But over and above that what seems obvious to me is that if I am not complete, then I am asking someone else to do the work of completing me. Practically, for men seeking women, they are looking for mothers, or at least cheer-leaders. They want someone else to put out effort they could and should be putting into themselves. Many women are happy to do this, since care-taking comes naturally to them, even to the point of being harmful to themselves and their own happiness.
You cannot expand until you exist as a unit of consciousness. Until then, you are getting into various muddles of confused emotions, codependence, emotional life-sucking, and unhealthiness. You can mislabel all this and call it “spirituality” by talking continually about love and compassion, and how much you care about others. Many do. Many spend their lives as articulate imbeciles.
But spirit, true spirit, true Truth, doesn’t give a flying fuck about who you pretend to yourself and others to be.
The world has rules. This seems clear enough. Step one is learning them. I’m still working on it.