Exclusive, Optional

In the previous piece, I wrote that New York relationships often feel wide, not deep.

Friendships expand easily. People keep meeting new people, adding new circles. There is always another dinner, another introduction, another possibility waiting somewhere.

Sometimes it feels like standing in a supermarket aisle filled with snacks. With so many options, it becomes harder to focus on just one.

Relationships can begin to behave the same way.

And in a city like New York, the stimulation never stops. Screens flashing in Times Square, noise, movement, ambition everywhere. It can feel a bit like watching too many short videos in a row. Your attention keeps jumping.

In that environment, focus becomes difficult. Even intimacy sometimes struggles to stay still.

While living there, I saw relationship structures I had rarely encountered before.

I once met a woman who had dated a man. Later, her mother dated the same man. There was no scandal attached to it when the story was told to me. Just a coincidence in the map of their lives.

I also met people in relationships involving more than two people. The balance shifted constantly. Two against one. New alliances forming.

Drama wasn’t an accident. It was part of the structure.

None of this felt like rebellion when you saw it up close. It simply existed, like another configuration people had decided to try.

New York is full of choices. Cities like that tend to produce unusual arrangements.

Some work. Some collapse. Some quietly transform into something else.

I watched many of these stories from the side, sitting on the subway like everyone else.

People came, sat for a while, and eventually disappeared again.

And the train kept moving.