Relational Starvation...

It is the epidemic everyone is talking about but no one is really talking about.  Our relationships have devolved to a crisis point and we are foundering dangerously close to starvation.

In the world today, we have all the same needs for connection, love, intimacy, joy, happiness and purpose we have always had.  I am sure I could launch a good argument that perhaps today we need this more than we ever have. And instead of our relationships providing a loving background in our lives, they are places where we are starving to death.  And we are willing choosing them.

Women tend to call it, “let’s see what happens...”  Men call it, “keeping options open.” Both are now the setup for what will later become another relationship that failed to launch and acted almost like food, sustenance, but instead of actually sating you, you are hungrier than you were before it all started.

We are now in a calorie deficit in our relationships.  We are pounding empty sex, empty promises and words of affirmation, to get whatever feels good in the moment and allowing the consequences to be what the fuck ever they are later...we will deal with that quagmire later.  Except, we have now done this so many times, that we are so much worse off then when we started.

Each relationship promises fulfillment, sustenance and safety but each one instead breaks us down a little more until there is really almost nothing left of us.  And now we have all these hungry ghosts haunting love and intimacy and connection, and each failure, each situationship gone awry, leaves us less and less capable of relating to the next person to come along.

It is an epidemic.  And I am not sure how we come back from it.

I think the biggest confusion in today’s dating landscape is mistaking whether or not someone wants you.  It is like we have all agreed to just accept behavior at face value and delay asking for what we really want until later. Like if we are upfront about what we want, we are afraid we won’t get it because the other person will not agree.  And this is exactly how we end up in things that don’t look anything like what we want or need.

Zen Prem said, “if someone wants you, you will know.  And if someone doesn’t, you’ll be confused.”

And this sums up dating in 2025.  We all tend to think that someone wants us but we mistake actual interest with confusion. If someone makes us wonder about who they are and where they are and what they want and what they don’t, we aren’t engaging in anything that is likely to work out well. Or be anything like what we want or need.

Wanting someone takes effort, and risk, and intimacy and time.  Today, we are taking sexual desire as something it was never intended to be...permanent.

There are so many options for connection today.  I know I can get online right now and have a date lined up for tonight.  The quality of what I would be dating would be hugely suspect.  And the person would not be interested in me at all as a woman or human or anything.  Instead I would be a ticket to be punched, an option made, or a conquest had.  There is no room in this immediacy of dating for intimacy to stand a chance.

It is so strange, I see this splayed out over every single possible platform.  The internet and social media providing us the world of choices, hasn’t made us more free, it has bled us out one text message or DM at a time.  Our inbox is replete with options that will never get exercised because there are too many of them to ever investigate...and no one on the other side of those DMs is going to bridge that gap because they are over there doing the exact same fucking thing.

Online dating is good for easy sex.  It is good for temporary fun.  But I have learned, the hard way, that easy fun comes with a cost to my psyche, my body and my heart.  And while I was willing to pay installments into the empty void for a long time, I have since given up the fight.  I would rather be alone than to give that a try again.

The world is offering up today a relative smorgasbord of half-love.  A lot of stuff that seems like it will be laden with heavy emotional calories, but in reality, it is all empty and bread crumbs and we are wholly delusional that we will ever find a lasting satisfaction.

We have to all decide to stop being half-chosen, half-loved.  We have to want more than what is being offered up in today’s dating milieu.  There are other choices but we are failing to exercise them because the world keeps telling us that being alone is not a good choice.  It is a lonely choice.  It means you are not chosen.  Well fuck that!

The loneliest I have ever felt was in my last relationship.  In fact, I can honestly say that I have felt more alone in all of my relationships than I ever have felt when actually alone. Perhaps the problem in today’s dating landscape isn’t that we are having trouble relating to each other, perhaps instead it is our relationships with ourselves that is the underlying problem.  Not choosing you first, before you attempt to choose someone else, is the thing that has this whole dating and loving thing so amazingly fucked up.

I am lonely sometimes.  But I am far less lonely than I have felt when I have been with someone who I am not really interested in but trying to make a connection.  I am less lonely than I have been all of my relationships.  I am less lonely than I have ever been in my entire life, and I am quite single.   The dating decks cleared and truly going it solo.

We are starving relationally because we keep thinking that someone else is responsible for our nutrition.  And if nutrition is defined as the process of providing or obtaining the food necessary for health and growth...well, you can see the problem with the way we are “eating” currently.

And as with everything else I have discovered in this life, it all begins and ends with my relationship with myself.  If I don’t love me, you are never going to be able to love me enough to get me over my self hate.  If I don’t value me, you won’t either.  If I don’t care more about my peace and serenity than appearing like I am wanted and desired, there will be a never ending parade of narcissistic mother fuckers through my life that will make my life a living hell.  And while I am living this relational hell, I will also be starving myself to death while I pretend that I am sated, full and robust.

It is all hooey.  All of it.  If I want relational sustenance I have to improve my caloric intake and I have to stop believing and insisting that desire is enough to ever sustain me.  Desire is a mere carbohydrate, quickly and easily consumed but will always leave me desperate and starving for more...

Again, still...