The below is an excerpt taken from a piece I wrote earlier. The threads within these are something I would like to discuss, and iterate on with others to refine the overall approach and thought process:

Familiarity in finding compatibility is becoming a myth, or an old notion. Even if I know someone fairly well, does that person fit into my mind’s evolved mental state? And that is becoming a hard to get at answer, because now it’s not just time that’s needed, but many things come out after marriage, that you suddenly realize, Oh that’s not part of my mental framework, even though you were not cognizant of it before anyway. The issue with that is, one’s prioritization of mental state does not give room for dealing with relationships/partners/marriages in a humane manner. It tends to go into either a, compromise thing, fix the person thing, fit into the mental framework thing, give and take in the relationship, etc. but those all principally are like two things being welded or stuck together, but not actually intersecting with each other. Because genuine, long term ways to approach differing mental states require deeper work, an “intersection of ideas” (more on that later) and what not.

Anyway, allow me to slightly expand on this mental state concept thing.
1) There’s a concept called Tribalism, which I didnt know actually existed. I always theorized about it without knowing the concept, and had once explained my thoughts to someone, who then shared with me the below Twitter thread that exactly talks about what I was talking about, but I didnt know there was a term to it.
https://x.com/DevMuzzammil/status/1753420067621228754
https://x.com/DevMuzzammil/status/1753420051104022590
So in a way, thanks to Tribalism, our so called “evolved mental states” have all sorts of niche likes, preferences, opinions, etc. And btw, I am not talking about the classic online political definition of this term, it’s the more nuanced, modern application that I am trying to get at, like “Oh I want to be the kind of person who eats pancakes every Sunday” for no reason (example taken from The Walking Dead) sort of “trivial” niche preferences thing I am talking about, which I am perhaps not explaining very well on text, but can do so better in person.
I found a random clip online while trying to see if people were talking about my definition of tribalism, but I couldn’t find any, but the closest I could get was this clip, which is probably taken out of context, but there is some mention of divorce and tribalism at the same time, so like a typical non-rationalist, I will still use it lol (although I am sure what they were talking about was something totally different)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5zN1BxY1G10?feature=share

2) A perhaps pictorial view that I had in mind, and luckily found the exact illustration, is this:
https://i.sstatic.net/DvEIW.png
We can apply those random polygons as a way of showing how our mental states have evolved. We want our potential partner/polygon to fit in/complement/complete or whatever. In the initial polygons, sure, not too hard. But in the last polygons, finding an exact jigsaw puzzle piece, that matches into that type of niche design, is very very hard.

btw, there are a few instances or examples that I have seen that I am not gettting into for now, of partner expectations and evolved mental states, all of them of my generation, how they show up in some simpler parts of my family I know in India, the high growth parts of my family I know in India, and the wholly evolved parts of my family I know in USA.

Okie, so, to summarize so far for modern day dating: Familiarity is not enough to find someone who might match our highly evolved mental states, but we still give dating a shot, because we are not self aware that we have evolved too much and to hence, adjust our approach or definition or expectations from the process of dating.

End of excerpt, thanks for reading, see you soon 🙂

• Type of talk: Open Discussion