So what does one look forward to?

(UPDATE Jan 23rd, 4:26am - I just remembered what I started writing on December 30th but I never finished. Here goes):

What does one look forward to, in a relationship, romantic-love style? I just recently began to consider that.

Ever since I was a little boy, I've been attracted to girls. I saw them, I thought they were pretty, that their long straight hairs were beautiful, that their skirts and blouses and ponytails held some mysterious secret that I couldn't uncover myself. Instead, I had to circle them, hover around them, show my affection and appreciation to them until they were willing to uncover themselves to me. But my first attempts were only met with shame. As a little boy, I had no girlfriends.

When puberty came, my attraction to girls became much stronger, and I could hardly spend a day without obsessing over one or another girl in my classroom. I pined for them, dreamed about them, wanted to be near one, touch their smooth skin, be close to their slim, artistically sculpted bodies, have their precious voices close to me, talk to me, close the gap that made them seem kilometers away. I gave them my affection and my admiration, but they did not give me anything back. As a teenager, I had no girlfriends.

When I went to college, I continued meeting girls of my age, and they seemed more mature and diverse, but still far away, hard to reach. My infatuations were still very common, and I managed to engage in casual interactions with them, be friends with them. But I was afraid to let them know of my true intentions, convinced by experience that, once they knew, they would get away from me, consider me ruined as a friend, and again become distant. Instead, I stayed cautiously close to them and learned about them, their thoughts, their wants, their humor, their joys, their weaknesses, in the hope that it would help me understand them better and achieve more success when getting closer to them. I pursued many girls during this time, but all my proposals were declined. As a college student, I had no girlfriends.

After graduating, I have been involved in intimate relationships with at least 3 girls, and technically, with 6. None of them, however, would really qualify as an actual girlfriend. They were all secret relationships for different reasons. They were all constrained, so I took the most of what I could out of them, but I wasn't free to decide what the relationship should be like. They could only be in one way, so I took what I could, but I would be deceiving myself if I thought that the relationships could ever become open to the public, or extend beyond a few weeks. The way they were was never my decision.

But certain recent events have come to make me think about this further. Just recently, a good friend-girl of mine just reciprocated her feelings for me, 4 months after I told her mine. And only until now am I considering a possible actual boyfriend/girlfriend relationship in my life. It makes me wonder, though... what am I looking for in a girl? What do I want from her? I had never had this decision before, so I hadn't really thought about it clearly. All I knew in the past was that I wanted a girl, probably as a girlfriend, but I just "wanted" one. But now I ask myself exactly what DO I want from a girl.

Do I want to see her prettiness, have her laugh with me, play with me, have her attention, like I wanted as a little boy? Do I want her as a vanity item? A trophy, a proof to myself and to the rest of the world that I am indeed worthy of love and affection? As a certificate of my worth, an attempt to heal past wounds? Do I want to touch her, feel her body, satisfy her sexual needs, have her admire me, love me for what I can do to her? Prove to her my worthiness as a lover? Do I want to satisfy my own sexual needs, my cravings, fantasies, experience a full sexual life, in the hope that this fulfillment will make my being a wholer self, like Maslow's hierarchy describes?

Or do I want to make HER life better? To help her, to promote her, to give her part of myself so that she will be able to achieve her goals, to pursue the actions that will make her happy in her life? Do I want to make her life happier, or my life happier? Or both? What do I want a girl FOR? Vanity? Company? Sex? Love? What is Love? Something that is beyond the first three motivators? True selfless caring? A pure energy that promotes well-being, or even beyond that?

Do I want to be with her only while we are happy together? It is known that couples' spark weakens with time, and then conflicts and the noticing of imperfections and defects in the partner occur. Do I want to be with a girl only while we are still happy and "in love"? Or do I want to form an intentionally long-lasting relationship with a girl, encounter the slow, stale, and/or conflictive moments, confront them, get past them, and forge a stronger, deeper bond between both of us? Or maybe I want to just wing it, and take decisions as they come along. Relationships are, in any case, motivated by feelings, and these are very hard to predict, especially for someone who hasn't been in a relationship of this kind during his whole life.

Some people want a partner to form a family. To marry, to have children. That is not my desire. Reproduction is not part of my life plans. So what happens if that is the other partner's goal? Is it wrong to say to the partner "OK, let's give it a try, and maybe I'll want to be together forever with you in the future, and then we could marry", while knowing that it is most improbable for that to happen? I don't have many certainties in my Life, but one of them is that I do not want children. Two others are that I do not want to be homosexual, and that I do not want to be fat. Having such a strong certainty, is it "fair" to attempt a relationship with a person who expects you to change that certainty? Personally, I think it's perfectly justified to pursue such a relationship if the partner knows what these thoughts are.

• I want us to be together. I want to get married.
• I want us to be together too. But I don't want to get married now. And I don't think I'll want to get married in the future.
• But it is possible that that might change, right? There exists a possibility?
• Yes, I guess. I'm open to what I'll feel on the way, as our relationship progresses. I highly doubt it, but yes.
• OK then, let's give it a try.
• k'cool.

I think it's perfectly fine to pursue a relationship if a conversation such as this precedes it. Or includes it. That's my opinion.

I'm still left with the question, though - what do *I* want from a girl?

Since I lack experience of the sort, I'll have to guess. My guess is:

• I want a girl whom I can share experiences, thoughts, adventures, secrets with.
• I want a beautiful girl to have a lot of sex with.
• I want a beautiful girl to feel worthy of her love.
• I want a girl whose goals I can support, and who can support mine, with encouragement and actions.
• I want a girl that I can learn positive attributes from, and who can learn such others from me. A mutually positive relationship.
• I want a girl who I can explore Life together with. Explore concepts, paradigms, possibilities, places, countries, people, languages, arts, hobbies - there are so many things to explore and experience in the world. I want someone to experience them with, to share on the adventure.
• I do not want to marry or have children. Why? They are restrictions, limitations on what Life has to offer. I've written about this. Marriage only makes sense to me if there are children involved, and I do not want to have children. They require far too much effort, time, and the investment of pretty much the rest of one's life to raise and nurture. Doesn't seem like a good investment to me.

So there I have it. A good first draft of what *I* want from a girl (The asterisks around the "I" seem necessary to emphasize it, as I cannot capitalize the word any further).

(Cool. Feels good to finally close the gap in the empty post that this was).