Melissa Broder

I began sneaking hints to him about my real feelings. I wondered if he could actually see us being together.

Our single friends say they are going to be alone for the rest of their lives and we tell them they are crazy. We tell them they are definitely going to find someone. But how do we know? We know nothing.

It’s probably never really about the person you think you’re obsessed with. It’s about old pain.

When I dreamt of him, the dreams were no longer full of lust and ache. Even in my dreams I knew that we weren’t right for each other.

With this drug-person, there was genuine love. I would say we were both in love but also got fucked up on each other. So I suffered a lot, in spite of the love, because you can’t make a drug-person not be a drug-person no matter how wonderful they are. What fed the drugginess was that distance, and other factors, assured we would never be able to really be together. Neither of us were really available. So we were in a constant state of longing—of almost touching—like Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” but with iPhones.

it is very easy to tell me you love me when it is over and you are thousands of miles away in a foreign country
I said: could you love me at your front door?
I said: i don’t think you could.
I didn’t think he could. And even if he said he could it wouldn’t mean he could. It wouldn’t mean I could. But of course I wanted him to say he could, whether or not either of us could.

getting over the fantasy of a person (especially the fantasy of a fantasy person) is hard.

Does anyone really know who they are marrying? People change. We do not know if the person we commit to will be the same person in ten years. We do not know who he or she will become. Will you be the same person in ten years: in health, body, money, interests, mental health?

That’s not the clitoris: a love story.

The anxiety of the sexual act is my sexual act: a love story.

I’m always scared that every feeling is going to be permanent.