Topic of the Day

Saying “I love you” — the when, the how, and the “what’s taking so long?” of it — is one of the most asked about topics in letters I receive from readers. Ten years ago I wrote something that went viral about how women in heterosexual relationships shouldn’t say “I love you” first. I was writing for a website at the time that valued clickbait above just about everything else, and this seemed like a natural lightening rod. It was, and I got both a lot of heat and a lot of love for that post. My feelings have evolved over the years (and I’m also not so concerned about clickbait!), so…

“Five Lies Our Culture Tells,” an opinion piece published in The Times earlier this week, is one of the best things I’ve read in a long time. In it, Times contributor David Brooks argues that our culture has perpetuated what he believes are myths around what make us feel happiest and most fulfilled, like having career success, remaining autonomous and independent, finding our own truths, becoming rich, and achieving things through self-sufficiency. It’s a provocative article, and one I hope you’ll take time to read. I was especially struck by the fallacy of meritocracy as an ideal we’ve come to fully embrace, especially as it relates to self-worth and how we perceive…

A reader sent me a link to this advice column, where the LW vents about her partner of 20 years going vegan. She says: “There are worse problems than a vegan partner, but I am not handling it well. I go through periods of avoiding eating and cooking with him. I don’t want to offend him, and I don’t want him to offend me. I don’t believe veganism is a good choice for personal or planetary health, and I feel healthier on a low-carb diet; we both realise we are not going to persuade each other to change diets. He has lost lots of weight and looks great, and is happy with…

As we start the second month of 2019, I’m wondering: did you make any relationship goals for the new year? Drew and I made a few, including:

What are you all up up to for the Christmas/winter break this year (assuming you get some sort of break)? Here in NYC, public schools don’t let out for the winter break until the week of Christmas (next Friday, the 21st, is the final day of the calendar year and then school resumes on Jan. 2), which is a week shorter than most school districts around the country and what I was used to growing up. Instead of maybe enjoying an extended vacation somewhere, or one week at home and one week traveling, you have just a week to pack everything in with your kids that you want to before they’re due…

After my grandmother passed away last month, my cousin uploaded a video to YouTube of an interview she did with our grandma about ten years ago as part of a video editing class. I loved watching the video for several reasons: hearing my grandmother’s voice again; seeing and remembering how she was a decade ago before the ravages of multiple strokes, a heart attack, and the heartbreak of losing her husband took their toll; and learning how she and my grandfather met — a story I guess I never thought to ask for for some reason, and either never knew or maybe once heard but forgot.

There was a question in the forums this week that left me SMDH, as the kids say.

Every day I’m faced with some small — or sometimes not so small — reminder that midlife is upon me. Maybe I’m not exactly old, but I’m no longer young either. Assuming I live to my early or mid-80s, I’m halfway there. I still have plenty of time to do lots of things — travel the world, watch my children grow up and maybe become parents themselves (or not), learn new tricks, make a difference, maybe learn to sew finally. But the energy I have to do these things and the body in which to do them is different now than it was 15, 20 years ago, and I know it will…

Mindy Kaling, actress and author, gave the commencement speech at her alma mater, Dartmouth, over the weekend, and she had some dating advice for the young men in the audience: