The Artifice of Nonchalance

Desperation is not repulsive – being ashamed of it is.

User-made manuals on how to build yourself an identity around the art of pretending to not want what you want are all the rage now, but I think it's a sad symptom of a generation too embarassed of its own desires, too scared of rejection, too hesitant to possess, so it actively encourages self-denial to "fix" what is assumed to be a personal defect. Men and women both are told to treat dating, flings and chance meetings like "delicious additions" in the buffet of human intimacy, to enjoy moments not people. This creates an ecosystem of disillusionment with love and meaningful sex, but it does not actually kill the desire for intimacy — it simply redirects it into resentment and, yes, breeds incels and femcels. It's an epidemic of unmet desire mixed with self-esteem issues.

You still want. Badly. You want others to want you like you want them so they understand the private humiliation ritual you go through. How you obsess and romanticise – how you see God in someone who barely knows you. But you'll never be wanted back this much as long as you're embarrased about it, playing mind games and pretending you're not down bad. Ironically, the sluttiest thing you can actually do is be raw about how disgustingly needy you are and own it. Wear your hunger like a badge of honour, not a warning sign. Don't pretend like you'd rather be some kind of ascetic monk, denying yourself pleasure because it's also pain. Don't you want to feel alive, human? Don't you want ecstacy, madness, adventure? Admit it, the fantasy is so intoxicating it makes you terrified if the real thing, whether it's disappointment or an event that challenges your perception of reality itself. Whatever the case, people who write and read articles about wanting to be emotionally unavailable are after something deeper they're afraid to name – to occupy someone's mind without trying to. Except distant people aren't "chill" they're terribly afraid of vulnerability. Is that really something to emulate? Because no amount of time spent on self-improvement and niche hobbies is going to fill that hole inside, I assure you. The most it'll do is make it bearable, something to distract yourself with. It's the biggest psy-op of the age.

If you really think emotional distance is “intoxicating” that’s your business, but writing AI-ass articles on how to become unavailable while you crave romantic bliss is kind of pathetic. I say have the balls to own up to your desperation even if it stinks – how badly you want to be in love, to be desired and otherwordly in someone’s eyes. Your lack of courage is the real turn off.

It’s no wonder articles about artifices go viral; everyone wants to seem nonchalant, to minimise their raw hunger gnashing on the mask of their carefully curated ego identity. Cool people don't text back right away. Hot people do.

No one is honest with themselves because they’re scared of wanting too much... The level of repression this article exposes is actually so sad. It's giving femcel "if I make myself unavailable then maybe they'll finally beg for my attention" type shi. Let's not kid ourselves: you're not actually doing this to cultivate a rich inner world; you're doing this to be *seen* as doing such. You think if no one wants to reach for the real you then maybe by making yourself unreachable and unknowable you'll remove the desire until it doesn't matter to you. There's something disturbingly surgical about this. What's wrong with being a desperate romantic and who told you it stinks?

There's apparently some kind of new social value system measuring desire, and if you break those abstract rules you become "too much" and you need to tone it down before your crush gets the ick. Not only that – people are now psychopathologising romantic desire as some kind of "limerance episode" that you need to do "shadow work" for, overanalysing because big feelings are scary and wild and — worst of all – transformative.
A generation raised by the church of individuality and psychological terminology doesn't know what to do when love threatens to dissolve self-interest and personal boundaries. This mutilation of romantic desire to prevent the surrender of ego to love is fascinating to watch, the way reading about medieval torture methods is fascinating. It's pre-empting assumed eternal suffering by trying to exorcise your desires now. If the less you want the happier you'll be then annihilation of a desire is preferred over the risks and effort believed as necessary to actually satisfy a desire.

Serge Gainsborough was 18 years older than Jane Birkin, and could go months without taking a bath, but she loved him so passionately she once threw herself into the Seine just to get his attention. Should have gone to see a psychiatrist and taken her meds, right? They were romantic and creative partners and also had a daughter, actress Charlotte Gainsborough. They never married but remained close until Serge's death.

Taking an interest in something your crush likes just because they like it is endearing, touching even. But somehow it's being framed as "losing yourself" in someone else, and that it's something you should certainly avoid, as if the self is a limited resource. But you only lose yourself when someone is taking you, not when you freely give yourself and they gladly accept. They're different states, but because giving yourself feels like an impulse you can't resist, like you are imposing yourself on someone else, it's perceived as a loss rather than the truest expression of your soul stripped of performance. Rejection is not a loss or failure, it's surprisingly more complicated.

This instinct to act proper, controlled, lightweight, socially acceptable and emotionally detached in matters of romance is remarkably Victorian. These are the very things at which Oscar Wilde hurled his razorsharp wit, and why Romanticism took off so powerfully during the Industrial Revolution, expressing in art, music and literature what the people truly yearned for, what they fears, how disgusted they were with their own repressed obsessions. Now we have the Age of Information; a new kind of revolution driven by computers and cyberspace. And like the codes and the censorship of online spaces, those who grew up like this have strange anxieties surrounding intimate human connection, particularly heterosexuals. Life feels lacking something. Vitality, purity, vividness.

The reason why introverts seem effortlessly seductive is because introversion is somehow inherently feline in nature, and anything feline appears to be charming, graceful, mysterious, cool and playfully unpredictable. A dog stays loyally by your side and apparently that's cringe, but a cat goes out and no one knows where or why and that's sexy... Projected onto human behavior, of course. I'm not into furries or anything.

What people don't seem to realise is that a devotional lover can still habe a rich inner world. The difference is they want to share it, to let themselves be shaped by you, to build something together with you. To allow yourself to be transformed by love is not the same as losing yourself – it's a minor death. Of the ego. Union where it's not you and I anymore – it's us. And it can feel surreal while it's happening, like a dream that might shatter. But love isn't fragile like that. The ego identity is.

I’m selective because my emotional/mental energy is a limited resource – every interaction is measured by an abstract internal value system before I can even think. This is not something to envy; it’s often socially alienating and it used to be a real source of anguish for me. I was perceived as "emotionally distant" meanwhile I craved meaningful connection with the same people who had no idea about it. Of course, I blamed myself for "wanting too much" and being unfit for normal human relationships.

The article I read didn't reek of desperation – it was disappointment edging into femcel-adjacent territory, except it wasn't self-aware enough to admit as much.

Someone was too available. Too ready to drop everything. Too loudly in love.

And someone did not appreciate it or did not know what to do with that level of desire.

I was never repressed or polite. Since I was a child, if I liked someone I told them to their face as soon as I noticed I wanted them romantically. No dropping hints, no games, just raw honesty handed to them like it's their problem, not mine.

Every time it turned out the feelings were mutual.

This summer I was in a beautiful city in Eastern Europe. I saw an elderly couple slowly dancing to a street musician's violin tune. It was literally the most romantic thing I have ever seen in my life; they were visibly absorbed in each other, in their own little world which did not care if it had spectators like me or not... Do you think they got that way because they "had somewhere else to be"? No way. It was because of pure desire; unflinching, present, devotional, true enough that the flame continued into old age. That's the real ideal – at least in my opinion – to reach old age and still be deeply in love, or to die together because separation is unbearable. Yeah, I'm serious.

My truth? I am not "normal" about love and I can't pretend like I am, because being a freak took me further than fake detachment ever could. Most people are just cowards.

Long live chalance – intense feeling, music, poetry, and the art of being alive!!!