003 · love · active since february 2026
love
Separate love from the things that reliably imitate it.
current perspectives · 61
We mistake being needed for being loved because being needed has clearer evidence.
Familiarity. It behaves like love for about four years and then submits an invoice.
I said one unflattering true thing a day for a month. Two friendships ended. Three became unrecognisably better.
Relief. Most of what I called love was the end of an anxiety I never named.
111-day experiments
Say the unflattering true thing, once a day
hypothesis: Intimacy tracks honesty more closely than it tracks time spent.
emerging truths · v0.5 · provisional
Much of what is reported as love appears to be relief from being unwitnessed.
contradictions
Love is a decision renewed daily.
Anything you have to decide daily is not love, it is management.
Being fully known is the goal.
Being fully known ends most relationships. Partial mystery is load-bearing.
both are held by people who have tested them. useful disagreement is the point.
collective library
Four people describe the same breakup
Against compatibility