>>I'm only saying he could have found that blind girl he was always looking for, or someone with a similar illness.
He might have been able to find her, but I doubt anything would have come of it. The internet has, if nothing else, made us all much more cynical. I know if I received a message from a purported girl who expressed interest in me because I have limited range of motion in my legs, or because I'm partially deaf, my first response would be, "why?" I imagine it'd be the same for the blind girl. It's not at all flattering to know that someone is interested in you because of your disability, not in spite of it.
>>If someone has problems dealing with intimacy, how can they work on that by themselves? Hug a tree?
I think the argument generally goes that intimacy issues should be worked out through therapy and/or medication, so as not to burden a lover with one's romantic deficiencies.
>>Consider the story of a girl that was raped and beaten... Is this not a plausible situation, which possibly has happened before and will happen again in variations, in which all your presumptions fail?
I don't think my presumptions have failed at all. Note that I said that, according to the standard argument, a person should be healthy and stable before finding a "compassionate lover." In your example, the girl didn't find her lover; he found her. If a person is fortunate enough that someone else would seek out him or her and desire to enter into a relationship with that person, despite his or her "scars," then the onus is on the one seeking out the disabled person's affection. He or she has to accept the consequences of his or her decision.
If an unhealthy or incomplete person seeks out romance without healing first, then that leaves the other party open to the possibility of entering the relationship without full knowledge that this is likely to be a relationship more difficult to navigate than the norm. The healthy party has to be aware of what he or she is up against, and that his or her partner will need extra patience, consideration, and care. To enter a relationship under false presenses is profoundly unethical.
A better analogy were if your raped and beaten girl were somehow doing the pursuing. If she disclosed to her prospective partner all the trauma she has suffered, and that person still agrees to the relationship, that's just fine. But if she doesn't tell him, and they enter into a relationship, he'll find out eventually. It may come as a complete surprise to him and he will likely have trouble coming to terms with the full scope of its implications.
You say it's cruel to say that some people are unfit for love. I say its at least as cruel, if not more so, if someone with special emotional needs enters into a relationship without making the other person aware of those needs. Someone unhealthy and incomplete could certainly enter into a relationship after making the prospective partner aware of that fact, but how many people would really be willing to say yes?
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>>There are degrees by which we are all entirely dependent on each other in order to survive and thrive. Since I don't grow my own food and don't know enough about plant life to even forage, I depend on the grocer and the long line of people that supply the food he sells. Unless your name is Les Stroud, you will depend on others.
But the point, as you yourself seem to concede with that last sentence, is that it is at least theoretically possible to survive independent of other human beings. It is not possible, theoretically or otherwise, to love -- and be loved -- independent of other human beings.
>>I must clarify a distinction: To deserve something is no guarantee that you will get it.
On this, at least, we agree. Yet I cannot say I share your optimism that people would be willing to help someone out romantically, even as "charity work." People all have their own problems; why would they willingly choose to enter a relationship where they have to deal with someone else's (arguably more intense) problems in addition to their own? The other person has to know that this will be an uphill struggle; why shoulder that additional burdern, when the healthy party could just as easily find someone more normal?
I'll grant that this sort of thing likely does happen, albeit uncommonly, but the how and why of it is mystifying to me.
>>What we all deserve even more than love is hope. And I feel you're saying there are some people out there that should not be afforded that limitless commodity.
Oh, people are free to hope all they want. But there is a point at which hope becomes a fool's errand. I think we, and especially those of us who qualify as "damaged goods," have to recognize that fact. Eventually, hope becomes counter-productive.