love and dating

love’s power as an act of invention, the way certain people draw out a version of you that didn’t exist before they arrived. They witness you, and thus, rearrange you. In their presence, words you didn’t know you knew tumble out. Your thoughts sharpen, colours seem richer, you inhabit yourself more fully.

We all carry endless hidden selves and... See more

Romanticism delights in this inefficiency: it stretches the present until it creaks, hoards gestures like coins, insists that a detour is often more revealing than the straightest line. When even affection is advised to be “low-maintenance”, it dares to squander attention as if it were inexhaustible. To love romantically is to want the world itself... See more

Has love fallen into the realm of planned obsolescence? Where beautifully packaged, terribly fragile emotions are evidence of having reached the summit of our aspirations, only to be left yearning, craving that next big hit? Desire is the newest addiction. The feeling of “want” being much more thrilling than the comfort of being satisfied. Craving... See more

I’ll invest in the love between us, even when there’s no guarantee of permanence. That’s the tax of living. That’s the cost for feeling any sort of aliveness or tenderness. There’s no insurance on your experience. No way to backstop the loss.

I want something quieter and harder to counterfeit: the intensity of attention that notices the quiver of a wrist when reaching for a glass; the presence that enlarges an ordinary afternoon; the appetite that doesn’t require catastrophe to be vivid. I want Romanticism stripped of its operatic melodrama, no consumptive poets dying by candlelight,... See more