What is it about a person that makes you want to pursue a relationship with a person?
If I admire their intelligence and kindness, and if I think they have the capacity to *see* me and love me deeply.
What are you looking for/hoping to find in a relationship?
I am hoping to be with someone who is madly in love with me. I've had three long-term, live together/married relationships in my life and in each case they had a kind of pragmatic fondness for me, partly because I tried to give them everything they wanted of me, but the process of leaving/separating demonstrated that not one would risk anything to be with me. Not one even said "I love you, you are a wonderful person, a special person, please stay". During the relationship not one made anything beyond a minimal, cursory effort in negotiation with me, so I always had to do all the bending/stretching/adapting. I'll go along thinking the best, assuming I'm loved, and then a line is eventually crossed that undermines my entire paradigm of the relationship and I realize they couldn't possibly love me in a reciprocal way. I end up feeling used because the relationships were always the best when the person had no money and needed me, but when they got settled in a career with good pay, I became minimally relevant.
I also have the problem of being super laid back and flexible about basic living and so I adapt the specific brands of bread they eat, the shows they want to watch, how often the house is cleaned, what time they go to bed, how money is spent, etc. Then they assume everything about me doesn't matter, but I have some emotional triggers and sensitivities, so they get used to dismissing what I may want or need and transfer it to the emotional realm, I become devastated, my functioning goes downhill, and then I leave. I want to be with someone who doesn't dismiss me emotionally, and especially doesn't dismiss my body - both in terms of the pain it experiences and intimacy.
Edit: I'll add that in all cases the emotional and physical connections were not high for their values and what they wanted or needed - so I mostly resigned to seeing it as incompatibility. They tended to be relatively content with the relationship before I left (I chose to end each one), mostly because the aspect of my emotionality they didn't like they were able to dismiss until I reached a breaking point, then they rejected it and I left. I'm not so much angry at individuals, but frustrated with the nature of humanity or something. [/edit]
What are the best things about being with another person?
I love sharing experiences and jokes, having funny inside jokes, and of course physical intimacy is central. I don't have the ability to sleep with strangers or acquaintances, so it is reliant on having a partner. When one relationship starts taking a tailspin, friends always cite the conventional wisdom - take time alone, etc. But if you just spent the last several years alone and with minimal physical intimacy, that advice feels demoralizing. Then they go one to talk about feminist things regarding individual identity and not needing a man, etc. I have zero investment in identity regarding relationships because I have a very cool identity professionally and so forth, but no one talks about the issue of being very emotionally driven, very intimacy driven, and sexually driven. Having that combination in this world is hell because you actually do need another human being, but a particularly special one. I can tell the people for whom sexuality is important based on how they talk about having relationships. The ones that are fine living at great distances or who treat it casually don't have that much physical need, even if they slap it on the side as identity. Our culture pressures everyone to have an identity of being sexy, so lots of people talk it up, but then in reality after life becomes routine and familiar - it is suddenly optional.
And on a side note, at what point do you know you want to stop being single and form a relationship with another person? What is the tipping point?There is only one person I feel I can be with, but it is still going to be a while before we can completely be together. I've never wanted to be single and I spend enough time going on walks alone, that I don't need to learn how to be alone. I've spent most of my life alone. I grew up as the younger sister, always shared a room, played lots of fun times together, and that is my framework for living. I'm used to having a buddy, and so I hope this one last hope of mine happens because I'm in a conundrum where it hurts more to be with most people than alone, but it also hurts to be alone.