On love, limerence, and other-significant-others

It seems to me that love should not make all else disappear but should simply tint it with new nuances; I would like a love that accompanies me through life, not that absorbs all my life.

Most of us have never experienced the kind of love that transforms you and expands your interiority, so we don’t realise it’s out there. But it is and it exists. Once you’ve experienced it, you can’t go back to the mimicry, because it feels like a sorry excuse for the real thing.

Love, for hooks, is not a feeling but an ethical act, a conscious choice to engage in mutual transformation. To love is to take responsibility for one’s own and another’s becoming, sustaining relationships that enable freedom rather than dependency.

This definition allows for many forms of attachment but roots the concept of love in commitment: a... See more

“Yearning has been showing up in pop culture, with the succession of films like Netflix’s One Day , Bridgerton and the recently concluded The Summer I Turned Pretty all depicting the sweet torture of pining and longing for someone. And it goes beyond the media industry to manifest in the types of content we see brewing on social—people are... See more

I miss the futile fantasizing and being the precise target demographic of Taylor Swift’s marketing efforts. I miss being on the floor, ready to nail-to-cross myself for love. The dull aftertaste of heartbreak lingering for days, often weeks. But then, you know, I look in the mirror, and I like what I see. I see that I’m protected and can think... See more

historically, marriage was an economic arrangement between families. And now it’s an identity project — two individuals seeking self-actualization

I believe most people we spend time with should be “low maintenance, high intimacy

This may sound counterintuitive, but I deeply believe that the path to happiness in a relationship is not just about finding someone who you think is going to make you happy. Rather, the reverse is equally true: the path to happiness is about finding someone who you want to make happy, someone whose happiness is worth devoting yourself to. If what

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We seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well. In a wiser, more self-aware society than our own, a standard question on any early dinner date would be: “And how are you crazy?”