love and dating

The paradox is that it takes discipline to stay open. Detachment is the easy reflex, like closing a window at the first sign of rain; it costs nothing once the latch is turned. Remaining receptive requires stamina, you must let experiences in without letting them wash you away, stay permeable enough to feel yet solid enough not to dissolve at every... See more

Just two humans behaving as if tenderness were still newsworthy.

I’m always thinking about that Raúl Zurita quote that people put on Tumblr: Toda declaración de amor es urgente porque vamos a morir [every declaration of love is urgent because we’re going to die]. In real life, obviously, you cannot declare love to just anyone. You have to go with the flow, wait on other people’s time, accept their ambivalence,... See more

Looking for love sounds more like chasing the high of an extreme sport, trust falling with someone you don’t really know like that. It demands exacting reciprocity, extreme vulnerability. It brings out people’s basest and most primal instincts and a frightening desire to merge into someone else. When the girlies on TikTok talk about dating, they... See more

Romanticism is often accused of being impractical, yet it tends to manifest in the most practical currency we have – our time, our labour, our willingness to be inconvenienced. A bouquet may be a cliché, but leaving work early to accompany someone to a doctor’s appointment is never mistaken for theatre. The real risk isn’t in the gesture itself,... See more

To want intensely is naïve; to hope openly is unsophisticated. The culture trains us to wear irony like armour, a prophylactic against humiliation. I sometimes wonder if most of us are merely acting out the coolly detached charisma of advertising campaigns, eyes half-lidded, voices flat, appetites on mute, an entire species auditioning for a Calvin... See more

Psychologists generally agree that similarity isn’t a good predictor of romantic compatibility. Nor is “complementarity”; opposites don’t necessarily attract. Gaps, then, aren’t a hugely helpful frame with which to consider relationships at all. And besides, isn’t it a bit navel-gazey to think so much about yourself in comparison to others? Freud... See more