---
creation-date: 2025-10-20
tags: org/thor
---

# thor dating doc
I start the doc with a bit about me before moving onto dealbreakers and what I'm looking for in a relationship. If I don't know you yet but you would like to chat about the doc, email me at thorck at pm dot me.

For the convenience of a quick scan, here's the short of what I am looking for:

**dealbreakers**: partner dancing, polyamory/relationship anarchy, kinky sexual connection, mutual attraction.

**would want**: 22-29 year old women or maybe 26-37 year old men, social community orientation, health and presence oriented, creativity and artistry, silliness, probably kids.

**would be nice**: comfort with psychedelics, lives in SF or Oakland/Berkeley, financially self-supported, spiritual purposefulness, and a general orientation toward kindness, emotional attunement, and service.

## pics

## who thor
At time of writing (2025-10-20) I am a 31 year old bisexual man living in San Francisco. In 2020, I took an undergraduate degree as a mathematics major from San Jose State, then worked as a cryptography engineer at a series of startups. I lived in a few places in California, before moving to Oslo for a year to finish the last year of my undergraduate. After graduating, I lived for 2 years between Berlin and Lisbon, working on startups. I moved to San Francisco at the beginning of 2022 to slow down and root in a place where I could find or create a more stable community.

I grew up north of Sacramento, in a place near Auburn. I was diagnosed as borderline Aspergers when I was 13. I claim to mostly pass for neurotypical but am sensitive to things like bright lights, loud noises, and crowds. I have a distant relationship with my parents, for whom I continue to try to be emotionally supportive but often feel drained by. My two younger siblings I have lost contact with. I felt depressed, isolated, and emotionally dysregulated for most of the first 26 years of my life but tried to keep a growth mindset, to keep working on myself, and to avoid getting stuck in the places I felt depressed by and unable to change.

I am happily living now in a group house with friends that I began building into a home and community at the beginning of 2022. My experiences with isolation have guided me toward valuing community and living in service to the people around me. Feeling unable to identify with the cultures I grew up in, I have aimed to shape the culture of my community around things like being kind and warm to strangers and old friends alike, co-creating an atmosphere of coziness and comfort, and striving to grow and be the best possible version of myself. This path has guided me toward creating events and workshops for embodiment and relational skills, including partner dance, circling, shibari, and bodywork and massage. I feel joy in creating experiences for my friends to practice depth of presence and artistry with one another.

In 2021, I started dating polyamorously when I became the third wheel of an ill-fated thruple. It was hot, it was a mess. Still, prior to that relationship, I struggled with my partners experiencing jealousy in ways I could not relate to and feeling controlled. I appreciated feeling met by polyamory, in having language to talk about things like boundaries and desires, rather than taking a relationship model that I never felt suited for. In the last year, I tried dating two women monogamous-ishly, which cemented my desire to date only polyamorously. I found that I never quite felt secure in these relationships, never felt like I could completely express how I was feeling or how I was trying not to feel. My ideal relationship would be able to celebrate the partnership without stigmatizing--ideally even celebrating--physical intimacy, sexuality, and exploration outside the relationship.

I am fortunate to be financially independent. I now spend most of my time reading and writing poetry, dancing fusion, triathlon training, and organizing community around my group house.

I'm now tentatively searching for a life partner, someone to share life with and maybe have children with, though I have some baggage around partnership and marriage. My family situation and the upper middle class swatch of suburbia I grew up in provided sparingly few examples of stable or happy relationships. My experiences growing up and in relationships have led me to wonder if searching for a life partner is actually an emotionally sane thing to do. It feels strange to me to try to predict a 20+ year relationship based off a couple 2-3 year experiments in partnership. Most couples I grew up around stayed together for the kids. If pressured, I would also try to stay together for the kids, though that feels like a depressingly low bar. I feel it's worth trying to search and work and grow into something beautiful, to grow a garden together with someone, even if I don't know the precise shape our garden will take, how to be the right shape myself to nurture that garden. It feels exciting to me to try to grow a garden with someone that could last 60 years, even if I don't know how. I hope that we might be able to discover that shape together.

The following sections outline some things that have felt correlated with easy, low friction relationships or are otherwise things that I am excited about. If you are also excited about some of these things, I would be interested in getting to know you. I look forward to growing and learning about the things that excite you too.
## what want
### dealbreakers
**partner dancing** - in my ideal relationship, I'd be able to share a dance connection, dance with my partner a few times a week, ideally fusion, tango, or wcs. Would still be excited to mix it up with other partner dance practices. Feels important that I be able to have fun with a partner, especially early on; the main way I have fun is through dance. Dance is also a large element in my community. I would be open to teaching a partner to dance, but only if they felt genuine excitement about dancing and not just to dance with me. I'm dancing 3-7 days a week at present. Someone who didn't dance would always be missing a big part of my social life, and I would probably slowly drift away from them and feel conflicted about whether to spend a night with them or go dance, as I have with my most recent partner, which has been hard.

**kitchen table polyamory or relationship anarchy** - I've consistently struggled to feel seen in monogamous relationships. I don't much experience jealousy. I have felt controlled and boxed in. I am looking to date someone who feels a balance in emotional attunement and strength in their independence. I feel comfortable initiating emotional conversations; I want to feel met there. I spent the last two relationships trying to make it work with very flexible monogamous agreements and couldn't feel seen or make it work.

**kinky sexual connection** - shibari, playful dynamic, dom/sub, kink, sensation play, pain, sadism, cnc, switching, edging, playing with friends, cheering for and actively supporting one another's promiscuity. Sex feels to me a big proxy for emotional compatibility. It seems like my ideal cadence for sex is 1-2 times a week after NRE falls off. [fetlife](https://fetlife.com/__thor)

**attraction** - feels implied that I want to feel attracted to a partner. It may be worth spelling out some things I am physically attracted to in a general sort of non-comprehensive way. Build athletic, slim, or slightly curvy, punkish alternative aesthetics--undercut, hair dye, piercings, tattoos, small to medium breasts, queer/androgynous gender presentation, expressive wardrobe colors and silhouettes, particularly favoring flowy forms. I've mostly dated white people, with the exception of one white/korean woman. I'm also attracted to most of these things in dudes. I have much less experience dating men.

### do want
these things aren't actually dealbreakers, but are reflective of things I care about, and would hope to share with a partner.

**age** - Related to immediate attraction and the possibility to have kids on an unpressured timeline, I'd prefer to date women at least two years younger, say 22-29. Wider upward range for men.

**comfortable around my community** - I've built the community around my group house around kindness, embodiment, presence, and dance. I want someone who enjoys that and maybe even sees that as important. Hard to imagine a relationship with someone who makes little effort to get to know my friends. Still, given that I value independence, it feels more important that they feel comfortable around my community rather than that they need to integrate in some big way.

**health conscious** - I would want to align on trying to be the best versions of ourselves. I am a health maxxer; this means I enjoy things like: exercising 5 mornings a week, meditating most days, sauna and cold plunge regularly, taking life extension supplements, eating a diet consistent with ayurvedic medicine, mostly avoiding alcohol, generally stopping eating between 730pm-10am and sleeping regularly, and having a maxed-out social life.

**creativity, artistry** - I want to share in appreciation for creative self expression as a way of existence. Developing a sense of what feels beautiful feels central to how I want to live, and I would want to share that with a partner. I would struggle in a relationship lacking a shared appreciation for creating a beautiful existence.

**silliness/humor connection** - I need to be a silly little guy sometimes. Want someone who I can feel secure in my sense of humor around, and my sense of humor is silly and playful and joyful. Humor feels like a language for worldbuilding and a valve for release of tension. Silliness feels connected to kink, actually. I had a partner who always felt serious to me, couldn't express in jokes, and only wanted devotional sex. I felt inspired that she could be that consistent in her desires and crushed by the lack of room for anything else.

**kids** - 80% sure I want them, probably not within 5 years. I would strongly consider IVF for IQ optimization, relocating to an integenerational community, and homeschooling.

### do want, less important
**occasional psychedelics** - doing psychedelics with partners has felt tremendously meaningful to me historically, and I would be a little sad to not do so with a partner.

**lives in SF** - though I think my dating pool may live more in the East Bay

**financially able** - I would be tentatively comfortable dating someone with a less able financial background but would prefer dating someone financially capable. I had a serious partner for several years who was unable to find work and depended on me for rent, groceries etc. This was fine for me but uncomfortable for her and became a dependency problem over time. I also learned that I like space and don't expect to move in with a partner again without at least a year or two to build conviction in the relationship.

**spiritually aligned** - I feel we create our own sources of meaning. I create meaning in continually returning toward a path gratitude and service within the tides of mundanity. I would like to share a sense of meaning with a partner.

**body comfort/positivity** - This might be redundant with some of my other preferences, but I find American macro-culture upsettingly uncomfortable about bodies. I think bodies are great. Naked bodies. Clothed bodies. Male bodies. Female bodies. Non-binary bodies. I like them, I like the bodies.

**just a little nature** - I enjoy being in nature, and also know that I feel most rested by the presence of nature in my day-to-day life. Day-long or longer nature excursions are more challenging for me

## some other things I care about
I care about fun and friendship. Many of my closest friends are people I have dated, still feel close connection to, enjoy spending time with, and may still occasionally hook up with. My least successful relationships shared an NRE-fueled urgency toward seriousness.

I care about kindness, and I care about service. For a long time I cringed at kindness as a core value. It felt so broad as to be a generic cliche of non-advice: be kind. There's only so much a person can give, and so much kindness feels like the equivalent of saying thank you to a clerk at the grocery store or a pat on the back for recycling. I attempt to refine kindness to service. I want to be of service to others in my life. I admit that I am mostly selfish, taking care of my own needs first. It feels good to know that I am taken care of, the better that I may serve others.

I care about emotional attunement and listening well, supporting the people around me the best I can. I think about a relationship as a context for mutual support and mutual emotional growth.

I avoid the term intellectual connection as it feels like denial-speak for "I want someone who agrees with my talking points." I am reasonably smart and considerate. I enjoy reasonably smart and considerate conversations.

I don't mind whether my partner has different politics or spiritual beliefs. I am loosely libertarian and generally agree with bay area rationalists on most things. I primarily avoid politics on the basis that they're mostly discussed as engagement clickbait or as a wedge to justify non-kindness.

I appreciate the beauty in mathematics and science and value critical thinking. There is some egocentrism among STEM people around non-STEM people being innumerate or lacking critical thinking skills. I felt this when I was younger, and it feels less present now. I do value critical thinking and good epistemics. I add this paragraph as an afterthought; it hasn't much come up as an issue in practice.

I haven't owned a car since 2017 and usually rideshare or borrow a friend's car whenever relevant. I bought my first electric unicycle shortly after moving to SF, ride it everywhere, and now own 4 of them. I think they are very good and at least offered to teach everyone I have dated how to ride one.

I have been to Burning Man twice: 2022 and 2025. I prefer other festivals, especially partner dance festivals. I don't expect to go back to the playa, but I thought 4th of Japlaya was pretty good and would consider going to a smaller burn.

## a good first date
I host [events](https://partiful.com/u/KOINyh36rBwSCb6o7LbV) regularly (1-2 per week), and care about any serious potential partner enjoying the kind of atmosphere I aim to create, so many of my potential dates get filtered through the zeroeth date of having already been to my house.

A good first date for me involves some subset of dancing, shibari, cooking, going for a walk, and sharing art that we feel connected to.