Dating Profile

I'm a straight man, years old.

I'm currently in a relationship with one polyamorous partner. I'm open to going on dates with new people with the possibility of long or medium term partnership (including of monogamous partnership).

(I look like this.)

What I Want

I’m attempting to live with an open heart and with scrupulous epistemic standards. Above everything else, I want relationships, romantic or otherwise, that support and nourish me in that.

I'm open to two pretty different flavors of relationship:

Long term - High intensity Partnership (with a captial P)

In the long run, I’m looking for a spiritual collaborator*, for the other other half of an altruistic power couple.

I want a relationship that is about helping each other become stronger and making the world better. We work together, train together, rest together, and make it easier for each other to live in integrity with our values, and generally face the world together. We help each other be badasses. (Some more operationalization here.)

I want a partner who inspires me to be better than I am.

This a very rare and intense kind of partnership, in some ways more committed than a marriage to raise a family. Finding a person who wants this, and making it work with them, is a serious, long term, project.

* - To be clear, I am an atheist. It is an extremely important fact about the universe (and about my worldview) that we are beyond the reach of God. But I am deeply concerned with matters of the spirit, no matter that souls turn out to be implemented by neurons.

Medium term - Once-or-twice-a-week compnionship

In the meantime, I’m looking for more companionship in my life.

It would be great to have someone to hang out with about once or twice week: talking, circling a lot, co-working or strength training, being curious together, maybe cuddling, with a practiced expectation of being fully honest with each other.

(This somewhat-out-of-date document gives some ideas for what that could look like, given my focus on my work.)

And, especially while I'm traveling, I'm glad to go on casual dates with anyone who thinks "sharing something one of us learned recently" or "trying to puzzle something out together" is a good first date, even if it doesn't seem likely to lead to any kind of long term relationship.

Constraints and relationship-essentials

Work

I am highly committed to my work.

According to my map which is not the territory, I'm likely a member of the last human generation. I think there's a sizable chance that I will die, and the human story will end, between now and 2040, because of AI stuff. If there's not much time left, I want to live a beautiful life. That means, first and foremost, trying everything I can think of that might help save the future, and searching for more ideas to try.

As such, I work hard, and I spend the majority of my waking hours sequestered in my office.

Anyone dating me in any recurring way will need to be ok with that, either because they have a similar orientation to the world themselves, or because they’re chill with a relationship that is intimate, without being time-intensive.

* - It also includes striving for a very high standard of integrity, being fastidiously honest, staying fit and healthy, keeping a vegan diet, eating wholesome food with my full attention, being present, living with an open heart, and generally, being robustly makes things better instead of worse.

Honesty

The thing that is most important to me in all of my personal relationships is skilled honesty.

I’ve sometimes been in contexts where there was something important that I felt like I “wasn’t allowed to say” for some reason or another. (Because it would offend someone, or because it “wasn’t my place”, or because pointing out some farce would make things worse, etc.)

I’ve come to think that you can’t build anything robust on a foundation of this kind of holding back. I want to participate in contexts where I can be fully honest, and it is safe and practical for people to be fully honest with me, up to and including all of things that it is usually not polite or acceptable to say.

Creating those kinds of contexts by merely intending to be honest isn't sustainable. It requires skill to say the things that can't usually be said, in a way that doesn't do undue harm.

I make explicit considered effort in all my important relationships, to build an API such that the two of us can say anything (including our judgements, frustrations, and deep feedback), in a way that the other party can hear it, without feeling attacked. And I’ve sought to develop the skills to support this kind of honesty, Nonviolent Communication, rationality, and circling skill.

It is important to me that, between the two of us, we have enough skill to maintain this kind of connection: that it continues to feel possible, for you and for me, to share what’s up for us, even if that is uncomfortable or impolite or awkward.

Meta

Relatedly, relationships with me typically involve a lot of “meta”: doing checkins, talking about the relationship and how it is or isn't working, flagging frictions and generating creative solutions together, investing effort trying to improve our communication proecess, etc.

Some past partners have found this onerous or annoying. “Can’t we skip all the process talk, and just do the cool things that the relationship is about?” I don’t see it that way. Much of what I care about in a relationship is this sort of meta and process-iteration.

Completely unironically, leaving comments on my relationship-communication google docs is one of my love languages. (The google doc format is optional. That's just a communication method that has worked well for some past partners.)

Relationship style

I'm dispostitionally monogoamous generally prefering to commit to only one person. However, I am happy to date pepole who have other partners themselves, especially if I can see that that makes them happy. I have only ever dated one person at a time, and only ever dated people who were poly.

I can easily imagine dating someone monogamously. Or in the unlikely event that I met two people that I really clicked with, dating two people at once, as long as I could reliably ensure that they both felt secure and supported.

Kids

Raising kids appeals to me, but I’m not currently planning around having a family. However, I would do that if I found a highly compatible partner and having kids was important to her.

That is to say, I am open to having kids, but only if we are an exceptionally good match.

Sex

Sex is not a priority for me. I would like to have sex with an intimate partner, but if she doesn't want that or can't, that's not a deal-breaker for me.

Some notes about the kind person I'm looking for

I tend to like, and like spending time with, people who embody either unusual moral commitment, emotional/relational skill, and/or intelligence.

Some concrete, non-exaustive, positive signs that you might be the kind of person that I like...

You're vegan · You've done more than 20 hours of circling · You donate a largish-fraction of your income, or did at some point in your life · You majored in (or audiodiacted) a STEM subject · You participate in volunteer or social activism projects · You have a personal practice of Gendlin Focusing or parts-work · You've reflected seriously on ethics and integrity, and have some provisional conclusions which guide your personal choices · You prioritize exercise and physical health · You write a blog about ideas · You read the LessWrong Sequences · You invest heavily in personal development · You distinguish between the social justice issues that are rolling moral catastrophes and the ones that aren't · You journal regularly · You consider "having true beliefs" to be an ethical imperative

You absolutely don't have to match all of that (or even most of it!). But if you value similar things, consider reaching out. : )

Some friends' descriptions of me:

Friend 1: "Erudite, stoic, and unrelentingly devoted to good. Also a little bit clumsy, but you can leave that part out.”

Friend 2: "Human, on the lower end of height but upper percentage of brain capacity with a weird interest in saying true things, keeping commitments, and deliberately practicing skills he wants to get good at."

Friend 3: “Eli is kind of what you would imagine a human might be like if you hadn't met any humans but had built a lot of houses.”

If you want to say hello...

If any of the above sounds interesting to you, or even if you just want to say hi, press this button to tell me your name and a few sentences about you (or just email me here). Maybe we can meet up the next time we're in the same metropolitan area.

I'm grateful to everyone who takes initiative and reaches out, even if it turns out we're not a good match. In an important way, your doing that is the only reason this system works at all. So thank you. : )

If you would like more detail about who I am, or what I care about, you might explore the rest of this site, particularly the public statements page, or flip through my blog and/or archived twitter threads.


Aid my quest!

If you’re not a good match with me (you’re male, or married, or want something different than I do), but you'd like this project to succeed, you can help by connecting me with thoughtful, single (or non-polysaturated) women who want the sort of thing that I want. If you took even 5 minutes right now to flip through your facebook friends and consider if any of them might want to date someone like me, you will earn my gratitude.