Context: Each day on her blog Letters To Boys, Gretta Duleba has been posting things she once sent to men she dated. One of those, recently, was a love letter to me, which she “sent” me by posting it on the blog.

With a setup like that, it would be an absolute waste not to respond in kind.

Gretta,

I don’t love you in the usual sense of the word, or in the sense you defined at the beginning of your letter. Nor do I feel limerance or a crush toward you. But I feel something toward you, something subtle but strong, something which wants to be expressed, and I know no better words for it yet. So I can’t honestly call this a love letter, but I have no better name for it yet either; it is an attempt to explain what I do feel. Be warned, it is largely a stream-of-consciousness as I probe my own feelings.

When I query my own feelings, the first words which bubble up are “thank you”. I feel very, deeply grateful toward you.

Thank you for entering my life. Thank you for inviting me into yours. Thank you for… and then I struggle to find the right words. Being you? Being sane? Being trustworthy, in some idiosyncratic sense which is native to my mind and probably not whatever that word summons in your head or other peoples’ heads?

Thank you for… not letting me down.

(I had to pause, at this point, because I cried a little. That’s… pretty unusual for me, to put it mildly. Guess I must have poked the right feeling.)

You (and others) have noticed that I emanate a lot of… poorly-concealed contempt or disgust or condescension or something like that for basically everyone around me, by default, all the time. I don’t want that feeling. There’s a part of me which really desperately wants to work as a team, wants teammates I can trust, teammates who can agentically optimize alongside me, not just act as drones but also not just do their own solo thing. But for thirty-some odd years, over and over again, I keep… not having that. There have been exceptions, and they’re rare and precious. But the main experience has been a sort of emotional scar developing over that want for a team, for that trust.

An example: in the domain of romantic relationships, I instinctively tried to wingman for both of my previous long-term partners anytime they expressed interest in a guy (and I succeeded at least once!). My instincts are poly, and I instinctively try to treat a partner like a teammate, to play a team game. So when it turned out that my previous girlfriend of ten years couldn’t even think about me seeing other women without having an outright anxiety attack… well, you can imagine how that felt. I can see her perspective when I try, of course, but emotionally… it felt like even the person I was closest with was not just unwilling but emotionally unable to be on my team, even when I’d been on hers.

That’s why it means so much that you clearly pass that test. And not just you, but your primary partner too; these little exchanges where Eliezer and I set each other up for better experiences with you mean so much, because again, it feels like being on a team.

It’s not just about wingmanning, though. Just a few days ago you asked why I wanted to spend this weekend with you and the kids, and I replied:

I expect to have a lot of little moments where, like, you watch the kids while I go grab something (or vice versa), or we both sneak around a corner to make out for a few seconds, or we're both going back-and-forth in a conversation or a story with the kids, or one of us notices the other's overwhelmed and just gives a hug or tells them to take a break, or I'm fingering you under a table and you're trying to keep a straight face, or we're coordinating how to move all the bags. Where the unifying theme here is something like, we have a team activity of spending the weekend together and managing the kids and are working together on lots of little moment-to-moment things toward that team activity. And the prospect of all those little moment-to-moment coordinations with you feels really yummy.

I can work with you, and it actually feels like working with you. It doesn’t feel like I need to carry the team. It doesn’t feel like you’re emotionally incapable of handling your part of the team game. Your needs don’t exceed what you bring to the table.

And that means the world to me right now, because it penetrates a little bit of that emotional scar tissue. It gives me a little bit of hope in other people - a hope which had previously run out. It gives me a little bit of something I've wanted very badly for a very long time.

So thank you, Gretta, for… being the sort of person who can be a good teammate for me. And thank you for being my teammate.