I Present to You A Challenge

Why do I feel the need to be in a relationship? I can't see any reason for it at this point in my life. I can't say that I need someone to have sex with, because I don't. It is true that there is a biological urge to have sex, but for me that urge is completely satisfied by masturbation. I don't need a lover to attain intimacy with someone: the level of intimacy that I have with my friends is actually quite deep, or at least deep enough to satisfy me, and frequent enough to satisfy me too. For physical contact, I very frequently touch my friends in platonic ways, giving them hugs and what-not. One thing that my little affair with The Talker showed me (note the past tense) was that I really don't want the increased intimacy that having a committed relationship brings; I didn't enjoy sleeping in the same bed as him, and didn't enjoy being touched by him all the time. I didn't enjoy always being around someone who was trying to figure out what was going on with me on a deep level, and I didn't enjoy knowing what someone else was feeling all the time. Having a psychologically intimate experience with someone for a few hours at a time, every other day, is just enough for me. Then I want to have some distance from that person, and focus more on my personal interests for awhile. I like sleeping alone; I like saying goodbye to someone, and then turning back to my peaceful solitude; I like being fully responsible for all my decisions and actions, and not having to answer to anyone. People are great, and I love doing things that involve them as well, but only in small doses.

The only other reason that I can think to have a committed relationship is the need for financial security. Well, to be honest, every affair I've had which had financial concerns in a place of central importance has felt really wrong to me, and rather corrupt. Also, it's too easy for me to focus just on how much money someone has, and forget about the important things, like whether or not we get along, whether or not I agree with their moral values, and whether or not our relationship is making our lives better.

No, I can't see anything wrong with wanting to be single, and with wanting to spend my life partnerless. As long as I'm not isolating myself, then I don't see anything wrong with being a little bit of an eccentric loner. I want to live a balanced life, and I recognize that human interactions and intimacies are an essential part of psychological health, and by extension physical health; but the level of human intimacy that I seem to require in order to feel balanced and healthy is actually not so very much.

And if anyone out there has a problem with that, then I present to you a challenge: Tell me one thing that I can get from a committed relationship that I can't get in a different way (and that one thing should be something that I would actually want: terse, uncomfortable arguments at 4 in the morning are not going to be any enticement for me).

And yeah, I understand that at some point in my life I could very well start wanting to have a deeper intimacy with someone than I'm able to have just being their friend; but until that day comes, why should I subject myself a level of intimacy that I don't actually enjoy?