love and dating

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

A great relationship is not only finding the person you have fun with, but also finding the person you want to be bored with. The beauty of long-term relationships is often hidden in boring, ordinary moments.

We blunt romance and passion with this constant calculation of risk, this paranoid scanning for threats, and by holding back to avoid being hurt. We encourage each other to be emotionally absent, unfazed, uncaring. We even call it empowerment! It’s not. It’s neuroticism. I think we are a generation absolutely terrified of getting hurt and doing all... 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

There is a trope in romance that when you meet the person you are supposed to be with, you can talk about anything. You can apparently inverse that too: if you talk about anything that pops into your mind, you can tell if you're supposed to be with the person by judging their reaction.

The type of person I’m assuming we’re looking for here is 1) someone that you will find fascinating to talk to after you’ve talked for 20,000 hours, 2) you feel comfortable with them talking through the hardest and most painful decisions you will face in your life, and 3) the conversation is wildly generative for both of you, in that it brings you... See more

I told someone recently I was looking for love who responded “in this economy?" I feel pathetic admitting this, someone else texted me, but I want a boyfriend. When I scroll through TikTok, skinny women wearing sweatbands dole out romantic advice: if he wanted to he would, no sex until the third date, how to get him to commit, red flags, green... See more

We are a living record of every interaction that fate has had us bear witness to. Love is not just a chance encounter that we hope to come across once or twice in our lives, it's the nuance that shapes the hidden layers of our story. Meaning care, or lack thereof, will manifest in varying aspects of our day to day.

Why did we start to... See more