Modern Love, Revised and Updated: True Stories of Love, Loss, and Redemption

by Daniel Jones

Vulnerability is the animating quality of all love stories, and it can take many forms. In every case, though, vulnerability means exposing ourselves to the possibility of loss, but also—crucially!—to the possibility of connection. You can’t have one without the other. The

were Spock from Star Trek, I would explain that human love is a combination of three emotions or impulses: desire, vulnerability, and bravery. Desire makes one feel vulnerable, which then requires one to be brave.

“We get so fixated on the job we want or the person we’re dating because we don’t think there will be another. But there’s always another.”

To win the person (or the job, for that matter), we think we have to be the most perfect version of ourselves. When our hearts are on the line, vulnerability can feel impossible.

What makes movies magical is not that incredible things happen in them. Incredible things happen in real life. No, what makes movies magical is they end right after the incredible thing happens.

realize that meeting someone wonderful is the whole point of dating, but actually being with someone wonderful can be too stressful for me to enjoy.

Making a fool of yourself for love is ultimately about you, about how much you have to give and the distances you will travel to keep your heart wide open when everything around you makes you feel like slamming it shut and soldering it closed.

But this was a man who didn’t even like his peaches bruised. What would he think of a damaged psyche?