I think of this collision of affects, hot and cold, as one of the basic ways that political discussion derails. we in fact need both styles, and we need to respond to the real situation. your particular personality will almost certainly be useful and you should try to determine how

Intellectual Property is 1/3rd of the economy of the US empire. The most powerful oligarchs focus increasingly on controlling the avenues of communication and coordination rather than the means of production.

Control over information flows is increasingly detached from capital.

oh I have a huge amount of respect for Lynch but I can only watch a tiny fraction of his work, I can't handle his more intense stuff (sadly because I know that's much of his best work, but I've tried and I just don't have the "spice tolerance" for it)

Some of that is work directly on your relationships. Some of it is work on yourself. Some is work you have to trust others to do that you have no control over. Commitment takes many forms. But my parents' story is a good reminder to me that a whole new chapter of your life can start at any time.

But I think what I'm coming to understand as I age is that having these things consistently with anyone also takes work.

The kind of relationship where you can have hot sex for many years without getting bored isn't a casual one -- even if it also doesn't have a traditional escalator trajectory.

So, what does that leave?

Primarily, it leaves pleasure.

What I'm really looking for in my romantic connections at this point in my life is basically great sex, good conversation, enjoying each other's company, celebrating our respective growth & successes outside the project of the relationship.

I still want to love in ways that are aligned with my values but that's because I want to be an internally consistent person who lives up to my own standards, not because relationship anarchy is going to bring down capitalism. (Like, it still might but that's not the reason I'm doing it.)

In the meantime, I've worked out my shit with my bio-family on my own terms.

Materially, I'm stable enough that I don't need to weigh concerns like having a partner to split rent or food costs with.

And I've outgrown the idea that my own personal love life has some grand political significance.

But, at this point in my life, many of these motivating factors are pretty moot. I have vestigial emotional appendages that gesture toward them still...but the reality is that I've already built myself the life and home and family that I want; of course it's always a work in progress but it's here.

(More than anything else here, that one feels like a pre-transition anxiety...but it's still a pattern worth noticing and naming for myself. I'd bet that impulse to be the moon reflecting someone else's light still drives some unconscious practices that it would serve me to unwind.)

I probably also wanted the social validation of being seen as desired by somebody desirable. I've had a habit of dating people who are extremely popular, in part because I was attracted to how "in demand" they were at the start, with predictable results. 😝