I think I've spoken a few times about my own...interpersonal dysfunction. I'm nigh incapable of forming close, caring, loving, lasting connections with other human beings. I push people away reflexively and have since childhood.

Nonetheless, I'm lonely, at least occasionally. It seems to be getting worse, and at times I find myself online, desperate for some sort of contact, usually when my mind is overloading and I want someone to talk to.

But this is about something else: partially a stressor from listening to people smarter than myself. Human romantic relationships are, according to others, nature's way of ensuring reproduction. That's all they are. And this disgusts me - I see this attitude so much and it repulses me. If that's really all love is, nothing more than a ploy for sex, with the pointless goal of "carrying on the species" I want no part of it. Yet thinking about this just makes me sad. I could never admit this is more sophisticated circles without being dismissed as illogical and overly emotional; but I'm lonely dammit, and I want to feel those higher, nobler emotions. Truly caring for someone else, wanting to see them happy, to feel total calm and happiness when you're with them. It exists, I've seen it in others. If love is nothing but sex, though, and none of this has any other value...I don't know what to do there.

I have a small theory of my own, that human relationships, due to our more complex consciousness and general capacity to overcome natural barriers, are not purely reproductive. There's also an element of social bonding, of safety and security - I think that's far closer to the mental state we label "love" than just any pragmatic desire to procreate. There's totally a reproductive element, you'd be delusional to think otherwise, but I can't bear to believe that's all it is. Perhaps I think this as someone with rather confused sexuality: I find I've been less afraid of sexual things lately, though the gorier details still squick me out. Yet, consciously, it's so secondary when I do feel attracted to someone. It's confusing, actually terrifying, to think that I actually must want to do something I don't consciously want to do because biology. I can perceive attractiveness, I'm not asexual, but sexual anything tends to be secondary. Or if it isn't, it doesn't mean anything - "Oh, he's cute" *goes on with day*. I suppose this is why the idea that love is nothing more, in reality, than the desire to pass on one's genes, seems so disgusting and so confusing.

And I know there are others who experience this, or something close.

This is probably another one of my insane rants. Can you get banned for making too many obnoxious threads?