"Having a relationship is a lot like writing: To be good at it, you have to be interested in other people and believe you have something interesting to offer them in return. Many people who pursue either do so poorly because they are actually interested only in themselves."

Nice for What

A comic’s look at dating now

LAUREN OYLER

Having a relationship is a lot like writing: To be good at it, you have to be interested in other people and believe you have something interesting to offer them in return. Many people who pursue either do so poorly because they are actually interested only in themselves. Roberson doesn’t seem to realize that attempting to harmonize her heterosexuality with her feminist-writerly impulses could improve both her love life and her work. (Reconsidering The Sorrows of Young Werther might help your writing and your relationship.) Even if the idea of taking a man’s feelings into account is too distasteful, the book Roberson envisioned could have been situated among several recent attempts to reckon with heterosexuality’s relationship to social shifts—Kate Bolick’s Spinster, Moira Weigel’s Labor of Love, Kelli María Korducki’s Hard to Do: The Surprising, Feminist History of Breaking Up—but in shying away from analysis of how, exactly, she sees her personal life as political, Roberson seems to be acknowledging that the feminist basics are common knowledge, the specifics covered better elsewhere.