Opinion

SEX ON THURSDAY | Ethical Sluttery and Solo-Polyamory

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When it comes to romance and sexual relations, I seek novelty. I seek the nervous excitement of a budding romance or an unfamiliar fuck. But I also seek the comfort, reliability, unconditional affection and deep connection fostered within a longer-term romance or fuckbuddyship. My “exclusive” high school relationship supplied me with the latter, but at the expense of that novelty which I now know is equally important to my overall romantic and sexual satisfaction. Only in college did I come to terms with my need for both at once, and with the possibility of ethically having both at once via polyamory. 

Columns

KUBINEC | The Low-Risk Love Life

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Perfect Match is symbolic of how Cornellians pair off — in as low-risk a way as possible. We want the perks of a romantic relationship within the safe confines of our own plans. Perfect Match hand-delivers you five meet-cutes from the comfort of your bedroom while letting any potential disappointment fall to the math gods. The stakes literally couldn’t be lower.

And the sort of person who would be attracted by this highly efficient dating scheme is also the sort of person who goes to Cornell, isn’t it? We have been taught, often from young ages, to avoid risk — take the right classes, say the right things in interviews, don’t rock the boat too much, major in something sure to land a big salary. Our love lives play out atop the subconscious belief that the safest way is the best way.

Columns

DO | What is Love?

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Love is, at its core, a feeling of strong affection. It’s a very strange concoction of emotions that makes us desire a certain person’s exclusive romantic attention. Very rarely is love this straightforward, though; problems typically arise once we consider that not only do you have to love the other person, but the other person has to love you back.

breakups

HUA | I Got My Heart Broken Freshman Year — And I’d Do It Again

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I lived it. I did what everyone tells you not to do when you first go to college. By Sept. 12 of my freshman year, I got into a serious long-term relationship. My freshman year was then filled with sleeping over (in a double), no longer putting on makeup because I was cuffed and spending hours studying with one person.

Opinion

SONG | A Relationship Isn’t the Answer to Happiness

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The first time my boyfriend and I talked about the definition of love, we were in a New York City apartment. The summer was humid and scented with moss, and in a crowded kitchen, we talked about what love means — argued about it, really. We quickly realized this word required a definition neither of us could grasp — a concept simultaneously as expansive as the city awake around us, yet as narrow as the mortar between brick walls. We haven’t talked about that definition in a while, but I hear it discussed all the time around me, in cafés, in classrooms, in libraries. And as Valentine’s Day comes around, there emerges a widening rift between those who are lonely and those who are not, those who are cuffed and those who are eating ice cream alone in their bed, those who are happy and those who are heartbroken.

Columns

LIEBERMAN | Get Dumped: Become a Better Person

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The Cornell academic calendar, with its first day of classes (and therefore, my first scheduled column) desperately far from the start of the New Year, tested my ability to write about New Year’s resolutions. I’m doing it anyway because I love fresh starts. In 2018, I resolved to Not Get Broken Up With, Not Even Once. I got dumped, on January 21st, by a boy who taught me how to roll cigarettes that I, less officially, have resolved to never smoke. So, the gig was up, and the resolution was broken, but I was surprisingly okay with it.