Your friends give you a sense of belonging, and it is this security which bestows upon you your greatest emotional strength, for it makes you feel part of something special. Your dream, in fact, is one of being twinned to someone with whom you can walk through life hand in hand, bound in the first instance by a vow of mutual friendship, out of which love proceeds to grow.
It is very important for you to have some element of intellectual trade between you and your partner as this is a source of emotional stimulation. Words and conversation spark in you certain trains of thought which create inroads into your emotional terrain. Understanding your inner nature gives you a platform from which you can oversee the actions of others. Thus, ‘physician heal thyself’ is a particularly powerful axiom for, in clearing your own back yard first, you provide a haven for others. Don’t commit the cardinal sin, though, of setting yourself up as a standard against which you then measure others; the purpose of self-education is, as you know, not self-adulation, but to disseminate gifts of the spirit.
Your emotional life can become integrated with that of the intellect, thus you could develop a somewhat rational approach toward affairs of the heart. You might apply rationale to some issues, where to ‘feel’ one’s way through perhaps would be truer to the spirit of things. The imposition of mind on feeling on occasion can result in emotions being broken down into their components for the sake of analysis. The positive aspect of this is that, when the mind is satisfied, any emotional attachment that may follow is cherished for its having stood the test of investigation. Those nearest and dearest will represent sufficient social stimulation for you; you will rarely need to go too far further afield.