I am reading Silvan Tomkins. His science is poetry, sensual and comic, though I would like to battle cliche.

"If you like to talk and I like to listen to you talk, this can be mutually rewarding. If you like to feel enclosed within a claustrum and i like to put my arms around you, we can both enjoy a particular kind of embrace. If you like to be supported and I like to hold you in my arms, we can enjoy such an embrace. If you like to be kissed and I like to kiss you, we may enjoy each other. If you like to be sucked or bitten and I like to suck or bite you, we may enjoy each other."(qtd in "Shame and its Sisters." Eds. Eve Kosofsky Sedwick and Adam Frank. Durham: Duke UP. 4)

Or on limits:

"It is not uncommon that two individuals, both very sociophilic, may be incapable of a sustained social relationship because of varying investments in one or another type of interpersonal interaction. Thus you may crave much body contact and silent communion and I wish to talk. You wish to stare deeply into my eyes, but I achieve intimacy only in the dark in sexual embrace...You wish to communicate your most personal feelings about me, but I can achieve social intimacy only through a commonly shared high opinion about the merits of something quite impersonal, such as a particular theory or branch of knowledge or an automobile." (ibid)

And so finding a mate is about finding the best deal, or an arbitrary compatibility. Words somehow make the contracts and the randomness incredibly intimate.