"The root of all suffering is desire", say the buddhists. And imo, they are right. The less attachments, the freer you are of suffering, o​f toxicity. You can even see this in dating discourse: care less, y​ou will be better off. And in some sense, that's not wrong.

But​ perhaps the most foolish and intense type of desire/attachment is sexual passion. It is innately fueled by lack, it is a longing for something out of reach by nature. This is why it's difficult to maintain it in ​relationships (hence honeymoon ​phase). That's just how it works. Sheer sexual passion, where your soul feels​ ablaze, is not about stability, security, familiarity. It can coexist with those things, but again, that's​ difficult. The more intense it is, the more you lose yourself (​in the moment).

We have many aspects, and we can feel a plethora of different kinds of attachments, but again, sexuality, passionate sexuity, is of the more foolish kind. And that does mean that there is in fact a dichotomy to this, which exist in all of us.

I personally think some degree of forgiving ourselves for our own foolishness is necessary, and it is largely missing from "progressive​" discourse. There is a fairly widespread overemphasis on non-toxicity today. Go to therapy so that things won't be​ that intense for you anymore cause that's not normal. Infatuation is foolishness. Projection is dehumanizing. The old ways were wrong, we are now more rational and normal. ​So on and so on. I very much see it as the pendulum swinging back a bit too much. It's an attitude that caught on to some of this "attachments are making us suffer" stuff and forged it into a strange half-virtue through therapy lingo.

One example is how a common take on Romeo and Juliet these days is that they were total fools and their "love" was toxic. And to some degree, I get it, but like... really? Is that really ​it? All of it? ​To me, that feels just as nuanceless as the other extreme, and dare I say even toxic.

With all this in mind, I also find it ironic how a lot of the times you see these "romantically ​struggling men" discussions boil down to "you want me to explain magic to you? You gotta *feel* these things, man!"

Either way, I hope this trend will calm down a bit going forward because at the moment I definitely think it's making things a bit awkward and does not help (​hetero)​sexuality. At the end of the day, it's okay not to go full monk mode.