Since ending my relationship with Joshua, I’ve seriously reformed my philosophy on that kind of interaction, and pretty much all types, in fact. In paring down my expectations, I found that most of them centered on romantic relationships: entitlement to fidelity (in most cases, from the beginning), which usually translates into some form of ownership, entitlement to mutual attraction, entitlement to exclusive attentions at the expense of my own and the other person’s existing commitments… all of this puts so much strain on the natural course of the relationship that it is no wonder that these things succeed so infrequently. So, in the first wonderful new opportunity that I had, I found myself confronting these expectations at every turn. I believed that this new maturity would help relationships to flourish, but in this and a more recent case, it actually seems to have become lost in translation. The communication has been so intermitted and poor that this is probably just assumption, but I think that my willingness to not beg more of these relationships than they naturally supply has been heard as… disinterest. And it is not as though the message that I convey even resembles that. The only trappings of traditional relationships that I’ve really abandoned are jealousy and her companions. What do they hear? Maybe my disconnectedness itself is overbearing. Maybe I am not as disconnected as I believe. I do call, and I do desire time with those I become involved with, just not exclusivity. The reward that I had hoped to glean from this new perspective was a more peaceful and full life with a man who didn’t want complications. He’s proving pretty difficult to find. Of course, more than anything, I’ve a feeling that I’m completely off base. After all, no one will talk to me at any length or give me enough information for me to determine what the problem actually is. My increasing suspicion is that it has nothing to do with any of this. I've probably just got a problem sustaining their attention... obviously. Even expecting that relationships will be there at all is a great expectation, apparently.