Human Experience
The Expectations We Inherit
Some of what we want from love was decided long before we arrived.
Most of us did not invent our expectations of love. We inherited them — from the households we grew up in, the stories we were told, the marriages we watched up close and the ones we only heard about.
These expectations rarely announce themselves. They arrive disguised as common sense. Of course a partner should do this. Of course a family should look like that. It is only when two people with different inheritances try to build a life together that the instructions start to conflict.
Reading the fine print
It can be useful to ask, gently: where did this expectation come from? Is it something I chose, or something I absorbed? Do I still agree with it, or have I simply never questioned it?
Not every expectation is wrong. But an unexamined expectation is difficult to negotiate.
This kind of inquiry does not require rejecting where we come from. It only asks that we look at it with open eyes, so that what we carry forward is carried by choice rather than by default.
Continue reading
Care Without Understanding
It is possible to be cared for deeply and still feel unseen. The two are not the same thing, and the space between them deserves a closer look.
Friendship as a Long Conversation
We write endlessly about romance and say comparatively little about friendship — even though, for many people, it is the relationship that lasts longest.
The Language of Closeness
Two people can share a home, a bed and a surname and still be strangers in the ways that count. What makes closeness real?