Mixed Feelings: How to Make Friends after Thirty
The problem is we tend to let romantic love eclipse all else.
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Posts Tagged: advice
Mixed Feelings: A Better Version of Love
You are free to love others as if it were a pleasure and a privilege, because that’s exactly what it is.
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Mixed Feelings: A Valentine to Aging Women
Letting go of these ideas about a woman’s value feels like the obvious thing to do, but it’s really hard.
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Mixed Feelings: Two Roads Diverged at a Picket Fence
Here we are standing the woods. Which path should we take?
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Mixed Feelings: The Power and Limits of Labels
Maybe I’m not bisexual. What am I?
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Mixed Feelings: Your Divorce Won’t Ruin Your Kids
Marriage is one way of housing love. But there are a hundred other houses—sometimes you just have to build them yourself.
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Mixed Feelings: Am I Too Fat For Love?
We don’t like to think that love traffics in the same biases that shape our culture—but of course it does.
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A Desi Win: Trust No Aunty by Maria Qamar
What started off as a coping mechanism to deal with the widening generational gap within immigrant families, Qamar has shaped into a new philosophy for cultural in-betweeners.
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Mixed Feelings: How Do You Break a Heart?
What should love cost us? What do we owe one another? What, especially, do we owe those who have chosen to love and trust us?
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Going Off-Script: A Conversation with Mandy Len Catron
Mandy Len Catron discusses How to Fall in Love with Anyone: A Memoir in Essays, what makes for a thoughtful love story, and the politics of love.
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Mixed Feelings: Happy Wife, Happy Life
Ending a relationship is hard, but it’s not as hard as quitting an institution. And the thing we often forget about marriage is that it is an institution.
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Mixed Feelings: Why Do Men Always Want to Settle Down?
Many women do want to get married, and that’s a perfectly reasonable choice. The problem, then, is that when a woman says she doesn’t want to marry, many people find this hard to believe.
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Mixed Feelings: The Emotional Labor of Listening to Men Complain
In the first installment of “Mixed Feelings,” a science-based advice column, Mandy Catron offers counsel on handling a partner’s obsession with their ex.
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The Rumpus Interview with Sara Benincasa
Comedian Sara Benincasa opens up about her latest book Real Artists Have Day Jobs, adjusting to success, Venn-diagramming love, and the loss of Morley Safer.
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The Rumpus Interview with Amy Rose Spiegel
Amy Rose Spiegel discusses her debut memoir, Action: A Book about Sex, carnal confidence, and the nuances of sex-positivity.
...more21st Century Magical Realist
Beyond the obvious fact of when it was written or published, what does it mean for literature to be contemporary? Is a work’s relevance determined by market trends and cultural currents? In her monthly advice column for Electric Literature, Elisa Gabbert allays a writer’s temporally induced anxieties: Magical realism “has been done,” yes, but so […]
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The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Heather Havrilesky
We are in a chaotic mess of a world, and our lives are going to be chaotic messes no matter how victorious and shiny we manage to become.
...moreTo Cheat or Not to Cheat
Life coach, Rumpus columnist, and novelist Rick Moody lends his ear to those at the crossroads of love over at Lit Hub. This week, he addresses the unfaithful: And: what we’re talking about, here, really, is intimacy. In order for someone in a relationship to be especially intimate with you, he (or she) has to be less […]
...moreThis Advice Is Terrible
Don’t use semicolons and other terrible advice from good writers.
...moreHow to Write Something
Keep a close eye on your Twitter account. Important things may be said there that you will be expected to weigh in on, and if you don’t, everyone will wonder if you fell asleep in the bathroom stall of the bar last night and are still there, head sunken low next to the toilet, one […]
...moreAdvice from Sleater-Kinney
Being the reigning curators of all things empowering and sweet that they are, the people at Rookie got Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker to act as guest advice gurus on the magazine’s series, “Ask a Grown Woman.” The duo answered questions on coming out, how to turn someone down gently, and first kisses. It’s adorable. […]
...moreAuthors, Goodreads Isn’t for You
In response to a recent scuffle between a Goodreads reviewer and an author, BookRiot offers this advice to authors: But it’s not just the one-or-two-star reviews. I also don’t think authors should respond to positive reviews, even to say thanks — the dynamic is too weird. Perhaps not all reviewers feel as I do, but […]
...moreMr. Murakami’s Place
According to the Guardian, Haruki Murakami is soliciting fan questions through the end of January, offering his opinions and advice,” says Shinchosha Publishing, “on how to tackle all manner of difficulties.” The answers will be posted on his website, “Murakami-san no tokoro” or “Mr. Murakami’s place,” throughout February and March.
...moreMore Sunday Links
Friday was one of those days where it felt like way too many threads had come unraveled from the thrift-store sweater of my life and were just tangled in an heap of wet yarn at my feet. One of those dreary grey days when I could have used some advice, and maybe a gentle voice […]
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What the Websites Tell Me to Do
At best, I see her not as my oldest friend, but as the protagonist in a movie, lost and beautiful and unstable, a character I sympathize with even as she self destructs.
...moreJohn Steinbeck Talks Falling in Love
John Steinbeck will be remembered as many things – as the author of Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, and many other canonical works of American literature, of course. To his son Thom, however, he was a sagacious authority on love, as evinced by this 1958 note taken from a collection of […]
...moreAdvice from Vonnegut
Advice my father gave me: never take liquor into the bedroom. Don’t stick anything in your ears. Be anything but an architect. To celebrate Kurt Vonnegut, Maria Popova posted on her Brain Pickings an interesting list of advices the author use to give his children, excerpted from his collection of letters.
...moreHelpful Hints for Emerging Writers
Being the most talented writer doesn’t necessarily translate into publishing success, which really comes from methodical and consistent work rather than raw talent. Read this and other advice for emerging writers at the Missouri Review‘s blog. Bonus: The post’s author, Michael Nye, “isn’t nearly as grumpy” as some other advice givers, and indulges in zero “kids […]
...moreIgnore This Advice
Policy Mic has a fun post about the four worst things people tell young writers about writing. Perhaps the most important of these to disregard is “Good writers always write well”: Imagine you are someone who has no idea how to play a guitar. One day, you pick up a guitar and run your fingers […]
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