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Many elements make this story typical of a certain pattern in the relationships between men and women. The woman here is swayed by the man: that is, she is persuaded to enter the relationship. What persuades her to enter the relationship is not a mystery; it is the fact that it endows her with abun…

Modern romantic suffering is also to be excised, but with radically different models of the self: it is to be excised in the name of a utilitarian and hedonist model of the healthy psyche in which suffering marks either a fl awed psychological development or a fundamental threat to one’s sense of s…

The aristocratic ideal of suffering was intertwined with Christian values: it did not make reciprocity the condition for love, and it viewed suffering as a purification of the soul. Christianity provided a narrative framework to organize the experience of suffering, and even viewed it as the theolo…

He was, well he is a very famous academic. Everyone is in awe of him. Before I met him, I felt I was this invisible, insignificant thing, that no one paid attention to me. I always felt the more stupid one in the room. But when he chose me, when we were having this affair, I felt I had become a v…

[...] Moreover, it is quite possible that what is staged here is simultaneously one’s capacity to criticize oneself (and therefore to display one’s character) and one’s capacity to build intimacy by revealing to another one’s flaws and faults. In displaying their capacity to uphold an ideal of char…