Almost
Rational.
Writing at the intersection of love, psychology, and sociology. Unpacking why we do what we do.
We are neither logical machines nor chaotic beings. We live in the deeply human space of being almost rational.
Writing
The Smart Person's Trap
A series on how intelligence becomes a liability in love. Smart people are the worst at relationships — not because they feel less, but because they think too much. Working on Part 2: why overanalyzing someone's behaviour is just fear wearing a lab coat.
Reading
Kahneman + Fromm
Re-reading Thinking, Fast and Slow for the third time — each read surfaces something new. Also deep in Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving, which argues that love is a skill, not a feeling. Most people have never been taught it.
Obsessing Over
The Vulnerability Performance
How social media created a generation of people who are very good at performing vulnerability and very bad at actually being vulnerable. There is a real essay in here about the difference between sharing pain and processing it.
Fresh off the press
Latest Articles
Honour Killing in Modern India: It Did Not Go Away. You Stopped Looking.
India records a few hundred honour killings officially per year. The real number is somewhere between that and unknowable. The gap between those two figures is what impunity looks like.
8 min readPost-Marital Affairs: Why People Who Had Everything Still Cheated
They had a partner who loved them, children they adored, a life that looked complete. Then they destroyed it for someone they met at a conference. The question is not whether it makes sense. The question is why it felt like it did.
7 min readPre-Marital Affairs: The Relationship You Carried to the Altar
The affair that happened before the wedding is the one people talk about least and think about most. It does not disappear when you say the vows. It waits.
7 min readWhy Some Spouses Kill: The Psychology of Intimate Partner Homicide
Most people who kill their partners are not monsters. They are ordinary people who reached a specific psychological state that ordinary people can reach. That is the part that should disturb you.
9 min readWhy Victims Do Not Leave: The Architecture of Staying
The question is not why they stay. The question is why we keep asking that instead of asking why the abuser keeps hurting them. But since we keep asking: here is the honest answer.
8 min readWhat Betrayal Actually Does to a Human Being
When you discover your partner has been lying to you for months or years, you do not just lose the relationship. You lose your grip on reality. That is not a metaphor.
7 min readWorth your time
Editor's Picks
Why Some Spouses Kill: The Psychology of Intimate Partner Homicide
Most people who kill their partners are not monsters. They are ordinary people who reached a specific psychological state that ordinary people can reach. That is the part that should disturb you.
Why We Give Up on Everything Except Love
We quit guitars, businesses, and diets after a few failures. But heartbreak after heartbreak, we keep going back. The reasons are biological, psychological, and more rational than they look.
The 7 Psychological Tricks Every Ad Uses on You (And Why They Work)
You think you choose what you buy. You do not. Here is the playbook advertisers have been running on your brain for decades.
The writer
Satyam Raj
I write about the space between logic and emotion: where love, psychology, and sociology collide. If you have ever made a decision and then wondered why, this is for you.
Join the conversation
Get essays in your inbox.
One email a week. No noise, no spam. Just writing worth reading.
Unsubscribe anytime. No hard feelings.