“A soul mate isn’t just someone we love. As for our grandparents, there are probably lots of people out there whom we could settle down with and, in the fullness of time, grow to love. But we want more than love. We want a lifelong wingman/ wingwoman who completes us and can handle the truth, to mix…”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“If I had been a young person a few generations ago, I would have gotten married pretty young. Most likely, I would have wound up marrying some girl who lived in my neighborhood in my hometown of Bennettsville, South Carolina, around the time I was twenty-three. She would have been even younger, whic…”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“After the rings, the priest should just say, ‘Enjoy it, bing-bongs. Due to our brain’s tendency toward hedonic adaptation, you won’t feel quite this giddy in a few years. All right, where’s the pigs in a blanket? I’m outta here.”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“The vows in this wedding were powerful. They were saying the most remarkable, loving things about each other. Things like ‘You are a prism that takes the light of life and turns it into a rainbow’ or ‘You are a lotion that moisturizes my heart. Without you, my soul has eczema.’ It was the noncheesy,…”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“If we could all have lifelong passionate love, the world would collapse. We’d stay in our apartments lovingly staring at our partners while the streets filled with large animals and homeless children eating out of the garbage.”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“So love goes from feeling like I’m doing cocaine to feeling how I feel about my uncle? I don’t want to make companionate love sound like a bummer. It is love, just less intense and more stable. There is still passion, but it’s balanced with trust, stability, and an understanding of each other’s flaw…”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“At a certain point the brain rebalances itself. It stops pumping out adrenaline and dopamine and you start feeling like you did before you fell in love. The passion you first felt starts to fade. Your brain is like, ALL RIGHT!! We get it, we get it. She’s great, blah, blah, blah.”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“In a world where you sit around all day in your pajamas and swipe right on the faces of your dreams, the options problem rears its ugly head, making settling down seem so damn limiting. Yes, you have someone great, but are you sure they’re the greatest?”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“At a certain point the cost of the work needed to maintain a fun single lifestyle outweighs the benefits. The nights when you have amazing casual sex start getting outweighed by the times you wander home alone wasted and wake up hungover with a half-eaten burrito sitting on your chest.”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“As I hit thirty, I started to despise the bar scene. I had experienced every single version of those nights. I knew all the possible outcomes, and I knew the probabilities of those outcomes. When you hit that point, you realize how fruitless trying to find love by barhopping can be; you have enough…”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“At one point I was the hopeful romantic who would stay out till 4: 00 A.M. every morning, worried that if I went home, I’d miss that magical, amazing woman who showed up at the bar at 3: 35 A.M. After many late nights and brutal mornings, though, I realized that most amazing, magical women don’t wal…”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“If I ever was texting frequently with someone and wanted to make an alias, I think I’d go with ‘Scottie Pippen.’ Then any friends who were peeking at my screen could be left wondering why I was texting with the former Chicago Bulls star on the reg. I only hope Scottie Pippen’s wife never has an affa…”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“M, a brand marketer, sent her boyfriend a picture of her breasts to help him cope with a case of nerves before a presentation at work. This is my favorite. I just love the idea of the guy opening up his phone, seeing the boobs, and thinking, ‘Ahhhh. Okay, you got this, Phil! Let’s nail this PowerPoi…”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“At certain times, though, this ‘I need the best’ mentality can be debilitating. I wish I could just eat somewhere that looks good and be happy with my choice. But I can’t. The problem is that I know somewhere there is a perfect meal for me and I have to do however much research I can to find it. Tha…”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“Needless to say, the singles scene in Qatar is not quite like what we observed anywhere else in the world. Those from religious and traditional families are literally prohibited from casual dating. Flirting in public places gets a young person in serious trouble, and it’s especially dangerous for yo…”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“Walking into a bar or party, a lot of times all you have to go by is people’s faces, and that’s what you use to decide if you are going to gather up the courage to talk to them. Isn’t the swipe app just a HUGE party full of faces that we can swipe right to go talk to? In the case of the girl I’m cur…”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“Online dating is like a second job that requires knowledge and skills that very few of us have. In fact, most of us have no clue what we’re doing. One reason is that people don’t always know what they’re looking for in a soul mate, unlike when they’re picking something easier, like laundry detergent…”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“Even a guy at the highest end of attractiveness barely receives the number of messages almost all women get. But that doesn’t mean that men end up in the online equivalent of standing alone in the corner of the bar. Online there are no lonely corners. Everywhere is filled with people looking to conn…”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com
“The smaller the pool of potential romantic partners, the lower the odds of finding romance face-to-face, whether through friends, in schools, or in public places. Sure, there are booming gay neighborhoods in some cities, but the people who live and hang out there see a lot of one another. After a wh…”— Aziz Ansari, amazon.com