Relationships

People often destroy their relationships over their whims. "He doesn't go rock climbing with me." "She doesn't do this specific thing when we're having sex." They start to obsess over this lack, mistaking a flight of fancy for a great and vacuous unfulfilled desire that if satisfied, will fix everything. What could have been summarily dismissed... See more

if you stand firmly on a self-lain foundation of patience and trust, someone crossing your boundaries is not so threatening. let them in. see what they do in your space. remove yourself if necessary.

A relationship, notably, is not an algorithm. It is a gestalt. Far be it from me to say that I’ve figured out what relationships really are or really mean, but I know there is an intangible force formed between the centres of people that sits beyond the limits of interpretation, that is larger than itself and both of you, that cannot be explained... See more

You’ve been duped into thinking you can create a life without danger, one liberated from constraints and uncomfortable emotions, and that such a life is desirable. But you can’t, and it’s not. If you connect with someone and it comes with the risk of losing something, good. You’re alive!

I had my reasons, of course. As I say, she is crazy. I am, too, but in a very different way. The immense effort it took for me to spend a whole day with her and ensure that it was “perfect”—that I did nothing to offend, upset, or bother her—proved to me that we just didn’t work. And I thought: When a relationship does not work, each party has the

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ritualized, compulsive self-disclosure is not intimacy

it’s often a defense mechanism, one that masquerades as vulnerability but actually kills erotic charge, polarity, and mystery

shared experience, unspoken tension, and real-time attunement are the components of intimacy