Love.

Embrace the chaos

I’m currently 22 years old. Surreal to type that out. Your 20s are rough, it’s one of the most hectic times in our lives. Graduating college, first jobs, moving away from home, friends leaving, and starting over. On top of all of these things, some friends are moving in together with their significant others, getting engaged, and even married. Isn’t that a bitch. We’re supposed to fall in love.

The range prioritization of love is also super polarizing around this time.

Optimize:

Some people are all in at work and want no distractions. They have huge commitments to their growing career. I think a common misconception is that these people are cutthroat or optimization robots. They supposedly don’t have feelings and only care about work metrics. I have friends that have been accused to be both. A lot of them actually want love, they just want to have the proper time and energy to care for it. I think this is actually really thoughtful and commonly overlooked for those who dive headfirst into love. They want to be prepared for it when the time comes. These robots don’t like to miss, and that bleeds into their romantic life too. Although the drawback is never taking the leap. Love is supposed to be risky and unstable. High risk and high reward. If you never take the leap, then you’ll never get it. Romantic relationships bleed into your overall well-being, work, and foundational headspace. It’s not an easy calculation to make.

Head-first:

In contrast, we have people who prioritize love above all else and ask why they haven’t found the “one” yet. I think this is where a lot of us start. Many of us are guilty of it. I might be… But I’ve grown a bit thankfully. We often skip the question of why someone should even be with us. What do we bring to the table?

This headspace and necessary mistake is basically trying to have an identity and being clay. Clay is just a material and label, it can be a hut, sculpture, bowl, or utensil, and these aspects add depth. We mold to whoever we’re talking to and base our hobbies and interests around them all we really hold onto is our name. The name isn’t the identity, there’s much more to it. I imagine a lot of these relationships end up in existential crisis and resentment. Resentment of lost friends, hobbies, and passions, because love has enough power to cause that kind of damage. When we’re even younger, it’s a normal mistake, we have no idea who and what we are, I know I still don’t. I have a better idea though. Some of us will just have to make that mistake more frequently than others, but that can’t be helped. Just need to learn after each loss and optimize from there.

We should put more energy into working towards being someone worth being with. Resolve all of your internal conflicts so when the time comes you don’t fuck it up. If you don’t your partner will have to carry that burden and no one deserves that. Self-awareness is everything. Communication is hard. Being able to know what your issues are, and how you react to certain things is the first step. The second is somehow finding the words to explain them without exploding.

The obscure analogy I’ll provide is that your partner is in medical treatment. Without any diagnosis, they are going to give you chemo when you have the flu or cough medicine when you have cancer. The doctor is then also speaking in a foreign language. Pretty concerning. Communicating is hard enough, to go in blind without any idea is absurd. There have been zero “because I said so’s” that were well received that I know of. It’s not good enough.

After that be a loser. Go find a million obscure hobbies that maybe you think will impress the girl. You’ll find a few that will stick, those were really for yourself all along. Whatever gets the wheels turning. Working out is by far the most simple example. You start with some sort of insecurity skinny or fat and maybe you want to impress the girl. You end up getting stronger, feeling better, thinking more clearly, and developing discipline. That ultimately adds 4 benefits for you and 1 to the girl you're trying to impress. That’s good math: net positive. Personally, I’m getting kind of tired of it, but that’s part of the game. I joke with my friend’s that I hope she finds me soon so I can stop picking up all these obscure hobbies to make myself more interesting. This entire substack kind of feeds into one of those hobbies. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying a lot of it though.

There are also people that are always in relationships. I think those people almost have it right. I like to try to imagine those people have more than just looks. I like to think that they are 80-90% there. But that last 10-20% is all deep internal reflection. Clearly, there is a lack of success with the track record but it mostly works. Sometimes all the relationships just add a bunch of noise to the data and it’s hard to really determine what was your fault and what wasn’t. As friends, we typically try to prescribe them more single and alone time but compliance sucks with that and in medicine. More relationships sometimes mean more baggage. This world has a way of always finding balance.

Baggage:

Love is volatile as shit.

When we fall in love, it is reckless and irresponsible. We surrender our entirety problems and all. Imagine you had a set of keys. The keys give access to your insecurities, trauma, intrusive thoughts, and all the red flags you’re trying so hard to hide. If you give the keys to a robber you’re fucked. If you give the keys to your wife/husband you have someone that can deeply understands you and properly support you. You can feel less alone. I think we’re all looking for a bit more of that feeling.

Another huge issue that I hear is people complaining about there being no good partners to choose from. They’ve been hurt by past experiences. People start to lose faith in humanity. We only know what we know, seems fair enough. Logic serves me well. There are roughly 8 billion people in this world. Let’s assume that the girl is one in a million. We have 8,000 people to choose from then. Let’s take 50% of that to have 4000 potential people we can die happy with sorting out people who are taken, out of age range, geographic reach, preferences whatever. For serious relationships let’s say maybe you’ve had 5. 5 is not even close to representing the data set of 4000. Those 5 people are not representative of the rest of the population. It’s unfair in romance to assume the worst from someone because of someone completely unrelated to the relationship at hand. Each person is a reset. If there is an issue in 100 for 100 people then maybe you need to fix the filter. Maybe it’s not women but the women you like. With that said, the odds are still low, but a worthwhile fight. Hoping to find the girl, get married, and ride it out to the grave. A lot of work to be done with those odds at hand… I’ll just be doing my best til then, hopefully, she’ll be accommodating.

No matter the effort, vulnerability without judgment is the only thing that will bring us some sense of peace. We can’t erase the past. We carry all the baggage and scars wherever we go. Family history, body count, past (failed) relationship experiences. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. The bad serve as reminders of things we don’t want, out of our control, and most importantly, lessons learned.

The best part about baggage, we all have it. Some of us are just better at hiding it or care less about it. The people who judge people off surface-level aspects are forgetting about themselves. What makes your character and being so much better that you can’t spend the time to get a little more understanding? Personally, I’m convinced those are some of the worst people to be with. They typically have a lot of deep-rooted problems but instead of dealing with them, they choose to nitpick at everyone they can see on a dating app. A rough look. Sure maybe this guy or girl has some tendency but who is to say it wasn’t from past trauma you haven’t taken the time to understand? Reducing all of your pain into a little red flag is somewhat impressive if you ask me. Take the time to figure it out, don’t be lazy. It’s already hard enough to find the one. Go find a war worth fighting, it’s not gonna be free when you find it.

The Answer:

I’ve never admitted to being the most sane. But I think that you should put yourself out there in your entirety every time. Be completely vulnerable. Get shattered a million times. At the end of those moments at least you won’t have any regret and have left it all out there. I don’t want to bear those doubts and what-ifs. In gambling, there is something called the Martingale system. It is a system where every time you experience a loss you double your initial bet. Theoretically, it will even out the win. The flaw is that most people don’t have enough money to keep betting. But with love, all we need is a little time and vulnerability. Once we establish internal security, we can then continually double our bet on vulnerability til we win. Much cheaper than betting in a casino, and debatably more rewarding too. Shout out to all to degens for this reference knowledge. I have a lot of blind faith that whatever it is on the other side of this is going to be worth it. In the hopes in the near future, we will all feel less alone.

She’s coming as fast as she can.

Until next time

Always wishing you the best,

Corey Chiou

Supplements:

Some videos that I’ve enjoyed on the topic. Don’t necessarily relate to all of it, but appreciate what they have to say.

This one below is just a cool song related to being a parent. Looking forward to that day.