Why I Struggle With Relationships

Preamble

I’m including this here because this problem is effectively the origin point of the Codex. A significant portion of what I’ve learned and now write about has been, at least partly, in an attempt of trying to think my way around, through, or out of the problem described below. Readers engaging with my philosophy are engaging with conclusions that were shaped, at least in part, by this specific problem. Given I make a lot of claims surrounding relationships, I want to clear up my relationship with relationships.

I’m not putting this here for sympathy, and I don’t expect anyone to read it or have anything to say about it, but I’ve written it as though someone might, because thinking through an imagined reader is the only way I know how to effectively organize my writing. I’ve attempted to explain everything as thoroughly and logically as possible, but it is difficult for me to keep emotion out of the picture when talking about this. I’d rather you understand the actual conditions under which the rest of the Codex was written than encounter a version of me that appears more resolved than I am.

The Problem

I am a highly intelligent (relatively speaking), analytically rigorous, deeply introverted person who has built a complete and largely self sustaining internal world that I engage with seriously and authentically. My life is structured around autonomy, solitude, efficiency, and self sufficiency. I’m doing well for myself, much better than I used to. But there’s one thing I’ve never been able to resolve, no matter how much else has improved.

I have a relatively weak desire for human connection that cannot be thought or fought away. It produces fantasies for reasons that are partly involuntarily biological and partly an untestable desire I can’t confirm nor deny because I’ve never had the experiences to test it against. I don’t know if I’d actually want any of it if it arrived, but I can’t stop wanting the idea of it.

The desire coexists and conflicts with a near total inability to act on it, rooted in several compounding factors. For one, intimacy is deeply uncomfortable for me. Not just romantic intimacy, but the general vulnerability that any close relationship requires. Secondly, I don’t understand relationships at an operational level, meaning I can observe and analyze them, but have no intuitive sense of how to function inside or maintain one. Third, I refuse to prioritize them over my own autonomy, because doing so has always felt like sacrificing something more important to me. Fourth, I push people away before they get close because of the previous reasons. Finally, every investment I’ve ever made in connection has returned nothing that justified the cost (whatever it briefly offered was consistently outweighed by what it demanded of or took from me) which makes the prospect of investing again feel irrational because it appears as a net negative, regardless of who I might be investing in.

As a result of all this, I want the reward without the risk. I want relationships that require no effort to develop, no intimacy to build, and no prioritization over myself. No sacrifice, every benefit, no effort. I want the external conditions to simply fix themselves. I know that’s a fantasy. I know it’s unfair. I can’t stop wanting it because the realistic version has never returned enough to justify the cost it demands of me.

The Causes

This situation has been created by both internal and external conditions. For one, I’ve never met a single person I resonate with. Not once, across my entire life, in any environment, regardless of how I present myself. Surface level connection has rarely been the problem, I tend to get along with most people easily enough, especially in physical environments, although meeting new people is difficult. But once familiar, being liked has generally not been an issue, the problem is that it never develops beyond that, seemingly regardless of what I do or how I present myself. That’s either evidence of something fundamentally wrong with how I interact with people, or evidence that the right people simply haven’t appeared, and I have no way to accurately tell which. I’m inclined to say both, which doesn’t make things easier for me. But the very fact that this hasn’t happened yet means I have no reason, no concrete proof to believe it ever will and nothing to actually hope in, which makes everything else more difficult.

I’ve exhausted every variable I can consciously control in terms of how I present myself and the result has always been zero, and that in itself has been extraordinarily consistent throughout my entire life. But I’m also aware that I’ve optimized heavily for isolation, which makes that consistency less surprising than how I sometimes treat it. I genuinely don’t know what might be so offputting about me, because it’s not apparent to me, everyone else gives me a different answer, (if they are willing to answer at all) and the inconsistent answers I do get are often not particularly honest because this is a touchy subject. So I don’t know if there is a problem with me, what the problem might be, and how I’d go about dealing with it, all simultaneously, and all while nothing changes externally.

This is all separate from the deeper issues I get into below, which I understand considerably better than I understand this, but this is what I think about most of the time because I find the consistency remarkable, considering I’ve watched people who seem to have far less going for them, at least on paper, have no problems with getting others interested in giving them a chance, which I just can’t wrap my head around. Perhaps that’s a harsh statement, but the point is that on paper, I feel like I have quite a lot to offer, so objectively speaking, I just don’t understand why this is such a problem for me. By all rational accounts I can muster, it should not be, but also it’s impossible for me to not be biased about this.

Furthermore, my standards are exceptionally high, partly out of caution given how uncomfortable relationships are for me in the first place, partly because I’ve grown a lot as a person and therefore feel owed, and partly because I’ve spent so long dealing with this that I refuse to settle for anything less than something that actually justifies the cost. These standards have never been an actual obstacle, since I’ve never been close enough to an opportunity for them to matter, but they’re another part of the problem regardless. I’m aware that no person is realistically going to meet them, but that doesn’t stop me from applying the standard because settling for less feels irrational.

Secondly, relationships don’t operate on logic, don’t have rules, have patterns that break, feelings that contradict themselves and each other, and needs that change at random. My entire framework for understanding the world is built on logic, pattern recognition, and consistency. I can solve almost anything I put my mind to, including identifying and explaining all of this as accurately as possible, but I cannot logic my way into knowing how to be vulnerable, how to repair, how to need someone, how to let them need me, or even how to care about people in the first place. Those skills are fundamentally opposite to everything I’m good at, and they’re required to manage any kind of significant relationship.

Any desire I would have to connect with others is immediately superseded by the fact that I have no idea what I’m supposed to do to manage that, because it’s different for every single relationship and constantly changes in nonsensical ways because relationships are built on emotions, which are fundamentally unpredictable. Any genuine attempt on my end almost always results in me screwing something up, or crossing a line I didn’t know was there, which on top of this already being difficult for me to understand also makes it frustrating, because any effort I do give to relationships almost always weakens them, which is almost never the intent. So I keep my distance to not do more damage, even if that guarantees I won’t be able to understand the relationships I’m involved in, let alone relationships as a concept, because the only alternative is actively making them worse. So I don’t understand relationships, don’t know how to cultivate that understanding, and can’t seem to get involved in relationships where mutual understanding is desired and possible in the first place, all simultaneously.

Third, I have a full inner life of things I produce and deeply engage with (philosophy, art, systems, writing, etc.) but no exterior to respond to it seriously, effectively meaning I am in my own echo chamber. I produce anyway because I enjoy it and because it’s who I am, but it has a ceiling, and I’ve reached it. Additionally, I’m living in a world that is systematically designed to keep people powerless, isolated, and distracted. Understanding that at the level I do is making this worse for me. I’ve identified the problems at the structural level, I’ve literally designed alternatives, I’ve written extensive philosophy to operate within it, and none of it goes anywhere because I have no power to implement any of it and no community to even discuss it with. The conventional solution, that being to find your people and build community, runs directly into the same walls as everything else I’ve discussed here. I’m too structurally isolated, too resistant to the effort required, and too aware of how rarely that community actually forms around people like me, let alone how rarely community actually forms at all nowadays. So I’m living in a world designed against connection, with a stable internal world I can retreat to at any time, and don’t know how to find or cultivate any relationship with anyone willing to genuinely discuss any of this with, all simultaneously.

Finally, beyond the external conditions, I have actively contributed to worsening this situation on several counts. I have chosen isolation repeatedly and consistently, even when alternatives were available. I have kept people at a distance by design, cut them off quickly, and refused to be vulnerable even when it might have been worth it. I am frequently unnecessarily cruel, lack empathy, and am genereally unpleasant to be around. I have prioritized my own autonomy and comfort so completely that I have left no room for anyone else. I have built walls that I then complain about being trapped behind. I don’t trust people, don’t like most of them, and don’t give their emotions consideration. I genuinely do not care about people anymore, only what they provide to me. Outside of serious moments where I have no choice but to be empathetic, the lives of others are not something I care or think about, regardless of how they feel about me. I have min-maxed my own isolation and then been surprised by its effectiveness. I have made little effort to change any of this because the stability and growth it produces is the strongest I’ve ever had. The external conditions are real obstacles, but I have still played a major part in getting here.

However, it’s worth noting that the internal and external conditions were not independent of each other. The walls I’ve built were originally a response to external conditions that made isolation feel safer. But they have since become their own obstacle, operating independently of whatever caused them, creating a self sustaining cycle where both the internal and external conditions reinforce each other, which is the root of the problem.

When someone is genuinely trying to change and the external world consistently fails to reward that attempt, it actively pushes them toward the version of themselves they were trying to move away from. Every unrewarded attempt makes the familiar strategy feel more justified. Every failure makes the walls feel more necessary. Over time, the person you didn’t want to become starts to feel less like a choice and more like the only logical conclusion. It becomes difficult to argue against a strategy that the external world keeps proving correct, even when you know, on some level, that the strategy is also part of what’s preventing anything from changing in the first place. The longer it exists, the harder it is to imagine what it would have looked like if even one attempt had been rewarded early enough to matter. I’m not saying that one good relationship at some point would’ve solved my problem, but it would’ve been a step in the right direction. It would have been something tangible I could work with. But the fact that it feels like there is nothing I can do about this situation only makes me more likely to continue isolating myself, knowing that it will make the problem worse, but without an alternative I’m willing to consider.

When this entire conundrum surfaces emotionally and I get upset about it, either I eventually exhaust the feeling and something pulls my attention elsewhere, or, far more commonly, I get bitter. Within minutes, I’ve justified the strategy, reminded myself there’s nothing I can do to change this, and romanticized solitude enough to forget what I was upset about in the first place. Then I’m back to normal, just like that. It’s part of why nothing changes, the emotional pressure that might otherwise force a different approach gets redirected before it can change anything. I don’t get angry at other people, but that I even considered trying again. And even if things did start to change, I would run back to this familiar strategy without a second thought. I will choose to fall into the abyss rather than grab at any outstretched hand just to preserve every bit of my autonomy, fully knowing it won’t solve the problem.

The Conclusions

I intellectually process this situation every so often and have this same discussion over and over again with myself. Nothing changes. I forget about it for a while and pick it up again later in the same place. Ever since I figured out what the actual problem was, this loop has been repeating for several years.

The only way to know whether I’d actually want to prioritize any significant relationship over myself, or even be capable of functioning in one at all, is to have one. And the only way to have one requires doing several things I’ve never been able to do, incentivize myself not to do, and am actively afraid of. Every wall described here stands between me and that experience, meaning I cannot confirm nor deny the desire through any internal means available to me, which is why it feels like there is nothing I can do about this without sacrificing my autonomy, which is of higher priority, so I won’t.

I’ve been dealing with this same core problem for my entire conscious life. I’ve had all kinds of different relationships with all kinds of different people. I’ve tried everything I could bring myself to try, which is, albeit, a limited number of things given how heavily I’ve optimized for isolation, but I still have made many genuine attempts, and the lack of results only reinforces my unwillingness to try again, despite understanding that my optimization for isolation is part of why results don’t exist in the first place.

Despite everything I’ve tried, I’m just as isolated as I was in middle school, more or less, if not more. The rational conclusion has been that it might be impossible for me to genuinely connect with others, and I’ve reached that conclusion hundreds of times, but the desire doesn’t respond to rational conclusions, so I’m stuck wanting something I can’t satisfy, can’t ignore, can’t confirm, and can’t deny. Every wall I’ve described here stands between me and any kind of progress or resolution. And I don’t know what to do about it anymore, so I write all of this hoping it will somehow reveal something to me.

I don’t want reassurance, reframing, small steps, hope, or anything of that nature. All I want, at this point, is confirmation. A single tangible piece of evidence in either direction that proves any of this has the possibility of being different, either proof that connection is somehow possible for me or proof that I can eliminate the desire entirely, but that is also the one thing my situation makes most difficult to achieve. I haven’t found it yet and don’t know if it exists, but I’m still here trying to figure it out, primarily because the desire doesn’t give me a choice in the matter. And I’m sitting here writing all of this to an audience that will never read it, can’t do anything about it, and even if they could, wouldn’t care enough to try because I’ve shut them out. I just want this to be over so I can be at peace, but I refuse to sacrifice anything to achieve that. I just play the cards I’ve been dealt and wait for external circumstances to fix themselves.