55 Comments

If it makes you feel any better, most lovers are better imagined in your bed than actually found there the next morning. And I have kittens all over the county.

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truer words

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“Not for the first time, I sensed that those who know love and those who enjoy life are not the same people.” - Proust

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If the multi-verse theory is true, there are infinite versions of both this letter and a night of passion.

So.

Chin up.

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😌

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People don't seem to seem to understand you wrote this for entertainment purposes. Which is odd. I thought it was brilliant keep up the good work

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thanks Jolan! indeed I did and enjoyed writing it very much !

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Clowns to the left me, jokers to the right......anyway

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I’m old and married and decades past the world you describe but it all rings true. It at least rhymes with what I remember. Even if not literally true it’s emotionally true. Good writing.

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glad to hear it Polynices :-)

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Funny how some in the comments are interpreting this piece.

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they are a joy to read, even if I struggle to keep up with responses- some of my posts have attracted real gems

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Stella, I'm curious what you think about this bit from online therapist Orion Taraban. I find it interesting how he skirts the issue of Capitalism creating depression in a clever way that "almost" goes there but doesn't, as it would not be congruent with his or his audience's worldview. And his advice to "low status" men about how to overcome depression is just.... off. So off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHjIIeMI7W0

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so someone else send me some vids from this guy today and they were well intentioned but I disagree with his world view, especially in dating where he see its a practical arrangement where if you play your cards rights you get the prize. I agree that low status breeds depression, and rising income inequality has a very negative impact on people's socialising. He seems to be very well known but I have not been following him. I am sure he has plenty of good advice but I find approaching dating in this calculating way very irksome.

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He's a hit with Manosphere inspired men. His therapy is "masculine centered". He views relationships as "power dynamics". He screams "insecurity". He lives in the San Franciso Bay area and I assume his dating life was full of rejection and bitterness just based on his looks and body language and "power" obsession.

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They dont seem to get the sarcasm 😭

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I mean I did try to say in multiple posts that I write because I enjoy writing and the emotions are often exaggerated for effect but some people must think I live a deeply miserable life where I cry myself to sleep over Chad not texting me back

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They see what they want to see. Its a revenge fantasy. Btw i loved ur female neediness article! I do think male neediness for relationships is stronger than we realise. A lot of my friends have been the romantically pursed rather than the other way round. I also think female sexual desire is also very strong factor. But yeah so glad I found ur page!!

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Thanks Hannah! I also have some seen these reverse cases, I am just not one of them, for now least 😁

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The universe has not once made me feel vindicated for declining to sleep with someone as soon as the opportunity presented itself, earlier in life due to lack of confidence and then more recently through trying to make good long term decisions. The universe just wants me to be a slut.

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Is it either/or or both/and?

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Stella, you might like this https://www.ggd.world/p/status-scarcity-and-hostile-sexism

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this is fascinating, thanks

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Marvelous

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thank you :)

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The line about strawberries made me think of the Chairlift song that mentions frozen strawberries

Bruises

Mostly sung by a woman who fell for and is now black & blue for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ9hLOHj8ag

The lead singer kinda looks and maybe acts a bit like Stella, along with being a bit weird wrapped up at the end.

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I concur.

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Love your posts but the recurrent "female neediness" theme needs some pushback. Why?....because it would confuse one hell of a lot of lonely 'Beta'-type young men and be entirely other than their dating/mating experience. The following comment was inspired by your Jan 27 post but it applies here just as well:

You: "....I will take my bitterness [about not finding a man to marry] to my grave...." I realise that you were probably mostly kidding here but even so the cognitive dissonance needs picking up on. You are a pretty woman (you've said so). And you are a savvy woman too. So you will know about the sexual mating dynamics whereby pretty young women tend to hanker after just a small % of men at the top of a kind of Alpha scale of desirability. And so you will also know that pretty women like you could have masses of suitors except that you are just not interested in them. Surely? They just don't count. [I (even more than James) am out of all this - by the way - because I am 73 and my lovely wife is all I need.]

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thanks Graham, what I'd say to you is that I don't have unrealistic standards and that my most personal essays are more about the creative expression than the politics, because politically I don't think there is anything to do about the fact that the tragedy of human nature is to want and not get. Love hurts </3

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I wasn't saying anything that could be thought of as politics surely? It was about the tricky business of trying to be straight with oneself about one's desires - which it seems to me is the essential theme of your 'Stack? This piece of mine: 'The Less Desired': https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired ...says it more clearly than can be done in a comment thread.....should you ever get the time to read it.

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I really hope your confidence matches your vanity one day. I mean if you regret not being a slut or are not very confident in your prowess as it's quality not quantity then I highly reccomended monogamy with someone who stays although one can have amazing mind blowing monogamous sex with someone and end up hating his guts for being little more than a walking dildo at the end of the relationship. Do you and what's going to make you happy. If being a cum dumpster to multiple partners will make you happy then do it by all means from what I've observed in women they fake happiness like they fake orgasms for unworthy men but do you boo. Please go get laid. Since you are so beautiful and high status it shouldn't be too hard right. Let you freak flag fly. When you get done getting your grove back let us know the range of emotions you feel and think then. I'll be here with popcorn and you can guarantee when you inevitability admit how empty it is if as a self proclaimed narcissist Cassandra that you state you are if able to express that level of honesty then this asshole right here will be more than happy to say I told ya so bitch. You may also settle, act like your happy and lament you wish you had gotten your whore on sooner though and it may have nothing to do with your self proclaimed narcissistic inclinations it may just boil down to pride and wanting to be right and not wanting to admit you were wrong or believed a lie. Hey maybe he'll convince you an abortion would be best if he knocks you up and then you can lament on what type of mother you could have been while allowing ptsd, pass and other issues take hold rather than how many dicks you could have had huh. By all means let your freak flag fly. We're all here for it. Some have to learn the hard way, pun intended. 😁

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gosh, that sounds bleak !

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So does reading about you lack of a sex life.

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Don’t read my writing if it makes you sad x

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I'm not sad. 🤣 You are. Obviously and needy, and wishing to be a cum dumpster and lament about it incessantly.

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Cringe

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Thanks

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Your well cum

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Gross ya fucking douche. Cringe. Seriously it's an article about someone lamenting they should have been more of a whore and isn't fulfilled. So go fafo. Sorry if my crassness bothers you but you aren't anything but a depositors in the bins of these dumpsters that want to act as if women and men are biologically the same when it comes to tons of casual sex. I'd venture to go further and say Senor that of course you would cringe if I encouraged one to hold out for someone who isn't a guy like you. I don't need your validation, for you to like me as a matter of fact you tend to be the type I hope to chase away and doesn't deserve to know me let alone get the best parts of me and doesn't deserve them from countless others you try to talk into your awesome life orrrr your an incel bc you don't know how to pursue and engage with irl women or think any woman that wants to talk to you wants to have sex with you. Voluntarily being celibate when you can and choose not to must be difficult for you to comprehend though.

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Nah I said cringe because you wrote a really condescending essay in response instead of anything productive and helpful. Your lack of charity was cringe.

I’d want someone to hold out for me, but I also wouldn’t be so rude to someone who didn’t before I came into their lives. It’s not productive and nobody, not even her, can take away her dignity.

I’m having a rough morning, or was, but this essay allowed me to make a couple funnies and now I feel better. Yes. It allowed me the momentary ecstasy of forgetting my problems to be silly for a few moments. Rather than taking my anger out on strangers I chose to be silly.

I don’t apologize for being silly with you.

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It was the YW. I think it's sad to see women get so hung up on the almost regret not having tons of regret. Men and women think of sex differently which is why you found it funny. This is a recurring theme in her work. I sure hope she gets empowered enough to say fuck yeah I'd rather eat to live and have energy instead of wasting it on someone who has different goals with the level of entanglement and tbh what I'd say would end up about these fantasies and regret that she seems to beat herself up over may have ended up full of more regret based on what happens when it's the two of them and not just sex or what if he's a rapist, serial killer, she says she's a narcissist and I realize it satire but I may be giving a bit back. That wasn't an essay.

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Not really.

If what we want is mere sensation, the languorous stretch, that orgasmic twitch, then scratching that particular itch with 'What's His Name' gives us actually very little and takes much more. We diminish ourselves. 'Getting & Spending we lay waste our powers' and are therefore, in the afterward, somewhat less when we return.

Meaningless sex is meaningless sex and regretfully tinged hindsight doesn't change that in the least.

Looking down that ambered path to yesterday, sure -- it seems like it could have been so much more, and wasn't. But what we more truly desire is not the Other's flesh, for in the end one body is like another just slimmer, heftier, taller, shorter, hairier, et al...what we desire is the Other. We don't want just another body in our embrace. What we want instead is them, in their wholeness.

And even then, we dream not the individual per se -- not Dave, or Stan, or Sue, or Debbie as they actually were -- we want them as we imagined them (now or then) to be. We want the life that would, in the today, include them as we dreamed them, not as background players, but something quite substantially more (albeit a 'more' that they themselves might not even recognize).

But if, indeed, that imagined coupling had occurred...if, indeed, the 'I' that existed then had been with 'you' (as I dreamed you to be), then I as I am today would not exist. As a living sum of everything that came before, that sum, today, would be different. "X" would have added and "Y" subtracted. And the 'me' that resulted would simply have a different set of amber-tinged regrets and might-have-beens.

Life does not expand to include all options of every one of the infinite choices which confront us. Rather it narrows and becomes increasingly constrained as the life we actually are making becomes real and solidifies and settles around us

As Kundera put it: "The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”

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"What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”

It's not either/or but both/and.

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An impossible condition.

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"I wish I had blocked you from reading that blog I wrote about my aversion to casual sex. I didn’t lie, but I would have made an exception for you because I have an itch that only you can scratch."

So, up there is a quote capturing an interpersonal phenomenon, call it conundrum, I've always pondered. This is the format it often takes: I'm sharing with a new and interesting female (or male) acquaintance some negative aversions, tastes, preferences of mine. Say, I tell her I don't like talking on phone. She takes it that this applies to her as well whereas I'd have gladly made her an exception.

But here's the trap: I can't tell her specifically that she would make an exception if our acquaintanceship ever developed into something deeper. If I did, I'm explicitly telling her I want something deeper with her and also inviting upon myself a burden to uphold my words which I may not be able to do consistently since we're talking about an exception to the rule of my behavioral preferences. And if I didn't tell her I find her interesting enough to make of her an exception, she backs down thinking: "Well, what's the point. I like talking on the phone!" I'm always aware of this dynamics when sharing my intra- and interpersonal aversions with people worthy enough to constitute exceptions to the rule.

On another issue: Stella, do you really believe that if given a second chance to have a casual sex with this mysterious lover that never was, your choice would still be any different from what it was originally?

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I did this same thing to a woman recently. Here's to gender equality in the sexless-overthinker-sphere. But yeah, it's funny how "better to have loved and lost" is a line everyone knows, and yet a lot of people need to rediscover it for themselves.

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