relationships | The Smart Set

In The Case Of A Failing Friendship, Don’t Settle — Break Up

Kelsey Smoot — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 11:30:00 +0000

A friend of mine is in the midst of what I call “the shedding season” at the tail-end of her twenties. The shedding season denotes the transition away from young adulthood — often informed by new responsibility, changes in geography, and in my experience, a recalibration of relationships. Through tears, she recently recounted how a […]

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Wandering Jew

Liz Shulman — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 11:30:00 +0000

It might have seemed appropriate, albeit a cliché, to get a new houseplant when my husband and I separated. “It’s good to bring in new life,” one friend said tritely. “Watering it will keep you from being depressed,” another friend mumbled as she left my apartment, gazing downward sheepishly. Another suggested I take up gardening. […]

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The Lost Art of Showing Up

Maria Hewett — Thu, 11 May 2023 11:30:00 +0000

Humans are social animals, and our brains are wired accordingly. When a brain is socially isolated, it will crave social interaction in the same way that a hungry person’s brain will crave food. And yet, we live life in defiance of these facts. While our brains want to be fed social-connection broccoli, we feed them Skittles […]

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Take Only One Memory

Joylyn Chai — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 12:30:00 +0000

If I could take only one memory into eternity, it would be the evening I fell in love with my husband. Long ago, I saw the film After Life by Japanese director, Hirokazu Koreeda. After watching two hours of an imagined purgatory set in what looked like an abandoned, unheated high school, I left the […]

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Thanks for Coming

Colin Fleming — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 12:30:00 +0000

Save for certain varieties of romantic trysts, we like to think our relationships — especially our friendships — are built to last. We don’t enter into them so that they can end. Our aim is that they’ll remain present, adding to our lives whatever it was that drew us to that relationship in the first […]

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Measuring Time

Kalyani Iyer — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 11:30:00 +0000

At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, if you had asked me which food or drink I would miss the most in the event of a grocery shortage, I would have guessed something hearty, like rice, lentils, or potatoes. But here I was, ten days into the lockdown, staring at the very last drop of […]

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Changing Seasons

Rachel Coppe — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 21:00:00 +0000

So, it goes like this: every April, for the past 3 years, I have spent in the aftermath of some kind of breakup. Now I’m sure I would be able to recognize this fact, and have it not bothered me if I met any definition of what it means to be a “chill girl.” However, […]

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May it Be So

Rochelle Jewel Shapiro — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 11:30:00 +0000

Months after I move from my apartment to this ranch house in upstate New York, I find my favorite frying pan boxed beneath a pile of winter boots, but where is my Pablo Neruda with the coffee stain on his odes? Where is my dog-eared Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler that brings me into the maelstrom […]

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My Girl

Jeanette Tran — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 11:36:00 +0000

It is the summer of 2006, and I am at the Karaoke Kid in Madison, Wisconsin, being serenaded by my boyfriend, H.D., and his new Vietnamese language summer school friends, Sam and Trung. Sam is half Vietnamese, half white, and 100% Minneapolis hipster. He is approaching his mid-30s, loves jazz on vinyl, and has an […]

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Step by Step

Nikki Carter — Thu, 07 May 2020 11:30:31 +0000

It is fall in Yosemite, a month past the September equinox. The air is crisp but not uncomfortably cold yet — just right, in other words. I debate between shorts and pants, ultimately choosing the former even though it is only warm in direct sunlight. My legs are covered in goosebumps but I confidently declare, “I’m […]

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