Two summers ago, I had a weekend tryst in Miami with a former Albright Scholar who wrote op-eds on Middle Eastern policy for The Wall Street Journal. He was the kind of private-equity-toiling man whose calendar included both Capitol Hill briefings and silent meditation retreats in Big Sur.

I was tan, tipsy, and constantly tripping over the heels I wore to the wedding where we met. We hit it off immediately. He told me I had “an incisive mind”; I told him I loved his restraint. By the end of the first night, we were already planning our next getaway.

Then the texting began. Over the next few weeks, it became painfully clear that all my knowledge of current events came from The Daily Mail. I forced myself through episodes of The Ezra Klein Show and The NPR Politics Podcast, trying to memorize the talking points, but performance has a shelf life. Things came to a head at an IMF fundraiser when I asked him when the DJ was coming on.

Chemistry is sneaky; you think you’re building something sustainable because someone knows how to look at you right. But eventually the fix wears off, and you realize you don’t even eat dinner at the same time, let alone believe in the same version of adulthood.

The saying “opposites attract” has been co-opted by dating apps and chemistry teachers. But in practice, it lives in a stranger place—that unstable overlap between infatuation and projection. It’s party girl meets introverted coder. Jet-setter falls for someone who watches YouTube explainers about bird migration on Friday nights.

Difference might pull us in, but years of dating my polar opposites have taught me that daily life can be all too quick to pull us apart.

One of the starkest opposites I dated came from a prominent entertainment family—one of those surnames etched into theater plaques on Sunset and movie credits your dad recognizes. But this guy, let’s call him “A,” wanted no part of it. No money, no connections, no help. He insisted on living independently, funding his life with odd jobs and graffiti—yes, actual illegal tagging, often on buildings owned by family friends.

At first, it felt cartoonish. “Fuck the world,” he’d say as we crouched behind recycling bins at 3 a.m., prepping his spray cans. I wore gloves—not for legal reasons, but because the canister was freezing. He painted walls like love letters to a revolution that only existed in his head. It felt misguided and performative—privilege disguised in Krylon matte black. God, it was hot.