these really. I've been single for most of my life, along and unattached for more than I have been with a partner. I barely spent time looking. No point really. I don't fully understand the concept of romantic love and how a marriage can possibly work. I barely understand sex and the purpose of it aside of the obvious; reproduction. It's all practicality and fact to me. Trying to see myself in a relationship would be like turning human love into my own little study in human thinking and I know that's never going to work.

But recently I've began to consider the need for a partner in life. It's not practical to stay single forever anymore. I'm young enough to see at least forty or fifty years and if the economy stays the way it is, I will only see it get worse than it already is, in my own lifetime. Single people pay higher income taxes, higher insurance. Indirectly the rent and bills will always be higher because they are paid by one instead of shared by two. Food costs I think tend to be higher too,because while one uses only half as much food, their tends to be more wasted leftovers and such things. Also it seems society in general looks down on the single people at bit.

As I begin to look for a partner of my own though I wonder if it's right to do so. I do want a relationship in a way for the same reasons most people do. I want to do what people normally do, find love get married have a child, have someone to talk with and travel with, etc. But still there is also the economic and practicality side of it.

There's lot's of people who are with their partner out of practicality. In fact, that is what marriage originally was: a business arrangement. The idea of finding a soul mate and getting married for love has not been the dominant thinking for long in our society

I think you are just honest about it instead of being manipulative. How many people do you know who are married because it is convenient or because their partner makes a lot of money or because they don't want to be alone? I know a lot married people who are not happy in their marriage. They got into it for reasons other than love and stay in it for reasons other than love. The people I know who are married because they are soul mates are a very small minority.