love and dating

Love embraces slowness, likely even demands it. So why are we all in such a rush?

our sense of self is a collaborative fiction, drafted in the space between your gaze and my interpretation of it, and love has a way of making that fiction more generous, more daring, more alive. Each act of seeing draws up another hidden self from the depths

Falling in love seems to happen mostly either by a process of osmosis or simple familiarity (and a lot of waiting) or by setting intentions of seriousness and weeding out partners who don’t share them. Sometimes, it happens randomly. Sparks fly. You’re reminded why there’s so much poetry, so much music, so many stories, so many cautionary tales... See more

Being a romantic means being brave. To offer something to someone, with hope — the hope that they will like it. To show someone who you are by making something that only you could make. To be extra, to choose to build something extra. To manifest things that are strange and unexpected and surprising…

These acts can feel wildly vulnerable and... See more

Love asks for heat. Left cold, we harden into our existing shape. But under the steady warmth of attention, we soften, loosen, and take on new form. The right gaze reorganises the self; you begin to recognise yourself more clearly in their eyes, and they in yours. Each becomes more singular by being seen, a longing to inhabit the silhouette cast by... See more

Because someone once said: we are not defined by the love we receive - we are the love we give. The act of loving, even without outcome, still expands the soul and reveals what we’re capable of carrying.

Prioritizing pure feeling, so the idea goes, leads to people choosing bad, unsuitable partners, to acts of desperation and violence, to shirking your duties. That love can also be an incredibly redemptive force meshes uneasily with our sense of individualism, with our Protestant ethics. Controlling it requires an entire normative framework.

hers is the right attitude: you do not like a category. You like individuals. And you’re not born knowing which kind.