8 February

What a window into the mess of our ideas about relationships. I love that many are realising that being alone is not a bad thing. But their reasons here are all about personal development, incredibly self-centred. Being a couple and being single are both presented as vehicles for that self-centred development. When you read it you come away thinking that our only two options are a life devoted to our own personal needs. Or a co-dependency with a partner, where you play out stereotypes about married life of denial and total obsessive focus on your other half. All ‘me’, or all ‘you’. Crazy. Both options (single or couple) as described in this article are exactly how adolescence sees relationships. Including the retreat to friendship as some apparently superior form of life. Friendship is a superficial form of life, a training for love. Grown ups with ‘besties’ aren’t grown up. Love is a surrender of your precious self to something bigger than it. Confronting and enjoying the reality of another person, as an ‘other’ in your life, even when it’s difficult. It’s not MAFS, the teen dream of adult life, of ‘cheating’ being the ultimate sin because again that’s teenage life, fighting over ownership. A Gen Z told me it’s about ‘loyalty’. We live in a kidult culture, people playing at grown ups because grown up life was wrecked by the Peter Pan forever young world of high school/boomer culture. We never leave high school, the culture is stuck at that stage of development.