On Strategic Interactions (and Pareto Optimal Love)

I don't want to instruct you
on what I want.
I don't want to play teacher to
you, student,
because that implies some sort of
power differential that I
am not entirely comfortable with.
see, I'd like to think we
are on even footing in this whole mess.
we begin, both with asymmetric information
we only win
by efficiently trading our thoughts,
opinions, caresses, and general outlook on
life until our division
is pareto optimal.
by that I mean,
we make each other better off.
We are
not in need of the other, but rather our
stakes are improved by playing the game.
so, we cooperate.
we compromise.
we meet halfway on this bridge across
this gap that seems to be widening by
the day,
by the hour,
by every second that
passes and we haven't spoken.
I may not know much about building but
I would assume such a thing
stretched so thin
could not possibly hold the weight of us.
I am not trying to sink you with the
iceberg of a well-worn heart. nor one
comprised of the dark thoughts that
linger in the nighttime.
nor one measured in the
revelations or affections you simply
were not prepared to receive but it
appears I have made of you
a Titanic.
No longer wishing to float with the
weight of a heavy word struck,
it submerges itself
with the hope of
being left alone
at the bottom of the ocean.
It is only recaptured by the efforts of
scuba diving memories
whose sole job is to selectively
choose which pieces are
most suitable to keep; to refurbish,
to rose-color glaze over, and ultimately
store in the quickly-filling unit my
brain has allotted to disaster prevention.
History is a way of learning from the past.
May you store well in amber like
the best of fossils so that I may be
student to you, case study.
I could use a lesson on
strategic interactions.