Feel free to send questions, feedback, snark, love letters, etc to [email protected] .
The intent of this doc is to put some basic facts about myself online. If these facts feel aligned, then reach out. Some folks have reached out to say this kind of doc “spoils the mystery”. To me, the mystery is our emergent dynamic. It is what uniquely arises from us, what dance we co-create.
The previous version of this doc was aggressively autistic, feel free to check it out if you like walls of text: Date Me Doc: Steven Elleman (old)
About Me
I worked as a professional software engineer for 7 years, I quit last year to try to align my main life threads into one coherent braid. There are three threads in my life: (1) communal living, (2) secular religious exploration, and (3) “DWeb”.
(1) matters to me because there’s magic to communal living that has made my life so much richer, and I want family in a communal context. (2) is about my relationship with myself and relationship with others. The magic that (1) offers feels like the right environment for (2), and I’ve been exploring different secular religious communities and running experimental retreats. (3) is a technical movement about a bottom-up version of the Internet and our digital world. I think (1) is the right vehicle for (3). Communal living is all about navigating shared resources and infrastructure; adding home servers into the mix makes a lot of sense.
What unifies these threads is simple: home. If I had a home with a community of people I deeply admire and love I think that’d satisfy most of my needs. I’m interested in building a new kind of home from the bottom up, one that makes sense to me. This is both the simplest and grandest kind of endeavor, creating my own community-home is a constant act of world-building. I long for a partner-lover-friend who wants to build it with me.
Romantic Dynamic
I build intimacy slowly. Using the body as a metaphor, I build intimacy through head → gut → heart → sex. Head: on an intellectual level I need to think we have aligned values and goals. Gut: I need to feel safe with you, that you’re a stable, reliable, and integrous person. Only after my head and gut feel safe do my internal inhibitions drop, and I feel permissioned to fall in love. And only after that do I feel permissioned to feel sexual attraction. My story for this order and degree of inhibition is that I fear being trapped in a partnership similar to my parents – if I’m going to be committed I need to feel deeply aligned. Typically the way I build intimacy is through shared projects and lots of talking or writing. Romantically so far my pattern has been heterosexual and serially monogamous, and I would like to be a father.
Ideologically I subscribe to “relational presence”; I believe relationships of all kinds should honor whatever is present and alive, over stories of the relationship. What does a shared commitment to presence and aliveness look like? When stories are prioritized, feelings can be repressed out of a sense of responsibility or obligation. This is putting the cart before the horse. It’s putting intellectual stories over feelings which often represent a deeper and more embodied truth. In rational positivist thinking, the intellect trumps subjectivity and feelings. I believe this perceived superiority is at the root of many contemporary problems; it amounts to gaslighting. Feelings are facts. If feelings are facts, they’re always valid and legitimate. All wants, desires, fears, aversions, boundaries, etc are first-class citizens; stories must follow from the feelings, the cart must follow the horse. This allows radical honesty and transparency, eliminates unhealthy shame and repression, and ensures stories are constantly brought back into alignment with what’s actually being felt, what’s actually present and alive.
The stories we tell often feel rooted in a desire for safety and control, fear of loss can prevent relationships from changing in necessary and beautiful ways. I see possession in conventional monogamous relationships as an attempt to prevent change and loss; in the process it puts the cart before the horse, it can put the story of the relationship before appreciation of what’s real. Loss is inevitable. Abandonment is inevitable, and you’re going to be okay. People change. We’re going to die. I want to feel safe in the impermanence and change. Beyond acceptance of loss is savoring the preciousness of life. Denial of impermanence prevents savoring, it leads to clinging to stories and grasping for control that simply doesn’t exist. It leads to attachment to a story or image of self and partner over who they actually are, and in the process, aliveness is stifled, and self-deception takes over.
I want to see and know you as you are, and I want to be seen and known in turn. I want to honor you in your full aliveness, and even if it’s brief and fleeting, at least it’ll be real.
This belief has been shifting all my relationships pretty significantly over the last year, and I’m still seeing how it coalesces with my historical romantic dynamic.
Romantic Archetypes
There appear to be recurring archetypes that I’m drawn to. “Autist” (culturally more than psychologically) – women who emphasize intellect, principles, analytical reasoning – I feel safe with this archetype and there’s a shared interest in systems and reasoning . “Post-Rock Bottom” – women who had to go through emotional turbulence and have hit rock bottom before – I admire the resilience, compassion, and acceptance of this archetype, often it has emotional depth and contrast. I feel like I can be seen by this archetype, and in being seen feel close and safe. “Shamanic” – I often like women who marry a high degree of sensitivity, attunement and intuition with spirituality. “Fiery” – I want a warrior. I like strong women. Beneath my outer layers of personality is a lot of fire. I’ve noticed I like women who are fierce, I know I can handle them, and I want them to be able to handle me. I can like the “Brat” archetype – I like being of service, but I like taking control in other contexts – some brattiness can strike a nice balance.
If you’re some combination of Fiery Post-Rock Bottom Shamanic Autist Brat please reach out!