hoard my small resentments / like rare & priceless gems

[erika]

Basically, I have just realized that I'm 26 years old and I have no idea how to have a functional romantic partnership. Like, I know how to hang onto a sinking ship of a relationship past all reason, and I know how to delay the inevitable explosion of a relationship for a couple weeks...

But an actual functional give&take loving partnership? Snowball's chance in hell.

I don't know if I've said this, but I've actually been out of the dating game for a year; that's longer than I've ever gone without a partner in a decade. Since I was 16, I basically have been coupled the entire time. And let me tell you, it would be faster to name the people I dated who weren't abusive fuckheads than the ones who were.

On that note, I give you fucked.zip, a EP compilation of the songs that seem to indicate my likely romantic prospects.

These songs are:

The Mountain Goats - Autoclave
Death Cab for Cutie - The Sound of Settling
Aimee Mann - It's Not
Beautiful Small Machines - Simple Joys (feat. Simon Le Bon)

Comments

[deathgaze]

Perhaps now that you have time out of being in a relationship you can analyze the ones you've been in and figure out the warning signs of the abusive ones before they happen again? If that made sense...

It's a tough game to play, for sure.

[alwayswondered]

Basically, I have just realized that I'm 26 years old and I have no idea how to have a functional romantic partnership.

I'm 29 and no better off. I've spent maybe two years IN TOTAL as part of a couple, and a year and a half of that was with the same person.

[chomiji]

>hugs<

[smw]

I can intellectualize what counts as ‘healthy’ behavior in a relationship, but damned if I know a thing about romance on a personal level, or how to make it work in one’s life. Maybe being aware that one has no idea is the first step towards... something?

I think I’m going to conclude with an *offers hugs*, here.

[highlyeccentric]

*hugs* I was deliberately single for... over three years, and never very good at staying in relationships before that. But being deliberately single was something else, and really good for me, I think. Like a great big 'reset' button, so looking at future relationships wasn't a question of 'how do i do this better' but 'do I need to do this at all?'

[enemyofperfect]

I feel a little weird commenting on the music, but that's an amazing compilation.

My own romantic experience is a null set, and is extremely likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. For some reason, I rarely freak out about that, even though I do get intensely wistful sometimes. It's kind of confusing, given how much I freak out about virtually every aspect of my life, but I don't object to the change.

Even if it's weird that this is what my brain has decided to be philosophical about. "There are lots of other broken people out there," it tells me. "Your chances of finding somebody compatible are almost definitely non-zero!" Um... thank you, brain? I think?