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Chapter 4.
In every life, we are constantly confronted with situations where a stranger will do something acutely irritating or discomforting: perhaps they’ll turn up their music too loudly on the train, or they’ll be wiggling their leg maddeningly next to us on the plane. Maybe they’ll assign us a room in…
We have reduced it down to a trite error – ’worrying about what the neighbours think’ – as if this were a trap that only a mediocrity could ever fall into.…
For many of us, whenever we feel substantially scared, sad, anxious or lonely, the last thing we would ever think of doing is to share our distress; a confession threatens to…
Many of us, even the very kind ones, have a habit of walking through the world wearing a distinctly uncongenial and surly expression. If someone secretly photographed us on our way…
It’s one of the minor tragedies of social life that we make such rigid and unimaginative distinctions when defining the differences between ‘friends’ and ‘lovers’. When it comes to lovers, one…
In undertaking the quietly momentous task of telling someone that we don’t wish to be friends with them anymore, we face a practical and a theoretical hurdle. Strikingly, the practical issue…
There are plenty of people who look like good friends – but are not; and therefore many of us who don’t feel we should be lonely – but deep down very…