relationships

Literature allows us to name the world by giving us new phrases, new characters, new words. Poets like Chaucer and Shakespeare coined hundreds of new words. So many of their phrases are still used in common speech. They named all sorts of things for us. And by using those names, we expand what we can understand about the world.

Sex is weird and disgusting and ridiculous and quite often abused and weaponized and traumatic. But I like it. I like what it can be and sometimes what it is. Sometimes I think it might hold the secrets to almost everything. ... Sometimes it’s just nice to hold someone while they cum, kissing their earlobe and whispering to them yes .

[b]eing trapped in protocols dictated by a functional-yet-suboptimal system feels eerily calm, yet unsatisfying. Everything works, sort of, but participants feel a curious lack of fulfillment. (Remember that protocols are designed to accomplish a function, but not a purpose.

. . . the match [is] not always or primarily instrumental to getting a date but rather as producing a form of satisfaction in its own right. [. . .] A match feels like a confidence-boost; it is a sign that the Other sees you and likes you [. . . ]. Admittedly, it is ephemeral, but it is also replicable, so the sense of void that follows the fleetin... See more

The incentives of dating apps actively discourage building algorithms that show compatible matches, since finding a compatible match means you no longer need their product. You really are put in a room with total strangers, most likely the wrong kind, instead of those with similar interests and values. If you met the right stranger, you’d hit it of... See more

The problem today’s daters face is that the mass adoption of online dating apps has not only eroded incentives to switch from explore to exploit mode, it has made exploration itself boring and dysfunctional.

Dysfunctional dating protocols have a profound ability to negatively impact the long-term progression of society. If you only care about interacting with others for short-term benefits you can extract from each other, you lose the potential for solving loneliness, building community, or accessing committed support systems. Society as a whole could ... See more

Since the ideal strategy for many singles is to date around enough to find someone worthy of marrying, the “game” is of a finite length. At some point, singles will necessarily have to double down on a date, i.e. , switch to exploitation. If you don’t date around (explore) at all, you may very well get stuck dating (or even marrying or having child... See more

The best advice? Act normal, even if you don’t feel like it. Who knows if true love will indeed find you in the end, but it certainly boosts your chances if you can pull off functional optimism. It helps to remember that everyone hates themselves, at least a little bit, and the more you can refrain from projecting that hatred onto the world the les... See more

If attachment theory were fake, how would we know? It’s not only the fact that most of attachment theory’s “knowledge community” are auto-didacts fervently reinforcing each others’ analyses that should trigger alarm bells. What are the odds that the vast majority of heterosexuals would sort so neatly into what look like gender-coded slots — the wom... See more