I am mainly interested in hearing from people who have experience with being the benefactor in a romantic relationship. Do you think you loved your beneficiary as strongly as you could have loved anyone else? Did you feel like you were settling?

Would be interested to hear from beneficiaries too--did you feel like there was an imbalance? Did you feel secure in your relationship? Did any of you have the upper hand? How do you think your benefactor partner felt?

I've dated one SEI (maybe two, not sure what my high school ex is) and more than my fair share of ILIs. With my two most serious candidate ILIs, I think one I liked more than he liked me, and the other vice versa. The one who liked me more than I liked him, I think we were just on such uneven ground in terms of social standing that it outweighed the asymmetry of the type relation.

The SEI and I kind of both didn't like each other that much. I have wonderful SEI friends and like them a lot but am not usually sufficiently attracted to them to start dating them. I'm much more prone to attraction toward ILIs and adore my ILI friends and seem closer to them maybe. But I suppose that's normal for benefit relations... I do have an ILI friend with whom all our mutual friends are like "why don't you date Economist?!" but he's just like eh.

Can benefit/how often does benefit work for marriage? What attitudes/mindsets are necessary for the benefactor or beneficiary to adopt to make it work?