unthought known. Unthought knowns are those things we know about ourselves but forget somehow. These are the dreams we have lost sight of or the truths we sense but don’t say out loud. We may be afraid of acknowledging the unthought known to other people because we are afraid of what they might think. Even more often, we fear what the

I love my boyfriend and, I can only say this to you, I want to marry him. But I feel like I’m not allowed to want that at this point in my life. So we keep taking these breaks to date other people and then we end up talking all the time and getting back together. It’s like neither one of us thinks we can say you’re it. Like there is something wrong

There is something scary about picking your family. It’s not romantic. It means you aren’t just waiting for your soulmate to arrive. It means you know you are making decisions that will affect the rest of your life. It means you are thinking about the fact that your relationship needs to work not only in the here and now but also in the there and

Twentysomethings who take the time to explore and also have the nerve to make commitments along the way construct stronger identities

They were fooled into thinking they were compatible because they had many plain-sight commonalities. They felt confused as their dissimilar personalities continually clashed. Not sure what to make of this, each hoped the other might change. Both imagined that they might become more similar the longer they were together, but the evidence for

The Big Five refers to five factors that describe how people interact with the world: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.

[Society] is structured to distract people from the decisions that have a huge impact on happiness in order to focus attention on the decisions that have a marginal impact on happiness. The most important decision any of us make is who we marry. Yet there are no courses on how to choose a spouse. —David Brooks, political and cultural commentator

The future isn’t written in the stars. There are no guarantees. So claim your adulthood. Be intentional. Get to work. Pick your family. Do the math. Make your own certainty. Don’t be defined by what you didn’t know or didn’t do. You are deciding your life right now.

The more you use your brain, the more brain you will have to use. —George A. Dorsey, anthropologist