"Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?"

Okay, maybe I've become too much of a hermit and too picky since my last relationship about a year ago. My neighbor's friend is now teasing me about the lack of men or man in my life. I'd like to tell him he's wrong, but in the last year I've gone out on less dates than I have fingers on one hand. I just haven't been that interested in the guys I've met.

Mostly I just don't feel like there is much point to dating or relationships anymore.

While there is currently a guy who thinks I walk on water and who calls everyday, he lives almost 2 hours away and so while it's nice, we've had one date, haven't kissed and I'm completely okay with that.

Right now what most excites me are a few set goals I have. I feel excited about the days where I make $1200 or make progress in some other way. I want to get back to writing and I want to get a degree and I want to build my residuals up high enough to live on without working so I can focus on writing and getting a degree.

And then there's this thing where I'm just not sure I'm the kind of person anyone should ever be with.

All my studies into relationship psychology made me keenly aware of how I am not a good partner.

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As a mostly Island personality type (term from PsyD, MFT, Neuropsychologist Stan Tatkin) I can leave my partner feeling alone and hurt because I just don't need the same level of connection most people enjoy. I tend to feel smothered by it. I avoid intimate eye contact and pull away from a partner who initiates contact more than I do.

When I break down these days I seldom let anyone ever see it or be there for me. The exceptions to that are Sam, M, and my neighbor but this year I've found reasons to pull away from Sam and M too. Reasons I feel like I'm bad for them.

So I'm working on myself trying to get out the kinks but I'm not sure it's worth it. I love who I am and making myself vulnerable and open... I'm not sure even a great relationship is worth doing that.

I feel so strong, emotionally stable, happy, so what's the point in risking all that? I'm already in love, I have fallen head over heels in love with being alive and I am loved, maybe not in the way of boy meets girl, but by a much broader spectrum of friends. Around me so many people are miserable, in unhappy marriages or discarded by the person they adored, or in a state of temporary happy where you can almost see the rain cloud of hammers about to open and shatter their whole world. I want to believe I'm open to love if the fairy tale is really out there but I think if prince charming knocked on my door with a guarantee of forever I would probably send him away and that's not fair to anyone. So how do we weigh the risk vs the reward of relationships? Is it an at cost vs return basis? What makes relationships worth it? I know for men they get a few extra years of life if they have a partner but women tend to die sooner if they are married than if they are single. Sometimes I wonder if it's healthy to break down walls and let others in. If it is I think a little at a time is the best bet. We deserve to protect our precious hearts. We deserve to be cautious in testing out our compatibility with another. I've jumped heart first and been burned. I've jumped in with no heart and let things ride not really caring about the outcome and been left empty. I keep hoping I can do that friends first thing, but men don't seem to be interested in having me as just a friend and eventually taking things slow. It's usually all of me or none of me and I feel like I have to make my partner happy at my expense for the relationship to work, and I end up in relationships where I'm miserable and it's my own fault but I can't seem to change it. So again I think, I'm better off single even if it means I get teased.