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Mills Baker's avatar

Loved this! When you write “I have another working theory that you know you love someone when each new weakness uncovered no longer changes how you feel about them,” I’m reminded of a great quip from my favorite author to the effect of: it means nothing to me when someone tells me they love me because I’m handsome, or smart, or because I make them happy; everyone loves those things. It means something to me when my wife says she loves me even though I’m stupid, ugly, and make her miserable. That’s love, that means she sees me clearly and loves me anyway, that’s real, etc.

That always cracked me up but also feels sort of true.

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Benjamin Murphy's avatar

This really touched on a lot of experiences I remember going through in college (and still today, to some extent)! I still recall and occasionally experience the momentary crises of, "But I'm not good enough at my hobbies, and I've got so much time where I'm just indulging in sameness rather than expanding my mind!" Some of it was driven by the people I chose to surround myself with, some of it was the culture I found myself in, but one thing for sure is that it was exceedingly detrimental to my mental well-being and doubly so during the pandemic. We don't all need to excel all the time, always.

And, unrelatedly, "or that there’s some universal rubric of icks that all women should watch for, lest they tragically end up with a toxic, genetically modified, pesticide-laden man" was excellent and cracked me up.

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