When her 13-year-old daughter finds love a stone’s throw away, Lisa A. Phillips confronts the inevitability of first heartbreak.
heterosexual relationships
The Gift Economy
In the desert at Burning Man, Joanne Solomon dissects the implicit transaction that defines her cross-cultural love affair.
The Neanderthal
Jen Gilman Porat seeks a genetic excuse for her husband’s barbaric table manners.
Falling for My Booty Call
Sarah Kasbeer reflects on a history of hookups — and why they left her cold.
The Next Level of Commitment: Revealing Our Money Secrets
A personal essay in which Vanessa Golenia contemplates the ins-and-outs of merging finances as the higher earner — and bigger spender — in her (heterosexual) relationship.
The Next Level of Commitment: Revealing our Money Secrets
Vanessa Golenia contemplates the ins-and-outs of merging finances as the higher earner — and bigger spender — in her (heterosexual) relationship.
Welcome to the Jungle
As Caitlin Moran explains, there are Bad Men, and then there are Badly Educated Men.
Can the Political Override the Personal?
“Harmful to Minors” author Judith Levine mines her past contradictions to sketch out the challenge of a being a young woman simultaneously burgeoning into her feminist and her sexual selves.
A Woman’s Work: Home Economics* (*I Took Woodworking Instead)
An illustrated personal essay in which New Yorker cartoonist Carolita Johnson tallies the costs and benefits of love and cohabitation as a woman artist living in a patriarchy.
Politics as a Defense Against Heartbreak
Minda Honey assesses the deliberate choices and external factors affecting her dating life.