This is a choice we all make, in real life, and in this hobby.  But is there really a choice?  The one who cares for me gives it all, but I go crazy over the one I love ...  In the context of this hobby, I have been with providers who, I sense, really dig me, but I was just not attracted to them and never returned.  Yet I go back to those with lukewarm receptions because seeing them, or the thought of seeing them, palpitates my heart.  This is a universal human predicament.  What do you choose?

"We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them."
                             (Kahlil Gibran)

Choose what makes you happy. For all to soon you will be a smelly, rotting worm feast 6 feet under with no chance for a second go at it.

"Here's a sigh to those who love me, And a smile to those who hate; And whatever sky's above me, Here's a heart for every fate."


Lord Byron

"All that spirits desire, spirits attain."


(Kahlil Gibran)



TET

To most of us as we experience life, the most attractive thing to us is something we cannot have.  Some of us then eventually make peace with ourselves and are able to be happy enough with what we can have that we can be content.  However, many people go their whole lifetime without reaching this place.

Without spiritual context, it is very difficult to make peace with this aspect of human nature, and it will continue to drive you towards things that are either unattainable or that you have to sacrifice everything for.

Hobbying is playing with fire, because there will always be someone more alluring than someone we are with on a regular basis.  If you have someone "giving you their all", and you share some happiness with them, yet you are seeing providers, you have to be comfortable with lying to be content with that arrangement. Otherwise, you will inevitably want what you cannot have.  
However, if you are not happy at all, or in the case of the providers you said you aren't attracted to, you have to go with what makes you  feel at least some attraction, or else you will eventually stray.

My advice is to look for something larger than "happiness".  Someone famous once said something like this:  "Happiness is a butterfly that is forever fluttering just out of our grasp...but if we are quiet and patient, it may eventually fly right into our hand."  If you look for "absolute happiness", good luck.  Most never find it in this life.

the Count of Monte Cristo once said joy and sorrow are but a series of contrasting states in life.  Depending on one's beliefs, contentment is either nirvana or a form of slow suicide.

That would be whether to that person contentment is defined as "satisfied", or satisfied to a level that they've 'settled' for. The dictionary says 'satisfied'.
The contentment he is talking about is the one also mentioned in the New Testament - "be ye therewith content" (1Tim:6:8).
Contentment itself is a 'whole' place, not meant as mediocrity.

Now, joy and sorrow..both run deep. Those who know Joy, will also know Sorrow.

Blues,

"...the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself."

- Carson McCullers

Well said, Sedona.

Joy and sorrow are but two halves of a whole...the one cannot exist except in contrast with the other.

As the Zen Master said, "Completeness can only be found in opposites."

Or something like that.

Yoda

Master Yoda  said

As the Zen Master said, "Completeness can only be found in opposites."

{Yoda dialect on)
Wouldn't be" In Opposites, completeness can only be found."
{Yoda dialect off}


TET

Ah, TET, observant you are, yes.

Masked my unusual speech patterns, I did.

"In opposites only can completeness be found, hmmm?  Understand this, you must, yes."


Yoda

Why do I only want the ones I know I can't have? And the ones who want me, I run away from.  Maybe it's the challenge or I'm afraid to let someone get to close, or maybe I'm just fucked up and don't want to be a part of any club that would want me as a member. But it seems to be an age old story, He want's me, but I don't want him, because I'm wanting someone else, who doesn't want me, because he is in love with her, and she doesn't want him, second verse the same as the first, etc., etc. Let's face it. If it was easy, it just wouldn't be any fun.