I started a list in my last post about the things I’m looking for in a partner. My first need today seems in direct contract to one of the things I said I needed yesterday. Let’s get on with it.
4. Not too much of an empath. One of the weird things on the RKG Discord is that most of the Americans who comment late at night are empathetic people. It’s very odd that there are at least four of us whto chat away after midnight (Central Time).
The problem with being highly empathetic is that you sometimes overstep. I can tell what others feel in an instant–by the way, it’s amusing to me how some people want to deny this is a thing. THey think it’s made up just because they can’t do it. Apparently, there is an empath industry (as there is for everything), which…I don’t want to Google. I don’t want to know how people are exploiting empathy for gain.
Anyway, I don’t want someone who’ll anticipate how I feel at the cost of actually being there for me. Being able to sit with someone in all their emotions is a skill in and of itself. And, as good as I am at reading people, I am not infallible. I don’t always get it right, so I would not want my preconceived notions to trump other people’s actual lived experiences. In addition, I most emphatically do not like being told what I am and am not feeling; I would not want to do that to anyone else.
Granted, in my case, it’s because my parents have a history of disbelieving what I saylfeel/do, but still. It’s best to take people at face value unless their is overwhelming evidence that they are not being honest with you/are deceiving themselves. Which, by the way, the last is really hard to dispel. People need their coping mechanisisms, and one of the sayings of Pysch 101 that stuck with me is that you don’t take away a person’s coping mechanism (no matter how bad it is) if you don’t have something to replace it with.
5. The ability to sit quietly. This sounds facetious, but it’s not. I could phrase it as preferring introverts, but that’s not exactly true. It’s more that I need someone who is comfortable in their own skin and who does not feel the need to talk all the time. I like just chilling with someone, both of us on our laptops, doing our own thing.