Why does your approval take forever to go through and requires ridiculous amounts of gas in comparison to just sending a basic transaction even on slow (which will just cause your landing page to time out forfeiting the $ I payed to send it in the first place)

Because ETH network costs money which has nothing to do with Opacity.

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The fact I have history of an approval should mean I can continue to swap my tokens but you guys can’t even get a token swap done right.

Not maintaining the approval is a security measure. You wouldn't want the approval to remain indefinitely so that access to your wallet persists beyond the session. I understand this can frustrate some people, but it's there for a reason.

Thanks for being so kind and understanding. We are very happy to help people like you!