This is choice paralysis. Previous generations didn’t have many options so they stuck together through hard times and made it work. Now, abundance (or its illusion) has led people to feel less satisfied. People are now more anxious about making a choice and less certain that the one they made was correct.

A recent study found that after casual sex, women, on average, report high levels of loneliness, unhappiness, rejection, and regret. Conversely, men report higher satisfaction, happiness, contentment, and mood improvement. 

This is one of a few dynamics where social progress supposedly intended to benefit women instead ended up benefiting men.

I’m no moral philosopher, but from a behavioral standpoint, a lot of what we consider “evil” is poor self-control and/or psychopathy, which both make some of us less likely to suppress acting on impulses coming from the darker side of our human nature.

This is maybe the single most important core of human psychology - people want to reinforce narratives about themselves. If you’re marketing, don’t sell them a thing, sell them a self image that your thing happens to reinforce.

people talk about how women feel pressure from men to be sexy or a perfect romantic partner - and you feel that too - but really you just feel like you want them to take you seriously. and so you become vulnerable to their desires - you arch your personality into what you think they want, you develop the boyish preferences they have. it’s less that... See more

People are not reliable narrators of their heart’s desires. You have to listen to what they’re saying, but you also have to study their actual behavior and their previous partners to understand their real preferences.

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

There’s a real tension in love — at the beginning of love, particularly — between the desire to be honest about who one is and the desire to win the affection of another person. Of course, ideally, we can both be honest and loved for being honest. That’s the dream.

The theologian Paul Tillich declared that faith is “the state of being ultimately concerned.” He argued that because each person has something of ultimate concern that defines their life and identity, all people are religious—even the atheist. Every person has something in their life that functions as their god. For some, this god-function is occup

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