Welcome to Second Person
Table of contents and FAQ for new readers.
What is this?
Second Person is a blog about dating and romantic relationships, and why we find them so difficult. But seriously: why?
My aim here is to get truly curious about the question, not to offer easy fixes. To understand what it is about us and the world we live in that can make dating feel intractable. And how, through this understanding, everyone can chart their own path to the relationship they dream of.
Second Person follows the thematic outline of a book, albeit with many digressions. The table of contents organizes all the posts written so far by theme. Below that is a mini-FAQ to orient new readers.
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoy your time here.
Table of Contents
Each post is written to stand on its own; start with any that seem most intriguing. If you do decide to subscribe and read the entire archive, I would recommend doing so in the chapter order presented here.
The listed outline for future parts is to whet your appetite, there will certainly be much more by the time we get there.
Introduction
Introducing: Second Person, a welcome post introducing the main conundrum: if people think dating sucks, why don’t they do anything about it?
Part I: Let go of what holds you back
Chapter 1: Not like other books
Not a Dating Cookbook — the gap between general dateability advice and your personal dating life.
Love is Love, Science is Fake — why science provides so little insight into romance.
Review: How to Not Die Alone — who are dating advice bestsellers for?
Writing that Changes — not by instructing, but by clearing the path to doing.
Chapter 2: The opposite of resentment
Discourse Against Dating — why dating discourse is so dead set against dating.
Opposite and Equal — the elusive symmetry of each sex’s complaints about the other.
Black Ops 4B — remember when some women threatened a sex strike after the 2024 election? It lasted just long enough for me to make fun of it.
The Opposite of Resentment — why resentment is utterly inimical to relationships, and a way out for those stuck in it.
Pods and Ends — a roundup of some podcast appearances and addenda to the first 10 posts.
Chapter 3: On Femininity and Femaleness
Everything Is about Sex, Femininity Is about Power — It's a performance of peril and prestige, and everyone's watching.
Painting over the Female — “I swear, officer, these women were objects when I got here”
Barbie in the Longhouse, Part 1 — “Humans make things up like patriarchy and Barbie just to deal with how uncomfortable it is”
Barbie in the Longhouse, Part 2 — “You're gonna start getting sad and mushy and complicated”
Longboy — Finding manhood in a manless place
Chapter 4: We date in a society
We date in a society — Why is everyone so obsessed with how everyone else dates?
Ready, Player — Dating is improv, so don’t play by the rules — play by roles.
You Are not a Thought Experiment — You’re not a nobody or an anybody, the choices you get to make are the ones you deserve to.
Romantic Friends — Your friends are your dating life, whether you date them or not
Chapter 5: Sex Differences
Review: Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus — Outdated pseudoscience or a classic tale of alien encounters?
Girls Don't Talk about Sex Differences — But someone should, so we can all understand each other better.
Navigation by Moonlight — The power of yin: wielded by women, invisible to men, and everywhere under attack.
Moonlight Reflected — Women who yang and men who yin don't need my advice, but they need to commit to the bit.
Pods and Ends 2 — Three podcast appearances and a teaser about rationalism vs. dating
Coupling for Decouplers — Rationalism struggles to figure out dating (to say nothing of the rationalists)
Chapter 6: Identity trap
Soulmates — Most people believe in soulmates, but no one knows what exactly they believe in.
Standing there Being Hot Isn’t a Love Language — The temptation of being tempting, the mismeasure of love, and the risky work of intimacy.
Status: Incel — a Conversation with William Costello — The past and future of mating reflected in the black pill.
Part II: Your dream date’s dream date
Chapter 7: Supply and Demand
Markets in Dating — Understanding the logic of markets, and turning complaints into opportunities.
The Value of Others — a Dialectic — A book about transactional relationship that’s so wild I couldn't just review it, I have to argue with it.
The Good Men Aren’t Gone, They’re Delayed — And that means women can't afford to wait in the marriage market.
Chapter 8: Everything is selection
Girl Too Hot to Marry — Dating for marriage is hardest for the hottest, you probably couldn't pull it off.
Chapter 9: Learning curve
Your Personal Guide to Authentic Wanting — The difficulty of wanting and a personalized exercise for readers.
Husband-Shaped Curve — Who you’re becoming is more important that what you’re looking for.
From Nobody to Husband — The story of my own slow climb up the marriageability curve.
Chapter 10: Be yourself and have fun
How to Improve at Flirting When You Don’t Like Flirting — Flirting can be anything, so anything you enjoy is a place to start practicing.
What I Learned about Sex at the Rationalist Bloggers' Conference — Sufficiently advanced integrity is indistinguishable from a sex cult.
Be Your Psycho-Cybernetic Self — Coach yourself to dating success by setting goals, crafting an image, and reinforcement learning with all you’ve got.
Dating in the Age of Superintelligence — What if AI observed your entire life to matchmake you?
Chapter: The app death spiral
The fault, dear daters, is not in our apps but in ourselves
Chapter: Running the numbers
Micromarriages, market valuations, Nash equilibria, ratios, hotness scales, and the misunderstood spreadsheet.
Part III: Becoming a relationship
How two individuals transform into a couple: the differences that break and build relationships, safety and vulnerability, you can fix them.
Chapter: The work of building
GF who Bewitches You — If you want to live in his head, you have to pay rent.
The Couple as Firm — Relationships have many roles to fill, and only the two cofounders to fill them.
Marriage Isn't Fair — Fairness is the wrong thing to measure and strive for. On magic boxes, mankeeping, and expecting more.
You Can Fix Him — You probably shouldn't. But if you really insist, at least do it the right way
Chapter: What they don’t tell you about loving someone
To Love is to Surrender — Sacrifice, responsiveness, longing: a review of the 2024/25 Europa League final
Chapter: Strength and selflessness
Occasionally Asked Questions
I’m not single. Should I be reading this?
First off, congratulations! Best wishes from my family to yours.
A core tenet of mine is that people’s dating struggles are their everything struggles. It’s about insecurity and agency and identity and balancing your raw authenticity with social presentability. If you’re curious about how people are, you will be curious about how they date. And, hopefully, that’s why you’ll find this blog engaging.
Why “Second Person”?
We are often self-focused when thinking about dating. Why is it hard for me? What does it say about me? What’s my dating story? The actual people we’re hoping to date can become a vague them, their entire gender or generation.
I hope to shift your view to the second person, the one you’re hoping to meet. The clearer you can see them and understand their own dating struggles, the easier it is to find them and to love them.
What do I get for subscribing?
Roughly every other post is (and will stay) paywalled. If you enjoyed the free posts and want more, that’s the main reason. The subscription price will go up as I accumulate a larger archive, so grab the yearly price if this blog is your jam.
I will also have special opportunities for subscribers/founding members to get one-on-one feedback, like the authentic wanting exercise and follow-ups.
Was this supposed to be a book?
Yes. A streamlined and simplified version of Second Person will be a book one day, sans the extras and the digressions and the weirdness and the actual interaction with readers. This is the director’s cut.
If you’re a publisher, editor, or literary agent with ideas about how Second Person could become a great book with your help, please get in touch!
Is this about polyamory?
They say you shouldn’t listen to dating takes from married people since they’re out of the game, and definitely not from singles since they suck at the game. So who’s left? Well, I am married and occasionally dating — all for the love of the game.
However, Second Person has little to do with ethical non-monogamy. Most people I observe, learn from, and try to help are seeking heterosexual monogamous relationships so that’s the default in my writing.
What about homosexual/queer relationships?
I write about what I know, and that is the relationships between men and women. Insofar as it generalizes to very different configurations of sex, gender, and attraction, I hope all my readers will enjoy it. Insofar as it doesn’t, I trust my readers with more first-hand experience to do a better job of translating this to their own lives than I could.
Where can I read more of your stuff?
I’m mostly active on Twitter if you want to see me workshop Second Person ideas in their rawest form. I also have 8 years’ worth of blogging on Putanumonit, including posts about rationality, money, social science being a total joke, and, of course, dating.
I have another question/comment/complaint/funny dating story that is definitely about a friend and not myself
You can email me at yashkaf@gmail, send a message in chat, or ask my AI avatar about anything I’ve ever written over at Read Haus.