The Elaborate Manual of Love
When I was 15, I started writing a self-help book about dating for teenagers. This was a lofty goal for someone who had never had a serious boyfriend, but I was briefly dallying with positivism at the time, and I felt I was better positioned without first-hand knowledge that might muddle my empirical observations.
I should begin by saying that The Elaborate Manual of Love was not an original title. At the end of freshman year, a cute senior (Steve) gave a sophomore and known circus-arts enthusiast (my good friend Spencer) a hand-written guide to seducing women (either me, or my friend Anna, or the girl from English). It was split into four chapters. The first one only took up a single page, and it said, “Stop juggling.”
(I would later go on to date Cute Senior Steve for three entire years, and he never strayed from this penchant for wordsmith, the most effective tool for Getting Girls)
The intended purpose of my own Elaborate Manual, as I affectionately called it, was less a guide to self-improvement and more a set of explicit instructions, or more generously best practices, designed to (1) codify the profoundly messy experience of dating in a high school populated by 400 misfit kids from across the entire city who were, in the culture of the 2010s, hitting puberty just in time to identify en masse as bisexual, and (2) position myself as a subject-matter expert (Thought Leader) in the area.
That I would later go on to a successful career in management consulting should come as no surprise to any of you; that my attempt to seek an autism diagnosis proved unsuccessful should be baffling.
Over the next three years of high school, I spent most of my visits to the computer lab writing a formulaic series of 3-step how-to articles that somehow managed to be both brutally prescriptive and incredibly tender, which is an excellent way to describe the teenage psyche.
Topics included, but were not limited to:
How to Select a Romantic Partner
How to Be Attractive
How to Kiss
How to Break Up With Someone
How to Be Broken Up With
The Tragic Love Affair: An Art (“Although commonly associated with pain and suffering, if properly executed, the Tragic Love affair offers ample opportunity for entertainment.”)
A Word on Love
Glossary and Key Concepts
Then there was what I call the ‘proto slide deck’ work, like a flowchart ambitiously titled “A Guide to Romantic Relationships” that offered such positive outcomes as “Someone falls out of love,” and “Make angry flow charts,” and “Flirt forever in a situationship until one of you dies.”
The encyclopedic nature of the Elaborate Manual was part of its appeal; I was obsessed with the idea that something as nebulous as Love could be so neatly documented. Of course, it was not unlike Diderot’s in its underlying political intent. Without exception, the Elaborate Manual was written in the second person.
At first, it was to parrot the kind of journalistic interview and expert-consult structure Cute Senior had so expertly employed in his first edition. Later, it evoked a kind of Royal We or declarative structure that positioned me (its writer) as the voice of the collective; a kind of pubescent revolutionary and advocate for an enlightened approach to teenage romance.
One of the funniest things about the Elaborate Manual was the degree to which my classmates took it seriously, or at least humored it. There was serious demand for this kind of structured advice; and I took a lot of journalistic risks by writing articles about the more recently-occured dating faux pas troubling my classmates. (“Thou shalt wait at least 3 weeks after a break up before dating someone else, but this rule is shortened to two if the new couple is perceived to be more compatible.”)
The Elaborate Manual’s dating philosophy was a kind of stoic romanticism, in which the practice of falling in love and pursuing relationships was both desirable and inevitable, in which pain and heartbreak were the invariable outcomes of two hearts so betwixt, and to which the only solution was to optimize or otherwise intellectualize that pain so that it could at least be funny.
Thus Step 3 in “How to Be Broken Up With” is titled ‘Walking Away With Dignity’ and provides allowances for enjoyable melodrama - (“Ideally, you get (1) one glistening tear or angry phone call.”) - but then quickly turns to advice for rebuilding trust, prioritizing your friends, and of course, getting hotter.
Looking back, almost 20 years later, it would be tempting to “adolescent psychology-away” the whole thing. I was an intellectually precocious but socially awkward teenager who spent most of her time hanging out with grown adults and listening to them talk about their lives; explaining “How to get a date” in three easy steps probably made the world feel less daunting knowing that the grown ups were still asking themselves questions like, “How to decide when it’s time to move on from someone you’ve put a decade into,” and “How do I know if my marriage is over?”
I can’t be that cynical about it, and I won’t dismiss my teenage self like that. I’d love to be able to say, “I grew up and, shucks, I learned it’s not all that simple.” It is certainly true that in the 17 years since I began writing the Elaborate Manual of Love, I’ve faced a lot of scenarios teenage-me could not have anticipated (“How to tell your boyfriend you’re a lesbian” being one of them).
But then I think about the earnestness with which I wrote the Elaborate Manual, and I don’t think I’ve strayed from that at all. And thank God for that. To be a teenager, observing the impossibility of being tender in the world, and to decide to write a guide to turn that pain into something meaningful, even entertaining, is a gift I’ve carried with me for the rest of my life.
The idea that love and dating - that our very selves - are things to be codified and optimized can feel uncomfortably prescient in our culture. I can’t advocate for a 1, 2, 3 - step simplicity in dating when the very idea of swiping on Hinge or stalking an Instagram profile currently makes me want to take holy vows of celibacy.
I turn back to the stoic romanticism, or the romantic stoicism, that originally informed The Elaborate Manual; and a kind of Stendhalian obsession with ‘passion in its own right’ or in my case, ‘passion for its own sake.’
The Elaborate Manual was fundamentally an antidote to the age of optimization in its rejection of a structured, algorithmic life in favor of doing things because they were interesting. It was structured by an epistemology that argued for the validity of individual human experience, even emotion, as a source of knowing. It upheld the capital-r Romantic notion, as Ernst Fischer puts it, “passion and intensity of experience as an absolute value.”
I’ll say this, then: writing the Elaborate Manual taught me to experience life as both observer and participant, as both a master and an eternal scholar. Maybe someday I’ll come out with another List of Dating Commandments - and god help us, the lesbians love a Chart - but it’ll never be so prescriptive. There will be just a handful of chapters, and the first will only take up a single page, and it will say, “No juggling.”
2/A Selection of Key Insights from the Elaborate Manual of Love
On the closet door being made of glass:
“Think about the person of your gender you find most attractive. What about them makes them attractive? Is it the way their hair always covers part of their eye, is it their smell, their makeup? Are they hilarious, smart, sensitive? If you’re aware of what you consider attractive, you’ll better emulate these ideas yourself.” (How to Be Attractive)
On owning your mistakes:
“Rule #1: There shall be no tragic confessions of love if thou is to blame for losing said love in the first place.” (Rules for Life)
On enjoying the ride:
“Although commonly associated with pain and suffering, if properly executed, the Tragic Love Affair offers ample opportunities for entertainment.”
(The Tragic Love Affair: An Art)
On relativization:
“Infatuation isn’t a bad thing; some people have been known to prefer it. Loving someone means you care about them entirely for all their good points and bad points. But first loves can seem bigger and more important than they are in the big picture. Chances are you’ll have a few loves in your life, so don’t rush into something because it feels so huge and real right now.”
(A Word on Love)
On Machevellianism:
“Breaking up is hard to do, and we at the Elaborate Manual are well aware it’s often just as difficult for the one doing the breaking up. But it’s important to remember that breaking up with someone isn’t about making things easier for you, it’s about making yourself seem like a great person so that if it’s all a mistake, you still have a slim chance at forgiveness.” (How to Break Up With Someone)
On leaving people better than you found them:
“Yes, breaking up with someone is scary, but ignoring your partner while you muster up the courage just tells them you’re going to do it but don’t have the balls. Nothing says, “I Don’t Care About You At All, Like Obviously Not Romantically But Not Even As A Person,” like breaking up with someone via IM, text, or god forbid a change of the relationship status on Facebook. Don’t do it at your house, so she has to say goodbye to your mom. Leave them in a place where they can move on and be in a great relationship after you.” (How to Break Up With Someone)
On “How Soon is Now?”:
“If, after your break-up, you feel the need to go out clubbing and hook up with a gorgeous guy with an exotic name, by all means, do so. We’re sure he’s going to make you feel great about yourself and restore your confidence, which is exactly what you need. Just don’t say we didn’t warn you when you go home alone and feel the pangs of loneliness even more sharply.” (How to Be Broken Up With)
On playing the field:
“Rule #7 : Thou shalt maintain no more than three, but not less than one, flirtationship while single.” (Rules for Life)
On cognitive dissonance:
“Rule #31: Thou shalt be true to thine own sexual orientation.” (Rules for Life)
On Judith Butler:
“There are two extremes typically taken on the stance of attractiveness. One requires complete conformity to social and societal expectations of gender, the other, unwavering loyalty to one’s own nature and personality. The truth lies somewhere in the direct middle, and wavers constantly.” (How to Be Attractive)
On Love:
“We at the Elaborate Manual believe in love. We believe in sunsets, and romance, and being willing to die for another person. We also believe in unicorns, so you know, take that with a grain of salt.” (A Word on Love)
The Elaborate Manual of Love
When I was 15, I started writing a self-help book about dating for teenagers. This was a lofty goal for someone who had never had a serious boyfriend, but I was briefly dallying with positivism at the time, and I felt I was better positioned without first-hand knowledge that might muddle my empirical observations.
I should begin by saying that The Elaborate Manual of Love was not an original title. At the end of freshman year, a cute senior (Steve) gave a sophomore and known circus-arts enthusiast (my good friend Spencer) a hand-written guide to seducing women (either me, or my friend Anna, or the girl from English). It was split into four chapters. The first one only took up a single page, and it said, “Stop juggling.”
(I would later go on to date Cute Senior Steve for three entire years, and he never strayed from this penchant for wordsmith, the most effective tool for Getting Girls)
The intended purpose of my own Elaborate Manual, as I affectionately called it, was less a guide to self-improvement and more a set of explicit instructions, or more generously best practices, designed to (1) codify the profoundly messy experience of dating in a high school populated by 400 misfit kids from across the entire city who were, in the culture of the 2010s, hitting puberty just in time to identify en masse as bisexual, and (2) position myself as a subject-matter expert (Thought Leader) in the area.
That I would later go on to a successful career in management consulting should come as no surprise to any of you; that my attempt to seek an autism diagnosis proved unsuccessful should be baffling.
Over the next three years of high school, I spent most of my visits to the computer lab writing a formulaic series of 3-step how-to articles that somehow managed to be both brutally prescriptive and incredibly tender, which is an excellent way to describe the teenage psyche.
Topics included, but were not limited to:
How to Select a Romantic Partner
How to Be Attractive
How to Kiss
How to Break Up With Someone
How to Be Broken Up With
The Tragic Love Affair: An Art (“Although commonly associated with pain and suffering, if properly executed, the Tragic Love affair offers ample opportunity for entertainment.”)
A Word on Love
Glossary and Key Concepts
Then there was what I call the ‘proto slide deck’ work, like a flowchart ambitiously titled “A Guide to Romantic Relationships” that offered such positive outcomes as “Someone falls out of love,” and “Make angry flow charts,” and “Flirt forever in a situationship until one of you dies.”
The encyclopedic nature of the Elaborate Manual was part of its appeal; I was obsessed with the idea that something as nebulous as Love could be so neatly documented. Of course, it was not unlike Diderot’s in its underlying political intent. Without exception, the Elaborate Manual was written in the second person.
At first, it was to parrot the kind of journalistic interview and expert-consult structure Cute Senior had so expertly employed in his first edition. Later, it evoked a kind of Royal We or declarative structure that positioned me (its writer) as the voice of the collective; a kind of pubescent revolutionary and advocate for an enlightened approach to teenage romance.
One of the funniest things about the Elaborate Manual was the degree to which my classmates took it seriously, or at least humored it. There was serious demand for this kind of structured advice; and I took a lot of journalistic risks by writing articles about the more recently-occured dating faux pas troubling my classmates. (“Thou shalt wait at least 3 weeks after a break up before dating someone else, but this rule is shortened to two if the new couple is perceived to be more compatible.”)
The Elaborate Manual’s dating philosophy was a kind of stoic romanticism, in which the practice of falling in love and pursuing relationships was both desirable and inevitable, in which pain and heartbreak were the invariable outcomes of two hearts so betwixt, and to which the only solution was to optimize or otherwise intellectualize that pain so that it could at least be funny.
Thus Step 3 in “How to Be Broken Up With” is titled ‘Walking Away With Dignity’ and provides allowances for enjoyable melodrama - (“Ideally, you get (1) one glistening tear or angry phone call.”) - but then quickly turns to advice for rebuilding trust, prioritizing your friends, and of course, getting hotter.
Looking back, almost 20 years later, it would be tempting to “adolescent psychology-away” the whole thing. I was an intellectually precocious but socially awkward teenager who spent most of her time hanging out with grown adults and listening to them talk about their lives; explaining “How to get a date” in three easy steps probably made the world feel less daunting knowing that the grown ups were still asking themselves questions like, “How to decide when it’s time to move on from someone you’ve put a decade into,” and “How do I know if my marriage is over?”
I can’t be that cynical about it, and I won’t dismiss my teenage self like that. I’d love to be able to say, “I grew up and, shucks, I learned it’s not all that simple.” It is certainly true that in the 17 years since I began writing the Elaborate Manual of Love, I’ve faced a lot of scenarios teenage-me could not have anticipated (“How to tell your boyfriend you’re a lesbian” being one of them).
But then I think about the earnestness with which I wrote the Elaborate Manual, and I don’t think I’ve strayed from that at all. And thank God for that. To be a teenager, observing the impossibility of being tender in the world, and to decide to write a guide to turn that pain into something meaningful, even entertaining, is a gift I’ve carried with me for the rest of my life.
The idea that love and dating - that our very selves - are things to be codified and optimized can feel uncomfortably prescient in our culture. I can’t advocate for a 1, 2, 3 - step simplicity in dating when the very idea of swiping on Hinge or stalking an Instagram profile currently makes me want to take holy vows of celibacy.
I turn back to the stoic romanticism, or the romantic stoicism, that originally informed The Elaborate Manual; and a kind of Stendhalian obsession with ‘passion in its own right’ or in my case, ‘passion for its own sake.’
The Elaborate Manual was fundamentally an antidote to the age of optimization in its rejection of a structured, algorithmic life in favor of doing things because they were interesting. It was structured by an epistemology that argued for the validity of individual human experience, even emotion, as a source of knowing. It upheld the capital-r Romantic notion, as Ernst Fischer puts it, “passion and intensity of experience as an absolute value.”
I’ll say this, then: writing the Elaborate Manual taught me to experience life as both observer and participant, as both a master and an eternal scholar. Maybe someday I’ll come out with another List of Dating Commandments - and god help us, the lesbians love a Chart - but it’ll never be so prescriptive. There will be just a handful of chapters, and the first will only take up a single page, and it will say, “No juggling.”
2/A Selection of Key Insights from the Elaborate Manual of Love
On the closet door being made of glass:
“Think about the person of your gender you find most attractive. What about them makes them attractive? Is it the way their hair always covers part of their eye, is it their smell, their makeup? Are they hilarious, smart, sensitive? If you’re aware of what you consider attractive, you’ll better emulate these ideas yourself.” (How to Be Attractive)
On owning your mistakes:
“Rule #1: There shall be no tragic confessions of love if thou is to blame for losing said love in the first place.” (Rules for Life)
On enjoying the ride:
“Although commonly associated with pain and suffering, if properly executed, the Tragic Love Affair offers ample opportunities for entertainment.”
(The Tragic Love Affair: An Art)
On relativization:
“Infatuation isn’t a bad thing; some people have been known to prefer it. Loving someone means you care about them entirely for all their good points and bad points. But first loves can seem bigger and more important than they are in the big picture. Chances are you’ll have a few loves in your life, so don’t rush into something because it feels so huge and real right now.”
(A Word on Love)
On Machevellianism:
“Breaking up is hard to do, and we at the Elaborate Manual are well aware it’s often just as difficult for the one doing the breaking up. But it’s important to remember that breaking up with someone isn’t about making things easier for you, it’s about making yourself seem like a great person so that if it’s all a mistake, you still have a slim chance at forgiveness.” (How to Break Up With Someone)
On leaving people better than you found them:
“Yes, breaking up with someone is scary, but ignoring your partner while you muster up the courage just tells them you’re going to do it but don’t have the balls. Nothing says, “I Don’t Care About You At All, Like Obviously Not Romantically But Not Even As A Person,” like breaking up with someone via IM, text, or god forbid a change of the relationship status on Facebook. Don’t do it at your house, so she has to say goodbye to your mom. Leave them in a place where they can move on and be in a great relationship after you.” (How to Break Up With Someone)
On “How Soon is Now?”:
“If, after your break-up, you feel the need to go out clubbing and hook up with a gorgeous guy with an exotic name, by all means, do so. We’re sure he’s going to make you feel great about yourself and restore your confidence, which is exactly what you need. Just don’t say we didn’t warn you when you go home alone and feel the pangs of loneliness even more sharply.” (How to Be Broken Up With)
On playing the field:
“Rule #7 : Thou shalt maintain no more than three, but not less than one, flirtationship while single.” (Rules for Life)
On cognitive dissonance:
“Rule #31: Thou shalt be true to thine own sexual orientation.” (Rules for Life)
On Judith Butler:
“There are two extremes typically taken on the stance of attractiveness. One requires complete conformity to social and societal expectations of gender, the other, unwavering loyalty to one’s own nature and personality. The truth lies somewhere in the direct middle, and wavers constantly.” (How to Be Attractive)
On Love:
“We at the Elaborate Manual believe in love. We believe in sunsets, and romance, and being willing to die for another person. We also believe in unicorns, so you know, take that with a grain of salt.” (A Word on Love)