What do you seek in a relationship?

It's a combination of surprising and inconsistent.

He comes up with hilarious metaphors (he's Ne-heavy) that make me belly laugh. These are surprising.

He has weird plans for building things I wouldn't have thought of. And then he builds them. Also surprising.

I'll have a long, convoluted problem, explain it to him, and he'll say, "Oh, (five words)" and he's right. I'm always surprised at what I overlooked. However, most of the time he listens to me on everything, because he knows I have a better sense of what's going on.

Then there are the contradictions, so that I never really know who I'm dealing with, hence more surprises:

He doesn't let me push him around because he has a clear vision of what he wants. He might change it suddenly to what I want, but I can see the compassion happening there, it's not a reflex (he's not "trained.") He doesn't always get the balance right, but when he's present, when his heart is open, he does. (I have ways of helping keep his heart open. And no, no one can ask me about those.) I must be crazy if I think I can order him around, but he is, by his own account, my devotee whose primary joy in life is seeing me happy.

He believes men and women are equal (if anything, women are slightly better) but DIFFERENT. For example, he defers all parenting questions to me because obviously, as the mother, I know more about these things. And yet, people of whatever gender can obviously do anything they want. That sort of contradiction. He treats me like a lady, in both the good ways (respect, courtesy, protectiveness, courtly manners, not expecting me to take out the garbage) and more "chauvinist" or presumptuous ways that he knows turns me on. He feels guilty about this behaviour/these beliefs and revels in being such a cad in turns. So I never really know what he really is. And I love that. (I'm not exactly sure what I believe, either, and I probably embody similar contradictions for him.)

He thinks I'm better than he is in every single way (smarter, prettier, more moral, more creative) but he still deserves me, nay, deserves to take me for granted, even, because he's him and he's still the greatest thing ever. It's a hilarious contradiction, and he doesn't feel obligated to justify it.

He's a math whiz, self-taught programming whiz, but he writes comedy radio shows in his spare time and actually gets them produced. He wrote novels when he was younger, but he thinks in numbers.

He's a brown person whose parents hail from the tropics, but he would feel most at home in a tweed jacket in a leather chair by a fire listening to Handel. He loves stinky cheese, Yorkshire pudding and pickled herring, but also curry and steel drum music. He hates hipsters but is a vaping enthusiast.

His day-to-day attire is faded and often has holes in it, as do his shoes (until I throw them away). And then he'll have a meeting and show up in one of his Italian suits that cost thousands. When he gets his coffee beforehand, the baristas do not recognize him. That's how different his two modes are. Just when I get used to one of them, he'll show up as the other guy. It keeps things fresh.

He's a goofball, often needs simple things explained to him, but people pay him a lot of money to do complicated things because some things, he can do better than anybody else.

He's elegant and handsome to behold, but he is not graceful, is downright clumsy and has two left feet. He also doesn't bathe frequently enough if I'm not around.

I guess, in short, he's tried a lot of things, kept the ones he likes, and is passionate about them, even if they don't exactly mesh together. He's a weirdo, but if someone were trying to systemize this behaviour, that's what I'd tell them to do: try a bunch of things. Pursue vigorously the ones you like. Stay passionate about them. Then, try not to do or be the things you don't care about. That's how you learn to be your unique self, and that's extremely attractive.