Sexual/romantic orientation, intersections with veganism

[brimstoneSalad]

One further parallel I could maybe draw here between carnism and sex/romance is the experience of cognitive dissonance. I think if I did choose to have a long-term partner, I would be in a bit of a moral quandary, because In order to do so I would have to convince myself that this relationship is a good thing for myself and my partner w.r.t. our overall well-being. But a relationship is fundamentally based on attraction, which discriminates based on morally irrelevant and unchangeable characteristics like physical appearence, sex, race, etc. So in a very real sense I would be the person "enforcing" that discrimination, which does not feel right to me (think of the "would you love me if I were a worm" meme).

Without opening that can of worms that is free will, there's significant evidence that personality and ethical behavior affects attraction too.
Long term romantic partners typically subconsciously modify their superficial preferences to match the appearance of those they love for less superficial reasons.

If you're talking about benefit to well being, extensive demographic surveys of singles and married couples overwhelmingly favor the latter, and such relationships clearly extend both lifespan and health span as well.
Maybe happier people have happier and thus longer relationships thus biasing the studies and this is a correlation rather than causation, but in terms of the evidence we have if anything it only suggests a stable romantic partner is superior for both parties, obviously minus cases of domestic abuse.
Children are also a known factor in happiness/life satisfaction, and without relationships that is more difficult so that's a potential confounding variable, but none the less the evidence doesn't exist to suggest that a good romantic relationship is harmful to wellbeing.

Not having to tend to a partner (and eventually children) is certainly preferable in terms of individual survival (since you can focus more on taking care of your own health and that of your community as a whole)

The reciprocal benefits outweigh the costs there. Partners are not babies who need constant care from you, they provide it too. Likewise when children grow up (which is very fast) they require fewer inputs and at least historically help the ageing parents. Keep in mind that the most well known interest of older people is their grandchildren; without that and adult children to keep relationships with old people rarely find much life satisfaction. This is not saying it's impossible (somebody with a valuable career in science who works until death may find enough value in that) but it's the norm for older people to primarily extract life value from those relationships.

but this sort of continual give and take is something that can and exist outside of the context of romantic relationship (e.g. friends doing favors for one another),

It's not impossible, but it's uncommon and usually weaker. Familial bonds are stronger.

and anyways there's nothing to say that it is strictly necessary, as people can often take care of most of their needs themselves.

It's not always easy when you're 80 and you get the flu or break a hip.

There are cases where it is indeed necessary to receive help from others, in situations of disability or medical emergency for example, but then it's more of an expectation that people will help you rather than a "favor" on their part.

No. If you go to the ER you will receive stabilizing treatment in most developed countries in exchange for possible bankruptcy, but you will not necessarily be helped by anybody else. It's a substantial burden to ask of your friends who are also probably old and dealing with their own problems.

The only remaining way I could see people thinking of romance in and of itself as being useful is in terms of someone's mental health, as something that someone "needs" in order to cure their loneliness, but if someone is entering a relationship for this reason there's a good chance that these mental health issues will persist in spite of the relationship, and perhaps even worsen.

This is not a mental health issue, it's a normal human behavior to want a relationship even with plenty of friends. It's only pathological if it's perceived to be all-important and world ending for relationships to be lost (for instance, during dating).
It's not pathological for it to mean the difference between modest happiness and more optimal happiness.
The case may differ for neurodivergent individuals, but there's no reason to think that satisfying (not pseudo-satisfying) a primitive human psychological need will make that condition worse. There is reason to be wary of pseudo-satisfiers like online interactions or only friendships in place of familial connection and long term romantic partnership.

[aroneous]

Without opening that can of worms that is free will, there's significant evidence that personality and ethical behavior affects attraction too.
Long term romantic partners typically subconsciously modify their superficial preferences to match the appearance of those they love for less superficial reasons.

I could see someone further argue against this by saying "people can fall in love with AI chatbots, so how can you explain that"? Or "I would still love you if you were a worm, as long as you have the same mind and I can communicate with you in the same way". But I don't think that the fact that attraction can "still work" in these scenarios means that a partner's physicality is completely irrelevant. It's probably more likely the case that someone is projecting their preferences onto a bodyless entity using their own imagination. And even if it is the case that the love someone has for their partner is in large part based on aspects that are not superficial in the physical sense, it is still extremely superficial in that it's based on morally irrelevant features, like intelligence, personality, empathy, etc. Sentience and capacity to suffer are all that matter when it comes to concern for someone's well-being, and I don't think it's reasonable for anyone to say that they're romantically attracted to a person's sentience.

If you're talking about benefit to well being, extensive demographic surveys of singles and married couples overwhelmingly favor the latter, and such relationships clearly extend both lifespan and health span as well.
Maybe happier people have happier and thus longer relationships thus biasing the studies and this is a correlation rather than causation, but in terms of the evidence we have if anything it only suggests a stable romantic partner is superior for both parties, obviously minus cases of domestic abuse.
Children are also a known factor in happiness/life satisfaction, and without relationships that is more difficult so that's a potential confounding variable, but none the less the evidence doesn't exist to suggest that a good romantic relationship is harmful to wellbeing.

You touched on the big issue that I have with these kinds of studies, namely affirming the consequent. Having long and happy relationship hugely depends on both partners good mental and physical health to begin with. I'd be interested to see studies that control for factors like people who are single because of divorce, widowhood, psychological issues, etc. That, and what portion of single people in these studies say they feel negatively affected by loneliness or are single for factors beyond their control like poverty and overwork etc. I would imagine that there is an extremely limited sample size of people who are single simply because it's a lifestyle they prefer and don't feel particularly lonely without a partner. As straightforward and natural as this is to me, I have come to understand that this kind of perspective on romance and just "not needing it" and feeling entirely "complete unto oneself" is highly atypical and likely difficult to account for in even large-scale studies.

So really the best we have in this regard are anecdotal examples of neurodivergent individuals, like Nikola Tesla, for example, who lived to quite a healthy old age, and didn't seem so miserable in his later years (though he did fall in love with a pigeon).

The reciprocal benefits outweigh the costs there. Partners are not babies who need constant care from you, they provide it too. Likewise when children grow up (which is very fast) they require fewer inputs and at least historically help the ageing parents. Keep in mind that the most well known interest of older people is their grandchildren; without that and adult children to keep relationships with old people rarely find much life satisfaction. This is not saying it's impossible (somebody with a valuable career in science who works until death may find enough value in that) but it's the norm for older people to primarily extract life value from those relationships.

The reciprocal benefits you refer to are not exclusive to romance except for the psychological aspects of the romantic connection between two people, but that's also where people also have a lot of control over their own perspectives on life without a partner and whether or not they really need that kind of connection to be happy. In a relationship you put a lot of time and work into helping your partner, who does the same for you, but without a partner, you're likely to put that time instead into helping a larger number of people more indirectly. I think there's a lot to be said for that, especially in the age of the internet and globalization, where the work that we do and share in the areas of science, art, and philosophy can have far-reaching and immediate consequences for thousands of people, who can pay you back in many ways as well.

W.r.t. social support in old age, most developed countries are actually pretty good about this as long as you're wise enough about your finances in your youth and are able to afford a retirement home. And even if you don't have children yourself, it's pretty likely you'll have nieces and nephews, or even more distantly related younger relatives who will likely care for you to some extent, or at the very least not leave you to die when you have a medical crisis.

[aroneous]

This is not a mental health issue, it's a normal human behavior to want a relationship even with plenty of friends. It's only pathological if it's perceived to be all-important and world ending for relationships to be lost (for instance, during dating).
It's not pathological for it to mean the difference between modest happiness and more optimal happiness.
The case may differ for neurodivergent individuals, but there's no reason to think that satisfying (not pseudo-satisfying) a primitive human psychological need will make that condition worse. There is reason to be wary of pseudo-satisfiers like online interactions or only friendships in place of familial connection and long term romantic partnership.

Also, to touch a bit on this question of whether or not we can pathologize loneliness -- could we not have a similar discussion about the desire to eat meat? There are people who are convinced that they need to eat meat, which one could say is also based on a primitive human "need" for calorically dense nutriment. But most vegans will recognize that this is a problem of psychology that can possibly be resolved through sufficient application of reason. Are beans a "dangerous pseudo-satisfier" for that any less than the commitment to one's friends, existing family, and community are for romantic connection?

Sure, loneliness is probably something that is biologically coded into humans to some extent to encourange social cooperation and reproduction, but it seems like quite a leap to say it implies a universal "need" for romance or a parent-child bond in particular. We may have somewhat of a need to be social and interact with people in our daily lives, but if someone feels that this is enough and doesn't feel the need for the consistent and intimate social validation that romance provides, I don't think it's entirely fair to say that they've been "pseudo-satisfied". On the contrary, someone feeling like they "need" romantic validation just makes me suspect that there are mental health issues at play, relating to self-esteem in particular. Even if we are biologically programmed to be uncomfortable with and by ourselves to some extent, making us seek out personal validation through romance, that doesn't mean that loneliness is something that can't be addressed through therapy and something that we wouldn't be better off without (on an individual level, of course, disregarding any potential utility of human reproduction that could result from it). It may be heavy-handed to categorize loneliness as a "mental disease", but I don't think it's necessarily problematic to think of it as not being a completely intractable condition.

Personally, loneliness is something that I think I can say I have never really been affected by, I am often quite comfortable in my own company -- which is something that is probably really quite atypical, now that I think about it. I may be projecting somewhat since the only way I could see loneliness being applicable in my life would be as a consequence of some horrific regression in my mental health and self-esteem, but at the same time it does feel quite "impossible" for that to happen to me at this point. If loneliness and the "need" for romance is something that all humans are doomed to be afflicted by once they reach a certain age, I passed that window quite a while ago.

[aroneous]

There's a bit more I'd like to say on this topic, if I may -- this might just become more of a one-sided monologue at this point, but anyways, here goes.

One thing that is certain about relationships is that maintaining a healthy one, and eventually raising children with someone, requires a great deal of maturity (and even "skill", one might argue). People are complex, and consistently accommodating someone else's emotional and physical needs on such an intimate level is no easy task, indeed. In this respect, I think that people are much more likely to affirm the consequent w.r.t. their overall "competence" as a human being. When we see others of a similar age to us in happy relationships, while not having one ourselves, it's easy for people to interpret that as a "skill issue" on their part. Part of that is probably instinctual, i.e. the impression of being outcompeted by one's peers in the gene pool resulting in the drive to "prove their worth" by finding and keeping a partner of their own. But at its base, it is logically inconsistent. Fighting in a war is something else that also requires a whole lot of maturity, intelligence, and skill, but we don't think of joining the army as a requirement for someone to be able to consider themselves a mature adult. Though perhaps people don't really apply this kind of judgement to other people nearly as much as they do to themselves, that is, by actively disparaging a hypothetical parallel-universe version of themselves who chooses to remain single as someone who "never really grew up". Though I would say that this is pretty much always a result of a failure of imagination where people simply do not really make much of an attempt to think of other realistic and fulfilling ways in which they can prove their worth to themselves without necessarily having a romantic partner.

In my case, as someone on the aromantic spectrum, I would say that I interpret my possible competence in maintaining a healthy relationship with someone in the same way that an atheist may interpret their competence at giving a church sermon. Namely, I probably wouldn't be very good at it, but that's not because I am an incompetent person overall, it's that I lack the belief that is needed to drive the necessary emotional/psychological state to perform well at it. So the fact that someone else may judge me negatively in this regard doesn't really affect me, since they are using a metric that is broadly not applicable to myself. Romantic drive is not itself a belief, I would say, though I think it is reflective of something similar to belief, which is more naturally ingrained in us -- a kind of "proto-belief", perhaps. But it is a belief nonetheless, in that it is something that we have some control over on account of our unique capacities of reason.

Something else about romantic relationships that is kind of lost on me is the whole "recompense" aspect of it. It's sort of seen as the "ultimate reward" that makes up for all of the bullsh** that we have to put up with in our lives. I think that romance could be enjoyable, but I suspect that I see it as much more of a finite pleasure than most people do, and I interpret any difficulties in my life (luckily, very few at the moment) more as an unavoidable aspect of the world I was born into rather than as something to eventually be compensated for with a beautiful love story and the immeasurable joy of raising children with someone. This may not have been the case if I had developed a bit differently growing up, but I do think this is a one-way street, psychologically speaking.