Queer relationships have long modelled forms of connection that mainstream culture struggles to name, let alone practice. Built in a world that rewards avoidance, detachment, and performative independence, queer relational cultures insist on emotional presence, care and truth. Not because queer people are inherently more sensitive or communicative, but because queer love has never had the luxury of autopilot. When your relationships aren’t automatically validated by the world

My first encounter with heartbreak was fairly early. Not the kind you’re thinking of (my social skills with boys are virtually non-existent), but a little something called friendship. As a child, this heartbreak did a pretty fantastic job of rattling my brain when I couldn’t yet make sense of the world. When I was nine, I spent two hours making handmade Halloween cards for two of my closest friends, each card personalised for them. But they never showed up. I’d wait exactly

Social media gave us constant access to our friends' lives, but quietly replaced the conversations that made us feel close. Your friend uploads an Instagram Story. You watch it while waiting for the bus, react with a heart, and continue scrolling. By the end of the day, you've seen where they spent the weekend, what they ordered for brunch, and who they were with. Weeks later, you realise you haven't actually spoken to them. Somewhere along the way, watching began to feel lik

Let’s honestly talk about love, money, female friendship, and the luxury of never having to settle. The other day, completely unprovoked, I heard myself say something that would've horrified twenty-year-old me. "I think the only man I actually need in my life is an asset manager." Not a boyfriend, not a husband, or even a “soulmate” - But someone who understands compound interest… Someone who can explain whether my money is sitting in the right place...

Nobody prepares you for that friendship that just quietly stops. Not with a fight, not with a conversation, not with any kind of closure. Just the slow, gradual realization that the messages have become less frequent, the plans less concrete and one day you are not entirely sure when you last spoke. No drama. No ending. Just a fade so gradual you almost missed it happening. And then the guilt. The low-grade, persistent guilt of having let something that once mattered just d

A few weeks ago, I found myself deep in a YouTube rabbit hole watching someone explain Sabrina Carpenter's place in heteropessimism. It was one of those ideas that seems, at first glance, either like profound cultural criticism or exquisitely packaged word vomit. The term heteropessimism, coined by writer Asa Seresin, describes the performative public disavowal of heterosexuality: the jokes about how terrible men are, the declarations that dating is hopeless, the "I wish I we

Love might bring two people together. But what happens when your partner becomes your business partner, your biggest critic, your biggest supporter, and the person sitting beside you when the dream gets difficult?

We are a generation that has chosen ambition and success over romantic connection. Unless you were one of the unfortunate ones who found your husband in high school. In my earlier years, I prided myself on curating my personality into being ‘wife’ material, whatever that means. I prioritised being financially savvy, unburdensome, independent and visually appealing. To men, or whatever. Creative, ambitious, academic, extroverted enough not to be perceived by my boyfriend’s fri

Olivia Rodrigo's new album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, reminds me of the heartbreak of a woman who sacrifices herself in order to keep a relationship alive: a fatal ritual of young womanhood. After spending three years in an emotionally depleting relationship, the album reminded me of what lost hope feels like, and yet the most painful part is the regret that follows after the fantasy dies. After losing both my father and the relationship I had spent three yea

My love life has always been the most complicated part of my life. Tangled up in waiting, hope, disappointment, insecurity, and longing. Love, in that sense, has always felt out of reach. So I turned to someone who could never disappoint me or make me feel insecure and sad. He was handsome, kind, caring. He was simply always there. Every now and then, over the years, I would hear someone say, or realise it myself, that I idealised men, relationships, and love. But it was only

Three years, one breakup, and the woman who taught me the love story I was looking for wasn't romantic. I am twenty-three years old and, as a rite of passage, I have finally started watching Sex and the City. The first time I ever watched an episode, I was twenty. At the time, I had a terrible self-tan, a nose ring, and a tooth gem. Looking back, that version of me feels less like my younger self and more like a stranger staring back at me in the mirror. I was in the middle o

The most dangerous sentence a man can say in a marriage might be this: “Just make me a list.” On the surface, it sounds helpful. Cooperative, even. A man offering to pitch in, to carry part of the load, to prove he’s willing to help run the household. But to many women, that sentence lands very differently. Because the list he’s asking for, the one he’s willing to complete, is already running silently in someone else’s head. Usually hers. Always mine. The mental load has been

The first date was never the problem. The performance was. How many times can one woman answer, “So… tell me about yourself?” Before she loses her mind? First dates have always been one of those things that stress me out the most in the world. As much as I love to flirt, meet new people, chat, and hear different opinions, I’ve always hated first dates. At what point did a first date become a networking event with sexual tension? Normally, meeting someone is easy; maybe liking

After nearly two decades living and working in New York City, I moved to Colorado in January 2020. Looking back, I realized I’d been living inside a hermetically sealed bubble. Nearly everyone I knew was liberal. We read the same publications, shared our outrage, and spent so much time talking to one another that I forgot we weren't talking to everyone. I felt secure in my assumptions about what a "progressive man" looked like, confident that if we checked the same boxes on a

Ask a man or woman what the worst thing people can do to them is. They respond so quickly with “Cheating”; you wonder whether their brain could have generated anything else. My last girls’ night out, one of my friends broke a not-very-awkward silence with: “I caught him cheating; I think he destroyed me.”And then I started to think: “Did he?” Is cheating really worth the hype? The worst thing someone can do to you can’t really be cheating. Cheating actually has nothing to do

I used to want a man who could sweep me off my feet: tall, six-pack abs, killer jawline, the whole white-horse fantasy. And of course, I had standards, or rather, a meticulously curated checklist I’d probably written long before I knew anything about love. He had to be smart, ambitious, financially stable, emotionally intelligent, and somehow still effortlessly cool. Back then, I could describe my dream man in obsessive detail, right down to the brand of his tailored suit, ge

Everyone wants to be seen as beautiful. We women, especially, spend endless hours preparing ourselves to become the image of beauty. We shave our legs, we obsess over the cleanliness of our nails, the sleekness of our hair, we practice smiles in the mirror, we paint and sculpt our faces to perfection, and we nitpick the clothes on our bodies until we exist as a faultless shape— a portrait of beauty. And when we go out, we walk like models on display. Yes, it’s art. But it’s

I can’t stop watching Dance Moms. My senior year of college was the end of my three-year, on-and-off, absolutely horrible relationship. Every time he left me, and he left me a lot, I would put on Dance Moms, cry, and ask my mom if she’d hug me. This happened enough that Abby Lee Miller started to feel like a family member. It wasn’t even the breakups that got me. It was the thinking. He’d tell me he was “thinking.” Thinking about us. Thinking about life. Thinking about whethe

Dating wasn’t always so drawn out. With the rise of social media has come the notion that we have all the time in the world to decide, date around, and settle. The next day is never guaranteed, and although it's good to take your time getting to know someone, people might not be around forever. I think men especially fail to understand that their options might not always be there. When I lived in Paris, I was dating a guy who decided to stop seeing me in the Spring. After the

To quote Samantha Jones, defender of messy women and hard truths: “Chill, babe. We’re all bad in someone’s story.” For nearly a year, I had an affair with a friend’s husband while living with my boyfriend of almost six years. Even now, writing that sentence makes my stomach turn. Not because it isn’t true, but because it is. I was in my thirties. I knew better. I was the kind of woman who would have destroyed a man for doing this to me. And yet, there I was, actively particip

Never date a lawyer, or maybe just don’t confuse political literacy and emotional integrity. After graduating with my undergraduate degree, I took a gap year. I spent it working a job so miserable that I quit on a random Friday after being accused of having an affair with a married coworker. It was the kind of accusation that made me wonder what kind of free time my coworkers believed me to have. Outside of work, I was trying to build a life that looked healthier than it felt

Imagine your closest friend telling you one day, "I think I'm finally ready to get married." Chances are, you wouldn't be surprised. After all, women's relationship with marriage has always been full of contradictions. They're asked about settling down before they've even figured out who they are, yet the moment they admit they want a serious relationship, they're suddenly accused of being too eager, too intense, or of putting pressure on men. It's one of those unwritten rule

Sex has always existed with two meanings. On one hand, it is an act of love shared between two people. On the other, it is a lustful sin, bitten by the tooth of taboo. Or so history would have it. As a friend and I laid our woes on the table one evening, both recounting worryingly similar experiences that had happened on different occasions, I began to realise something. Our understanding of what sex is has lost an important, intimate side in its slow shift towards becoming c

Come at 9 pm, we told them. “Bet,” they replied, meaning, See you at 10:45 pm. Nights with our “guy friends” – naturally, they were only ever nights – were fueled by the hometown mule, who delivered strawberry lemonade vodka straight to suburban parents’ homes, up-charging teenage daughters at a rate of 50%. With grins that bore full sets of milk teeth, we waved his Honda Sedan out of the driveway; “You be safe tonight, girls!” he called out to my friends and I, as if he wer

Can you love someone without ever meeting them? When was the last time you truly met someone? It sounds like a simple question, but I'm no longer sure it has a simple answer. We still talk about "meeting" as though it only counts when two people occupy the same room or shake each other's hand. But in 2026, is that still true? What if you've heard someone's laugh before you've ever heard their footsteps? What if you've spent nights discussing your essays, shared the poems you