i'm not sure why i feel this way. it's sort of out of character -- usually when i'm in a [happy] relationship, i feel supremely confident in my romantic idealism, and when i'm not (and have no concrete possible perfect relationship on the horizon) i am full of despair and doubt. but the latter is certainly the case right now -- i have no active crush -- and yet i feel like i'm in a good position. i feel like if i did meet the right person, i have myself in a shape where things can work out.
i really don't know why i feel this way, but i can hazard some guesses. one of them is that bridge has really gone quite well recently. my relationship with bridge is in a very stable state -- i have always had these serial hobbies, just like i have had serial relationships, but this one seems to be around for the long-term. i've now been with bridge for almost three years, and of course we have had ups and downs, but i really feel like the fact that we're still together is a telling if overly nerdy sign regarding my potential ability to keep a relationship together. after all, it's not hard for me to imagine a girl i like as much as bridge or vice versa.
surprisingly, one of these is that i haven't been my usual unbeatable self at games recently. i've lost three straight games of puerto rico, in particular, which i claim is the thing i might be best at in the whole world. this is a ridiculously rare event, but it perhaps portends two things: one, maybe i'm becoming more normal (which might imply being relatable?), and two, the fact that i'm not even upset about this means that i might be losing some of my hypercompetiveness.
now, i should note that i don't really feel like that's true. and i also don't think that the hypercompetitiveness is necessarily a bad thing; it's highly correlated with some good things about myself, or at least things that i would think the perfect person for me would perceive as good. but i can't deny that this reaction of acceptance and general calmness (as opposed to blowing a gasket on a small sample size) is different than i would have been in the past.
i guess the terser way to put it is that there are signs that i am maturing.
there are other things that give me hope, like jeremy and kristin's marriage. they're moving to seattle on tuesday, but i've spent a lot of time with them over the past several months. their relationship absolutely works; it's absolutely my ideal relationship, i think, and spending time with them has also allowed me to see how it works and see why it's possible for me to have something like that. as well as seeing why i haven't had something like that in the past. to be sure, some of that is random luck -- i mean, they are both exceptional people, and it's not like i could have that relationship with anyone. but i realize that in the past sometimes i've just been too flamboyant, too random, and why that doesn't work.
the other thing -- and this is a four-year-old realization that idiot savant me is just coming to for real -- is that i've come to realize that it's possible to be an absolutely extraordinary, whip-smart person with some weird irrationalities. i have them, of course, most notably the fact that i can't seem to really control my appetite at all, and the fact that i waste copious amounts of time seemingly doing nothing productive. but more to the point, everyone has these things. i'm learning to realize that other people's irrationalities are no better or worse than mine, and learning to actually intuitively accept them and perhaps even find them endearing.
so all of this rational stuff, but as always mostly my intuition, makes me think that i'm in a good position to find happiness in love. now of course, i can't do it by myself; i still need that miracle meeting-someone. but i do believe that such a person exists (probably many such people), and i do believe that if i find them things will work out. and i understand some of the reasons why this wasn't the case in the past, and what "maturity" means.
of course, the counterargument is that i think i've figured it out and i'm mature and therefore i must be more foolish than ever, since only a fool would think they knew it all. not that i think i do, but i do think i've made strides.