I’m not sure if the structure of my desire is similar or different from other people, but one thing I’ve long noticed is that I desire others not only for their own desirability to me, but based on their desire for me. This isn’t to say I haven’t desired people who haven’t seemed to be interested in me overtly; but I certainly only desire people who I think harbor some regard for me, whether it is overt or I imagine it to be covert. Desire is a necessary, though not by itself sufficient, condition for me to desire in return; and when I discover or realize that their desire is insufficient, that’s when my desire drops or disappears entirely. It’s as though the fact that someone is interested in me is itself a quality I admire; I literally think, if this person doesn’t desire me, then they’re not the sort of person I want. Perhaps that’s a rather egotistical or solipsistic element to my desire, but this happens at some level below conscious thought, so there’s not much I can do about it. But it’s also, I suppose, that a large component of my desire is how I imagine making the other person feel, how I imagine giving them happiness — it turns me on to think about the other person being turned on; without that, what’s the point? So there are both egotistical and generous components to this.
As for my own opinion of myself: I suppose I think of myself as very desirable, but I also think only certain people can really appreciate that, and I (involuntarily) reserve my desire for them.
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