juliana ong

it’s so easy to derail our own joy by looking around at someone else’s life or worse — the imaginary life we think we should have by now

Jacob Falkovich says that single people often seek out similarity when complementarity is what makes relationships cohere long-term. It’s a great observation. But how to operationalize it? Maybe: look for someone you can’t initially understand, but also don’t feel like walking away from.

Fulfillment... is a function of time. The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal... It has an end. It comes to the end and has to start over. It is not a journey and return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell... The thing about working with time, instead of against it, ...is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.

The question is not whether women have permission to forego longstanding marriages and relationships to pursue a regular churn of sexual and romantic partners, in an effort to achieve real satisfaction and happiness. The answer to that was already yes. The more relevant question is, will the women who attempt this actually achieve satisfaction and... See more

Clichés are just a cynic's characterisation of timeless and essential wisdom.

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.

And in the same way, I sort of want to reach out to the people saying Me Too and I want to tell them that it’s okay to hurt, but this doesn’t have to be anything special. It can just be pain, and then healing. I’m afraid that the cultural attitude that sparks Me Too will lock people into the pain.