May 1, 2026: Intimacy and Pheromone Illiteracy and the Fog of Love

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone – and finding that that’s ok with them.” Alain de Botton

Intimacy requires courage because risk is inescapable. Rollo May

Pheromones are earth’s primordial idiom. Karen Joy Fowler

God, it was good. Comforting and stimulating at the same time. Absolutely world-class pheromones. I wished I could take his jacket home with me. Not him, just the jacket. Lisa Kleypas

The “self” is a particular kind of consciousness whose duty is to accurately pin the “longitude and latitude” on the many kinds of maps they’ve created or accepted about the world and life. A failure to pin accurately means the individual does not know where they are. And that kind of lost is a ubiquitous human affliction. Hoonōs

Personally I find that all of us have trouble reading intimacy and pheromones. Certainly, I do and certainly the people I know something about do. I do not know everybody, but I am making a broader guess about the application.

Most of the time things work out, as in folks take a pass at getting more real (real is already a tough one) and/or the prospective couple is simply not well suited to pair bonding (excuses like “others are meaner” or “the grass is greener” or the “promise is simply a ubiquitous neener-neener”).

I’ve chosen to walk away instead staying with the “come-here, go-away” syndrome (if one moves away, the other wants the come-here or vice versa). But my way is just one way.

Sometimes we just do not get do-overs even if each of the combatants might secretly want another try. And for those who do get involved in attempted do-overs, some folk can actually change their trajectories. But however rare behavioral 180s might be, personality 180s are a bit more difficult. The difference in true behavioral 180s is that the same personality trait no longer carries the same weight as it becomes much easier to recognize flaws and in a shorter amount of time. The actual disappearance of those personality flaws is not required for meaningful behavioral changes.

As I have my own misplaced pins on the maps of intimacy and pheromones, I’m not waving any look-this-way flags. I will likely take my stumbles with me to my death, though I hope I’ll have moved enough pins so my maps are at least semi-accurate.

Sometimes though, it’s just too late. That’s a different pin drop on a different map.

The problem of inaccuracies afflicts all of us to some degree or the other. However, in this largely patriarchal society of ours, women have found a way to have control. Nonetheless, all of this on either side is a control-overcorrection.

My take is that men need to learn women should have the initial move, as vague as it might be. Women need to learn men are way more fragile than even men think—men are required to learn rejection and to do so gracefully. But men can become monsters when trying to wrestle the narrative back into their corner.

Women on the other hand, seem to believe that once they decide, if their interest is rejected or subjected to scrutiny, then monsters they can become.

We do not have to be very astute to figure out what another person likes and feed them that “meal.” I’m not being an intimacy wet blanket; I am pointing to how people can be like stuff we can use or not. However, people are not stuff.

We all know a map is not the place, just a symbol representing place. To rely on a map alone is like looking solely at our navigation device and forgetting to look out at the world to check if we’re tracking correctly. When it comes to intimacy and pheromones, it is almost always “visual flight rules,” seldom instruments alone. That can be quite disconcerting when it comes to the “fog of love.”

Like reading and writing illiteracy, intimacy and pheromone illiteracy also recognizes there is something on the “page,” but the symbols cannot be read, only guessed at—and guessing is a poor way to find tracks in the heart.

When we become enamored with the seduction of the “molecules of emotion,” we can forget to find an additional reference point. But we can “find” a protective reference point in what amounts to sapiens’ “imperfect monogamy.” When we do, betrayal can become yet another symbol in our head. Even more massive over-corrections will likely follow.

Warning—run-on sentence ahead:

If we define an intimate relationship as a combination of intimacy, passion, and commitment with pheromones involved in each facet while interacting in concert in the triad of “and an I, a you, and a we, though never in the same way (one cannot put their toe in the same water twice), then it is clear an imperfect monogamy can be unsettling. But when we practice deception (mostly we fool ourselves), we will become rather good at it. We do best, what we do most.

The fact is one can actually have a love of their life without love being returned. And I mean actual love, not just a pheromone reaction. The litmus test of this condition is to respect, not to reject. The lack of rejection is not about comeuppance nor is it about unconditional acceptance; it is about knowing we all have trouble. However, that lack of rejection is not the same as forgetting who the primary instigator is or was, even if it was one’s own self. Whether one or more bears responsibility, it is time for another pin placement.

Heartbreak is part of the human condition. We will break hearts; we will have our heart broken. That’s a guarantee—even if one eventually has to choose a life alone.

Once love is buried in the artificial conditions we’ve helped to create, it will be a long rescue, and many will not live to see the resurrection.

Next up in the above scenario? Learn to be alone? Learn to adapt well. Learn to forgo blame. Learn to see beauty anyway, as beauty is a staple always in season.

As for love, my take is we think the need for toughness requires a good beating to tenderize it and make it “consumable.” Instead, we manage to bruise and batter the very thing we seek to sustain. Not a brilliant plan, any more than trying to pin longitude and latitude on a moving donkey map while blindfolded.

And in case a reader is going there, this post is not about being woke or asleep, it’s about knowing when to do and when to not do—after all, we all have sleep-wake cycles. There is yet another need for an accurate pin drop.