How to Think More About Sex (The School of Life)

Most of what we are sexually remains impossible to communicate with anyone whom we would want to think well of us.

‘I was relying on you to be loyal to the specific variety of disappointment that I represent.’

‘I promise to be disappointed by you and you alone. I promise to make you the sole repository of my regrets, rather than to distribute them widely through multiple affairs and a life of sexual Don Juanism. I have surveyed the different options for unhappiness, and it is you I have chosen to commit myself to.’ These are the sorts of generously pessimistic and kindly unromantic promises that couples should make to each other at the altar.