What You Know 'Bout Love? A Romantic Reading List

“Re: categorization—I'll throw this under the books category once I get an image bug on-site worked out! Hang tight.”

I often describe my taste in nonfiction as that of a little alien trying to fit in with the earthlings. I’m fascinated by human behavior overall (which is probably why I'm a novelist), and on a personal level, have this misguided idea that if I can just understand something deeply enough then it will always work out for me. I will always know what to do, and thus I will make the best decisions possible at all times.

So naturally, I've always loved reading about love: the very epitome of a domain I cannot fully control.

I describe myself as romantic but not sentimental. Since I define myself in terms of awe and gratitude (and grounded optimism), I've never really had a problem feeling platonically loving towards others. I am sappy about recognizing the role of kindness and generosity and beauty within all of our lives.

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But everyone has a different relationship to relationships themselves, and my own has always been complicated. My own experience makes it clear that romantic L-O-V-E as a practice is just as nuanced as all the people participating in it. Verb, not a noun, etc,. Needless to say, chasing concrete understanding from a distance always feels perpetually tempting (and elusive.)

I Mostly Keep It Private, Y'all—

Privacy-wise, I also prefer to keep my social and romantic life off the Internet. Some things are just for me.

The one time I wrote an essay on love, I'd pitched it as a culture piece—a social analysis that had very little to do with me personally based on the books and media I'd been consuming on the social history of dating. I rarely pitch, but had mapped it out very thoroughly and clearly what I wanted to do in alignment with what they were looking for.

Ultimately, the editor kept pushing and pushing me to turn it into a personal essay until I felt, uncomfortably, like I'd been pushed into a different article. I ended up divulging things I didn't want to, and looked back at our conversation to check that—yes, I'd definitely pitched exactly what I'd turned in. I could have backed out as the edits changed, so that was my own fault, but I'm an early career journalist, scraping together freelance rates, and it was a byline I really wanted. So that's on me, but I'm secretly hoping they scrape it from the Internet someday.

Since then, I've pretty much decided within my career that I have no interest in writing personal essays dealing with vulnerable or relational matters of my own life. Some journalists thrive in that lane. Working in lifestyle media has its pros and cons.

Like I've said when talking about anonymity and the veil of a parasocial relationship with your favorite writer on the Internet—I'm happy to use a conversation reference ("I was talking to X about Y") as a point to bounce off of, but generally have the line of keeping the details of my social life private. I also think that anyone I'm ever involved with is entitled to anonymity, because I don't think it's fair to share details of their lives with an audience they didn't consent to.

About the Books—and the Overall List

Of course, I read plenty about love, hence me pitching the essay at all. I was curious about a broader trend, I think, about convenience culture and how we partition elements of our lives more nowadays—including dating.

an excerpt from the essay—segueing into talking about how we compartmentalize it nowadays

There are books that explore physical intimacy like Sex at Dawn or Bonk, and then there are books that talk about who you connect to and why, like The Chemistry Between Us. Or what you find attractive, like A Taste for the Beautiful.

There are books that veer more self-help-y (never my favorite), and others that analyze our need for others at all. See: The Social Animal or How to Not Die Alone (written by the Director of Relationship Science at Hinge.) Remember that Sex and the City episode of Miranda choking on Chinese food in her apartment? Yeah.

There are other writers too whose ideas are influential to me in tackling my weird personal hangups about romance (like Oliver Burkeman discussing finitude), but for the sake of the heart-themed holiday, I'm sticking firmly to romance for this one.

“As you might be able to tell, I originally started this post for Valentine's Day.”

A Short Spiel on the Act of Analyzing Love at All

To anyone who might someday go on a date with me, I will at some point eventually break and give my evolution spiel about the scientific portion of love and romance. I'm sorry. I'm a fun facts girl, and that means maybe 1/10th of what I share has a "there's a great study about XYZ" or "I read this book that said—" attached to it.

It is inevitable, I'm very sorry for not being able to resist its intrigue, but I do also find it slightly hilarious. Resisting is futile. It's never the right moment. Friends might also fall victim during wine-laden chats about various love lives and dissection-worthy Hinge responses.

I don't think looking at romantic love analytically makes me a cynic; if anything, I think ignoring the practicality of love—or why we're wired for it—is naive. Acknowledging all the factors that have to work out in a row gives me a healthy amount of appreciation for eventually getting it right, and the sheer luck of that idea does give me goosebumps.

This year especially, I've been trying to reconcile my dominant need for independence with the admitted truth that the whole structure of meeting and falling for someone involves them disrupting you in some way.

“For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have. — Oliver Wendell Holmes.”

I realize there's only so much I can dissect in theory instead of in the thick of it, but that doesn't stop me from picking up another work and having a good ol' statistic ready to go. And haven't you heard? Reading is sexy.

I'm procrastinating, so let's get into it. This has been sitting in my drafts for far too long, and will be messy no matter how I lay it out. But I think it's helpful in understanding my reading threat this year on the fundamental tension between my self-sovereignty and desire for connection i.e. one of my major internal conflicts. The more you know!

Books I've Read to Understand Love, Romance, and Avoidance

Told through half personal musings and half book recs, here are some recent (or favorite books) that have contributed to my perpetually-evolving understanding of how I operate romantically.

I need independence & singular agency

individual vs. collective identity / How to Be Multiple by Helena de Bres

how our personalities develop / Me, Myself, and Us

need for self-reliance / Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

fear of dilution and engulfment / All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfield

fear of losing freedom / The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

fear of "wasting" time / Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman

having one foot constantly out the door / Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

how this boils down to relationships / Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller

Basically, I have realized (and talked about) how being an identical twin means that every personality test I've ever taken has pointed to my intense need for independence and self-sufficiency. It gets exhausting being lumped in with another person, so I detest any sense of interchangeability (which is why the apps and I do not get along.) I always have other projects and priorities, and dating just...slipped by the wayside for years and years.

That being said, I did ultimately come to the conclusion that I'm never going to feel the "need" to date, which means that I just have to suck it up and do it. I do eventually want partnership. It's just on the other side of how I'm wired, basically. The method and the girl are fundamentally opposed, and anything that encroaches on my singularity is going to feel bad, but that's the nature of letting someone in. Most people just don't have to trick themselves into it.

How to Be Multiple was a little nauseating on the twindom front, but helpful in establishing two spheres of identity: individual and collective. (Ex: group units function differently than singular ones, so it's silly to think of coupledom as any different. It's helped me so much to think of myself as having two full identities at a given time—who I am alone, and who I am with someone else—so that I no longer feel as much like one chips away at the other.)

I hate feeling diluted or engulfed, hence the inclusion of All Things Are Too Small, which includes an essay about the hunger some people have to basically melt together in codependence. Shudder down my spine—not my thing, but a useful opposition measure, because some people do need that. When I am with someone, I'd want to spend time with them and adore them and consider them my best friend and us as part of a unit and all, but I also want to maintain my own identity!

That being said, all traits are reverse u-shaped. So my independence can be that too. It's helpful up until the point that it starts hurting me. Individualism, self-sufficiency, perfectionism, singular agency, etc,. are all great up until they increase the terror of commitment to the extent that I'm unwilling to try at all. (Yes, I have commitment issues. Shocker!)

“We’ll do almost anything to avoid burning our bridges, to keep alive the fantasy of a future unconstrained by limitation, yet having burned them, we’re generally pleased that we did so. — Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks.”

See: The Unbearable Lightness of Being or Four Thousand Weeks or Paradox of Choice, which rightfully points out the pitfalls of modern consumer and dating culture: that the burden of choice ultimately paralyzes us, when we'd be much happier if we just stopped searching once we found a choice that checked all our boxes versus perpetually thinking one end decision would magically make us certain. Basically, we (or at least I) will never be entirely certain about anything until we choose, because the choice itself engages the brain mechanisms that make you happy.

“We expect to know how each choice will make us feel before we make it. — Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice.”

The Molecule of More would also say that this is where the shift happens from dopaminergic processing (the "wanting" system) to the here-and-now processing system (the "pleasure" system) which also marks the shift from infatuation to genuine love. Dopamine wears off and brings you back to a level of not caring. The real caring starts when you decide to care anyway. (More on that in another post—not just in regards to love.)

One shift here that's helped me figure out how (in theory) to tackle the suffocation of modern dating et. al. is to think of any relationship as involving constant choice, not a "one and done" choice. You get up every day and choose to be involved.

and I am kind of cynical about the structure of modern dating—

how the modern dating ecosystem developed / Labor of Love by Moira Weigel

the disconnect over phones & apps / Alone Together by Sherry Turkle

deep-rooted desire to be known & loved / East of Eden by John Steinbeck

but that involves losing full control / Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

because others throw you off-balance / The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr

and miscommunication is inevitable / Consider the Lobster by DFW

I think the tricky part of being an incredibly independent person—and genuinely thriving in my own life—is that the further I get into my twenties, the less willing I am to relinquish the control that I've forged over my own life. Sometimes, I wonder if I know too much about it all (from a distance at least), hence my curiosity about the trap of self-awareness.

At this point, it's been...six?...years since I last committed to a relationship (in college), and I've spent a majority of that time not dating or even wanting to date at all. What started as personal preference probably eventually calcified into an unwillingness to ever be vulnerable at all—a mix of nature and nurture.

I'm pretty cynical about the modern dating ecosystem being need-driven (i.e. "I need to find someone who makes me feel X") versus, when I went to a very small school for college, I got to know people organically and would ultimately develop feelings based on lots of time and exposure without fully realizing that's what let it happen in the first place.

In postgrad, it's the exact opposite, which is why it's just "not how I'm wired," especially when you introduce the apps into the system. Dating feels too pronounced, like you basically need to decide who someone is to you first because the very act of setting up a sequence of dates puts more pressure on the two of you. In short: I need some plausible deniability to get comfortable with someone, but you can't exactly filter for that on Hinge intentions.

And that's all banking on getting to know someone in person. In postgrad, we're busy and traveling and chaotic too, so some of the communication is probably over text or over a more stretched-out period of time.

Frankly, you just don't feel as close to someone when you're not physically around them. Enter: the fear of miscommunication (Consider the Lobster), or the sense that it's those damn phones screwing with everyone (Alone Together) or this worry that you're not showing enough of yourself to let them get a full picture—but also not really wanting to drop your walls? (See: East of Eden or Tiger Lily or Flowers for Algernon, but that's a later slide.)

How do love and attraction actually work?

the thrill of the chase / The Molecule of More by Daniel Lieberman and Michael Long

the initial dopamine hit / The Urge by Carl Erik Fisher

y'all are just trying to... / Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá

a frankly refreshing zoom-out novel on the irrationality of it all / On Love by Alain de Botton

how love and attraction scientifically work / The Chemistry Between Us by Brian Alexander and Larry J. Young

a poignant look at the questions that make people feel known and loved / How to Fall in Love with Anyone by Mandy Len Cantron

Many friends—and people who have asked me out—don't relate to my logic here, which is fine. They assumed I just wasn't over an ex, or had too much going on, but I just thought it maybe wasn't fair to the other person to actually go and have my head not be in it. I figured I'd eventually meet someone in the same fashion as in college and feel the same way now as I did then once I got "used to" someone, but I just don't encounter or orbit people in the same way as I would on a tiny campus with communal events and run-in opportunities.

So part of why I avoided dating from roughly 2019-2024 (beyond also writing a book that I devoted 40+ hours a week to, simultaneously building a career across major publications, traveling frequently, and plenty more) was because I suspected I was extremely emotionally unavailable and just doubted anyone would have the time or patience to let it unfold the way I needed it to. I am slow.

Ultimately, I've realized it will never quite be the same as my college climate, but I still don't get crushes all that easily. I've had (1) in the last five years, and that was after all I unraveled a lot of this for myself. I very much think it took me consciously desiring to change this about myself before my brain was even willing to feel that. And even then, it threw me off because I hate the feeling of someone affecting me that much, and immediately felt like I wasn't doing it all correctly. (That last bit might be true. Ya girl needs practice, but the very idea of "practicing" dating feels unkind.)

Still, my compartmentalization won't entirely work here anymore—not when the science of building closeness basically the risk and willingness to feel off-balance, which I think may be even more pronounced for those like me who have built their entire identity around singularity. Sometimes, my attitude around dating frustrates even me, but it's still so engrained—and there's a lot of good in the philosophies it's rooted in. A lot of people would just rather demonize hyperindependence than actually understand how it works.

Hey, other people might be easier—but at least I'll always be vaguely mysterious.

Skepticism, hitting the wall, self-sabotage

all aspects of crushes frankly make us feel crazy / The Incurable Romantic by Frank Tallis

blind to cycles because of walls up / Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

how do you trust others? / Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

feelings feel bad / How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett

genuinely getting to know someone / You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy

building closeness / The Love Prescription by John M. Gottman and Julie Gottman

the initial thrill fades unless you shift into choice / The Molecule of More (repeated)

so swap 'em out / This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Díaz

or struggle past it / The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, M.D.

because happiness only comes when you've chosen / The Chemistry of Us by Brian Alexander and Larry J. Young

Frankly, I think I am such a cool person. I adore so much about myself. And I love so many people on a platonic level, but snap into extremely high standards in dating that limit my desire.

As a whole, I do think I'm rather specific. Tunnel vision, "strong sense of self," ideas for the future, etc,. I broadly assume most interested parties won't "get me" enough for it to really work, and that's probably accurate. I'd rather filter early—which, again, is partly helpful and partly probably an unwillingness to let people surprise me.

But if I'm looking for reasons to say no instead of reasons to say yes, nothing's ever going to work, and mindset and timing definitely matter in that.

I think I've maybe swiped right on five people on a dating app in my life. Am frequently oblivious to men hitting on me—aren't they just being friendly?—and distracted by everything I want to do alone.

If I can tell someone's trying to get with me or is into me without (perceivably) knowing me well enough, I'll avoid because I run into the whole "you don't know me" bitterness and scoff (unfairly) at the interchangeability of it all. If I'm interested in someone as a person who I met organically, I am probably jumpy and need a lot of time to get used to the idea of them as company—but here's where I mourn the whole lack of friends-to-lovers possibility. 1:1 hangs, at least in my demographic, are more rigid and obvious than they were in my school years. So it all immediately feels like "too much pressure."

I also run into this deep suspicion that men are fascinated by me because of my relative unapproachability, independence, backstory etc,. Like they get this immediate high of me being a challenge to solve. Or maybe you run into the East of Eden bit of someone romanticizing you to the extent that it's not about you anymore at all. Fun!

Someone seeing "the idea of you" vs. who you actually are—

perfectionism and desire and what's genuine / East of Eden by John Steinbeck

the hurt & distance of putting someone on a pedestal by turning them into an idea of themselves / Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

various applications of attachment styles / The Attachment Effect by Peter Lovenheim

regret only ever kicking in when it's too late / The Plague by Albert Camus

permanent detachment as a comfortable answer / Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro

but still wanting to be known quietly / Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Marie Rilke

the trap of being too self-conscious around the exchange aspect of love / Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

Getting to know someone, actually, can feel so much harder when you're automatically independent/self-sufficient/etc,. because it feels like you're losing something of yourself, at the beginning. Maybe it was easier as a kid because I didn't think so much!

But while reflecting, every real relationship I've ever had, I used to experience that intense sensation of suffocation or numbness right away and try to throw it away—but it only worked out because I was a little bit of an idiot and those boyfriends were kind, and also, I ran into them frequently.

Knowing someone requires lowering the walls more than I would naturally do, hence it being easier to crave the relief of some distance to "figure out what I think" when I feel the closeness becoming real. Previously, I have probably tricked myself into investing via lots of time and proximity and in-real-life interaction. In my late twenties, it might require more conscious effort from me to get over internal hurdles I didn't notice then. It...is...a choice to trust someone? And harder to pick that destabilization now.

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. — Hemingway.”

But, since it's rare for me in the first place, I definitely feel more pressure on any romantic situation simply because I'm out so of practice. What's normal in testing for potential vs. what's just panic at the unfamiliar? Alain de Botton points this out in On Love, that basically most romantic beginnings require a certain amount of ignorance in order to take off. (And I'm an overthinker, obviously.)

It's not as simple as "just go on more dates" to get rid of that sensation of the stakes being uncomfortably high, because that temptation to rebalance alone will only happen with someone I really, really like—but it does make me feel enormously terrible at all things involving love. I'm not used to giving anyone else power over me, and anyone who's like "having a crush doesn't give someone power over you" is not familiar with the hangups I'm describing. There are definitely other people like me out there; it's just less common, or maybe less articulable. It's a catch-22, for sure: the process sparks a paralysis that then makes the process even harder. Self-consciousness undermines things.

I've talked with girl friends about this who are similarly independent, but I think many of us dating later in our twenties are having a harder time deciding we feel "ready" for anyone to affect us because we're so used to how we've been operating for so long, whereas when younger, we hadn't yet built up our systems or routines—so someone could more easily get past them. Because we're happy with our own company, it's harder sometimes to feel that propulsion of "need" that might get us to make ourselves uncomfortable. In other words: a future partner's not going to "complete" us, because we don't need completing.

But I think I can figure out how to want romance and not wreck it while still valuing and praising the benefits of solitude and independence.

a favorite poem

I still can't say I'm very good at romance, or that I will pursue it any time soon. (That depends on my prospects, and I'm always biased towards my own company, projects, etc,. Plus, O'ahu's a small island, y'all.)

But I am, at the very least, slightly more open to the notions of destabilization being inherent to the process of genuinely knowing and eventually loving someone at all. I know I have to compromise on my self-sufficiency a little bit within it, not just once I'm confident something will work out. I do believe that once you decide you're compatible, it's just all about choice. In my individual post-grad landscape, that's tougher.

Easier for me to say with the filter of a book list to do my work for me, though. Intellectualizing things instead of feeling them is a net-positive for me in most cases, but absolutely contributes to the ways in which I distance myself from actual vulnerability. I don't feel vulnerable on the blog at all, so it's an easy way to wade into the practice.

(The odds I will someday just send a man the link to this instead of explaining what I think directly are quite high.)

codependence vs.

interdependence, which is what you want—

Bonus points for this song being stuck in my head the entire time.